It wasn't love at first sight, I met you in 8th grade. You were fun back then, filled with history and mystery and laughter, but I never suspected what would come. But when I step off that plane after graduation, I knew. I knew I had just met the last city I would ever love.
And to be honest, I tried to leave you several times. The seduction of the mountains in Colorado and the temptress that is the wanderer and the adventure both beckoned hard. And I tried, really tried to walk through both those doors, but it wasn't to be. You are my true love. And I haven't said that to many places. Sure there have been special places, the house on Belmont Circle, the barn, Texas A&M, camp...but none of those places held my heart in such a way.
I love driving through you, and believing and knowing what you will be. I see redemption all over the place. And I know that is the basis for this love. There is something about the fact that you aren't perfect, that you are a work in progress, that you are in need of someone bigger than yourself to come in and save the day, but you don't quite seem to know it and you're not that great at admitting it. You welcome strangers every day of the year from around the globe, you treat old friends with love, although the snark is never far. You are so much like me, that it scares me at times. I know my life is inextricably bound up with yours.
And that is why I am so hopeful for you. I have seen absolute incontrovertible proof that we serve and are loved by a good God. The good God. And for all our problems, fears, difficulties, sins, the good God sent His perfect Son to redeem us both. And He is.
So as I watch you change, I trust that the change is happening in my little wayward heart as well. And that makes me love you more. That makes me love Him more. And I love that He introduced us. That he gave me this love. It wasn't created by me. But it is here and it is real and it is abundant.
We started in a garden. We end in a city.
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