From an email to my friend, whose birthday was yesterday (mine is today).

My friend knows my wife Karen and the shock we’ve had this week, learning Karen has uterine cancer.

I write …

So few people know true love.  Karen and I have shared true love for 31 years.  Even if she is taken from me to an everlasting life beyond this one, the gift of love we’ve shared on this earth is a gift from God Himself.  That gift is God Himself.  I knew that from the moment of the diagnosis, though I had a bad day today (we both did); still, it is the love that will get us through this.

Many people have never known love, have no idea what it is.  To know love even for a moment, much less for 31 years, is an unbelievable blessing.  When you don’t know it, you come up with substitutes for it, parodies of it.  And those substitutes and parodies all involve form of use and abuse. 

But love is transcendent.  It is a great gift.  We never are worthy of it.  We never rise to its level.  We always mix in some sin and selfishness, some confusion and pain.  But it is the very life of God Himself.  And he shared it with us the day we were born, and in so many ways ever since.