Walking With the One You Love

It is great to be able to walk with the one you love...

Since we moved to our new house, Dan and I had began a nice routine of late afternoon walks.  The weather has been decent enough still to allow us for our walk on most every evening.  I'm REALLY enjoying these, especially because that's the only time I have true, unadulterated, one-on-one time with Dan during the day.  With two young sons and two jobs, we don't get much of that at all.

We get to talk quite a bit, but we also have moments of silence, mainly while climbing a hill on the street behind our home...I am so out of shape that if I talk I faint : )  But even when we walk in silence, time spent on the path together is a precious gift.  There is a special comfort that comes when we walk silently side by side for it makes room to help us quiet our souls.

Walking last night made me think of a poem Dan shared with me not long ago.  Its poignant and wisdom-filled verses left me unable to do much more than to let out a deep sigh... I tried to quote it to a friend earlier, and I could not find the words, so I searched for it and here it goes:

I walked a mile with Pleasure;

She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When sorrow walked with me.

-Robert Browning Hamilton

I know I am going off on a limb here...(some, probably our relatives, may jokingly tease us saying "yeah, walking with Dan equals sorrow for sure" : )...but for some reason, the poem made me think about closeness and intimacy. Never do we become more intimate with God and with the ones we love than when we walk into our trials together.  Sorrow is too one of such which teach us much, and make our relationships grow as we endure it with our Lord and the ones He gives us to love.

Sharing the burden of the long days silently, side-by-side, surely makes it bearable and doable.  And even in the midst of sorrow, there is a reason to keep on walking, for it is along the way that we'll meet our destiny as we get where we need to go.

So next time Dan and I go for our evening walk, I will remember to think of it as a symbol of our strength and as a reminder of the lessons that we still have to learn.  And even if it is just the sound of our shoes hitting the pavement what we hear, we must continue to listen for it is in the whispering of the quiet where most wisdom and maturity is found.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. Romans 8: 18