One More Day
A Letter to the One Who Loves Me Most
To the one who loves me most,
I’ve been thinking about you constantly – even more so than usual. I need to tell you something. I feel a pain in my heart like a load of bricks resting on my chest. Usually I just live my life, walking through each day with joy, doing the best I can. But the burden I feel right now has stopped me in my tracks. And before I can write anything else – another blog post, chapter, or line – I must write this to you.
I remember that day.
The day I was so lost that I didn’t even know I was lost. I was trying so hard to find myself, create myself, reinvent myself. I had no direction. No purpose. If one thing didn’t work, I just tried something else. Nothing was off-limits.
But then something compelled me to go into the small room that day and sit down across from someone I didn’t even know. Sure, I offered a cordial smile and decided to be polite. I didn’t know how radically everything was about to change.
A perfect stranger looked me in the eye with all sincerity that day and told me about you.
He explained your suffering, and how the excruciating death you endured bridged the gap of sin that separated me from God.
And how you would gladly do it again.
The stirring in my heart told me this was the moment I’d been longing for. Honestly, I was a little scared, but you knew that already. When I made the decision to believe in you, the heaviness of guilt and shame lifted from my shoulders so much that I felt a physical lightness as I left the room.
After trying to find myself for so long, I finally found you. And in doing so I found the me you created. You knew me before I was formed. You numbered the very hairs on my head. You direct each step of each day of my life. I found my real self in you.
You also gave me a hunger that day - a desire to learn more about you. That desire led me to the Truth written in your Book. It taught me things, and still teaches me today. I realized there were things I would need to give up, decisions that would need to be made. You loved me just the way I was, but you didn’t want me to continue on a destructive path.
You taught me to have a reverence for God’s laws, just like you did when you walked the earth.
But as I sit here today, the same tears stream down my face. They are not the tears of freedom I found the day I came to know your love, however. They are tears of longing to see you again – tears of heartache for the tragedies I see around me.
Persecution.
Suffering.
Sickness.
Hatred.
Death.
Those things build that weight you once removed back on my shoulders and everything within me burns to cry out,
“Come, Lord Jesus!”
But then I remember the me that sat in a small office that day listening. The me that was so lost, so burdened by the weight of sin I carried. And I know the message wasn’t just for me. You said “whosoever will, come.” Your desire is that none would perish. Your word tells me this.
So before I let my voice beckon, “Come, Lord Jesus! Don’t tarry any longer. I want so much to see your face, to bow at your feet and spend the rest of eternity in heaven worshiping you,”
I thank you for this one more day.
One more day to sit down across from someone who is searching, but not even sure what she’s searching for.
One more day to explain how your suffering covers anything she’s ever done – clearing away any guilt or shame she may feel.
One more day to tell her that you love her more than anyone else.
Because that’s why we have one more day. All the persecution, all the suffering, all I endure on this earth is worth it. I will gladly stay one more day to tell someone else what you did for me.
For every day you give me, Jesus, I will remember the day you changed my life. And I will rejoice with that person who came to know your love because you waited just one more day.
With love,
Kristine
