There’s a reason that husbands and wives refer to each other as ‘their other half.’  Genesis 2:24 describes it clearly.  You sometimes see long married couples in restaurants where they  sit comfortably without much conversation, wordlessly passing the milk or the sugar.  They are ‘knit together’, the fabric of their lives threaded with all they’ve shared over the years.

Recently I chatted with a man who has been married for 49 years this August.  His wife is in one of our care homes, and until the coronavirus lock-down it had become his home-from-home.  Now, of course, he can’t visit .  Part of his coping mechanism, he says, is knowing that she is being ‘brilliantly’ and lovingly cared for.  Another part is a structured day that includes exercise.  So each day he walks 5 1/2 km each day to the home, where he blows a kiss over the wall towards her window.

You might think it’s just a lovely thing to do – but I wonder if the Holy Spirit takes the kiss and drops it into her heart?  On a lower plain – how often have we found ourselves thinking about someone when the phone rings and there they are?  How often does the Lord drop into our minds to pray for someone we’re not normally in touch with?

As one of Shakespeare’s characters says,  ‘There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”, and who can say they know how the Holy Spirit works?

I wonder how many other little touches there are like this, from those who are ‘other halves’ ?

Louise Morse

Louise Morse MA (CBT) is media and external relations manager for the Pilgrims’ Friend Society. She is a writer and speaker, and author of books on issues of old age, including dementia, published by Lion Monarch and SPCK. She is a cognitive behavioural therapist, and her Masters’ dissertation examined the effects of caring for a loved one with dementia on close relatives.

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