I Heart You

Another dreary Monday morning. Carpool kids snoozing comfortably as I wend my way down Westside Drive, heading for the 390/590 bypass of the notorious 490 construction. The sky is a dull gray, light rain is falling, just enough to need the slow speed of the wipers. I glance in the mirror at the back seat occupants who are all nodding, earbuds dangling, whispering a tinny beat into the still air. No one is anxious to return to school after a week's break. Please, they would really rather not.

I stop for a red light a block from Chili Avenue, and there on a gray steel streetlight pole in bright red paint are the three symbols "I (heart) U". They are written vertically in near perfect symmetry, as if some calligrapher had designed this quiet intimacy for all the world to see. Who wrote it, I wondered. Is this a sign of some puppy love, some adolescent crush? It doesn't look like graffiti such as you find on buildings and overpasses. Is it the proclamation of a young person deeply in love for the first time? Surely not the work of an elderly couple as they stroll hand in hand down the boulevard, though judging by the houses lining the street, it is an aging neighborhood.

I love you. No one has said so to me lately. I smile wryly, thinking of times when I have seen couples together caring for one another, doing those gentle little things people do for someone they care deeply about, whispering through their actions 'I (heart) U'. Suddenly, as I waited for the light to change, those words hit home. It was as if God said them out loud directly to me. I LOVE YOU. You are loved. You are cared about. You are not alone. I do those little caring things, those gestures of nurturing, of provision and protection. Do you not know how you are cherished? Cherished!

Tears sprang suddenly to my eyes, and I blinked hard. Yes, I do know that I am loved. I do know God takes care of me. Better than anyone. I am deeply moved. I can't help think God went out of his way to put that perfect statement just where I would see it on a bleary Monday morning in the midst of life's mundaneness, a reminder of his rich grace.

The light changes. I drive away blessed.