I’ve been thinking a lot about my wife recently. Some medical concerns have left me reflecting on the sweetness of life, the blessing of a good marriage, the gift Cindi’s been for our 23 years together, and the 27 years we’ve known each other since we met during our senior year of high school—and became fast friends.

Reflecting comes more easily in certain environments. I’m in a downtown hospital waiting room as I begin to write. I’ve finished the Chipotle bowl I had for lunch. I’ve drafted the CCEF faculty meeting agenda for our weekly time together. I’ve glanced around and wondered what other diagnoses and procedures are represented in this waiting area. And I’ve texted everyone who wanted an update—lots of praying hands and heart emojis the past few days. Now, I’m just doing the thing that gives this room its name.

As I wait, I’m reminded of a failed poem I tried to write for Cindi as I was preparing for my last Sunday as a lead pastor in Houston. That last Sunday was September 1, 2024, just before we climbed in our UHaul and began the long drive out of Texas and into the next chapter of our lives together. I was overwhelmed with all we’d been through during our seven Gulf Coast years—as a church, as a pastor, as a family, as a couple, as parents, as children of God east of Eden. My heart was full.

As our final farewell event drew near, I was hoping to honor Cindi in front of the church for all her efforts behind the scenes. Somehow, in some way, I was longing for the impossible—the ability to communicate publicly, to our church family, all that she is, all that she had been for me, and the honor she deserved.

My Father has wired me for words, so when deep meaning is crying out for expression, that’s where I turn. At least I try. In this case, I came up with lots of ideas, and phrases, and partial stanzas—lots of starts—but I couldn’t finish. It wouldn’t come together. It didn’t connect. It refused to flow.

Lots of shards. No mosaic.

I kept trying for days, then weeks—setting it aside, coming back to it, hammering my heated thoughts on the anvils one uses to shape thoughts and feelings into words. But I just couldn’t find the notes to register what my wife had meant to me over those long, arduous years, years we both knew were weightier than words could say.

(Now would be a great time for this little reflection to take a lovely turn—a breakthrough, a realization, a dawn. “Then late one night, the words started to flow . . .” But that’s not what happened.)

I never did finish the fullness of what I hoped to say about Cindi Gundersen on that final Sunday afternoon. Dozens of assorted lines just sat in a document, refusing integration.

But I did find four. Just four. Four lines that said what I knew, and what I felt. Four lines I never got beyond.

These are those four lines, said near the end of that event, after sharing some faltering words of appreciation for the wife of my youth. Looking out at Cindi, surrounded by our church, these were the last four lines—the same ones that come to mind now, here, as I wait. And had I been able to continue—to find more words and more lines—their theme would not have deviated from these four. Because you, my long friend, have written them with your life, and with your love.

You were the rock beneath my sand.
You were the sand beside my sea.
You were the sea beneath my ship.
You were the ship that carried me.

You still are.