Velvet Lisa

The dream was unusual – not for any differences in color, imagination, weirdness. All dreams, if I think about it, are magical, mysteries, miraculous as to how they play out from my mind.

And there she was…Lisa. Same golden hair, same beautiful smile. The last time I had seen her was in 2004, when she was being given an award by the Mayor for an art poster she had designed for a major local festival. Before that, it was probably five or six years gone by since she had broken my heart.

In the dream, she kissed me. It tasted much the same as I remember it in real life, something like honey but with an unknown spice to it.

When I awoke, I said aloud, "God, what is she doing here?" And then the memory – the memory that I cannot separate from her – came knocking on the door of my heart.

Velvet Lisa…

1997. We had been dating for a while. I was at work in a downtown arts office; she was coming to join me for dinner and a night at the theatre to see actress Faye Dunaway in Master Class. She walked into my workplace, this ethereal vision in a short, burgundy red velvet dress, dark stockings, and these awesome ankle-high black boots.

She asked me a silly question as two people in love often do. I don't remember, to this day, what the question was. I remember my answer: "It's a secret." Lisa stood there in her red velvet dress and smiled.

"I've got a secret, too," she said. She walked up to me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and moved her lips onto my ear. I could hear her heart beating in her breath, the silence swirling with possibilities, and my body numb with goofiness. "I'm in love with you."

As I walked down the city streets with this goddess in a red velvet dress, I knew the moment was one for a dream. Dinner was romantic. We couldn't keep our hands off each other in the theatre. I'm pretty sure we said the word marriage that evening in between public kisses and long looks.

I never saw her in that velvet dress again.

And this morning, reintroduced to a memory that won't disappear from a corner of my heart, I realize that it wasn't about the secret of being in love, or the nectar of a kiss, or a red velvet vision of beauty.

The memory, the dream, is a small piece of colored glass in the mosaic of who God created me to be…a man whose heart can, and will, be broken, but whose heart doesn't belong to anyone but Him. One day, in eternity, I will be shown the entire creation of His mosaic of my life.

I will be breathless, in love, and my eyes will see it all…including the one piece of glass in countless millions, the one that speaks the name of her.