Paper trail of love

People still marvel when my husband tells them he’s been married 17 years this month.  To the same woman.  They laugh and figure he must have married when he was about 12.  It’s true.  That’s how young he looks.  No one really questions when I say the same thing.  Perhaps that has a little to do with the half dozen babies I’ve carried and delivered, possibly.  They laugh again when he takes responsibility for those 6 children.  Yes.  “All with the same woman” he answers with a smile.

Deliriously stricken with what we thought love was when we were 15 years old in our junior year of high school, we talked on telephones with cords late into the night and spent our weekends going line dancing with friends.  There were school dances and trips to the mountains for day skiing.  There was girl drama and a hundred other things that felt like the biggest deal ever.  My grandma smiled when I told her we’d stay together after we graduated high school.  Politely not saying what everyone was thinking, “Sure, easy to say, highly unlikely”.

Our choosing two different universities gave way to writing the letters.  Not emails or texts.  No electronic anything.  Bonafide love letters.  Our very own paper trail of love those letters are. The anticipation and patience involved when word from the one your heart longs for is hours away and requires getting through border patrol to put eyes on. Not for the faint of heart.  They sit by my bed in a stack wrapped in a ribbon.  Their very presence dates me.  Ages me.  Puts me in the “pushing 40 years old” crowd.

Months turned into years and our long distance perseverance continued.  We became adept at waiting.  Waiting for the border open.  Waiting for the letter to come through the university post.  Waiting at the dorm phone for a scheduled phone call.  Waiting for direction for post-college plans.  Waiting for summer when we would be home with parents and only 20 minutes drive from each other.  Waiting for an engagement ring.  Which turned into waiting for a wedding.  Which meant more waiting.  Waiting to go to bed together and wake up in the same place.   I won’t ever forget waking up the day after our wedding and holding my ring-clad hand up in disbelief that yes, I was finally paired for life with this one I loved.  It was surreal.

Our paper trail turned into post-its at this point.  Notes written and stuck on the bathroom mirror.  I still have the sticky stack.  Short notes of love that cemented our gratitude that we were done waiting for each other.  We settled into married housing our last year of college and walked graduation together the following year.  Youth pastor and social worker finding our (very young) way.

This morning I wrote a bridal shower gift card to a young thing preparing for her own summer wedding.  I simply said “sending love and blessings your way as you prepare for your marriage (the wedding is the easy part, don’t stress about that!)”.  At barely 21, I certainly thought otherwise!  I was sure the wedding was the hard part.  Our big wedding with two receptions, which I planned without a wedding coordinator while keeping a $5,000 wedding budget, was attended by 428 people.  It felt huge.  Larger than life.  I hadn’t given a great deal of thought about the life that would come after.  Sure we did premarital counseling and personality tests and all.  Good stuff.  But nothing prepares any love struck sweetheart for the reality of marriage.

But love letters wane.  Post it notes get unsticky.  He doesn’t bake caramel brownies from scratch filled with love notes on foil anymore.  She doesn’t spend an hour on hair and makeup every single day.  He doesn’t know how to respond to her insecure 21 year old self.  And she doesn’t know how to cook after all.  Real life happens.  And real life is darn hard sometimes….most of the time.  Wedded bliss becomes a ruse and the sparkly ring gets dirty and scratched up.  So do the wedded ones.  No matter how good in heart or how sweet their intentions.

This is where the fire burns hot and hard choices are made.  This is where listening to the prevailing wisdom of the culture we live in (even church culture) says loudly “Marriage is meant to make you happy – if you aren’t happy, you can walk away!”.   Choosing to keep love in the midst of real, broken life comes hard fought, comes at a price.  Two sweet lovebirds change and grow up.  Inevitably, they don’t grow on the same timeline.  This proves incredibly hard to navigate.

Choosing love in the midst of the mess, in the midst of the growing, in the midst of imperfection and failure….this is how we are forging our way forward. By saying yes to each other.  Yes to love.  Yes to the gut-wrenching conversations.  Yes to humility.  Yes to apologizing and subsequent forgiveness.  Yes to awkward, soul-exposed moments .  Yes to being a witness to the whole of life by someone’s side.  Yes to the covenant promise of marriage.  Not just when it makes sense or comes easy or “feels right”.  Even, especially, when it doesn’t.

17 years and counting.  Thankful every day (even the ones that lay me flat) for my yes all those years ago and every day since.  Perhaps even, the best is yet to come…

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Mama to boys

To this mama whose childhood was filled with only sisters, raising boys is all sorts of wonderful and wild.  What they bring to our family table, our family story, is vibrant and valued.  Full of surprises they are.

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Like last week for example:  Out of the blue they put this tea table together for themselves and then made a place for me at their table!  I told them tea tables, even for boys, meant delightful polite conversation.  So they made sure to keep it that way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
They often take risks and like to push the envelope sometimes.  Like seeing just how far away they can be from the water dispenser.  Sometimes risks equate to emergency room trips which we’ve had our fair share of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
One boy can’t go to sleep at night until he finds me and prays for me.  He also writes the sweetest notes.  Like the one above.  “Do not forget that I love you”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Possibly one of my most-treasured sights is seeing older boys and grown men snuggling with and loving on babies.  I love seeing big boys holding their little siblings’ hand but its a rare thing these days.  There is a paradox in it I suppose.  A great contrast.  Strength woven in with such tender newness.  A couple months ago a friends’ husband came to pick her up and our youngest jumped into his arms.  They’ve moved on from babies, as most of our friends have.  I watched her heart melt as he toted her around on his hip.   There is something I think most women find a little bit intoxicating about it.  Our oldest son has learned great patience in dealing with his toddler sister.  It certainly has its challenges.  But they are worthy and good that is for certain.  She loves to say goodnight and crawl into his bed for a quick book read.  And he has learned to love her love.

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And I am learning, still with every passing day, to bask in all their love.  Six very different varieties of it.  All beautiful.  All a treasure for today.

Being Caleb

Dear Caleb,

You are 12.  Sitting at the cusp of your teen years, you are exceptional at many things, best of all at being Caleb.  You are intricately, uniquely created.  You rushed to the house yesterday, your freshly turned 12 self, and had eyes so round and full I thought they might spill over.  My instinct told me you weren’t hurt or worried.  But I knew you needed all of my attention with one glance.  You could scarcely get the words out as you beckoned me with your body to come with you.  Baby cousin in arms, I loped across the grass with you to see the amazing, beautiful thing that blended in so quietly, so perfectly with the mottled tree bark I still can’t believe your eyes could see it.  A barred owl.  Mysterious and stunningly marked with stripes of brown mixed with cream.  Looked just like strips of tree bark.  But with huge brown eyes staring down.  Right at you.  Right at all of us.  All of us who would have missed it.  Would have missed the crazy flurry of protective mama-birds diving and squawking terrified back in the forest at the day time sight of this looming predator.  You explored and wondered until your curiosity at the strange behavior gave way to the answer, sitting up high on a tree branch.

This is the essence of you.  You who sees hidden wonders.  You who feels deeply.  You who hears amplified.  You who experiences the whole of life in a way I can’t, won’t ever, fully be able to understand.  You have, in all your one-of-a-kind way, opened up slivers of life that we would not have known had you not been given to this family.  Your passion for the created world?  Blows.  My.  Mind.  The way you pay attention to the smallest detail in the sedimentary lines formed in a rock sample (of which you now own close to 200).  The way you disappear for an hour and then return with a collection of insects and tell me what they are.  The way you gently place a blue lace-wing moth on your baby sisters’ chubby finger and watch in delight as it crawls across her hand.  The way you care for your seed starts that sit in your bedroom.  The way you can read a (great) book for three hours and not think to look away from the page or stop for water or take a break.   All these ways and a thousand more.  I love them, every one.

We have been stretched by who you are.  In the best way.  Stretched to expand and grow  and to learn new things, new ways, new love.  So much we would miss if you weren’t here to show us.  You point our eyes to see the owl and beckon our ears to listen for the woodpecker.  Thank you for this.  Don’t stop being awestruck.  Don’t stop letting beauty and creation and life take your breath away.

All my love,

Mama

ps – Thank you for seeing this beautiful pink flower three years ago deep in the forest and digging it up carefully and planting it right by the front door “so you could see it mom”.  Three years now it has faithfully bloomed and brings me deepest joy.  This is the kind of thing you do.  This is who you are.