“Yet we found our super powers in our differences not in spite of them.” ~ Bob Goff about him and his sweet Maria
Dear my most amazing, most beloved, most cherished, most honored and most missed husband!!!!
Hugh, it has been a few full moons since I wrote you a love note and as I sit here and know that your moving in with dad day looms near, I must do as we always did and share the best book ever!!! The quote above is out of the book Love Does, by Bob Goff and first of all I am so upset we never read him together because we both would have freaked out!!!!!!!!!!!!! You would love his heart and you would so get tickled that he also called his wife sweet Maria just like you always called me sweet Karen, or sweet angel.
Every now and then I am brave enough to thrust my hand and my heart into my basket that holds all your love notes to me. There are so many of them and they are funny and lovely and whimsical and creative and they all have one thing in common…. You begin them with all kinds of adjectives to describe me.. They are not just love notes in their center but they are book ended with words and phrases that encompass how you felt about me. How you exclaimed about me. You were so good at elevating me and I was so good at elevating you. We were so imperfectly matched to be so perfectly matched. I think God is really good at that.
What the world thinks is the correct puzzle piece is not correct at all, it is in the incorrectness, the jagged edges that we find ways to bring our own kind of joy and gifts to the world. I am so glad God knew that if we did not.
Bruce loves to tell the story and I love to hear about how shocked he was when he found out that we were married to each other. I mean I really had to answer several questions to make sure we are talking about the same fellow. “So you say you are married to Hugh Smith, you mean the quiet and calm and standing in one place for hours on end, that Hugh Smith? You, Karen Key Smith who would not know how to stand still if someone cemented your legs to the ground? Really????” Okay honey I may have embellished this story a little but Bruce as well as many others thought it was hilarious that the Karen they knew was married to the Hugh they knew.
But God knew that the Karen that God knew was just right for the Hugh that he knew because he could see into our souls. He knew that you would be patient and kind and encouraging as we lived through so many stories of addiction. He also knew that I relished and adored a man that loved God and loved people and that all the other in between was just not that important. He also knew that the girl that needed adoration and being cherished and being honored would NEVER feel so cherished and honored and adored as you adored me.
God first. Honesty above all else. Honoring commitments. Seeking peace through seeking God. Loving the unlovely because God says we must. Seeking out the hurting and the lost because the same God we served said it was his path for us. Finding God in the most unlikely places in the most unlikely faces. Finding joy in the deepest of sorrows because that is where man shines the brightest. Believing that we could do anything because God could do anything.
Sounds like a perfect match to me. Oh honey we were so different in so many ways and in big ways but at our center was God and in that center was us loving God together so that sounds like the best pieces of a life to bring together.
God has not invented the words yet to say how much I miss you. I sometimes get a big catch in my throat but it is mostly just the love bubbling up. I have promised that since you left I would honor and take every moment of this one beautiful life and make it mean something.
I bet you and God are up to something and you can rest assured that I am too. I hope you are not upset that I finally learned to slow down. I still have really big dreams and big hopes and I promise I am doing the best I can to continue our angel work!!!!
Love your sweet Karen