Love Makes Poets of Us
An old post making a comeback
I thought I would have to get off of Substack but, thanks be to God, things are working out in such a way that I will not have to! Because of that, I am bringing back this post, which was my first one way back I don’t remember when, now.
If you want to support my dream of sharing my writings, please take a look at some of my other posts and if it’s something you can get behind and want to see more of, hit that “update subscription” button! Paid or unpaid, I am grateful for every one of you who is on this journey with me and takes time out of your day to read what I have to say.
I am a logophile, a lover of words. I love reading them and writing them. I love finding out new words and discovering new and unique ways people choose to describe something, be it an event, a landscape, or a person.
This passion for words was muted when I was a child, the story of which I may or may not relate, and remained dormant until the end of 2020, when I met the love of my life; my (now) husband, Sulejman.
With all the trauma I survived throughout my life, I was suicidal off and on from my preteen years until the day after my birthday, December, of 2020. The day of my birthday, I could not stop crying and crying out to God for help because of the most recent trauma I had endured earlier that year, in September.
I went out, late that winter evening, and bought myself a 1.75 litre bottle of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum (my favourite alcoholic beverage back then), the largest bottle of Equate Ibuprofen with the highest dosage, went home, and sat on the corner of my second-hand, worn, black leather couch, a whiskey glass with ice in one hand, the bottle of rum in the other, the pills sitting on the coffee tables in front of me.
I was ready to end it all. I was done with life.
I turned on my favourite films of all time - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, by Peter Jackson - snuggled up with my blankets, poured myself my first glass of rum, took the first round of 4 or 5 pills, and sat back and cried. As The Lord of the Rings played, I still begged God to help me, and foolishly - sinner that I am - gave Him the ultimatum that I would take my own life unless He somehow woke me the next day. I prayed in Jesus’s Name, telling Him, “I know I don’t usually use Your Name or ask You for anything, but I don’t know what else to do or who else to turn to”.
Did I expect to hear or see Him suddenly tell me to stop or take the rum from my hands? No. And that’s not at all what happened. But what did happen was just as clear that He made it happen.
I let the tears just flow, guzzling (not sipping) my rum, glass after glass, sucking down ibuprofen pill after pill alongside, and sat back against the couch, turning to app after app on my phone. Messages weren’t coming in to wish me a happy birthday; I was cut off from all but one of my blood relations, and the one person I thought was a friend, I had pretended I was fine when I had texted earlier that day so I wouldn’t get a speech about how selfish my suicidal thoughts and desires were. I didn’t want to be fixed, not really. I wanted someone to sit in the muck with me and help me push through it, not stand outside the mud and instruct me how to get out of it.
Finally, I turned to Facebook. Watching The Lord of the Rings, I was reminded of the group I was a part of; it was called “Middle Earth”. Throughout the years, we members of the group would share memes, thoughts, quotes, and wish one another happy birthday with those types of posts. I wanted some semblance of company so I posted that it was my birthday, I was feeling low, and asked if the members would share their favourite quotes or scenes or parts of the books with me, “to cheer me up”. Over the course of the next several hours, comment after comment was posted in response, wishing me a happy birthday, sharing quotes, memes, and more.
I am someone who is already very sentimental and sensitive. And as the night wore on and I continued through the marathon (extended editions, only, btw), private messages began coming through from some of the members of the group. Some were brief and kind, wishing me well, etc. Others were blatant messages asking me to end their loneliness and marry them or be their girlfriend. But only one private message stood out from the rest.
It came in around 2:30 in the morning, after I had already fallen asleep and was ready to not wake up the next morning. I had, before falling asleep, told Jesus - sobbing - "if You want me to still be alive then You'll have to wake me up tomorrow, because I'm done". My phone sounds were turned off, only the vibration mode was on. I should never have heard my phone when his message came in. Not with the amount of alcohol and ibuprofen I had consumed.
His profile picture was black and white and I could hardly make out of what. I wasn’t the type of person to go looking at other people’s profiles back then, so I just paid attention to his message…
“Happy birthday to you fellow Lotr fan girl :3 Wish you all the best from the bottom of my heart. Hope all your dreams and goals come true. You deserve it. <3”
… a meme of Gandalf below the message.
I’m not sure how to describe why his message stood out to me. I was ready to ignore it like the last few private messages from others before his. I was ready to say good bye and end it all. I was almost all the way through the bottle of rum and the bottle of pills was less than a quarter full, when I fell back asleep.
I woke up later that morning with only a slight headache and desperate thirst; you would think I would have had a horrific hangover, at the very least, after that much alcohol. I looked at the nearly empty bottle of rum with disgust and sighed.
“Well, I’m still here,” I told Jesus, “I guess You didn’t want me to go yet.”
I decided in that moment that I would live my life to Him and get to know Him so I could follow Him. And then I excitedly remembered the last message I had received; the one that was so clearly guided by Jesus to wake me on what was technically the next day.
“Sulejman, hmm,” I thought, “I don’t recognise where that name would be from.”
I opened his message and thanked him for it, keeping my own short and a bit blunt in an attempt to shut him off. I was done with men, I had decided some time between September and my birthday. I was going to remain single for the rest of my life, living the life of a nomad or hermit, maybe try to adopt a child or two and give them a good life.
But God had other plans for me.
Sulejman kept messaging me back. And not in an annoying way. I was interested in the conversation, as I got about my day. There was something about him that felt like he wasn’t trying to get me to go anywhere, do anything, say this or that. He was just WITH me, throughout my day… and then through the night… and then the next day…
And now we have been married for a few years and live happily in his home country: Bosnia and Hercegovina.
It’s very clear to me that he was and is Jesus’s answer to my last resort prayer from that night. Jesus is God; He didn’t need to listen to my ultimatum. He could have struck me down then and there for being so insolent toward Him! But He didn’t. In His infinite love and mercy, He sent me the answer to that prayer and one of the greatest desires of my heart: He woke me the next day because He did want me to continue living, and He did that through a loving man who would become my husband.
Since meeting Sulejman, God has guided him to support me and walk with me through my flashbacks, my anxiety, my troubles as well as my joys, and encourage and support me in my dreams and goals. His love, which is honestly so pure that it has made me cry on many occasions, inspired me to get back into writing. And the first thing I wrote, upon feeling the flood of inspiration again, was a poem for him… or more accurately, a ballad.
A Ballad for Sulejman
Who is he, this hero fair,
With eyes aglow, pure gold they bear;
Shoulders strong, great weight they carry,
His feet along the road don’t tarry
To simple truth, love, and duty;
The rarest heart, the core of beauty.
Through suff’ring long, and war so cruel
God bless’d the earth, from mighty will,
With a spirit indestructible,
A mind full incorruptible,
In room seeming import, of little,
This man - born babe - a gift: pure crystal.
The years did pass this warrior by,
Pain should’ve suck’d his soul bone-dry.
It tempted him with false promises
Of ending grief, sorrow: the price is
To leave this world. But warrior, this,
Said no. He fought for love and joy, peace.
Through suff’ring long, and war so cruel
God bless’d the earth, from mighty will,
With a spirit indestructible,
A mind full incorruptible,
In room seeming import, of little,
This man - born babe - a gift: pure crystal.
Finally, so greatly deserved
This knight found love, in way unheard
By standard writ; he risked everything
And savéd a maid, he saw hurting,
And healéd her wounds, love transporting
To the maid’s heart, her pain vanishing.
Through suff’ring long, and war so cruel
God bless’d the earth, from mighty will,
With a spirit indestructible,
A mind full incorruptible,
In room seeming import, of little,
This man - born babe - a gift: pure crystal.
His life, his love, his mind, his soul
Deserve the world, treasures untold.
So angels, behold, you I call on
To dress in breastplate, with great sword drawn,
And join and hear my pray’r - follow on;
God bless him, my Beren, Sulejman.