Love Me Simple

He sits leaned up against the car door, smile perched cheekily upon his face. The raindrops that background him dance a slow tango down the car window and the night is a black silhouetted by the glow of streetlight orange.

“I think,” he begins, and I lazily open my lids to listen, to watch his words wander on sound waves, his lips forming with articulation, his mouth creating, producing that voice that I have come to know and love and recognize and crave.

“That love is this. Sitting in a car, talking.”

It’s so simple. I smile at him because it’s not that easy. Love is messy and dirty and there’s fights and struggles and anger and awkward coldness between best friends on sad lonely nights.

It’s not that straightforward. Right?

Just sitting. Not doing anything extravagant or impressive or exhilarating or adrenaline raising or catch your breath exciting or romantic or thrilling.

Just in a car. Not in Paris watching the Eifel tower light up with fairy magic, or in Venice listening to an operetta, or even sharing a hot dog at the ball park.

Just talking. Being content with each other and our life, and our life stories, and our thoughts, and our wishes, and our silly jokes, and our love-sick mutterings.

And all those things that I mentioned? Going places, doing things – I wouldn’t want to do them without him.

So maybe this is love.

“What’s one word to describe this night?” He asks me, because he does things like that, because he makes me think, because he likes to hear my thoughts.

“Intimate,” I say. Because we sit in a car. Rain dripping down the sides, sleepiness wrapping itself cozily around us. And we talk and we love, and we know each other better even now than just two hours before.

And I suppose that, simply, this is love. 

Clean

It cleanses. Washes away the impurities, the emotions, the raging insecurities that dirty up the window of our heart and then slowly trickle off as the drops of water drown them willfully away.  We don’t appreciate rain as much as we should.

But rain is forgiveness. A new beginning. Symbol of growth, of life. Of dry earth turned fruitful, of dirtied heart made clean.

Summer bike rides through a downpour, alone on the trail, doubts chasing you all the way to your destination. You just want to be free. So you ride and ride and ride, wheels whirring across the muddy ground making clickety click sounds hard; wheels whirring away in your brain too. Pedal fast and faster, pumping legs burn but not as much as the fears and questions that pound their rhythm in your head, so persistent and consistent and you’re not content till you get them out. Or at least get them away.

It comes as sudden as a flash of heat lightning. The rain that bathes your body and heart, a car-wash for the soul. Drips. Splatters. Reminders that you are His. That the fears cannot reach you no matter how fast you bike.

It drips down your shirt, races down your arms, beads on your pedaling legs. Your eyes are squinted against the water that flows down your forehead, but you do not resent it. Wipe it away, clear your vision in more ways than one. It has cleansed you. When you reach your destination, stand, raise your arms, look to the heavens.  Smile. The downpour is God’s blessing. A reminder that you are purified, that the doubts that surround your heart like weeds, choking and numbing, have been washed away, sod clumped together, now cluttering up puddles in the ground.

And you? You are clean. You are free. Washed in the rain. Washed in the spotless blood of the lamb.