Leah, last week you asked about my husband's experience of leaving Innermost House. You wondered if it mirrors my own or if there are some subtle differences.
Michael and I are two sides of one life. It is only that I am this side of us and he is the other side. In many ways it was stranger for him than for me to leave Innermost House. To the visiting world of our guests, he was Innermost House.
There is a phrase that comes to us I think from the Stoic philosophers—Amor fati. It means "the love of one's fate." I have heard it interpreted as stoical resignation and acceptance.
Whatever it means to the philosophers, that has not wholly been my experience. I have lived for thirty years united to one whose love has never recoiled from our destiny. And I have never known him to be resigned to anything, but always to seek a way to its meaning.
I say this now because I know all the frustrations and discouragements of seeking an Innermost Life in an unyielding world. I want to encourage you to do with all your heart whatever you feel in your heart is best.
You think you do not know my husband, but you do. Everyone who has ever seen the photographs of our life at Innermost House has seen him. For what you see is him, not me. I am the half of us you hear.
If Innermost House is beautiful, it was his love of our fate that made it beautiful, even his love of our fate that made it possible to leave it.