It is I.

I have some words going round my brain at the moment: “It is I whom you love.” I didn’t make this phrase up; I got it from another woman. Perhaps she heard it from another woman as well. I would ask her, except that she’s been dead for 700 years. I do know that she wasn’t writing these words about herself.

It is I whom you love.

The first time I came across those words, I felt like the blood stopped flowing through my veins. Time stood still for a moment and my heart seemed to swell.

It is I whom you love.

I guess the woman who’s been dead 700 years wrote those words down because they had a similar effect on her. It was a moment when a thousand other moments come together into one, and suddenly make sense.

I had one of those other moments this week. With my husband three and a half thousand miles away, I was staying with family but feeling alone and run down. The children and I all had colds. I came down to breakfast to find presents for my middle boy, who turned three this month. And there, on top of his pile of blue and green wrapped boxes, was a MAC bag. A black MAC bag. No-one buys MAC make-up for a three year old boy. No, this present was for me. I started grinning like an idiot before I’d even opened it. It came with a lovely card from my sister, with some lovely words inside that made me want to cry. Somewhere under all the parental responsibilities and holding it together and just keeping going someone had found… me. Oh thank you, thank you! I had felt lost, but inside a black MAC bag was compassion and kindness and being known - the gift of being found.

It is I whom you love.

Yesterday I was at a conference for Christians. I am feeling a little at odds with my religion at the moment, so this wasn’t the easiest place to be. But, we had a great barbecue with friends and cooked sausages in the sunshine while the children played with pointy sticks and ate too many donuts. After a few hours of these simple pleasures, we left. On the long walk back to the car, we adults talked. We talked about the frustrations of feeling out of sorts with our religion. It made me feel a bit alone.  And then suddenly, breaking into the sky with a roar, came the Red Arrows. “Look, boys! RED ARROWS!” If you’ve ever seen the Red Arrows loop and twist through the air over your head, you’ll know it’s an awesome sight. You just have to stop in your tracks and watch. The power, the precision and the beauty are breath taking. I really did hold my breath as they climbed in formation, then dived together as though they were falling, falling, falling, before peeling off and looping up again in big joyful red swooshes. I let the surprise and the beauty and the joy and the power wash over me and through me. I had been found again. Surprise. Beauty. Joy. Power.

It is I whom you love.

I read online a couple of months ago about a young man who was overheard by his parents, whilst on the phone to his boyfriend. They were planning how he might tell his parents that he is gay. Having heard the phone conversation, the father got there first. “The only thing I need you to plan,” he wrote, “is to bring home OJ and bread after class… I’ve known you were gay since you were six. I’ve loved you since you were born.” How can so few words carry so much tenderness, acceptance, compassion, knowing and love, and bestow so much worth? They’re just words. And yet they carry something so profoundly beautiful in them that it makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. Whatever it is that those words carry, it feels timeless, heavy but light, serious but smiling, tender but strong – all these qualities shimmering together. There’s something about this peculiar mix-up of characteristics that I love. It feels somehow… alive.

It is I whom you love.

The black MAC bag. The Red Arrows. A father’s note to his son. Within each of these things came something else. Something enduring, alluring, that can’t be grasped with my hands and yet can settle in my heart, stirring within me something that feels like warmth, or maybe it’s light, or maybe it’s love. I am not alone in this strange universe. My life has been interrupted by many of these moments, where something else breaks in. The moments themselves are usually unremarkable. And yet within them, is something ever so courteous and gentle, something ever so strong and safe, something ever so serious and mischievous and funny. If it had a sound I think it would be deep and musical and roaring and laughing. And as it built to a great crescendo, I would hear it most clearly: Whatever this something is, whatever is noble, courteous, true, compassionate, loving, strong, heart-stirring, life-giving, hope-building, joy-bringing, worth-bestowing, whatever draws your heart: It is I. It is all I. It is I whom you love.

Back in the Dark Ages a woman living in solitude heard a whisper in her soul and wrote it down. Seven hundred years on, those same words linger in my mind too. Who is the I who first breathed those words? This becomes my quest: To know the I who speaks them, through sunsets and dewdrops and mercy and births and deaths and kindness in the face of evil and sacrifice in the face of suffering and stories of romance and science and art and letters from fathers and Red Arrows and a gift of make-up. I have heard the whisper and the gentle knocking on the door of my life.

So yes, come in, you whom I love.