The Wanderer and the Dreamer

We were young when we met that summer -so young that we thought we knew everything. We were also both crawling down from places that were wild and reckless. Allen had been introduced to Jesus and had just embraced Him, and I was a weary wanderer tired of believing one way and living another. We kind of collapsed into one another and spent that whole summer in endless conversation about our lives, our craziness and Jesus. Allen had come home for the summer to paint his parents' big old southern home, a huge task, and some days I would sit up on the roof and talk to him as he balanced on gigantic ladders to paint. We were just about inseparable. I can still remember the sound and feel of those summer days and nights - the way we watched lightening bugs appear on the lawn at dusk, the way the wind chimes gonged at his back door, the smell of paint and turpentine on him and the way we would sneak a kiss on the upstairs balcony or in the attic space of the house.

                                                  

That June we shared a lot of music together. I liked Joni Mitchell. He didn't care for her very much but pretended to like her a bit. He liked Jethro Tull. I said he was "just alright." He said he wanted to do something for Jesus. "Like what?" I asked. "You know, smuggle bibles into communistic countries!" That thrilled me because at the time I was as adventurous as he was and imagined how exciting it would be to do it together. He told me stories about how Christian men and women had done this in China and how some incidences were just miracles, that they should have been caught but weren't. I loved his stories about miracles. 

The Wanderer

 We stared at the stars quite a bit that July on blankets in his backyard or open fields. We were all about peace, love and Jesus. We would swing at Highland park and sing hymns at the top of our lungs. We were reclaiming our innocence. We were children again - His children. We would end most nights together in prayer. It was in a canoe on the Buffalo river where we started talking about marriage as if it were as natural a thing to discuss as the full moon rising every month. He was to return to college in September. We couldn't fathom the thought of not being together. So as we drove in the pouring rain back to Jackson from that day on the river, we decided to get married. I remember how I felt sitting beside him in the car -a little reckless yet convinced this is what God wanted for us. We had been together all summer. August was nearly over. We continued to pray about our decision.

The Dreamer

 There had been another time we had known each other, yet we couldn't remember it that well. We had truly been children. It was in the 6th grade, the year 1963, the year President John F. Kennedy was shot. We had traded dog tags that year, aluminum tags with your name and address on them, the kind soldiers wore during battle to be identified if something happened to them. We traded identities that year, traded names - silly kids pretending to know the meaning of love, the meaning of hardcore commitment. I think the trading lasted a week. Little did we know that one day we would not only be considered one in the eyes of God, but would take on His name, His identity, together. Isn't life strange that way? I think that it is. I think the things that happened to us were written in those stars we beheld that summer long before we were even born. I think God had already named us man and wife. I think our children were already known and named. I think the understanding of this is a mystery - free will, sovereignty. I have stopped trying to wrap my brain around it because it is as high and mighty as His ways, His thoughts. I don't think the finite can fully comprehend the infinite until they come face to face. The scriptures tell us that on that day we will know as we have been known.

    Allen and I met that summer around this time of the year. We were married the following December and settled down in a little farmhouse heated by pot bellied stoves. He went to class during the day and I worked at the library.

 We had those children that God had named but we never made it to China. However we have witnessed miracles. You see everyone wants to hear about big miracles, the kind  they believe will boost their faith, when to me being thoroughly convinced that Jesus was God incarnate is a miracle! And believing too that a God that has named every star in the night sky knows me and has "laid out my days before me that I should walk in them" is also a miracle. It is an incredible thing to believe, and so I think to believe comes from Spirit, from Him, not from flesh and blood. 

      Another miracle Allen and I have experienced is the birth of our children, the way a life grows inside of you and inside that life is the life of both families, traits, eye colors and even personalities swirling together in what we know as DNA. It is identities intertwining. And marriage! Marriage is a type of miracle. When two people, both bent on their own way, come together and stay together, no matter what is thrown at them, miracle is happening. Allen and I have had times where we felt our marriage had been kicked in the gut too hard to find breath again, but then somehow there we are, gasping for enough air to put some life back into us-enough forgiveness. It takes a miracle to know that even if the feelings do not feel as sweet as on a summer night, love is still present. Miracle is knowing and understanding that the most powerful kind of love is one of commitment to one another and to God. 

    This December Allen and I will have been married thirty-seven years. Some of our dreams we dreamed on those summer nights long ago never came true, but honestly we have hardly noticed. We have been too busy living in miracles, living in a constant state of grace.