There is a moment in any relationship, actually a number of moments, in which you become aware that something has changed, that the relationship has moved beyond what it was into new and unexplored territory. It is at once terrifying and exhilarating. Terrifying because you have lost the naiveté of not knowing, exhilarating because your past experience has taught you that there is a richness to what is yet unknown but waiting to be explored.

The more naïve, the more undeveloped, the relationship is, the more likely the moments of discovery will be largely unnoticed. They will appear as casually and quickly as new landscape appears at the turn of a corner. As the relationship deepens, though, one sharp turn will bring you up short, leave you gasping for air. You suddenly realize that this is something different than what was - and that to turn back would be as unthinkable as plunging on ahead as if nothing had happened. That is the moment in which faith gives way to faith.

It may be at the sudden disappointment of expectations, or at the discovery of a new and unsettling truth, or in the explosion of emotion at the thought of loss, or the acknowledgment that the other has somehow gotten into the deep levels of your being and demands - invites - a rearranging of your inner reality. You have moved in that instant from one faith, from one standing in reality, from one pattern of knowing and understanding, to a new and very different one.

In a friendship, it marks the beginning, perhaps, of an unspokeness that will carry the years. In a courtship, it pushes you past the hazy language towards the speaking of a commitment that has already been formed deep within. In a marriage, it signals a new phase of freedom in which the other is celebrated for and in their uniqueness, with the conscious awareness that the crucible has formed a stronger union in the heat of a lifelong promise kept.

And in a walk with God, it yields the solid awareness that to know Him is life, that one day in His presence is worth more than a lifetime anywhere else, that no price is too high for the privilege of embracing Him, that all of my life comes down to just this one thing - to know Him more.