This is from Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, except he has it being said by a man to his wife as he whispers some lines to her while she is sleeping. It's from chapter 13: Romance (Meeting Girls Is Easy).
Despite his humor, especially the humor in his chapter titles, this is the chapter I reread most often. I've probably read it at least 50 times--no exaggeration.
In this chapter, the lines the husband is whispering to his wife while kneeling at her bedside, are from a play he was writing called Polaroids, about a couple losing their child and whether or not that horrible loss would break them up.
The husbands lines are the most beautiful, honest words that I've found, ever, on marriage, specifically a Christian one. It shares what we do wrong in marriage and what we should be doing instead.
The dialogue feels like poetry, that has an older style wisdom and yet captures how we feel now, and what we still try to make marriage into: something that it's not and never should be.
But for this instance tonight I am going to be the husband, and I'm going to whisper some lines, the last few lines, of the speech, to God, to Christ, in a prayer, and I ask you all to join me if you will.
From the bride to her Bridegroom:
Dear God,
"I will stop expecting Your love, demanding Your love, trading for Your love, gaming for Your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to You, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this alter of dying and dying again."
Love,
Zoe
Amen (So be it, truly)
And we are dying to self by the way, and the ways of the world: what the world tells us love and marriage are. Because we are Not Of This World (John 17:16) and thus we should love not as the world does, but as God and Christ do: Unconditionally.
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