I love you Lord, because you loved me first. I love that you love me with such passion, unreservedly. You don’t hold anything back, not even your own life, and that kind of passion touches me. I know there are a myriad of other things that are lovely about you, but for me, it’s that total abandonment of ones self for another that is so delightfully touching. Not that I am glad you had to offer your own life for me, it is a tragedy, but you did it. I see the picture of that love when I think of my husband jumping off a cliff to save his daughter, touching, foolhardy, he wasn’t thinking of his own safety at all. That is a delightful picture of the heart of a man who loves deeply and it echoes the heart of my beloved who loves so deeply. My response to your passion is to open up and be encompassed and touched by you. I want to be known by you and to know you. I want you to peel back the layers, reveal what lies beneath. I want to know more about this man who loves me so deeply and completely. I see your abandonment for me and I want to abandon myself to you. I want to delight in the one who delights in me. I want to be always mindful of you, knowing you are ever mindful of me. I am amazed at the joy you take in me, and I am delighted that I bring you joy. Knowing you, I know joy. No one, nothing can touch this, it is in a place so deep that it is difficult to even put it to words, and yet so intricately interwoven into who I am that awareness of it is my constant companion. It is strange and yet as familiar as my own skin, as if this is how I really am, how I was made to be. I am not the sum of all that has happened to me. I see the world around me, it flows past me like a river, but the real me is who I am with you. I am defined by you, not by the world. I am because you love me, what you love is who I am. I discover something new about myself because you delight in something new about me. I am a living, loving response to you. That is who I really am. You are Ishi, my beloved, and I am Ishshah the response to your love. I delight myself in you and your laughter makes me sparkle. I seek not to define myself, but to love you. Love me well so that I may love you better. Be joyful and mindful, open and passionate, in order that I may be those things to you. I love who I am with you, who I see when you look at me.