Dearest Catherine,

Tonight I almost lost you. Tonight my greatest fear tore through me as that bullet tore through you. I held you. I felt your life slipping away and I lived an eternity. I saw my life without you, Catherine, and it was a loss I could not survive. I've known hopelessness, even worse. But what struck me to the core was this : until that moment I had never truly known faith. Yes, faith. Darkness enveloped me and yet I felt an inexplicable hope, a belief beyond knowledge that you would live. I know now that hope, that faith, came to me through love.

The night you told me of the risks you faced, I said to go no further. That warning came from care, but it was also filled with fear. I was afraid of losing you. Afraid you were not strong enough without me. I want to protect you. We need to protect the ones we love. But now I understand we also need to trust, to allow the ones we love to face their risks and find their courage alone.

How hard it is to let you go. How frightening it is to trust that fate will be kind, and yet I know I must if you are to continue to grow strong.

Isn't it strange that those we hold closest to our hearts are the ones we must also set free. Love is not a refuge. I think it is a journey -- and not a safe one. It is filled with terror and wonder and we must go forward in courage and in truth. I am with you on that journey, Catherine, wherever it leads. And on that journey we are all as children finding our strength, facing our fears, holding each other by the hand.

Oh yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill,

to pangs of nature, sins of will, effects of doubt, and taints of blood;

that nothing walks with aimless feet;

That not one life shall be destroyed, or cast as rubbish to the void,

when God had made the pile complete.

Behold, we know not anything.

I can but trust that good shall fall, at last far off, at last to all;

and every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream, but what am I?

An infant, crying in the night, an infant crying for the light

and with no language but a cry.

        Sleep well, dearest Catherine.