Letter: Where Dreams Come True

When the tasks for the day are done and I return home, wearily tossing my coat over a chair, I look across the room to where she awaits my reading of another chapter in the novels of Harold Bell Wright.

“Set amid the grandeur and the beauty of these vast deserts, lonely skies and wild and rugged mountains. . .romance and adventure still live.”

We are transported through the text and the turning of the pages to remote places where we relive our own love story.

Fifty years ago, I was debating with myself of what to say, to ask, as I looked across a university classroom at an attractive young lady.

I had questions but no answers.

A half-century later, I reflected on another question for which I most definitely had an answer.

Proverbs 31:10 asks the following:

“Who can find (as the various translations and commentaries put it) ‘the perfect housewife, the chaste helpmate of her husband, upright, God-fearing, economical, wise, of noble character, virtuous and capable, excellent, worthy, diligent, valiant?’”

I can. 

“It is very remarkable to meet with such a delineation of woman.  To paint such a portrait needed inspiration of some sort. Such a one is hard to find.” 

But I did.

Her value? “Far above rubies.”

On this subject, the 4^th century theologian and historian St. Jerome wrote, “Procul, et de ultimis finibus pretium ejus.”

“You may go to the ends of the earth to find her equal in value.”

I did not have to go that far. 

“Just work up your courage,” I said to myself, “and go across the crowded classroom and introduce yourself. 

“Ask her if she wants to go bowling, or to a football game or something.  You can do this.”

I asked.

She answered.

And a half century later here we are, returning to where we were – finding our story told in the pages of a book where dreams come true.

“Of all the stirring tales of this picturesque region, of all the romantic legends and traditions that have come down to us from its shadowy past, none is more filled with the essence of human life and love and hopes and dreams than is the tale. . .”

That is ours.