Number One in my heart

 

Used to be that my late husband was Number One in my heart.   He hasn't been for quite some time.   

I started fully occupying the 'Number One' bench this summer, after dating had yielded no suitable candidate for romantic bench warmer.  Indeed, in settling myself in on this bench, I wrote here, on August 21st, that Love, not fear, was now going to be in charge of my life. I made a commitment to live in the present tense.  And I assumed my life would be a solo act.  So how strange it was that five days later I became reacquainted with Joe, a friend I knew in New York City three decades ago.   He'd looked me up on Facebook.

Maybe you've read my last post  "Moving forward with the Emergency Brake on".  I've had some time to think about it.  Here's what I'm going to do.

I'm disengaging the emergency brake.  

O.K.  First and foremost, Love exists in the present tense and this is where I want to live.  Fear lives, if you can call it that, in the future.  So I've disengaged that darn brake, and I'm on the road. 

Why did I let two scary 'what if's' unsettle me?  I, or we, can deal with them.  The first 'what if' is my challenge balancing his needs with my own.  I've had no evidence this challenge is a problem.  The second 'what if' is death - one or the other will die first - if this romance blossoms into full love.   I've been there, and don't relish the opportunity to lose one I love again.   But I'll be O.K., with God's help.  Besides, who knows who will die first?  The only way I can figure out how to avoid these two 'what if's' is to avoid loving at all.   So.   Easy choice. 

I'm going to offer part of this bench to the man above.  Will he join me?