The other night I dreamed my husband held sin in a box. My sin. All of it. He stood on the bank of a river holding the box of sin, smiling at me. I smiled back, but couldn’t breathe. All my sin in that box in my husband’s hands burning like the leaves in the fall before they fall.

Why can’t we sin alone like a tree in the forest topples with nobody to hear it? Why must sin shake us all? A world of sin on the shoulders of a Savior. My husband has big shoulders. I married him for that. All my life I’ve looked for protection. Knowing I am weak. Knowing men are strong. Knowing it could go either way.

Before Jesus I searched men’s eyes for sin or salvation. 

In my dream, he holds the box and smiles at me and the river runs between us. Can a woman drown in mercy? I think she can. The box in his hands for a moment that lasts a lifetime. And my love for him flows like the river. Running wild. And it all becomes messy right there. The river. The man. The mercy.

Where the river of life begins at the cross of Jesus Christ and the mercy seat of God, but this is battlefield earth, and the lion is at our door. Roaring. Resist the devil and he will flee. Pastor Moore preaches this at church on Sunday. Our toddler Cruz is so sick both of us can’t go so my husband sends me to church without him. To the altar of God while he cleans up vomit.

And I can’t get that box out of my head. My husband holding my sin in the dream beside the river. My life like a dream these days. The real and the imagined. I’m not sure what’s true, but I hear the still small voice at church. “Feed my sheep.”

Peter denying his Lord, cursing and stomping and weeping bitterly on the back side of the cross, and the Lord says, “Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.”

“I know you, Peter. Know your failings. Know human love isn’t enough, but My love is,” says the Lord. “I created the river of mercy for you.”

In the dream, beside the river, I wait. On the other bank, holding the box, my husband smiles. The man with the scar on his lip that goes all the way through. I feel it when our mouths meet. That old wound from boyhood. Stitched up, but still there. This side of heaven it will always be there. The scar I love on my husband’s upper lip. When I kiss him. When he smiles. This scar makes him who he is to me. A man redeemed with mercy on his shoulders.

“I always knew it was there, the crazy in you,” he says as we lie face to face in the softness of the night. “I don’t mind. Nobody loves Christ like you do. It’s enough. Your love for our Savior is enough for me,” my husband says and I drown in the river of mercy.

In the dream, after the wait that slays me, after his smile that stays me, he does it. Tosses the box in the river.

“God did something in me as well. Something in all of us through you,” he tells me the morning after the dream as he holds his coffee cup. Fine-boned China covered in roses. I love that about my husband. The man with the shoulders and football scar on his lip who drinks from a rose-covered coffee cup.

“I’m not who I used to be,” I say holding my coffee covered in roses, too. The sun slanting through the kitchen window filling our day with hope. “None of us are the same,” my husband agrees. “God has changed us.” The cups in our hands so delicate. It’s a wonder these rose-covered vessels survive in our country home with our country boys. They also survive the microwave and dishwasher and our burning coffee each morning. And it hits me, they survive fire because they’ve been tested by fire. 

And I burn knowing God’s not done. And I wait for the LORD like one who dreams. Of better days. Of better ways. Of vessels tested by fire. And I lean hard on the man I married who does not hold my sins against me. Who holds me against his chest. I press my ear where his heart beats steady. His blood running sweet with God’s river of mercy.