For Glenn

This is just one of many poems I wrote for Glenn in the interim between 1985 and today but because this one is his favorite (he can quote it word for word, even after all this time) I thought I would share it here.  It isn't anything like the poetry I write today but it was so completely from the heart and expressed so completely how I felt years after we parted.

Sunny days and short hours
Turn to long, empty nights,
Without you by my side,
Nothing feels quite right.

Living my life without you
Will drive me crazy I know
I had you once but lost you
In my world, only memories flow.

You were the beautiful flower
that bloomed and grew in my heart
If I only knew then what I do now,
We would never have fallen apart.

There's so much I should have told you
So much you should have known;
The feelings that were oh, so true,
The love I could have shown.

But, my darling, I lost you,
All of my own free will
But if you ever call me back
I'll come running for you still.

How can I say the right thing
TO tell you how sorry I am
That I didn't mean to hurt you
Or to ever let you down.

Your love to me is most precious,
I hang onto memories few
No matter where tomorrow leads,
I'll always be loving you.

If we ever do meet again
And, once again, our love begins to grow
I'll hang on with all I've got
And never let you go.

Remember our love, remember it well
If our paths never do cross
Because, my darling, if you must know
I am the one that lost!!!

© Ruth Langford, 1989

Written in Stone

I'm listening to Shinedown, wishing you knew, praying for rain...I want to feel your skin touching mine as I hold you and you sleep, like the beautiful angel you are. This song always makes me want to cry because it is so very true. So much about us makes me want to cry...guess it always will because it is so rare, so beautiful and so damned tragic. It is the tragedy in it that breaks my heart...but that is where the beauty is too. Behind every tear is something beautiful in our case. I am tired, sore and emotional today. I am remembering, too many pictures are bashing around in my head. I see you, I hear you, I feel you...every single moment of these past 8 months, of these past 25 years are echoing loudly in my heart and I can't breathe. I can't breathe! I can only reach and laugh and cry and PRAY! I know how blessed I am. I know that this love is bigger than my heart, my life, than everything. I would die for you tomorrow. I guess a part of me will always grieve for all that we lost, but in the same breath, the same moment, I will always be smiling and thanking God that this isn't some messed up trick my mind is playing on me. You touch me softly and I know it is no dream. You are here, I am here and we are living and laughing and loving together. It is as it should be and I sigh! I keep hearing him say all those things I thought...if you only knew. Oh baby, if you only knew...forget wasted time, time we can never get back. I hate that there isn't some time machine somewhere so we can go back, go back just for a little while, so I can tell you all those things you should have known a long time ago. So I can look into the eyes of the boy you used to be before people hurt you and broke you and cast you aside...so I can tell you how very much you will be loved for years, so I can tell you it is all going to end up RIGHT, that karma or fate or the Gods, will favor you in the end and the woman you love and who loves you more than life itself will end up right by your side. So I can tell you I am sorry. So I can make it right. So I can hold you and lay on top of that combine with you again. So I can tell you it was all a mistake. So I can save you from the years of hell and hurt you lived because you chose the wrong path. OMG, I could go on for days about all the things I wish I could do if only. I hope that when it is our time to leave this earth and we are given all knowledge and the answers to all our WHY questions you will know, you will be able to see how much I have loved you and hurt for you and how very much you are loved now...
I hope THEN you will know and my heart will relax at long last. I need you to know, even if it means you finally knowing long after we are dust. "It's 4:03 and I can't sleep..." I still have those nights, those nights when sleep can't' find me. I am sure it is the fear in me. The fear that the axe will fall, that someone will somehow take you from me, that he will find me and end it all, that I will never be worthy or right again. Despite all that fear though there is a tremendous amount of hope in me. Faith, yes, the kind of faith that moves mountains. I will die for you yes gladly, in an instant. I cannot live through losing you again. I don't think you realize how very true that is when I say it! After only a few months of loving you and losing you, I fell into a world no one could save me from because I was hell bent on my own destruction. I couldn't ever do that again and survive it. Not this time. No matter how emotional I get, you are right there loving me, trying to show me I don't have to be afraid of ghosts. I miss you...I love you...I am so very thankful we have THIS right now. We were given a chance to make it right...and we are, we are!!! I LOVE YOU my husband to be! More than this stupid old world, or this crazy old life. You are it! The Man, my man...
Love,
Nan

A Love Letter to my "Husband"

Dearest “Husband”:
Victor Hugo, poet and novelist of the 19th century whose brilliant works include Les Miserables and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, wrote these words to his beloved, Adele Foucher…
When two souls, which have sought each other for,
however long in the throng, have finally found each other
...a union, fiery and pure as they themselves are...
begins on earth and continues forever in heaven.
This union is love, true love...
a religion, which deifies the loved one,
whose life comes from devotion and passion,
and for which the greatest sacrifices are the sweetest delights.
This is the love which you inspire in me...
Your soul is made to love with the purity and passion of angels;
but perhaps it can only love another angel, in which case I must tremble with apprehension.
There is no way to fully depict the enormity of his statement. How I wish I had been the one to pen these words but I must borrow them instead from a man whose genius is far greater than my own. You are to me the hopes and dreams of eons, before time was and before we were ever a tiny seedling of thought. I look at you, I see everything, and I know. I know! I want to scream it from the rooftop. I want to shout it out so the world can hear. What can I say? Could I say that you move through me like the torrent of a raging river; that this feeling is as subtle as an iceberg or a raging forest fire? There is nothing else, no there is nothing else! I feel you. Impulses shoot through me like fireworks exploding repeatedly. In every word, in every breath, I feel you, yet, I hide. Hide just a little… watching from my little view outside…waiting, praying fervently that this is no dream…that this is, in fact the eternity of which I have always dreamed. I cannot imagine it, how this has happened, out of the millions of people in the world, 25 years ago we found each other, lost each other, & somehow found each other again after all these years. Is it real or is it just a fantasy, some illusion my mind is playing, some hopeless dream. Can we walk these miles and live to touch, to smile, to breathe together? I know that nothing else is good enough, now that everything I am looks at you and sighs. I am already lost, I think I am beyond saving, beyond redemption, because there is nothing else, nothing else but you and moments, one little memory at a time and my world builds beautifully around me and the flowers bloom, the children laugh, and we live beneath the end of the rainbow. I cannot give anything else away…. how can it be that I have already given it all to you? How can it be? But I have! I have! Sunrise streaming in through the windows falling on your face, I see it and want to touch the light there. The light…that is what you are. You are light in all the dark places. You shine and bring light in places only darkness has ever existed. I cannot breathe. You are in the moonlight too, that magical, mystical moon that allows me to show a different face to you so wantonly and so freely. Come to me. I love the moonlight the best and I love to see it on your skin, illuminating you. Rock of ages…you are the rock I break myself against. You do not know, cannot know, what that means; how much that itself has told you. I have revealed the ugliness, the darkness, the broken shards that have cut me and sliced me and made me scream but how can you possibly KNOW what this means? You don’t know how I long to be with you and how I feel I could almost give my soul away if it meant I would have more nights with you, nights of clarity, nights of bliss, nights of rapture...and the days, one million days of standing by your side, working together, building dreams, a life, everything of which hopes are made. Can I say it? How I love you but somehow that tiny word does not capture anything…anything close to what lies inside, pulsating with life, with hope, with everything. Love, it does not begin to express how I feel. It is all there is, though there are no words to express it. I know you. I know you as I know my own skin, as I know my own laughter or that of my children. I look at you and feel everything… everything that was meant to be in the world, everything that is good, pure, and real. That is it. You still are the first and only real thing I have ever known…besides my children. It’s so real and although I ducked…you aimed for my heart and did not miss. Ask me and I would follow you to the moon just to hear the words fall from your lips, just to hear you say my Name, just to watch you breathe. Grow old, I find I could spend a lifetime with you and it would not be enough. So, that is what she means…I will love thee better after death. I could die in your arms happily; die tomorrow if I had but one more day in your presence…one more day, one more moment. We should not ever have to die in this life before we truly understand, before we truly touch heaven just because someone spoke to our heart in a language we understand. I understand you, and this knowing eclipses everything. I have never known another thing, which is why it never worked, that is why it was always an unanswered prayer. I have been waiting for you, all my life, waiting for you and until I found you again nothing else could have truly existed. Life has begun, I live, I breathe, and your name rolls gently off my tongue. You have changed me. Darkness is light. What is and what was... is not. Do you see that, how I will never be the same? You have claimed me, made me yours without even asking, you have and I am, hopelessly, completely, YOURS. Take all of me, yes. baby, take all of me. Leave nothing behind. You know that already, that I am yours completely with every thing I am and everything I will be. I am more because of you…more alive, more real, more…more… more. I am and you see the real me and accept wholly, but under your gaze I want to do more, be more, give more, live more. I want more of everything. I want to walk down the road of life and see it all, do it all, even those things I have already done. I want to do them all again with you by my side because that is how much you change things. Everything is new. I speak your name and my heart smiles. I speak your name and words like promise and hope and eternity come to mind. Words like I love you. You are god given, you are my soul, my heart…you, Glenn Henry. YOU!  You saw into my heart when no one else could and you believed in me. The darkness has faded and I have flown out of the swirling black abyss on the wings of the Phoenix, So I am going to spend the rest of my life living up to the faith you have in me. I do not have much baby, but what I have is yours. I am yours forever. I love you Glenn. Always, Eternally, for ages to comes.
Your loving “wife,”
Nan

Our Cake

When I was a little girl, my great-grandmother, Ruth Grisham aka Dommy, used to make my birthday cakes.  They were these beautiful things with soft, fluffy icing and silver bb's for decoration.  I loved those cakes.  Because we are using damask for so much of our decor, I originally looked for cakes that had a damask print on them.  Then, I happened upon a cake that instantly transported me back to my childhood and my Dommy's wonderful cakes.  I knew instantly that it was the cake I wanted.  I showed it to Glenn and he loved the simple elegance of it.  We are having a red velvet cake, with soft fluffy icing and we aren't forgetting the silver bb's.  It is perfect!

♥Mama, He's Crazy♥

I can't believe it is Mother's Day weekend and he proposed to me because if anyone knew how much my mother means to me and how much she has seen me suffer over the years knowing her hands were tied and she could do nothing to "save" me, they'd understand how much this changes things for all of us.  She has seen it all and hurt for me the kind of hurt I can only hope I never feel as a parent.  All the while, in her mind, there was Glenn.  All the years we spent apart, my mother never forgot him and never stopped believing he was the man I belonged with.  Of course, I always thought the same thing.  After all the horror of the past 6 years, her knowing that the right man was back in my life to stay, I think, is one of the best Mother Day's presents she has ever had.  And you know what, I cannot help but smile when I think of it.  I heard this song last night, hadn't heard it in years and I immediately broke into tears.  Posted it on my profile because it was so very fitting.  Now I am sharing the lyrics and these few words because I want people to know that the best day in my life didn't just happen to me.  It happened to four very precious children and a beautiful woman who has loved me more than life itself for all my life.  I love you Mommy and everything is going to be wonderful!!!!

♥Mama He's Crazy ~The Judds♥
Mama, I found someone
Like you said would come along
He's a sight, so unlike
Any man I've known

I was afraid to let him in
'Cause I'm not the trustin' kind
But now I'm convinced that he's heaven sent
And must be out of his mind

Mama, he's crazy, crazy over me
And in my life is where he says
He always wants to be

I've never been so in love
He beats all I've ever seen
Mama, he's crazy, he's crazy over me

And, Mama, you've always said
Better look before you leap
Maybe so, but here I go
Lettin' my heart lead me

He thinks I hung the moon and stars
I think he's a livin' dream
Well, there are men, but ones like him
Are few and far between

Mama, he's crazy, crazy over me
And in my life is where he says
He always wants to be

I've never been so in love
He beats all I've ever seen
Mama, he's crazy, he's crazy over me
And Mama, he's crazy, he's crazy over me

Mom's say the darndest things...

My mother is so funny. My aunt, Paula, showed her all the going's on today here on my FB page and she just called to say she saw it. Glenn is going to do the sweetest thing and ask my mom's "permission" to marry me in August when he buys the ring. I passed that along to her and she said, "what if I say no?" LOL, yeah this comes from the woman who has spent the past 25 years telling me "You should have married Glenn." And I spent the past 25 years answering her with, "I know Mom. I would have if I could have!!!" There is as much chance of her saying no as there was of me saying it...this man has been exceptionally loved for a very long time and not just by me...

Mother's Day - 2011

Train ♥ Marry Me

Forever can never be long enough for me
Feel like I've had long enough with you
Forget the world now we won't let them see
But there's one thing left to do

Now that the weight has lifted
Love has surely shifted my way
Marry Me
Today and every day
Marry Me
If I ever get the nerve to say
Hello in this cafe
Say you will
Mm-hmm
Say you will
Mm-hmm

Together can never be close enough for me
Feel like I am close enough to you
You wear white and I'll wear out the words I love
And you're beautiful
Now that the wait is over
And love and has finally shown her my way
Marry me
Today and every day
Marry me
If I ever get the nerve to say hello in this cafe
Say you will
Mm-hmm
Say you will
Mm-hmm

Promise me
You'll always be
Happy by my side
I promise to
Sing to you
When all the music dies

And marry me
Today and everyday
Marry me
If I ever get the nerve to say hello in this cafe
Say you will
Mm-hmm
Say you will
Marry me
Mm-hmm...


(♥I will♥)

He Asked ♥ She said Yes!!!

Yesterday (May 6, 2011) was, without question, the best day of my life.  Glenn was working as usual and I was at home posting away on Facebook, checking out this thing and that.  At lunch I got a post on my page from him.  I thought nothing of it as we always post songs to each other and we had just found that particular song the night before.  I really thought he was just reminding me of it as we are composing a list of songs that we will burn onto CD's for our favors...turns out that was far from the case.  When he posted the song, Marry Me by Train I didn't notice the question marks at first.  I replied with a simple, "yep, this definitely needs to go on the list...so glad we found it last night!"  He must have gotten a little worried and he posted So?????? in the comments.  I, still not getting it, replied with a So????? What????  I had NO CLUE what he was getting at.  Once again, I responded..."I LOVE IT! And yes we need to add it!!!????"  Then in a msg we had going on privately after he returned from lunch, I asked him, "Why are you asking me so???"  He replied, "Look at the title."  It took me a moment, (though I will swear to you, I am a smart woman, an educated woman, and am not usually so dense) but then it hit me.  It hit me with full force.  He was actually asking me to marry him right there on my page for the whole world to see.  Sad thing was he wasn't even on Facebook anymore for me to give him the answer so as I am freaking out, I am also dying for him to come back online so I can respond.  My friends are all going crazy, so happy and excited, enjoying watching it all play out right in front of them and they are just as ready for me to give that answer as I am.  When he came back, I made him wait, but only very briefly as I was about to bust...then finally I posted my answer...

Mr. Chrisner, I will marry you! ASBO-freaking-LUTELY!!!! A million billion thousand times YES, I will...you are the love of my life.&.I have been waiting to say that YES for 25 years. YES BABY!!! Yes, I will!!!!

I have dreamed that dream a thousand times in my head all these years.  I was always too afraid to express it, thinking that, like a wish, if you tell anyone it won't come true.  The very first time I saw that man, well, that was it for me.  From that moment, like most young girls, I dreamed of one day being his wife.  OF course, I had no way of knowing then it would take 25 years for us to get to that point, but we did...here we are.  He ASKED and I said YES!!!  I had to sit by myself for a little while last night.  So many emotions were running through me, so many years of emotion had come up from the depths and crashed into my heart.  I cried.  I couldn't help it.  I remembered that girl I was and all the years we were tormented by being apart.  I remembered the day he got married and I thought I was going to die.  Then I smiled because this time he is marrying the right girl, the girl even he says he should have married all those years ago.  This time, we aren't kids.  This time, nothing can separate us.  This time, is our time.  He asked and the dream of dreams came true.  I am such a very lucky woman.

We're Engaged - May 6, 2011

Lady in Red

This isn't my first rodeo and I feel no obligation to wear the traditional white dress on my big day!  Not that I don't love the white dresses or the sentiment behind them...they just aren't "me".  Red and black are my favorite colors.  Black is my color of choice in most circumstances but I found a red dress that I love long before I found a black dress.  So, yeah, I am bucking tradition, doing my thing, and I absolutely love this dress. The train isn't too long.  The back ties like a corset.  What's not to ♥LOVE♥ about this dress?   It is going to be beautiful.

Waiting...

It seems funny for Glenn and I to be planning this fabulous wedding, to have hired a Wedding Planner, to have booked a Photographer and yet, we are not even "officially" engaged.  Glenn is waiting until August and his bonus to "pop the question."  He is buying the ring then.  The running jokes are..."Well what if he never asks?" - Me and "What if she says No?" -Glenn.  Both of us know there is zero possibility of either happening but still we joke about it.  I am waiting as patiently as I can because I know that it is going to be worth the wait.  Knowing Glenn like I do, it is going to be the most romantic, heartfelt, and beautiful proposal ever.  And just between you and me, the answer is going to be a huge "YES!!!"  I will keep you posted...