Glittery eyes and gray hair...

Today as I was selling fall in a cup, (aka pumpkin spice latte) from the Nordstrom e-bar, the same weathered woman came to ask me for her husbands specialty. Our culture tells us to hide our age, to hide the gray, the wrinkles, the sun spots...but for me it speaks of a life well lived. She was beautiful, laugh lines at the corner of her mouth, her eyes, tell of all the joy she has had. Creases in her forehead, of all the grief she has been through. She is a springy older lady. I see her maybe once a week. She never gets anything for herself, just "that drink my husband loves". I ask her if her husband works upstairs. (silly me) She laughs a gentle laugh and says oh no, my husband just had his eightieth birthday. She told me how they come and walk every week and when he gets really tired, he sits and she goes to get him his coffee. She tells me that he thought that his kids had forgotten about his birthday but how they had all surprised him with a party, her eyes glittering with fun and mischievousness. She told me of how surprised he was. I ask how long they had been married. She smiles and says fifty-seven years. I am silenced. I smile, with no words to say, kind of awe-struck and humbled at the same time. I then suck in a breath and ask her what is the one piece of advice she would give, the one key, if she could only give one. She says, "i love him" then she says, "he loves me more than he loves himself and that, that makes me cry." She started to tear up and it made me tear up too. She scurried off before the tears fell on either of our cheeks. Oh to have a love like that. I am not very familiar to the story, but I was reminded of Jacob who worked seven long years to have Leahs hand. How, after trickery, he worked seven more years. It is so easy to just read over this, to flick through the pages and not soak yourself in this. Could you imagine? Seven years of seeing a man work just to have your hand, could you imagine the exchanged glances between Jacob and Leah as they passed each other on the families land? I try to put myself in Leahs shoes, even if at first there was absolutely no interest, there must have been a budding curiosity of a man that would work so diligently to have her hand. What a wooing must have occurred. I wonder what that did in Leah, what that made her feel like. What a beautiful picture.
   If I ever have the privilege of having a son, I want to grow him up to be that kind of man. A man that will pursue Gods heart and a man that will pursue a woman like that.

 May we all know what it is to love someone like that and to be loved like that.