Guest post by Kelly Heuer
When I first met him I thought I could forever be lost in his big near-black eyes. His eyes stared into mine with an innocence, almost relief. If I listened hard enough, I could hear him thinking, “So this is who you are!” I felt the same. His hand wrapped in mine was right.
This, this, is what true love is.
As tears glistened on the brink of falling, I knew I had found the one thing I would fight for, would die for.
We’ve been through everything together. I fought for him, and sometimes he fought for me. We played together. Fought each other. Sat by each other’s hospital bed. I made him wear a tin foil hat once, just because I could. He returned the favor by tricking me into a propeller beanie. There are times when he calls because he needs something, but usually it’s just because he needs to hear my voice.
Tears have been shed for him. I’ve never been more afraid for somebody than I’ve been for him. I’ve watched him throw his life away and take it back out of the trash, smoothing it at as best he could, and move on.
Pride bubbles to the surface for him. I’ve seen him be stronger than anybody should ever have to be. He’s put himself between others and danger more often than a single person should be expected to.
Laughter floats in the air because of him. He and I once tried to make a plan to get away from our body guard just to see if we could. We ended up with a plan to launch a nuclear missile that would, miraculously, end world hunger rather than the world itself.
Twenty years have gone by since he and I first met. I’ve grown quite a few gray hairs since then, most of them his doing as are the wrinkles in my brow.
I don’t mind, though. Because for him, I would die. What are few gray hairs? It was his birthday last week. Each and every very day of the past twenty years I have thanked God for giving him to me. My guinea pig. My partner in crime. My champion.
My firstborn son.
Do you have a champion in your life?
Kelly Heuer resides in Idaho and asserts that she is foremost a wife to her best friend and hero. Five children (plus a few extras) call her Mami, and she considers being a wife and mother to be her most important job and ministry. She is her church’s Music/AV Coordinator and serves as a song leader among other roles as needed. A missionary kid, Kelly lived in the Dominican Republic for 14 years learning to read and translate legal documents in both Spanish and English. She says one of the most important revelations of her time there was learning the value of writing in alleviating the pain of both internal and external struggles. She says while others might describe her as a survivor, she calls herself a fighter, a thriver, a winner. Kelly’s heart is to help women worldwide to go beyond survival and be freed to never again fear enslavement.
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Beautifully written!