It was a subzero night during the first winter after my marriage ended. A blizzard was raging across the Great Plains, downing power lines, stranding motorists, breaking tall trees, isolating families in their homes without heat behind the walls of drifting snow. Wind moaned through the crack between my front door and its frame, as brittle branches slapped against the windows and snow rose in great swirling drifts. When the lights went out, I picked up the phone to call my daughter Karen to see if the power failure was citywide. No dial tone! The phone was dead. Never had I felt so cut off from other people and the world.

I went to my prayer chair, snuggled up in Mother’s afghan and tried to make contact with God, but even that connection seemed to be severed. The prayers I spoke into the silence seemed to hang suspended in the empty darkness like fragments of lint, without substance and having nowhere to go. I tried to call on God, but all the names I knew Him by seemed to fail me now. "Heavenly Father" felt remote; "Almighty God" seemed overpowering; "Holy Spirit" seemed too untouchable for my arms that ached only to hold and be held that night. Even "Dear Lord Jesus" couldn’t seem to reach beyond my walls.

Discouraged, lonely and cold, I got up from my chair and got another blanket to wrap around me. From somewhere unknown, in the starkness of that winter night, came a name I’d never dared to call my God before. "Beloved," I whispered into the night, "my Beloved One." And in the heartbeat of that moment, the longing within me became a loving embrace. No further words were needed. Only those. I was not alone and never had been. Since then, Beloved has been my warmest name for my God. It never fails to bring me home to Love.

Beloved, my Beloved One…         -Marilyn Morgan Helleberg