to my someday second daughter

Some days are the days to write to the children you might not have. But you love even just the fleeting glimpse of the life that might sail past you, that might not be yours, but it is so fleeting and so beautiful that you must write something down.Dear one,I write this to you in the early morning of what already promises to be a long, full, grey day. I write in the helplessness of writing, knowing that these words are far away from the people we will be if, and when, we meet in the future. I write as the overwhelming sounds of Mumford & Sons and Bon Iver wash through my small space. I write because I don't know how else to think, sometimes.I pray that you might catch this restless, big love - whether yours is words or sounds or soccer. I hope with the Anne Sexton that those I love will live in a fever of love. I pray that in the space of our life together, my sweet girl, there will be an abundance of this.It is the restless loves that sustain us, daughter. The ones that hammer away at us. The voice that says we must. I am at the beginning of learning this restless love. I am making a moment of peace with it this morning, and so I am writing to you, whispering in the silence of the life-not-yet-lived that these loves grow with us, always ahead of us. My love of writing and my frustration with writing, my love of philosophy and my contempt of my fumbling attempts. You will laugh when you find my notes on Gadamer in the book I bought a few months ago, because you'll then realize your mom makes a fool of herself chasing down an idea. The scribbles alone will give you and your siblings hours of laughter trying to figure out what I meant by "sig?" "but if hermeneutic..." or the very funny, "NO! Wait. No?".I hope someday we are sitting in the study reading, and you ask me why when I was 22 I said I was like Eowyn, Lizzy Bennet, Anne of Green Gables and Atalanta. And then, we'll pull each other close and begin to read together, and learn how we live in the worlds and characters we love. And then Dad will bring us cups of tea as he always does, the old ritual, and you will fall asleep near me, and I will read out loud to the night, to the dog, for the sheer goodness of those words.Oh, it will be a life of restless, relentless love. It will be this love, and nothing less, that creates fullness. It does not mean you need to be reckless always, or that you cannot also be steady, sure on your feet, rooted and growing in all directions. It only means that we are always pushed forward to the greater, more wondrous thing by these loves that move ahead of us, clearing the path, always asking more of us than we think we can give. When you whisper about how much you love the things you love, how you ache with it, remember that these are the moments of the making of you.What a joy you will be, love. What a wonder. What a gift.Love,hilary (your someday mom) 

to my someday husband

Dear someday husband,This is not a love letter. Sorry. It's not a letter in which I say gushy things about what I imagine you'll be like, what you'll look like, what our days will be filled with. I'm not blogging a letter to you about you at all, really. I imagine you, of course. I'm 22, and foolish, and a daydreamer. You should laugh at this, because you already know how much trouble it's going to get me into. I will write you a love letter someday. But when I do, I will know who you are and what kind of toothpaste you use. I will know in what order you read the newspaper, and where you first felt at home away from home. I will have made it through the fear that you will walk away. I will write you a letter about you, and all the gushy things about how love changes us, and the good and terrifying thing it is to love and be loved by you. But not right now.I'm writing to you because my sister is getting married tomorrow and in the midst of planning my toast to her and her husband, I thought about marriage. I thought about what makes it beautiful, what makes it mysterious. I thought about what makes it worth doing. Last summer I was in a wedding, and I wrote about the delight I saw in my friend's face as she woke up the morning of her wedding and realized that she was going to unite her life with his, that they were going to become one.I see that same joy in my sister now. I see her smile like she's never smiled before, smile in the safety of her husband, smile in the wonder of him and them and the family they begin tomorrow. I see two people who gather around each other, with prayers and hopes fluttering in a great cloud, and I see love there. Jesus has come to this wedding feast, too.I'm going to be tough to marry. I am fiercely independent and yet desperate to be known. I fight more than is good for me, but I want to be peaceful. I am stubborn. The notion of grace, the kind that's free and deep and that really forgets sin and hurt and mistakes (not conveniently files them away to use in a fight later)? I'm not good at that. I am impatient. I talk too much. I trust this world by flinging my heart open but at the first sign of trouble I am a skittish colt running for the hills.I want to tell you this up front. Marrying me will be hard work. I would say sorry but I'm not really sorry, in the end, because marrying you is the same hard work and it is the kind of good that outweighs hard. My sister and her husband have the same hard work in front of them.They make promises tomorrow. These promises are heavy, filled with love and commitment, filled with the energy of a thousand hot air balloon hopes. I will cry. I cry every time I hear a couple promise that they will love and cherish and be faithful in all things, until they are parted by death. I cry every time I hear someone take their name, and take the other person's name, and in one sentence bind them together.Marriage is a mystery, someday husband. Marriage is a great and daily obedience, the kind that takes everything we've got and then more. The kind that between my stubbornness, and your stubbornness, between my picking fights and your withdrawal, between that trip to Rome and the huge fight in the airport parking lot after that trip to Rome - will be a miracle. I am going to walk down the aisle tomorrow, in a blue dress and borrowed shoes and hair someone did for me. I am going to pray as I go that I learn my sister's courage, her grace, her wisdom. I am going to pray that she is filled with joy, the kind that aches and ages and lasts through everything, even what is unknown. I am going to watch her delight, and share in it.And when you and I are sitting in a kitchen somewhere, silent and reproachful, the oven still smoking from whatever I told you I would make for dinner, I will read this to you. (Just promise not to laugh too hard at everything I get wrong. Okay?)I will remind us that marriage is a great and daily obedience. I will remind us that it is a miracle and a mystery. I will look at pictures of my sister's wedding and remember that when I was twenty-two, when I was at the very beginning, I learned love from watching my sister make a new family. And it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.I will remember that I wished for nothing less for us, nothing but the gut-wrenching beautiful work this is.And I will ask you to forgive me for being so hard to be married to. And I will forgive you for the same thing. And I will look over at you across the burned dinner and laugh. Promise me you'll laugh too? And in our marriage, however far away, we will become a family.Love,hilary (your someday wife)

to my someday brother-in-law

While Preston and I are on sabbatical for the summer in our letter writing, I thought I would keep up with letters. These, though, are letters with a bit more of my imagined, someday life, and a little bit less of the every day. I wanted to store them up, these daydreams, because even though we should live in the present, there is something to every once in a while glancing out and imagining the horizon.Dear soon to be brother-in-law,I already know you, but I don't know if you will read this before or after the moment you become my brother. It's a funny and miraculous thing to know that my sister is going to marry you. You will become so important to us, a part of our family. I think years from now we'll wonder about what it was like before we knew each other. For you, my soon-to-be older brother, I want to say thank you for the love you show my sister. You'll hear it at the toast, I know, but I might be crying and I'm sure I will forget to say all the things I want to.You teach me how to love my sister better. You take care of her, and you let her take care of you. And the way you love each other and respect each other, the way your heart and her heart seem to meet in just the right way, that teaches me what kind of love to wait for.Thank you in advance for challenging me when you think I'm missing the boat on something. Thank you for cards and words of encouragement, for believing in me. Thank you for being protective, and for the tough conversation I am sure any someday boyfriend of mine will have with you.Thank you for taking my sister hiking and camping and all the things we did reluctantly when we were little and driving across the Badlands. Thanks for laughing about the time I tripped over a root, fell backwards down a hill (after being warned to watch where I was going), and my dad said, "She's hurt herself! The fool!" I can see us all, years in the future, grilling steaks on the back porch somewhere in the Midwest, the sun beating down on my (and my sister's) pale skin, and we are all laughing. Family is like that, isn't it? It makes you laugh more than you think possible. We fight among ourselves (and we all know how much my family loves a good debate...), but it's often playful. And in those years ahead, somewhere in the Midwest, I'll get corn stuck in my teeth and you'll laugh, and we'll all laugh, and the visits will always go by too soon.I'll try to be a good aunt to your kids, to love them with a big love. I will come visit more often than necessary. I will send cards with goofy pictures of my kids, if I ever have them. I will call you on Sunday afternoons or Tuesday nights, just to catch up.My sister is one of those gifts from God I never deserved. Giving her away is harder than I thought possible, but it's okay because it's to you. Because I know you love her with a big heart. I know she is at home with you.In just a few days you will be my brother-in-law. I'm praying that some of these words, however small, however simple, make you smile when you read them. I can't wait to be family.Love,hilary (your soon-to-be sister-in-law)