!Love
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agk's diary 
13 December 2022 @ 07:29 UTC
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written on GPD Win 1 via PuTTY
after everyone's asleep
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Love's week four of advent, next week, but I wrote
this diary entry on it today.

I turned in my badge, took my exit exam. My parents
will be here soon to watch me graduate. The first 
time they get to see either of their kids graduate
from anything, mom says.

I led a thorough cleaning of the kitchen & living
room today: all furniture moved, minor repairs made
& floors scrubbed, in anticipation of the advent
of my parents and when they leave, life together 
after nursing school.

Evy pulled the CF card from the DSLR camera to pick
pictures for my parents. We arrow-keyed through the
last year on roommate's laptop. The creek, first
daughter laughing and grimacing, sister-in-law's
cheek kissed by her husband, leaves, snow, gas sta-
tions & our kitchen.

I saw myself in depths of nursing school, exhaust-
ed eyes red-rimmed, holding first daughter on the
staircase etc, face angular as if I relapsed hard
on percocet & fentanyl.

Through hell weeks when I barely slept, while first
daughter screamed, when Evy felt alone and hungry
for me and I was dead, a ghost, she loved me.
Devoted, patient, generous love. Even as classmates
in my nursing program and their spouses separated,
Evy steadfast, open-hearted, grieved me as she
packed my lunch and washed my scrubs.

She saw in those pictures the love around us that
she depended on, without which she could not have
loved me so well. Love makes a family & our fam-
ily's bigger than we remember. With a baby under 3,
two working-poor parents, and a gruelling academic
and clinical program, our marriage survived.

God made us in His image. He loves us, he wants us
to love each other. Those we kin, strangers, those
who try to do us in. In advent spirit, I can final-
ly envelop my wife in love ferocious as I feel for
her---and it's time to 4th-step inventory resent-
ment, fear, economic & sexual problems that harden
my heart against anyone.

Something new's coming into the world. Advent says,
Prepare! The only way to prepare's with love's
foolishness & devotion. Wisdom, selfishness have no
place in the already-here world Christians dimly
see, clumsily try to live together.