Twelve Years With The Man Who Loved Me Yellow

When I was sick and yellow, AJ loved me.

It is August again. Twelve years since the surgery. I am sitting and remembering.

August 2010. I had the surgery. It was the first time in my life I saw my skin not yellow. I looked at my arms. I looked at my eyes in the mirror. The yellow was gone. I did not know my own color until that day.

For years before that, the same voice played in my head.

“Who is going to love a sick yellow girl?”

“Who will stay for a body that keeps failing?”

I understand if you keep counting the reasons no one will stay. I have been there. I counted them for a long time. I had a whole list. I rehearsed it before I slept. I told myself I was being realistic, but I was really just protecting myself from a hope I was scared to hold.

AJ was already with me before the surgery. He loved me when my skin was yellow. He loved me when my eyes were yellow. He loved me when my body was the thing I was most ashamed of.

That is the part I still cannot get over. Not that he loved me after I got better. He loved me while I was still the thing I hated to look at. He saw the color I was hiding from and he stayed.

I used to think love had to be earned by being well. By being light enough, easy enough, low maintenance enough. A body that does not embarrass anyone. A wife who does not need too much. That is the bargain shame teaches you to make. Be useful. Be pretty. Be quiet about what hurts. Then maybe someone will stay.

AJ did not ask me to make that bargain.

Twelve years later, we are married. Every day I get hugs and kisses and I-love-yous. I once thought these would never happen to me. I used to count the reasons I would be alone. I am counting different things now.

And here is where I have to be careful, because I do not want to make AJ the gospel. He is not. He is a gift. But the gift points to the Giver.

God loved me yellow first. Before AJ saw me, God saw me. Before AJ stayed, God stayed. The covenant He keeps with His people is not based on our skin clearing up. He does not wait for us to be presentable before He moves toward us. He moves toward us in the yellow. He moves toward us in the shame. He moves toward us in the body that keeps failing.

When AJ loved me sick, he was showing me, in a small human way, the bigger love that had been holding me the whole time. I just could not see it yet.

He gave me a yellow body. He also gave me AJ. Both came from Him. Because of the rain, the trees bear more fruit.

I do not say that lightly. The yellow years were not a sweet lesson. They were long. They were scary. There were days I did not think I would get to August 2010. But I am here. And the rain that I thought would drown me is the same rain that grew the life I am living now.

If you are in a hard season tonight, please do not let it take the love that is already around you. Shame will tell you to hide. It will tell you no one could stay if they really saw. It is lying. Before you sleep, look at the people God has placed beside you. The one who texts back. The one who shows up. The parent. The friend. The spouse. They are not an accident. They are small letters from a God who loved you yellow first.

You do not have to clear up to be loved. You are already being loved. Let yourself see it.

For the glory of God.

- Lala