November 18, 1989

Thirty years ago today, I locked my keys in my running Toyota Tercel. I was cold and in a hurry to brush off the windshield, racing to a wedding. Ours. Pre-cell phone, of course. (To the child who will resonate with this story . . . sorry, it’s genetic 😉

I made it. (On time to our wedding, I mean.) We still shake our heads when we think back to the year we met and married,  all during 1989. By our first Thanksgiving, and Christmas together, we were already sending out thank you notes.  Even more surprising to me was digging out photos today to realize the verses we chose for the day.

Colossians 3:12-17 and John 15:9-12. These words have come to mean more in recent years than I could have imagined thirty years ago. Abide in my love. Clothe yourselves with compassion and patience . . . Bear with one another . . . let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts . . . and be thankful. Layers of meaning that deepen over time.

No couple can see thirty years into the future. What a gift it likely is, that we cannot. Experiences that were more than either of us could imagine, seasons we would never have chosen. Still, gifts await, riches unfold, carefully chosen words come to mean far more than newlyweds understand. And, through it all, we hold the gift of someone with whom to be thankful, to bear with one another, to find Christ’s peace in the midst.

And if you still buy each other similar cards, bonus!

But if we rest there . . .

Two weeks ago, major surgery. Somehow that escapes me at times, when the clock ticks by too slowly. (God, give Jon patience . . . I may not be driving for weeks. Heaven help us both.) Grasp of words has been slow too; the mind is amazing, resilient, and sometimes disobedient. Keep resting.

Part of this exercise in patience is the waiting that comes with healing, and delays in results, and appointments that have to happen in sequence. Which is all to say that we don’t know some things yet. But in the midst, we are relieved, giddy even, over these words: Rare atypical cells, negative for viable carcinoma. 

Isn’t that grace sufficient for today?

My friend Mary shared a well-timed poem during this time of resting.

But if we rest there . . .

Trough

by Judy Sorum Brown

There is a trough in waves,

A low spot

Where horizon disappears

And only sky

And water

Are our company.

And there we lose our way

Unless

We rest, knowing the wave will bring us

To its crest again.

There we may drown

If we let fear

Hold us within its grip and shake us

Side to side,

And leave us flailing, torn, disoriented.

But if we rest there

In the trough,

Are silent,

Being with

The low part of the wave,

Keeping

Our energy and

Noticing the shape of things,

The flow,

Then time alone

Will bring us to another

Place

Where we can see

Horizon, see the land again,

Regain our sense

Of where

We are,

And where we need to swim.