On a Friday night eighteen years ago, we were setting up flowers and candles. We were practicing a processional. We were finalizing the order of service, the songs, the vows. We had a fancy dinner with our families and closest friends. We said goodnight and goodbye to our separate lives. Eighteen years ago, I went…
Marriage
Middle Love
The first time I saw him, I was still in high school. This isn’t a high school sweetheart story, because he didn’t remember my name when I bumped into him a year later. No, the first time we met, I was the only high school member of a college worship team making the two-hour drive…
I Love You in Iambic Pentameter
for William The first time he wrote a sonnet for me, I was finishing my senior year of college and struggling through a Shakespeare class. This was after he bought a book of the bard’s sonnets and tore a page from it every time he wanted to tell me he loved me. Sonnet 116 was…
Real Love Awakens Us to Real Life
Last week I fell down a rabbit hole of remembering. It began with a search for my journal from the year we adopted our oldest son and ended with me digging through a musty pile of notebooks in the basement. I swiped away cobwebs from the dark corner of the cellar where the box of…
Story of the Song: “Hear Me” (on marriage and the art of listening)
The Story I was sitting in a coffee shop, my cup empty and hers still full. Cold, though, probably because she hadn’t taken the first sip. Tears stood in her eyes while she explained the way her husband didn’t listen to her. “He doesn’t know what I’m thinking or how I feel about anything. He…
{Leaving the Room}
It’s nearly 7 a.m. when I close my Bible, put the notebook aside, drop the pen in the coffee mug that holds its mates on my desk. I could use fifteen more minutes, but my time is up. My kids are stirring across the hall, and the serenity of this pale blue room, dimly lit…