To my beloved

Joey Carlson
MSMU Class of 2025

(10/2022) Dear Rosy, October begins to tread out her colors, and I cannot help to think of your own color, darling. Though I spend all my days with you, how often have I spoken to you free of tenebrous cares? How often have I made known to you my affection, which I once often made known to you in such words as these? It is true that daily life is its own affection when it is lived for another; yet I would be remiss if, besides my choices, my intellect did not make known to you what I think of you.

I once would have cared little for October and her comforts. In fact, a life such as mine might as well have been a simulation, an unhappy unreality; as such does it now exist in my memory. Dark had been my dreams of late, and to wonder beyond ambition, beyond urgency and strain, was so far from my experience that I could not have imagined it if I had known to try. Your entering in did not set all things right, that is certain. You know well that I had begun to wander into the peaks and valleys of virtue, of holy desire, and of self reflection, before your appearance on stage. Otherwise, our languages would have been so far apart as to not have been related. It seemed to me at the time of our encounter, that I was walking through a forest, a beautiful yet strange, fearful and awe-filled place. I had not another beside me in my odyssey, though I never ceased to surround myself with people. I trekked alone, and after some time spent looking ahead, I saw you, barely distinguishable from the beauty surrounding us, yet obvious upon first notice. As I began to ponder who you were, your beauty grew and grew, till I had no other recourse but to speak to you with words from my heart. I made a friend that day, a friend whose color abounds more deeply than any Autumn, more dearly than the happiest music, more renewed than the most perfect sunrise.

You might wonder if, considering how I felt that day, whether or not I feel the same now. In all honesty, it was a question I wondered about then too. My wondering, however, was rooted in the surest expectation; I simply did not have the capacity to imagine the future, or what you would mean to me in it. I would have predicted reality, that every moment with you would be a culmination of many wonderful moments with my best friend. I would not have known the feeling, for I was not able to know it, but in every additional experience I shared with you, I received one more little gift. My life has been built before my own eyes, and even now I see but a thread in a splendid tapestry of our Lord’s making. You and I are like two threads bound together in order to make a hue like something only God could imagine. I certainly cannot, for I cannot even see myself correctly. I am happy to see God and to see you, and to let the two of you see me. To answer your wonderings, I would say that, though that initial moment of romance and most pleasant surprise still persists in my heart, something far greater has dawned in my love for you.

To say one thing, I am proud that I have been steadfast for you. Every choice was surest assurance that I ought to do it again. However, I have not always been steadfast in my love for you, for every day I am reminded of my own selfishness. Yet even here, your color shines, a color of mercy, and love which calls me on to greater love. Ironically enough, you are the happier one between us. Though the whole world sees in you melancholy and in I sanguinity, you, practically alone in the whole world, are capable of simple joy. My happy moments are often marked by that which I love: God at times, though far more seldom than they ought to be; you and your hues; music, the sky; our family and friends. Yet, in the painting that is my heart, these beautiful things often must make way for silly splotches of ugly, random selfishness. You are happier than I because you care more about others than about yourself. Though sometimes you need a reminder of your own worth, it is far more often that I need a reminder of the worth of others. This, it seems, is the growing mark of my love for you: I have begun to, and have grown, in my care for others. I know that, though you are happy with me as I am, you would be happier if I chose more compassionately, and less selfishly. I would be happier too.

It seems, after years of your happy company, I have appropriated so many of your blessed characteristics. I desire to be like you, darling. Yet, even here, though I have made so much progress, I must let myself notice the most obvious thing: your kindness points not at yourself, but at Christ. If I desire to be happy, if I desire to care for others, it is not enough to simply look at you, an icon of our Blessed Lord. Rather, I must look at Him, wholeheartedly.

I wish the whole world would realize these truths. All the loveliest things that we have encountered in the loveliest people can only come from the Origin of all Goodness. When I praise your virtue, I praise our Creator, but I must praise Him and Him alone as well. I am most thankful that you do not point at yourself, but rather at God. Otherwise, my whole life spent loving you, and every moment of beauty and joy would have been for naught.

Love, Your Joe

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