CHAPTER FIVE

Some of us are wrapping up. And some of us are just getting started.
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The curtain is gently pulled away and she stands there, vulnerable not only in her choice of dress but more in what it signifies—a lifetime commitment to another who pledges to stand by her side. In sickness and in health.

My addiction to watching one dress choice and then another deserves a confession. Although it is not the dress that satisfies.

I profess this will be at the top of my bucket list—that is, trying on a wedding dress. Yes, I was married once and forever but the ritual of mama and friends oohing and aahing was never part of my life.

And yet, I sit and watch the intimacy of other people’s ever-after moments. And I cry.

In sickness and in health. There is assumption that at one point or another this is where it leads.

My own beloved wrote this to me just last week—"How will we script this final season.”
The question was meant to draw me into mutual conversation. Still, it was jarring to read.

Chapters One through Four.
The classic romantically poetic containment of a life’s journey—

But what about Chapter Five?
This chapter does what the others cannot.
It reveals.

Not who we were becoming—
but who we actually became.

I live in that strange land where time conflates. Where beginnings…and endings…coexist.

Where what is coming magnifies what is still being formed.

I have sat by the river and contemplated first kisses and professions of forever love. Even my words here in this Journal grapple with our shared longings of the soul—

Of moments pressed like wildflowers in-between pages filled with things given and taken in the end.

I think my obsession with white dresses flows from what they signify. Aren’t we all entitled to beginnings no matter where in the in-between we are?  

Here is where the bookmark of my story lies:
On the pages that define chapters one through four as practice for Chapter Five.

This is where you enter a season of me saying “yes,” not to sweeping physical adventures, but to ones that explore the depths of that all-consuming longing of the soul.
Yes to letting those I love in just a little more.
Yes to the kind of vulnerability that admits a softening.
Yes to the sweetness and the hard.
Until all the “yes’s” blend together into something fresh and unexpected that creates a new chapter unfolding.
Maybe the most profound of all.

Let me approach this “final season” not as something to be wound down but something to be embraced like a fresh beginning.

Chapter Five. The one in which “I get it right.”

Do we not all crave bringing the best version of ourselves to God? Not broken in spirit. Not one who has given up. But one who embraces the fifth chapter like a dance with our first love…because that is who God is.

I am preparing for it now. Not in winding down but amping up—
Pushing my body to new limits.
Learning with an obsession of what He wants.
Nurturing relationships that quietly retreated from mutual distraction, even neglect.

The hard work of living shouldn’t only happen when we’re trying not to die.

Every encounter should trigger something divine within us that does its best to love, understand, edify.

In sickness and in health.

NOTES

I have been musing about the possibility of Chapter Five.

Not as something distant, or final, or reserved for a time we hope is far away.
But as something that exists…quietly…just beyond the edge of every decision we make.

There is something about allowing the existence of an ending
that changes how we hold everything that comes before it.

An Invitation

Not to solve anything.
Not to overhaul your life overnight.

Just to sit, honestly, with a few things:

• If there is a Chapter Five to your life… what do you believe it holds?
  Not what you fear—but what you hope is true when you arrive there.

• What would you want to recognize about yourself when everything else is stripped away?
  Not what you achieved—but who you became.

• Where are you still living as if time is unlimited?

• Where are you postponing something you already know matters?

• What would it look like to live today
  as someone who is aware of Chapter Five—without being consumed by it?

Image: Mindy came to visit. She always helps me work things through. We have done that for one another since she was my maid-of-honor so many years ago. She took this picture while we were reminiscing about the day Ron and I spoke the words, “In sickness and in health.” He is keeping up his end of the bargain, just so you know. My dress wasn’t white but this breathtaking shade of champagne. And it was very non traditional—my mama and I discovered a gorgeous chiffon and French lace blouse in our favorite boutique…and I had a gifted seamstress hand-stitch a matching floor length skirt, tea-dyeing the laces to match, tucking it in under the blouse at the waist. I loved my dress. But still, I think it would be marvelous to try on a white dress, with a long train.