Rain

My left leg is tucked under me, and my right leg is stretched across his lap. He curves his fingers around my calf. The house is quiet. In the distance, thunder rumbles.

It's been a long day, full of wood splitting and children laughing. Together, we've marveled over the early blooms of the rhododendron and and the lateness of the bed hour. Such is life when you're raising four children and two acres of land. Both are works in progress, although he and I know we are not the creators of these wild things. We are merely the caretakers.

I marvel at the simplicity in these moments, the peace we share in the weariness together. It wasn't always this way. I remember a time when our soil was parched, when the drought left us shriveled and separate. There was no peace then, only staggering loneliness.

But then the rains came, unexpected and fierce. And what was dead was restored. Miracle.

A good thought on this most holy of weeks.

He drums my ankle and I study his profile, smiling at the gray hairs along the temple. Nineteens years this May, and did we have a clue back then how much we would endure? Of course not. But then again, we are not the creators of this wild thing. We are but the caretakers. We would never have seen the beauty of the plan back then. Our expectations were all wrong.

He drums my ankle, knowingly, and the thunder rumbles again.

The rain is almost here.

Linking up to my friend Heather of the EO for her 29th installment of Just Write Tuesdays. But I must confess, I was also inspired by the Marriage Letter series posted each Monday over at Amber's place, which never ceases to draw me into the mysterious beauty of this thing called marriage.