Tag Archives: marriage

Twenty-Two Things

Painting Toenails, Washing Feet

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Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. John 13:14

So I was kinda mean last week.

Actually, truth be told, I was really mean.

Stomping around the house, throwing things in the trash, grumping on my husband no matter what he said kinda mean.

He saw the angry side of me.

Not that he hasn’t before.

If we’re being honest here, he’s seen it more times than I care to admit.

He ‘s told me more than once that one of the things he loved most about me when we were dating was my spunkiness and firey temper.

I’m not sure if all these twenty-some years later he’d say the same.

I’m used to loud arguing and getting over it. He hates that. Quiet talking and peaceful resolve are more his style. All these twenty years, I’ve had to smother my anger and learn how to live without it.

Put it in the grave and nurture the tree called gentleness that’s planted in the dark dirt near the headstone.

Angry wants to rise up sometimes.

Claw her ugly way out and dance on the grave and mock the gentle tree that grows taller each year but still shows it’s fragility on those days when it’s not facing the Son.

It makes him crooked when we argue, he tells me.

It twists his heart up and he can’t think of life being right and he’d do anything in his power to fix it.

He wants unity between us.

Peace.

But it’s not peaceful when I’m cranky and ornery and being mean.

It tears up our household. It tears up him.

And it tears up me.

I don’t like being mean. I don’t like feeling mean and I certainly don’t enjoy the cranky feeling that overtakes an overwhelmed mama when there’s so much do that she can’t see the light of day and no one else can seem to see things the way she does and she’s just carrying it all ON HER OWN.

Being mean is feeling like the lonely girl who’s pouting as she sits in the car alone because she threw a fit on the way home and now no one wants to be around her so they left her just sitting there in the cold car parked in the driveway.

Isolated.

Angry.

Left with her ugliness.

But too stubborn about protecting it to get out of the car.

Deep down though, she’s lonely and crying.

So when we ignore the advice of the sweet elderly couple at our wedding reception…those ones long gone now…that pair who’d weathered life and loss and decades and death…that precious woman who lifted her sweet little wrinkled gnarled finger to the two of us standing there in ivory and said

“This is the secret. Don’t be mad when you go to sleep. You fight, you work it out. Before you go to sleep. Over fifty years. That’s the secret.”

But when we’re sitting in the car alone we forget her face and forget what she said.

So the next morning I sat with my Bible and my coffee, and even though we’re told to leave the altar and reconcile our differences, I tried to read anyway because angry people need Him and somehow just having that Book there in my lap with words red and history true, well, just that alone will start a gal on the path to reconciliation…then in walks my husband, just waking up and with a peacemaker’s smile…

…he washed my feet.

The kids still quiet in bed and the house still sleeping, he went to the bathroom and he got the nail polish fixings and he came back and he put my feet on the footstool and he started painting my toenails.

His big hands held the little glass bottle and I sat there quietly, my Bible and my coffee still in my lap, while he prettied my toes with my favorite red.

And when he accidentally knocked over the nail polish remover and it spilled a wood-eating mess of chemical all over our dark wood floor, he quietly and patiently got up and went to the kitchen and came back with a wad of paper towels. He gently and silently mopped up the spill and went back to work on my toes.

My Bible held me still and quiet, anchored to my seat and not breathing one word about the mess.

This was bigger than the mess and bigger than the fight and bigger than the pride and the little issues that I’d allowed to be too big the day before.

I wasn’t lonely in the car anymore.

I wasn’t sitting in the driveway feeling left and abandoned and prideful in protecting my heart with those swords that want to scratch their way up from the dirt and the depths and cut those closest to me..

I was loved.

I was accepted.

And I was forgiven.

There was a mess but it didn’t matter.

Because life is messy and sometimes it gets ugly messy and while we wouldn’t want the finish to be stripped away, when we look at the dull spot, that one that doesn’t shine quite as bright as the rest of the story…

…that spot right there is one to be remembered.

That spot right there is where something important happened and it was important enough to leave its mark.

That spot is where a knot formed and that tree just went on growing right around it.

That spot right there says “There! Right there! THAT happened to help us remember.”

That spot right there is where love grew.

And it won’t ever be perfect.

But in its imperfectness, it has a purpose.

It will be used.

It will serve.

And it will be strong.

In your anger do not sin…Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. Ephesians 4:26

Twenty-Three Aprils Ago

Thirty-Five Cents and a Tank Full of Gas

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I pulled out of work onto the highway and instead of turning right toward home, I turned left, toward North.

He was North.

And while it was only a Tuesday, and even though I’d just seen him on Sunday… and even though I had to work the next day…and even though I didn’t have anything with me but the clothes on my back, a quarter tank of gas and thirty-five cents in my pocket…I turned left anyway.

I pointed my little car North and I went to where he was. To where he was working hard, pounding pick axes and hefting dirt and swinging shovels and digging ditches…

…and thinking of me. Scan3

But when I got there an hour and a half later, he wasn’t there.

My knock was quiet on his motel room door and even though I’d never been there, the gas station attendant’s directions brought me right to it and once I was in the parking lot I knew exactly which room I’d find him in. After all, it was the one I’d been sending sweet cards and drawings and pictures to for over six months. His home away from home, his abode where he’d spend hours on the phone with me, chatting into the night, me listening to the stories about his work crew, their roughneck lives and his foreign part of the state I’d never once seen.

I knocked again and only after a third time knocking did an elderly man answer the door, his smile big from around the corner of the white dingey steel.

I was surprised at this face that was not my young man’s face, my happy-go-lucky, smiling man’s baby face. This wasn’t the face of my guy who worked so hard all week on the gas pipeline in the wilds of northern Michigan, earning the paychecks that brought him back to me and all of our dancing fun on the weekends.

No, the elderly, sinewy man who answered the door stretched his goofy smile even wider when he got full sight of me on the step to his motel room.

“Well hey Cassy, you’re lookin for Matt ain’tcha?” And he opened the door wide.

I’d been pretty sure I had the wrong room, but once he said my name, I realized this was the roommate I’d heard all about. This was the man my man spent his weeks with, ate his dinners with, slept in the same room with each night and drove to the same worksite with each morning.

“Smitty! Hey, good to meet you! Is Matt here? I thought I’d come have dinner with him.”

Somehow, that goofy smile got even bigger still and the little man of muscle leaned against the door.

“Well no. He ain’t here. Actually, he left about an hour ago. He headed downstate.”

What?!

In all our dating months, he’d never come home mid-week. Ever. He was a leave for work as late as he could Sunday night and come home the second he got off work on Friday kinda guy. The schedule was always the same.

Always.

A Tuesday trip home? What for?

Smitty must’ve read my thoughts.

“The boss had an errand downstate. Needed a tool. Matt jumped in the truck with him. Said he was gonna tag along. See his gal, take her out to dinner maybe. He was headin down to see you darlin.”

My heart leapt.

Isn’t it the unexpected…the out of the ordinary…the off the pattern times…aren’t those the times we really learn how a person feels about us? Aren’t those the times when we really learn who we are?

A midweek trip.

To see me.

He must really love me as much as he says he does.

But then my heart sank too.

Because there, in the pocket of my little blue and white striped short sleeved dress, I held all my worldly treasure.

A whopping thirty-five cents. And I’d barely breezed into this run down motel on the fumes from the itty bitty gas tank of my itty bitty Chevy Spectrum.

How was I going to get back home? There was no way I could get back downstate with no gas and no money. And how was I going to see my guy that I’d traveled so far to surprise?

Again, Smitty must’ve read my thoughts.

“Let’s see if we can’t get those boys on the mobile. Boss keeps one in his truck.”

Today, my trip could’ve been texted, tweeted, and on Facebook before I’d even left. Then, though, the smart phones consisted of a suitcase crammed full of spiral cords that led to a spy movie-looking device that sometimes worked but most of the time didn’t.

This time it did.

And after Smitty got the boss on the phone and told him he had Matt’s little gal here at the motel, he handed the phone to me and said “Here’s your boy.”

“Hiiiii honeyyyy….” I sounded like a junior high girl to him I’m sure. “Surpriiise?”

I was so sheepish. Here he was, in the truck with his boss, and here I was, in his motel room with his sweet old roommate. How in the world, the one and only time I decide to surprise him with a visit, -the most unexpected thing in all the world for this nice and steady predictable guy- how did he pick that day to morph into Don Juan surprise lover and swoop downstate to surprise me?!

I was the unpredictable one. I was the one who did things spontaneously and without thinking and threw surprise parties and blurted things on impulse and evidently drove two hours on a whim to see my sweetheart.

He was the one who was steady.

mackinaw

But now, today, here he went and blew all that to the wind and swooped me off my feet the moment I heard of his rash romanticism, – that somehow coincidentally, collided with mine- his careless abandon to his workweek schedule and that was the kind of stuff in movies so I knew to be quiet and just let him have his handsome hero moment and say just the right words that would top off the frosting in my heart and push me right on over to a knee buckling swoon.

“Cassandra how much money do you have?” The first words out of his mouth came firm and knowing and his voice sounded a bit like I imagined he’d sound if he were addressing his four year-old niece. How did he know?

The record on the romantic movie music in my mind scratched to a halt abruptly and my voice got even meeker than it was when I’d first held the phone, a mumble really, and I muttered into the receiver.

“Thirty-five cents.”

The silence was heavy and the toddler in me fiddled with the telephone cord and imagined I’d just gotten caught pilfering cookies out of the cookie jar and my face turned a little red and tears sprang into eyes that’d just been sparkling with thrill and now I was embarrassed.

“Put Smitty back on the phone.” And that was the end of our conversation.

As I stood there awkwardly, still in the doorway to a motel room that was neat and tidy but smelled like two men and their work boots lived there, I listened to one side of a man-talk between Smitty and my man, and I was sure it had just then been decided that his girl had proven herself too irresponsible and reckless for a hard-working, task minded young fellow such as himself.

“Alright buddy, we’ll see ya in a bit”, I heard Smitty say and then he replaced the heavy beige phone receiver to its cradle and turned toward me, his white smile sparkling still.

“C’mon darlin, your boy wants me to get you set up in a room. Didja eat yet? How about a Coke? Here lemme grab ya a Coke.”

And Smitty pulled a pocketful of change out of his weathered blue jeans right on into his weathered hand, a hand rough and missing fingers and tender as he fished a soda out of the vending machine on the sidewalk and placed it gentle and friendly right into my hand.

Within three minutes Smitty had me all set up and had gone back to his room, giving me my space and I sat on the edge of the bed in my very own motel room, alone in a town I’d never been to before, freshened by a drink of cold Coca Cola, knowing my guy was on his way back to me just as soon as he and the boss finished their errand downstate. It would be a long wait, and a lonely wait, but he would be back for me soon.

My man had taken care of things, and in his quiet, direct, and steadfast way, without saying much at all, he’d taken in the situation and got to doing what needed being done.

And as soon as he got back, he filled my car up with gas, my pocket up with some money and he took me out to dinner. chevy

And I never did spend my thirty-five cents.

Some twenty-two or so years later, twenty years of marriage, a cross-continent move, four children, a strong and growing Christ-following faith and half a lifetime built high onto the foundation of that long-ago spontaneous trip, I laugh as I find myself, once again, going to where he is.

He doesn’t know I’m coming this time either.

He won’t be surprising me at the same time I’m surprising him though, because I’m not meeting him at a motel, but at an appointment he can’t miss. It’s his radiation appointment, his daily 9:15 morning session with a narrow beam of poison that is slowly killing off the cancer cells that dwell near his ear, right on the side of his face.

Today’s the 22^nd of 33 sessions and the side effects are starting to wear him down. He’s tired and he’s sore and eating tears him up so he doesn’t and never did I think my strong robust man who still shovels but for fun now would be in danger of losing weight. But poison in your body takes an appetite away and sores in a throat kill the taste and he just can’t eat.

It hurts badly.

But he knew it would.

Back then, when they told him the options, he knew the risks, but in his quiet, direct, and steadfast way, he didn’t say much at all, just took the situation in and got down to doing what needed to be done.

And when we find ourselves alone in a town we’ve never been to before, -a strange new world with paths we’ve never walked- not much in our pocket except a handful of faith held in our worn and weathered hands, the One who takes care of things lets us know we’re not sitting alone. He’s coming back.

He’ll be here.

And He is.

And isn’t it the unexpected…the out of the ordinary…the off the pattern times…aren’t those the times we really learn how a person feels about us? Aren’t those the times when we really learn who we are?

When the prayers keep coming…when the love keeps showing up…when in quiet moments I feel held and sure…

He must really love us as much as he says He does.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~Romans 8:35-39

The unexpected surprise of sitting here on this new path in this new town has shown me how loved we are by our people.

By one another.

By our Lord.

And halfway to surprising him at his appointment this morning, I realize I’ve left my purse back home with the sleeping children and their watchful grandmother.

His smile is big when he pulls in and sees me there waiting and I tell him, not so embarrassed this time though.

“It seems I’m still that little girl who came to surprise you and only had thirty-five cents in her pocket. I forgot my purse can you believe that?”

“How much money have you got this time?” He smiles as I bring out the change in my pocket.

We count it up. Forty-five cents.

“More than twenty years later and only ten cents more?” He laughs.

And when we’re done with his appointment he fills my heart with some chat and my pocket with some money.

“Boy. I musta sure been cute back then, showing up with an empty gas tank and thirty-five cents.” I pocket the traveling money he slides across the console and hop out of his truck.

“Yeah. You’re pretty cute now though too.”

I kiss my big strong man, my baby faced man who’s starting to get sores from the three weeks of beams aimed at his handsome and happy face.

But he’s not saying much. He’s just doing what needs to be done.

And He’s trusting the One who loves him even more than I do.

And whether now, or someday far in the future, we’ll both leave work.

And we’ll turn North.

On that day, He won’t surprise us by being gone.

It may be a long wait but it won’t be a lonely wait.

On that day we’ll leave this foreign land and we’ll turn toward where He is.

On that day…

…we’ll head home.

Standing on this mountaintop

Looking just how far we’ve come

Knowing that for every step

You were with us

Kneeling on this battle ground

Seeing just how much You’ve done

Knowing every victory

Was Your power in us

Scars and struggles on the way

But with joy our hearts can say

Yes, our hearts can say…

Never once did we ever walk alone

Never once did You leave us on our own

You are faithful, God, You are faithful

{{Never Once, Matt Redman}}

The name of the LORD is a strong tower… ~Proverbs 18:10

New Face in a Hotel Room

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We commandeered the lobby level pool.

I imagined him quiet upstairs, tired, ready for bed…and shaving.

I didn’t worry about him, but knew when we returned…

…he would look different.

Smooth.

What had been part of him, part of us, -rugged and soft and grizzly- for so long now…

…would soon be gone.

It needed to come out. Bad tumor filled his face and it was a week until we learned cancer cells built nests, but that night, before it came out…

…I thought of him as always.

With his beard.

But then bare, there he was…

…strong.

And love.

Twenty Year Song in the Dressing Room

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Several weeks ago I was in Fred Meyer shopping with my bffs for a new shirt to wear to Ladies Night at the gun store. Yeah, we know a wild and crazy Thursday night when we see one. We did duck face pictures with movie star sunglasses and acted like giggly freshmen girls.

Cuz we’re like that when we’re out on the town and forget we’re in our forties and that between the three of us we’ve got eleven kids.

Then the sweetest most precious song came on over the speakers and had me near slobbering tears while I picked out the perfect black shirt. It was so beautiful right there under the fluorescents, I swore to myself I would remember the lyrics and download the song as soon as I was outside. I threw an iTunes card on the belt, paid for my goods and set out to search for my new favorite song from the back seat of my girlfriend’s mini van.

I couldn’t find it.

I searched every single word I thought I’d heard over the tinny loudspeakers. But they got all jangly in my head like the bracelets we had been trying on and before I knew it, my results window was bringing me back to bebop 50’s music and then some Bruno Mars.

I was so sad.

Because you see, in just seven months, if I am still on the earth, I will be celebrating twenty years of marriage to a man I thought I’d never marry. I told him so, in fact, about twenty-two years ago. Sat right down on his lap at a party and told him he was so NOT my type I’d NEVER marry him. He was too nice to me, too good to me, too sweet of a man for me to ever consider marrying. Some date I was huh?

And then, when I DID marry him, I’m sure there were folks who thought we’d never make it much past a few years together. Heck, there were times when WE thought we wouldn’t make it much past a few years together.

We didn’t know what forever was…back before we understood what forever meant.

The sweet song said “I love you more today than you will ever know, how sweet this life, I’ll never let you go….”

And it reminded me of all these years and all these miles and all these tears and all these laughs and all these sad times and all these babies and all these flaws revealed and all these forgivens granted and all these late nights and all these whispered prayers and all these gifts given and all these joys and all these dark times and all these light times and all this time…

…all this time together.

It made me think of all these near twenty years and right there in the dressing room I was reminded that yes, this life IS sweet. Marriage is sweet. This man is sweet.

And together, we’re sweet.

And while every single moment hasn’t been sweet, every single year of these twenty has been.

But I couldn’t find the song. I didn’t forget about it, but after coming up empty in my intense search to find it, I quit looking.

Until today.

When, almost a month after the trip with my girlfriends, I dragged my kids through the shoe department of the same store for our annual new-shoe extravaganza. I happened to be standing underneath a speaker in the sneaker aisle three or four minutes after we started shopping and there, right there in my ears, popped a sweet little melody.

I strained to listen while the sweetness of the song started to stir my heart just like the first time I’d heard it. Unbelieving, my chest jumped as I scanned the ceiling to see where the speaker was located. Could it really be the same exact song?? In the same store?? Did they play this stuff on some sort of loop? But now? RIGHT now, THIS second, THAT song just happens to be playing??

I found the speaker and strode urgently over to it, leaving my kids standing in front of the tennis shoes and hissing to them, “shhhhhht” when they loudly asked my back…

“Mama? What are you doing??”

Those sweet words. There it was. I never thought I’d find our dressing-room, twenty-year song and there it was. Right out of the blue it had come to me while I was helping my girl find a pair of Chuck Taylors.

“And dreams are worth the chasing…Love is for the making…and I’ll love you more than you will ever know…How sweet this life…I’ll never let you go…Nothing compares to holding on to you…I’ll love you more this I confess to you…

…I confess to you.”

There it was.

I pulled my iPhone right out of my purse and googled up the lyrics and tapped out the name of the song and the artist in my note pad. I would not lose it again.

There it was. Right there in a song piped out of the dingy ceiling at the department store.

This Life.

When our Creator says for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh…He meant it. What a gift.

And I confess to you:

Marriage has hard times and marriage can have dark times. But marriage is sweet and marriage is precious and nothing…nothing compares to holding on to the one you chose to spend your forever with. When you told God, when you told your spouse, that you were in it until death, you confessed too. You said I’ll never let you go. You clasped hands and claimed dreams are worth the chasing…love is for the making…how sweet this life.

You said it.

Live it.

All the days of your life. If you have that person with you, that is your sweet life.

Hold them close…they may not always be with you.

For as long as you have them, never let them go.

I’ll never let you go.

This life.

That’s my twenty year song.

That’s my forever song.

I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine… Song of Songs 6:3

Click the YouTube link to play Ryan Huston’s, This Life

Get Used to It

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So I finished writing a little book yesterday.

Actually, I finished it back in October, but yesterday I finished finished it. I finished my edits and proofreading and cuts and adds and rewrote that dreaded twelfth chapter and I got it to the point where it’s finished enough that I’m excited for other eyeballs to see it.

That kind of finish.

If it’s going to go anywhere other than the top drawer of my filing cabinet, there will be more finishing I know. Little changes that I had completely missed in the editing were flying off the page and crash landing on my eyeballs last night in the printing.

So really, it’s not finished but…yesterday, in my mind, I finished my little book.

And it felt kinda weird.

Kinda sweet and sorrowful and fulfilling and grown up and juvenile… all at the same time.

Because who hasn’t wanted to write a book right?

Since high school I’ve wanted to write one. Since being married I’ve wanted to write one. Since moving to Alaska I’ve wanted to write one. Since being a mama I’ve wanted to write one. Since becoming a Christian I’ve wanted to write one. Since people tell me to I’ve wanted to write one and then doesn’t a woman just get busy in the days of growing and loving and raising up a life and a family?

But if you’re like me, having a mind that constantly yearns to write, you think in blank pages and the thoughts you think form in lines, sometimes tidy and sometimes flung but always, always that white page with words. It waits ready on the backdrop of the brain.

Even in the busy, the writing is always there.

My husband doesn’t share my love for words. The page in his brain has grids and lines and drawings and things solid. His page holds work and touch and nature, and reading is okay for a day or so…but let’s put the book down and get back to real life now.

He has a lot to say but he would probably never set out to write a book. His mind mixes the letters and mixes the words and writing me a card is a beautiful finish for his writing hand. Oh he’s smart. And he has a lot of words. He just likes to whisper them soft or laugh them together.

Not everyone knows how to organize and compartmentalize their words. Sometimes when you are one who puts down words, you forget, not everyone is. Sometimes words don’t always have to be written. Sometimes they just need to be lived.

So when he reads mine and doesn’t have a lot to say but his eyes water tender, I know that means the words I put down are good words. I know he loves them. I know he loves me.

And when the world wants to go and tear down a woman for doing marriage and life the way she believes best, haven’t we forgotten? Forgotten that sometimes, the way of this world, this culture, is not always the best way but that there’s a page and there’s a Word and it is compartmentalized and it is organized and it is grace…and it is good.

But we’ve taken those words and we’ve made them bad and we’ve used them to stifle and degrade and make ugly what He wrote beautiful when He said For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

How could that ever be oppressive? How could the beauty of two souls uniting in flesh and being seen as one unit of two individuals before the maker of this universe ever be scorn worthy?

Or is it the submit part that causes the ruckus?

Maybe this one: Everyone must submit to governing authorities. Can’t we agree though, that there needs to be submission to the authorities? Don’t we appreciate the organized and compartmentalized word of the speed limit that keeps, if not all of us, most of us, traveling along safely together and collision free?

Or maybe it’s this one that causes all the trouble: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Is it because we think the other person should be doing it all that this one offends? Any person married more than a year understands that marriage is a two-way street. There is no My Way or the Highway in a healthy marriage. There just can’t be. So why would we have such a hard time with the idea of submitting to one another?

Maybe those aren’t the submission verses that get everyone in a twist and make normally nice people turn into name-calling, mud-slinging opinion ranters.

I betcha it’s this one: Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.

Ah, yes. There’s the issue.

We women don’t like to hear that we’re not the boss. That we don’t wear the pants. That we don’t keep him on a short string. That our roar isn’t as loud as we think it is, that our You’ve Come a Long Way baby might mean something different than what we want it to mean. We might not even know exactly what it means, but we don’t.like.the.word.s-u-b-m-i-t.

Period.

One little word will get this nation in an uproar.

So what if I didn’t? Submit. What if I didn’t voluntarily place myself under the leadership of my husband? What if I didn’t want to play by the rules and I wanted to scorn those women who read the words and love the Word and are an example to this world of how to live it out?

What if instead of letting my team captain be the team captain and my coach be the coach, what if I went gang busters unsubmissive and decided I didn’t want to do MY job of being on the team and building up the team and leading the team right from where I was positioned? What would happen then?

Submitting doesn’t mean we’re just sitting on the bench, folks.

And us Christians? Those of us who follow what the Bible says about marriage right there all through the New Testament? We understand that if it’s not your belief too, you won’t understand what it means to be on this team and so you’re certainly not going to follow the Playbook. But we don’t hold it against you, because really, we look forward to the day when you’re on our team too. We want you on our team. We love the coach and we know how much he loves you and spends this season recruiting you as one of his best players.

But if you decide in your mind that the game’s just that, a game, a made up bunch of scrimmages, well, that’s okay. Because we’re gonna keep at it anyway. We’re gonna run the race and we’re gonna play the plays and we’re gonna use it all up for that coach and our team because it’s not just a game.

And those husbands he puts on our team? Those leaders he gives us, each wife her own team captain? Guess what their job is?

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

There’s a whole lot of words in that job description. But we forget that part sometimes don’t we? The coach tells husbands to be just like Jesus. And what did Jesus do for his church? He died. He thought so much of his bride that He made himself little and he died for her in order to make her beautiful and blemish-free.

I can get behind a leader like that can’t you?

Wives, our husbands are the team captain, the lead player, the ball kicker and the quarter back of the family. If the team is going to take a hit, he’s to be the one to take it. If someone’s body is to be bruised, he’s the one to withstand it. He’s to take his big and his strong and make sure his team is safe and able to play well and that they’re all doing what the coach wants them to do.

And as his woman, we’re to be right there beside him. Running with him, ready to take over a play should he need a rest, willing to take the field should the team need it, helping him determine exactly what it is the coach said, and always, always to be a cheerleader and encourager to him and the rest of the family team.

That’s submit. Simple. Not ugly. Not oppressive. Not door mat. It’s the breakdown of the team and everyone has a job and when everyone’s doing that job it’s like a dance on the field and it makes sense and it works. It works because the words in the Word says it will work.

And when my husband, my non-word loving husband who has come to cherish the words of his coach and has come to quietly love the words his wife puts down and call her his wordsmith in secret, when he hears that the little book I’ve been working so hard on all these months is finally finished, he has some words for me.

He tells me congratulations.

He pauses and picks them carefully. He knows this is a time for some words. He has learned that a writer heart needs more than “fine” and “good” and that when a piece of that heart is splayed open out there on the page, a soul can squirm until it hears just the words it needs to know that it really is finished. He has learned to put his words together and whisper what his word lover needs to hear.

“How does it feel honey?”

I tell him the feeling is odd, finishing something you always wanted to do. Taking paths different than the ones you originally thought you’d take. Having it be done.

“It’s a weird feeling, finishing a book” I tell him, ready now to move it off the desk and get on with the day and just let it sit awhile, this heart still a little squirmy and insecure with the idea of feeling like a writer, doubtful at the thought of maybe even being a writer.

He’s not done with his words though. He’s the captain and now he’s the cheerleader and he may not love words like I love words but he loves his wordsmith and he knows his job is to help make her feel radiant and make her be radiant so he simply says “Well babe,”

“…You better get used to it.”

I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. Song of Songs 6:3

OCTOBER 2013 012

Scriptures cited: Genesis 2:24, (Romans 13:1-2) (Ephesians 5:21) Ephesians 5:22-24 Ephesians 5:25-28

Danger Day and the Gas Station

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We met her on Danger Day.

A Tuesday.

We’d left home on Saturday morning, the tires on the rental crunching the driveway gravel while the kids ran alongside the car and my mom waved from the porch.

The first time in ten years.

A vacation. An actual, real life, bonafide, just the two of us vacation.

Between pregnancies, babies, breastfeeding, and toddlers, vacation wasn’t a word in our vocabulary. And truthfully, even stepping out of those years and well onto the path of homeschooling, one income, and the farm…it could be another ten years.

We let the sun melt the frazzle as the ferry took us across the Sound. That night we puffed into the harbor of sleepy little Valdez, as far away as we dared to go to keep our checking account positive and our kids and home fairly close.

And it was magic.

It rained of course. But we didn’t care.

We fought of course. But we didn’t care.

Because after we figured out how to just be us again, there was no more of that and a quiet peace settled over our time.

The plan was to relax and explore for a couple of days then take the rest of the time to meander back home. I had our stops all mapped out. Except for Tuesday.

That was, in his words, Danger Day.

“I don’t want a plan. I just wanna go with it.”

When a true and faithful husband wants a little “danger “while his wife is hanging on his arm…you let him go with it.

I smiled at his grin when he pulled us out of the motel, squealing the tires a bit on the Taurus before we put Valdez in the rearview.

And I held his hand across the console and flipped on the radio as we dared off into the wilds of not having a plan.

To say we didn’t know where we were going is not altogether true. Here in Alaska, between towns, there is literally one road. He had an idea of our destination, but by not telling me, and me not asking or fussing over the details…we were dangerous.

We were footloose. Fancy free. Young again and not even thinking about what to make for dinner. Our car could’ve been a cherry red Charger. Or a Harley. Or the big blue Ford truck he picked me up in on our first date.

He opened the sun roof and let the hair blow free over his bald spot.

Danger Day wasn’t the destination. Danger Day was the ride. The mountains. The snow on my flip flops at the middle of nowhere pull-out. The waterfalls as tall as a hotel. My babies with their grandma. A clean rental car. Sunshine with my love.

The first vacation in ten years.

We do date nights when we can. And once a year we pay a babysitter for a weekend away to celebrate our marriage. But a whole six days? Never. Be still my matrimonial heart.

Five or so hours out, he pulled us into a crossroads gas station. It was like most places in our great state, rugged, homesteady, tough, Alaskan.

That’s where we met her. BJ.

She rung us up and she looked a little like a mother and a little like an aunt and a little like a longtime friend who comes to visit with your mom on Saturday mornings while you watch Looney Toones and listen in from the other room as they talk and smoke Virginia Slims and drink Tab on ice.

Her smile is big behind a rugged worry and her brow furrowed in a way that’s seen on the faces of folks who’ve worked hard and come by things rough all their life. She shines her eyes at us. Tired, but shining.

Her hair looked so pretty in her updo.

By the looks of her little store, we were the only ones who’d been in for hours.

I wanted to stay all day. I wanted to drink a Tab and even though I quit years ago, I wanted to crack a pack of Slims and sit down with her, just our jelly jars of soda with the ice clinking and an ashtray between us while we start up a game of Yahtzee and sit and visit the afternoon away at her little table behind the counter.

Instead I browse the shelves of handmade Alaskana and make small talk.

My dangerous husband perused her display of pamphlets.

“We’re thinking of going to the mine” he tells her.

So that’s where we’re going on Danger Day.

It’s pretty late in the day. You could go halfway in and stay the night with my friend up the road. She’s got a great little B and B. Cabins at the halfway point. I’ll call her and make sure she’s got one open.

She pulls out a paper and starts dialing her phone that’s on the wall behind her counter.

We keep browsing and she keeps talking and its quiet here and her Alaskana is so Alaskan and don’t the most peaceful moments happen when you don’t plan them?

She hangs up and it’s all set. We have reservations if we want them. If my tour guide gets really dangerous and we take another route and sleep in the car, fine. But if not, her friend Kayane will be looking for us later tonight and if we want it, we’ve got a place to rest. If we do come in, just stop at the main house before we go back to the cabin and her friend said she’ll send some bread with us for a snack and isn’t that the Alaskan way?

Everywhere, a friend.

Full up on danger for the day we mosey in slow and take hundreds of pictures along the way and when we arrive late we’re treated to a cabin in the woods and a camp shower by the roaring river. She’s not able to take Visa and just shrugs come payment time. Happens all the time. She assures me.

Just stop at BJ’s tomorrow on your way back through and leave some cash in an envelope if you want. I’ll pick it up on my next trip in. Or mail me a check when you get back home. Either way.

And she hands me a loaf of warm homemade cranberry bread. I’m in rugged heaven and we become fast friends with Kayane and her dog, and enjoy her tour of the little storage shed turned gift shop filled with handmade items.

I just keep some here so customers can shop. And then of course BJ lets me put some up at her store too.

That’s really how it is here in this place we call home.

I find steaming hot coffee in a thermos on the porch when we wake in the morning and we pray together and hug as we leave, promising to stay in touch. Then we venture forth, my husband and I, him having claimed a second day now for a Danger Day, and me being just fine with that, well rested, heart full, and loving to see him so relaxed and at ease because we’re not on any set schedule.

Our day is spent exploring the mine, dangerously not taking the tour. We venture on our own, enjoying the old quiet of a place steeped in stories and history and age. It’s just enough to explore and find a bit of copper before starting the long trek back.

By dinner time we find ourselves back at BJ’s, Danger Day 2 wrapping up and us needing to get back on the meandering path to home.

But I want to leave money for our stay at Kay’s cabin and tell BJ how right she was. That her friend’s place really is a slice of Alaska heaven. Tell her thank you for sending us. Get another Diet Coke for the last long stretch of the day.

My husband finds us a Klondike bar and as he looks around I visit with BJ and I suddenly have an urge to buy something from this woman who makes me feel like I’m eight again in footie jams, but who also makes me feel like a grown woman…a mother and an auntie and a proof, a womanly proof that we are all connected no matter where we live or what our job is or where our path in life looked like before or where it’s brought us now.

She makes beauty in her art and she lines her shelves carefully and it shows the people who grace her store that even though life may be rough and the road may be long and friends might be few and far between, there is beauty, always beauty in this world and it is important to take time to make it. Because sometimes, that’s just what a wanderer’s eyes need to see and what a friend’s heart needs to feel.

I pick up one of her birch bark baskets. I decide. I’m going to take it home. I want to have a piece of this place to remind me of BJ and her homey little gas station gift shop on this side of the state. Remind me of the smile she offers to the strangers-who-are-not that come into her corner of the world.

Alaskan art isn’t cheap but BJ’s got hers priced to sell. Even so, our trip budget is dwindling, and we’ve got one more hotel stay before home.

I expect my husband to remind me of that when he comes to check on me and sees me standing there with her birch bark basket in my hand. I expect him to tell me that I can get one later. I expect him to remind me that I have several friends who do birch bark art and that I could get something exactly like this one back home any day of the year.

But I say it anyway and I say it soft so she won’t hear. And I say it firm.

I want to buy one of BJ’s baskets.

In the pause I hear what I think he’s thinking so I go on.

She makes all this. This is her art. She’s over here in in the middle of nowhere. How many people look at her stuff? I want her to know it’s beautiful. That someone thinks it’s wonderful enough to take home. I know what it’s like. When no one sees what you made. She creates this. When you create you just want to put a little piece of yourself into someone’s heart ya know? She works hard on this. I want her to know it’s beautiful. I know we don’t have much money left but I’m buying one.

I prepare for his irritation. Except there is none.

“Okay.”

And he helps me choose one we can afford.

It’s a treasure to me before I’ve even reached the cash register.

We get ready to check out. He pulls out his wallet and I pull out my hugs and we tell BJ good-bye.

Thank you for sending us to the cabins. And thank you for this basket. It will always remind me of this trip.

She hugs me tight, smiles that beaming tired smile.

After our goodbyes, I leave my basket and my Diet Coke on the counter, ask BJ if I could use her outhouse before we push on to the next town, tell my husband I’ll meet him back at the car.

The sun frisks the horizon and we pull out, a happy sadness filling the car.

When you look for beauty, you’ll find it every time.

When you set the schedule down, you’ll find yourself doing what you never knew you were wanting to do.

When you allow yourself a little danger, you’ll find safety in the joy of life.

Telling her goodbye reminds me of all that.

I grab my husband’s big hand, smile at the land stretched out before us.

I sure liked BJ.

He pauses and the road hums under us, no cars to be seen anywhere.

“You know babe? I think BJ sure liked you too.”

Yeah. Ya know, I’ll probably never see her again. But I felt like I just made a new friend that I’ve known for a long time.

We’ve not turned the radio on and he’s quiet for another half mile or so.

”I betcha if you look in that bag you’ll see that she feels the same way too.”

What?

I reach in the back seat to find our bag and open it. There, wrapped in tissue and on top of my Diet Coke is the birch bark basket.

Except it’s not one I’d chosen.

It’s one that’s filled with intricate stitching and elaborate caribou hair tufting.

It’s one that would’ve taken her a very long time to make.

It’s one that served as a prime example of her pride in being an Alaskan.

He tells me she’d rung his items up, gotten a bag ready and that she’d gone over to the basket table and placed the one I’d chosen, the one he’d just paid for, back on the shelf and replaced it with this one.

I flipped it over in my hands as my eyes began to water, running my fingers over every inch of soft Alaska…the love…the care…the beauty…the friendship.

The tears touched the corners of my eyes and rivered over when my hand found the price tag she’d forgotten to take off in her rush.

She’d chosen one for me that cost three times as much as the one we picked to fit our budget.

She’d chosen one for me that was from the most expensive on her shelf.

“I think BJ really liked you too honey.”

The tears fall down my chin and slide into my lap.

And the glow of the midnight sun shined into the rearview and straight through my heart.

BJ’s basket sits on the window ledge in my kitchen to remind me.

It really is true.

Everywhere, a friend.

Space 22

Song of Silence

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We didn’t talk for almost two days. And in the silence…

…we found each other.

Of course it was my idea, to go the weekend without speaking.

“What?!” I was crazy for suggesting it he thought.

Not in a silent treatment sort of way. I assured him. Our life is just so loud. Kids, animals, phones, dishes, diapers, music, school. The sounds are just too many sometimes.

“Yeah but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk!”

But we only get one weekend right?

And if we only get this one weekend, just these two little days each year, how do we make sure our ears won’t hear those noises while we’re gone?

“Hm. Well I guess. If you really want to. If it’s time to go get a cheeseburger though I’m gonna tell you.”

So we drove in the quiet. Kids happy with the sitter. The noises falling on the ears of another for 48 sweet hours. And we just held hands.

And what he thought was going to be weird was the happiest weekend of all.

It was so quiet in the car that our love was the only thing we heard and it filled our ears with a song we’d not known before.

The problems of the week went away and the mountains on the horizon looked beautiful.

The discussions that begged our attention weren’t an option and the sunset was like no other.

The food tasted better.

The time seemed slower.

He was so handsome when I wasn’t worrying over the stain on his shirt.

He became more deliberate when he didn’t have a constant stream of woman words in his ear.

There was peace in my soul.

And we were one.

We’ve not done that since that weekend. But that one weekend of not talking,- of deciding to set down the things that screamed to be picked up – that became a place, a rest. When the foxes come and tease and threaten to destroy…to take our peace…to lesson our bond, I have the memory of that weekend and I have the skills to quiet my soul, to hush my priorities and just.get.quiet.with.him.

Our life is louder now. But that one weekend of quiet showed me where to go when it gets too noisy. It was my teaching time, a short lesson in what it means to be hushed with my love, to be still in my spirit. It showed me how to turn down the noise, mute the loudness of this life and quiet my heart to catch a moment with him so that all I hear is our song….

…of sweet silence.

Be still, and know that I am God. ~Psalm 46:10

Cassandra Rankin

Life is Messy and Things Aren't Always Little on this Crazy Little Farm

Tag Archives: marriage

Twenty-Two Things

Painting Toenails, Washing Feet

Twenty-Three Aprils Ago

Thirty-Five Cents and a Tank Full of Gas

New Face in a Hotel Room

Twenty Year Song in the Dressing Room

Get Used to It

Danger Day and the Gas Station

Space 22

Song of Silence

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