I see Jesus in you

(a poem for my husband, because I do.)

What I've failed to look at,
notice,
pay attention to
is that despite the brambles tangled up in your hopes and motivation,
you are not where you came from
and not who you were,
though habits fall off hard,
often unnoticed until the new better thing
replaces the old rotten, but I see it.
It is not the stuff of style and dress,
but the glow of an ember from beneath a pile of dry wood,
piled dark on top of dark on top of the dark of each other.
 I see how the spark did not flaunt itself obvious on the edges of the wood,
but began in the deepest, darkest, most hidden parts of that pit,
until it grew and grew,
burning the hardest and longest buried wood first,
it burned the not visible to the naked eye,
which you felt long
before I could see it.

(If I sometimes scorch
 from being made one in close proximity to a flame burning deeply the darkest things away, 
 then I can only hold fast to the hope it will purify me also, 
will start to work on my tangle of the thorns
 of a self protected rose wishing to bloom the brightest pink, 
but unable when bound shut so determinedly.)