When Do Two Hearts Become One?

To my husband —

I’m not sure when my heart began to respond to you.

Was it when you reached under the table shortly after we met and you touched my knee?  My heart responded as to an intruder.  It ramped up for fight or flight.  Fortunately I did neither.

Was it the next day when I saw you riding down the street and just the recognition caused my heart to skip a beat?

How about when you kissed me for the first time and our hearts came close?  It felt right.  My heart told me to stay awhile and run a diagnostic on your heart.  I did.  I was supposed to go home to South Carolina.  I didn’t.

Did I give you my heart when I gave you my body?  Was it when we shared the passion of youthful romance and we learned how to dance in a whole new way, our hearts climbing to the peaks together and then gently returning to earth?

Was it when you broke my heart that I realized how much of my heart I had given you?  Was it when you moved away and my heart hurt?  It was like I had found a part of me I never knew I was missing and then it was gone again.

Or was it when you came back and I discovered my heart knew how to sing?

Perhaps it was when you took my hand in a garden and we shared with the world what we already knew.  Our hearts had somehow become joined and we knew we had to be together forever.

Was it when we discovered somehow God had made a third heart from our two and we discovered a love deeper than we had ever known?

Was it when our hearts did not beat as one and we wanted to go back to our own rhythms?  We discovered how easily a heart can break and how hard it is to put the pieces back together again.

We discovered the truth about hearts.  When they are broken, only The One Who created them can restore them.  And He did.

God gave us healing times when we resynchronized and our hearts did beat as one again.

Was it when we discovered hearts can speak without words?  There were times of unspeakable grief when there were no words to express how we felt and yet … somehow our hearts kept beating together and  they spoke what we could not?

I don’t know where exactly our hearts melded into one.  I just know I cannot envision a world where my heart would beat without yours near by.

When you had a heart attack this year and we were on the way to the hospital, I sat in the front of the ambulance … stunned … in shock … my heart reaching out to you, willing your heart to keep beating.

And then you had the paramedics run an extra rhythm strip and pass it up to me.  It was a tracing of your heart … your gift to me … a reassurance … a special valentine.  Your way of saying, “my heart still beats for you.”

As mine did for you, my love.  The professionals could and did keep us apart while they worked to restore your heart.  But they could not separate us in spirit.  Our hearts have now advanced to where we are together, whether near or far.  Our hearts beat together, as they have for over 40 years.

God brought you back to me and in every moment of my life, I thank him.

They say Eve was formed from one of Adam’s ribs.  Wherever Adam and Eve went for the rest of their lives, they knew Eve carried a part of Adam inside her.  It was the part that protected her heart.  It was God’s Covenant that bound them together in Him.

And so I carry a part of you inside me.  You are forever The Love of My Life and I love you with all my heart.