What happens next almost doesn't matter, because this happened.
Enjoy.

Testify

O Holy Night is my favourite Christmas carol. It always has been. You may be wondering why I'm thinking about my favourite Christmas carol on the day of my wedding, a wedding which has just been completely derailed, but I'm getting to that. There's a line in O Holy Night that I particularly like: 'a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices'. What that line means to me is that sometimes in life, there's a sudden single moment of promise, and it makes you catch your breath, and it makes your burdens light. If you were Jesus, trapped in your tomb, it's the kind of moment which makes you able to roll away a stone which is that much bigger than you are.

I may be in the middle of one of those moments.

Jackson is standing up, and he's sort of wearing grey or a very pale shade of lavender, and black, and I'm definitely wearing white. I was wearing white when I started up the aisle, and I'm still wearing white, the most beautiful white dress in the entire universe. He's crying, or he looks like he might cry. For someone who gets mad face even when he's not mad, it's strange to see Jackson looking like he might cry, standing up, completely derailing my wedding.

So you see, I may be in the middle of one of those moments.

"I love you, April," he just said.

"I always have."

"I love everything about you."

"Even the things I don't like, I love."

"And I want you with me."

"I love you, and I think that you love me too."

"Do you?" He just asked.

This morning, I bumped into him, and we almost managed a hug even though I could barely look him in the eye. My hair was ten feet tall on top of my head and I thought he wasn't going to come – and now he's here, saying all that, asking all that, and all I can think about is O Holy Night, and the only question on my mind is whether Jackson is my thrill of hope, and whether I'm his weary world. We were done. We were signed off, cut and dried. We were never going to be the same again, but we were done trying to be different. The next line in the song is 'fall on your knees, oh hear the angel voices'. I can guarantee you that right now, I can't hear any angels.

I can hear a man, though.

And he's talking to me.

"Do you?" He asked me.

And I'm wondering if maybe it would be better to rejoice over a man than an angel. Jesus was a man, after all. That was his deal, being a man, being just like all other men. He wasn't perfect, and to me, Matthew is perfect. Maybe that's my choice, man or angel. All other considerations like feelings and promises were compacted and hidden in a corner of my heart a long time ago. They'll need to be pulled out and reconstructed at a later date.

I am definitely in the middle of one of those moments.

So you see, I love Matthew. I say I love Matthew with my whole heart but, as previously discussed, there's a corner of my heart where I hid certain things I didn't want to have to deal with anymore, and love couldn't go there because there was no place for it to fit. That's not wrong, though. Everyone has parts of themselves that they don't like, that they try to keep secret. It doesn't mean I don't really, truly love him. It doesn't mean that if Jackson hadn't got up, sat down, stood up again, I wouldn't have married Matthew. It just means that now, I have to decide if I like it here in the tomb, where I don't have to risk life or limb or heart all over again, or if I want to be resurrected.

Did I seriously just compare myself to Jesus?

Jesus, please forgive me. I'll make it up to you when I'm done procrastinating here.

But here's the thing, and I'm sorry for stretching the Jesus metaphor: when that bus exploded and I thought he was dead, you could've crucified me then and there and I wouldn't have uttered a peep. He walked out of the fire, and I caught my breath, and my burdens were light, even though I was more pissed off than I'd ever been. Stone would've crumbled if I'd touched it, but the skin of his chest didn't. It bumped along in time to his heartbeat, in time with my blows.

And the point of all this, if you're still listening, is that laying my hands on that man's skin and feeling his life still safe inside him is probably the closest to God I've ever been. Having his hands on me and his voice in my ear and that thrill – it genuinely is a thrill – of hope when he looks my way can only be a street or two away from Heaven. He's always been a friend. Apparently, he's always been a lover too. Apparently, we never signed off on trying to be different.

"Do you?" is the only question on my mind.

Do I?

Have I always?

Fin.