A recent walk in the fog had me thinking about what we can really know in those times in our lives when we, like Abram in Genesis 12:1, are told by the Lord to head out: “…to the land which I will show you.”

In the image posted of the lover’s bench with foliage, right in front of me in an otherwise foggy morning, they were found to be very clear, almost highlighted in distinctiveness, by the surrounding mists and as I moved further from the little outlook it lost its shape fairly rapidly. It must be that there is something extremely significant about the present moment in those times of moving without knowing the destination (metaphorically, in the fog)--something that really should not be missed.

How can we value the gift of the here and now when we just want to get to the then and arrived? The lover’s bench kept impressing upon me a message and it had to do with a favorite passage of mine in Psalm 45:1: “My heart overflows with a good theme; I address my verses to the King; My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.”

I was transported to the very beginning of my marriage to my dear husband, Jim, and how we moved from our Eastern roots to San Diego by a call of the Lord. We had, neither of us, ever been beyond Chicago in this great Country. We took a Greyhound Bus across this new land. We didn’t know anyone in our newly appointed home. We had no idea about a church home. We had no jobs. We didn’t know how we would find housing. We used public transportation in a city that even in the early 80’s made this to be quite a challenge. We had a tiny, very small, savings to live on. And as well we were just launched into the grand adventure of seeing how the two become one in the poetry and authenticity of such a remarkable union.

It was writing then, and always has been for us, that surrounds us in the joy of the journey--keeping us alive to His Presence when the future seems so uncertain. I am looking at, even now, an exchange of letters (150 pages worth) that we penned upon the exhilaration and trepidation of this first pioneering event to become established in a place that the Lord would show us. They are delightful--really like the writing of someone else since in a sense, by distance, we are new and deepened people, by this first trek and so many more godly stretchings that we would never have wanted to miss in sweet Jesus!

We wanted to keep the present-day indelible for the following times that may be surrounded in fog--as an exhortation to stay at our post with the Lord’s leading--the map ultimately in His hand. The letters are indeed love letters to the One who guides with His arm around our shoulders, whispering: “You’re a Child of God! You’re a Child of God!” As well they are a record of the deepening fervency of the love that the Lord can grant over the decades of the long gift of a godly romance. Without these lovely sharings, the remembrance would have been a wonderful evanescent feeling without the gift of the words that astound in retrospect—things that surely would have been forgotten.

This first series was entitled: Letters: Sharing the Spirit of Christ. We also have an extended group of letters on our reflections on the book of Acts from the New Testament. This was especially helpful as we searched for a church home to be able to ponder together over how the first Christians lived out the love of Christ. These shared writings have paralleled individual journals that we have both kept, and exchanges of poetry, stories, essays, aphoristic lists, and love letters that we have given to each other, and always read aloud, on holidays, anniversaries, birthdays and in those grateful just-because- times.

By the time of my return walk the rolling mists had lifted, and there before the lover’s bench was the expanse of the broad and beautiful Torrey Pines Golf Course with the stunning cliff to the Pacific crashing below. The fog that preceded our trip to San Diego continues to open out upon such glory. I sat on the bench knowing of the deep surrounding of the Lover of my Soul and also that I would have to document this reflection because writing can make the mundane stunning, glistening in the dew of a gliding fog that brings with it the clarity of the Lord’s plan.

If you will write, even a paragraph, in the midst of times of seemingly foggy tumult, I can assure you that a new peace and gifting can descend upon the lover’s bench where you will submit to stop and give thanks! Even if you think the words themselves are chaotic, if you will just be real with Him, He will come to settle you down. You are loved back in your love letters to the One Who is Love! On the bench provided for you by Him you will see the fog lift and feel His good right arm around your shoulder. Your heavenly love letter today reads: “I love it when you write to Me. You are endlessly fascinating!”