Sacred History

July 3rd of this year marked 17 years since the day that Mark and I met.   It's a special anniversary for us.  First, because it remains undefiled by tragedy which I truly appreciate. Second. and more profoundly for me, it marks the day I was found, the day I will always point back to and say that on that day in 1994, my life began anew.  The wall of protection I had put around my entire being was cracked on that day and I never saw it coming.  To be fair, neither did Mark.

This is the story of how our love began.

Somehow, my drunk friend whose birthday party Mark and I found ourselves at, managed to snap this picture of us.   Evidence that something significant had just occurred.  If you knew me in 1994, you would know that me on some guy I just met's shoulders would be very much out of character. (Since I thought all men were idiots and refused to date)
Neither Mark nor I really wanted to be at this party and that common thread united us shortly after he walked through the door.  For me, it was a way to get out of the house.  My best friend, Cheri, whom I usually hung out with, was out of town getting married.  Mark ran into one of the girls from this party at Safeway and I guess she thought he would liven up the party so she invited him to come.  His only plan for the night was to throw darts at the local dive bar with some buddies.  I'm not even sure why this offer seemed better than his original plan, but apparently it was.  The girl came back from Safeway to announce that she ran into Mark and invited him to come and all I could think was that it'd be just another idiot drunk to add to the mix....great! 

When Mark arrived, I think he and I were the only sober people left at this party and I wondered how on Earth I was going to get home safely since my ride was quite tipsy.  I didn't drive myself there as this wasn't a place I could drive but I was still able to legally drive at this time.  To put it mildly, I was not having much fun and this drunk fest was not quite what I was expecting.  Mark knew most of the girls and was quite the comedian, so he quickly had everyone laughing.  I tried to ignore him.  I told him in no uncertain terms when he did try to talk to me, that I was known to be a big hag (nice way of putting it) so he better watch out. I guess he took that as a challenge because he didn't immediately run away as I had hoped.   It wasn't long before the friend whom I had arrived with suggested she and Mark have a drinking contest which was rather silly considering how drunk she already was.  I just rolled my eyes. Well, somehow, she kept taking shots while he only pretended to and for whatever reason, I found him quite clever and amusing.  I found I couldn't keep from laughing nor could I continue to ignore him for much longer and soon he gave up the charade with this girl and we began conversing.  That was when I found out about his original plan for the night because he was due back at the bar for some tournament which he then decided to forgo to hang out with me.  He did have to leave the party to go tell them he would not be able to make it so they could make other arrangements.   That interim when he was gone was probably one of the most boring of my life at that point.  When he came back, I asked him what he told his friends.  "I said I wanted to hang out with this cute blonde I just met."  I laughed.

After that, we sort of separated ourselves from the group and somewhere in that time, I ended up on his shoulders.  Someone probably dared me, or dared him, I don't remember.   By that time, we had found common ground and it didn't seem out of the ordinary - to me - or him apparently either.  For my friends whose mouths were gaping wide, obviously a different story.  They became lookie-lous to the point of annoying so we left the house altogether and walked across the street to sit in the grass just behind his truck to obstruct their view.   It was getting darker and one of the girls came out to mention that everyone was going to come in and watch a movie. (I'm sure this was an excuse to lookie-lou again)  We declined the offer and actually decided to leave so there'd be no more peering out the windows and opportunities for running back and forth to gossip.  Mark said he was more than happy to drive me home and I was more than happy for the ride because he was actually sober and I was more than ready to leave.  When I got into his truck and left, I was certain that no one in that house was going to be fully able to focus on the movie.  Based on the many phone calls I received the next day from said girls, I was certain of it.

I don't remember what we talked about though we laughed about the drinking charade quite a bit.  I knew on the way back to my house that I wasn't ready for this night to end and I just so happened to have the key to Cheri's apartment so we stopped there and spent another couple hours talking before he took me home.  Somewhere in those hours, I told Mark that I did not date and declined giving him my phone number.  The logic on that one wasn't the greatest since he drove me to my home and thus knew where I lived, but he allowed me to feel like I had that control anyway.  I let him tell me his phone number and told him that if in the morning, I felt it was important enough to remember, I might call him.  If, however, I woke to decide that I'd made a series of errors in judgement, he would not hear from me again.

The girls started calling me early the next day.  They wanted to know what happened (of course) and stated over and over again how they just could not believe I left with him. One of them told me that I should be careful because Mark was an alcoholic which I found amusing considering he probably had two drinks to her ten.    So, I asked her how her hangover was which she did not find amusing.  The girls were hoping for some big explanation for what they had witnessed, or at the very least, a lot of juicy details of why and I just didn't have any for them.   And honestly, it wasn't any of their business.   I left with him because I felt safe with him.  I left with him because I wasn't a third wheel with him.  I left with him because for once, I didn't feel like I would be just wasting time.   I left with him because something inside me said "go" and so I went.   

Looking back I've known for many years now that it was a divine appointment.  God got us there; each of us not really knowing why we went, neither truly wanting to go, but there wasn't anything better to do.  And it was there, in what seemed like another day of empty nothingness that we found each other.  And that's why I think it was amazing to all who witnessed just how dramatically we dropped everything and everyone to be together.  In their eyes, we were two people world's apart on every conceivable level.   None of us could understand just what happened at that time but for me, it was one of those moments in life where you simply don't want to over-analyze it for fear of ruining it.  I couldn't explain it to them because I could not explain it to myself.  I ended all my conversations with the girls with "I'll let you know how it goes," and I found that in all this silly girl conversation, I could not wait any longer to have a real conversation with Mark.  It was then July 4th, his favorite holiday, he loved blowing things up, but he ended up foregoing all the festivities he had planned to meet me at Cheri's once again where we spent that night listening to fireworks outside, visiting and playing cards.  The world outside could have blown up and we would have hardly noticed.

The days that followed are a blur to me today and we've come and gone a long way since then.  Married life for us is the continued real conversation between best friends that began 17 years ago.  We might have come from entirely different backgrounds and on the surface seemed as different as night and day, but the deepest longing inside our hearts was identical: the need for true companionship and real love.  Mark was tired of playing the "girl games" and I refused to play games period and honesty is the best policy so the timing or our meeting was perfect. (God's timing is always perfect)  With him I've always been free to be me and that was something there from day one.  There were no pretenses and never have been. What you see is what you get and that was true for both of us.  From that day forward, we took these seemingly small but highly important ideals and built a relationship around them.  We dropped everything and everyone that became an obstacle in the forging of our relationship then and we still to this day, close the door to the outside world and focus solely on each other as often as we can.

In Mark, I found a person who was fully willing to carry my cross (my poor vision) and has never once made me feel like a lesser person because of it or tried to throw the cross back at me.    No person on this Earth has done more to help me feel independent, more to help me be the person I was meant to be, more to help me do things I thought I'd never do, or more to minimize such a major handicap than Mark.  When we are together, I hardly notice that my vision is poor.  In the rare instances where I've had to depend on someone else, I feel woefully blind and helpless because they often do not know how to help me so I have to direct them.    Yet, this weakness has made our marriage strong in that we simply have to do most everything together or he has to do a lot of things that "the woman usually does" because I cannot.  And he does so cheerfully and always looks for the blessings. For example, it's a total pain in the butt that I cannot drive but it is because of this that Mark was able to spend so much time with Samuel.  Had I been able to drive, he'd have probably went back to work a lot sooner and missed a good majority of Samuel's life.  God knew I'd need a full time helper for this life and that Samuel would need both his parents for his lifetime.  My weakness often turns to blessing.

I read a study that suggests it takes between 9 and 14 years to create a marriage's "form and being."   We need the history of a decade together before a true sense of intimacy is established and outwardly displayed.  Interestingly for us, if you count 9 years from 1994, you come to 2003, less than a year before Samuel's diagnosis of cancer.  Count to 14 and you come to 2008, just after Samuel's exodus to Heaven.  We can easily say that this era which encompassed Samuel's lifetime has glued us together as couple more than any other.  Tragedy exploits everything; whether good or bad, you'll find out very quickly the kind of person you are married to when the unthinkable occurs.  Tragedy only magnified our strengths, both as individuals and as a couple. 

Marriage is like a lifetime of hiking through the mountains and maybe that's why I am enjoying it so much these last few years; it's symbolic of our life together.  You pick a trail and start walking it together only half knowing what the final destination is supposed to be but not really knowing what you are going to find along the way.   If the terrain is an easy walk with great views, the conversation is always lively and ebbs and flows well.  If the terrain climbs steeply up, the conversation quiets to concentrate on the task of simply walking and taking deep breaths.  Sometimes the views are mundane for many miles and you begin to lose hope that whatever you are coming to will be worth all the effort but you keep walking anyway.  Stay on the same path and do not stray far from each other's view.   A little farther on you begin hear the crashing waters of a waterfall seemingly in the middle of nowhere and you feel hope rise up again.  A little giddiness comes back seeing the beautiful reward for the hard work.   Still, no matter how hard the climb up was, it's always harder to come down off the mountain; anti-climax, pain and occasionally tears.   Everybody stumbles once in awhile.  A loving, trusted hand is always needed when the trail gets slippery, narrow or treacherous.  Take it and hang on to each other for dear life.  Never let go until you reach stable ground together.   Occasionally, unforeseen tragedies do happen on the trail.  It's best at this point, to just concentrate on that next step in dealing with the situation and not look too far beyond that.  Let your words be only those which are necessary for survival until you reach a place of safety and can regroup together.  Often as you walk, take some time to stop and map out all the places you have previously been together.  See if you don't look back and find that it was the hard places that wrought the greatest blessings and sealed your relationship.  See if those areas don't become the inspiration in helping you persevere future obstacles as you move forward.   Everytime we hike, there is much recounting of our past history together, both hiking history and life history.  I always come home exhausted from the climb but refreshed in spirit and in love.

Throughout the Old Testament, God is constantly reminding the Israelites of their history as a Nation and as His people.  Throughout the New Testament, that history, the good, the bad, and the ugly, was continually reiterated often to exhort the hearers to rekindle their relationships with each other and with God.    Reminding ourselves of our history as a married couple does the same and should be an integral part of our anniversaries.   Recounting our history rekindles our relationship and reminds us that we were given to each other by God for a purpose.   Sharing that history often with each other, our children and our friends implants its sacredness deep inside our hearts and becomes a hedge against the enemy who wishes it's destruction.

The post, Love Story,  recently came to mind when I was reading someone's belief that in Heaven, God will recount our entire life history to Heaven's occupants.  That was the feeling I certainly had when writing that post.  Samuel's life in Heaven will be told, not as one of unheard of suffering, but as one of immense love and what it accomplished.   That's how I want my marriage spoken of, both there and while on Earth.  I want my children to grow up and speak to their children and children's children about their parent's marriage which defied all the odds given the obstacles thrown in it's way.  I want out marriage to be known and remembered as one of strength, stability and longevity.   

I know the immense gift we have been given in each other and I cherish that gift more and more each day.  I married my best friend and as the years have passed, I have become just as much a part of him as he is a part of me.  So much so, that I don't feel like myself unless we are together.  This is as God intended a marriage to be.  We cleave to each other forsaking all others.    I cannot help but think of Mark 4:25 "For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.”  Appreciate the sacred history of the marriage which you have been given by God.  Seek to understand and live out His will for your marriage more and more each day.  See if He doesn't take that initial flame that brought you together and rekindle it into a torch that lights the path into eternity.


I love you, Dear, each day more than the last. If you were the only person on Earth, I'd always be satisfied.  You are my everything!