"Love is how hope takes flight, in swamps and barren fields, arising in different frequencies, blending the way sound vibrations of different pitches organize to make music. With my failing hearing in our failing world, I try to listen for this song underneath the river of incoming data and my pinball machine mind and I find that it is always playing." Anne Lamott
I immediately knew he was not for me.
SD has exuded goodness from the moment I met him. And in the summer of 1993, I did not want goodness. I wanted to have a good time.
He exuded marriage material. I did not ever want to be married. Did I mention I wanted to have a good time?
I had not seen marriage done well. Not once. All of the adults in my life had divorces, affairs, abuse, and ugliness.
Who needs that?
Over the course of the next 4 years, SD and I slowly became best friends. We dated other people.
He dated "good" people.
I dated a string of disasters. People who treated me no better than the relationships I grew up watching and learning from.
Even in friendship, SD always put my needs first. Was I hungry? Let's stop and eat. Was I tired? Let's take a nap. Did I have school work? Let's work on it together.
No one in my life had ever put me first. I don't think I even realized it at first. This foreign thing. It seemed to be just an SD thing. Like some weirdly good character trait he had. Lone wolf.
And guess what? Hanging out with SD was a good time.
Somehow by the fall of 1997, I had very slowly fallen in love with my best friend.
My life became a 1980s rom com movie. It was Some Kind of Wonderful of a mess.
Do you potentially ruin the best thing in your life or play all the cards and see where it goes?
In the fall of 1997, I decided to play the cards. In the back of a pick up truck, under a full October moon - I worked up the nerve to give a big rambling speech. A grand gesture of one. Worthy of any rom com movie.
At the end of my speech I said "Just say something. Anything."
SD snored.
Yep. He had slept through the entire thing.
I decided then that gambling wasn't for me.
It would be December of that same year before he played all his cards.
The kids sometimes ask how I knew I wanted to marry him. Shortly after we started officially dating, we took a crazy "Hey let's go to the mountains trip."
We got lost. Like across two state lines lost. Pre-GPS days. As I frantically poured over the big atlas, he laughed.
Laughed.
Said "We'll figure it out."
That's how I knew.
I, the navigator, had made a big mistake. He had a huge paper due. We were supposed to be gone just a few hours. We ran out of money and gas. We ate dinner with what we could buy with coins in a gas station store.
And he laughed.
"We'll figure it out."
The day the Princess was born and made him a father, I made him go with her to the nursery. I could tell he was torn. He repeatedly told me he didn't want to leave me alone. I assured him I would be fine. The barely an hour old infant - I wasn't convinced.
While he was gone, I passed out, fell out of a wheelchair and had a medical emergency.
He knew where he needed to be.
We can't figure it out if we aren't together.
It's been a long and sometimes rocky 23 years together, 22 of those parenting.
No matter what has come up with these kids, he's always been a team player. Ready to figure it out.
My kids have had the balance life never gifted me.
Someone who plays air guitar in the kitchen and sings while he does dishes. Someone who shows up for all the things. All the things. Someone who provides wisdom with room for grace. Someone who gifted them room to make mistakes and know they are still loved.
Mama Warriors, as we all wake up on what I lovingly call "glitter day" , there's space for all the things.
For the big feelings we have about our own father, our kids' fathers.
And space for the love of a heavenly Father.
And space for the knowledge that we are worth the kind of "we'll figure it out" love.
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