Song of My Heart's Devotion

Guest Post: "Director of Me" by Natalie Zwolanek

This piece from my daughter, Natalie, recently made its way through local and state competitions and was awarded first place in the Junior High Short Story category on the national level by AACS. It had to be written from start to finish in one sitting, according to a theme given out in advance. We're pretty proud of her!

Since it is devotional in nature, I thought I'd share it with you all. Pray for my girl as my God works in her heart to align her thoughts with His ways. LZ

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            “Milller, Anne. Hmm, maybe Mrs. Cratchett? With Rob Jones as Mr. Cratchett? Oh please, she’ll sue me! Better make Lisa Cullens Mrs. Cratchett instead.”

            Greenville’s Granite Drama Theater had just asked me to be the director of this year’s winter play, A Christmas Carol. I was now looking through the list of available actors, trying to get a rough idea for casting. I was so thrilled! I had just finished my college drama courses, and I had never had a whole play to myself before! Sure, I had been an assistant director, but I had never previously had a whole play fall under my jurisdiction!

            I had been getting ready since September. It was probably a bit soon, but it was going to be perfect. I wanted my first play to be so perfect the audience would cry as they gave me a ten-minute standing ovation. Hey, a girl can dream can’t she?

            But then, on November fourth, everything started to change. I got a note saying funding had fallen through. I thought, “OK, I can handle this! I have a little left over from my college fund. It’ll be fine!”

            Next, the costumers went on strike. My measly “funds” wouldn’t hold up to renting costumes, so I borrowed off my mother. I figured I would pay her back with the raise I’ll get for the perfect performance. So on November sixteenth, I foolishly thought nothing further would go wrong.

            “Lisa, do you know where Mr. Rowlands is?”

            “Oh, I’m so sorry. He told me to tell you. I can’t believe I forgot!”

            “That’s OK, Lisa. But what is it that you needed to tell me?”

            “You see, he, uh, well, it’s a funny story, actually…”

            Oh great. Man, that girl could ramble. I knew I would be stuck there for a while, so I took out my phone, giving her half attention.

            “…so yeah, he’ll be at home with his leg for a while.”

 

            I nearly dropped my phone. “Wait, what!?! Lisa, what did you just say?”

            “Mr. Rowlands, ma’am. He broke his foot when he tried to…”

My attention was gone. He broke his leg? That meant he couldn’t be on stage in two weeks. I was in real trouble now. Mr. Rowlands was Ebenezer Scrooge! I could never find someone to replace the main character in time!

            I sat at home, embarrassed to have something like this happen to my “perfect” play. I called the manager of Granite Drama Theater. He was mad at me for my “incompetence” as a director. It was so disappointing. Fortunately, the flyers and posters hadn’t gone up yet, so few knew about the disastrous outcome.

            But I knew. And I would never let myself forget it, either. I ended up having to work as a waitress while looking for a new opportunity, and I had to pay back Mom somehow. During this time, I hated to go to church. I felt like everyone was judging me about what happened. When I had gotten the job, I had joyously spread the news everywhere, but now it haunted me.

            Next year’s Christmas came very slowly, but I wished it hadn’t come. Everything reminded me of last year’s horrible outcome. I barely paid back my Mom for Christmas that year.

            But then, another change occurred. Mrs. Jennings at our church came to me asking very kindly if I would direct the elementary Christmas play that year. I was completely shocked. My hardened outlook made me believe she was mocking me, at first. Then I realized she was in earnest.

            I told her I would think about it.  I went to my mother, (something I had avoided out of shame,) and told her about it.

            “Nicole! I can’t believe you would ask me about this!”

            “So, you think I shouldn’t?”

            “No, Nicole! This is the chance you’ve been hoping for, isn’t it?! Besides, Mrs. Jennings needs your help”! she said. “Listen, I know it isn’t A Christmas Carol, but it is the Gospel story! Which is more important to you, faith or fame?”

 

            After those inspiring words of faith from my godly mother, the way was clear. I still had moments of aggravation and utter selfishness, but now I had my mother and God to help me.

            The play was a success as far as enjoyment. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but I finally realized that was OK. The Gospel positively shone through those kids, and it shone on me, too.

            I finally realized my sights had been on something far less important than what they ought to have been. Eventually, I did get professional plays to direct, but first I had to learn to let God be the director of me.

_________________

Natalie Zwolanek, 8th grade

now I have two

It's impossible for me to relate to mother-in-law jokes.

I met my future mother-in-law when I was eighteen. She has been kind enough never to tell me what her first impression was.

But I can imagine now with what curious combination of trepidation and fascination Shirley must have viewed me, so terribly young and raw, way too big for my britches, opinions unexamined yet stubbornly held. And totally head over heels in love with the young man she had raised.

How she must have studied me, watching to see what Michael had seen. How she must have prayed and wondered and worried.

At eighteen, I could no more comprehend her perspective than I could climb the Sears Tower using only upper arm strength. And as the relationship progressed and I became her daughter-in-law--to-be, somehow it felt disloyal to call another woman "Mom."

I was slow to open my heart. Hers was open from the second she knew I existed.

If I have one regret from our early relationship, it is that it took me so long to realize she wanted nothing more than to love me with all her heart. My cheerleader for life. The daughter she never had. I was the one other woman in the world who loved Michael as much as she did. Of course she wanted to gather me in.

I should have let her love me.

Shirley hung in there through the prickly years, because that's what love does. It is patient. It is kind. It doesn't keep a running tally of wrongs (thank God).

And gradually, I learned how happy it made her to hear me call her Mom. I learned that it wasn't a disservice to my own precious Mother, but rather a high standard of honor I could bestow upon a person so worthy of being called a mother.

A mom meets offense with instantaneous forgiveness. There are no grudges because the forgiveness is paired with a determined forgetfulness and a refusal to keep score.

Still half-child when we met, I've had two moms now for longer than I only had the one. One loved me from before I was born, the long-sought after daughter conceived and carried at great personal risk. And the other unknowingly prayed for me in a state far away, speaking words of blessing over a growing girl she'd never met.

One had a head start on teaching me, the other brought new perspectives to blend into the mix.

One had no choice but to love me. The other had a choice--and chose love.

And still chooses love. Because I'm still a silly, selfish girl in so many ways. And Shirley might cringe on the inside at some of my choices and child-rearing decisions, but she has the best mom-poker face in the world. I suspect her tongue is about bitten half off from the effort, but still.

Eager to meet me more than halfway, she and Jim have taught me what strength there can be in quietness. None of us knew what we were doing, but there was love enough to wash over the little stings and scrapes.

So, yeah, that is why I can't relate to mother-in-law jokes. Because I don't have a mom and a mother-in-law.

I have two moms.

petals spread to the sun

For many years, seventeen, in fact, I served in a capacity at church to which I was both uncalled and unqualified. It was beyond stressful--and while I improved at it, I topped out eventually, even though I practiced faithfully, because I just wasn't GOOD at it.

The service (piano playing, if you were wondering) was truly needed, and I didn't say no, so I don't blame anyone for that. I learned things about myself that I guess I could not have learned any other way. If God had wanted me in that position, He would have given me the talents required, and the emotional abilities to faithfully serve. There was no joy in serving Jesus in this area. There was only anxiety, and eventual ill health.

I was performing a job that was not mine. In fact, I've taken on a series of obligations and expectations in my life that weren't mine. Most of the time, no one asked me to. I just saw what was needed, and did it.

A very handy person to have in your ministry.

A very unhappy person to have in your ministry.

Why? Because the Church is not supposed to be about round pegs smashed down to fit into square holes. Burned-out bodies just going through the motions.

I Corinthians 12 says God distributes the gifts to the body of believers--not equally, perhaps, in our earthly eyes, but justly. According to His inscrutable plan. But nowhere are we guaranteed a person qualified to fit every position in our specific ministry plans.

When I finally had my first breakdown, and we left our home church, guess what? Someone else eventually filled the multiple roles Mike and I had left. It took a long time for me to forgive myself for leaving a job I was never meant to have.

My job, then and now and throughout endless ages to come, is the task of all Creation. To to sing praise to the Creator.

But all the bits and pieces of this amazing world don't all sing the same melody line. Instead, a cacophonous, spontaneous, glorious jumble of a million million voices fill the skies. The whole world sings His matchless worth.

The mountains and the hills break forth with singing.

The trees shout and clap their hands.

The flowers dance and bob in time with the breeze.

The oceans partner with the shores in perfect harmony.

The sound of singing planets is different from the voice of birds and the croak of frogs. And the tune the wind whispers is not the one the clouds cry, or the sound the rainbow streams.

Creation sings with everything in its being, with its whole uncomplicated heart, unable to do anything but shout GLORY and HOSANNA and AWESOME is our GOD. And I raise my music along with the rest--only don't ask me to use the piano as my instrument to do so!

Yes, my music is my voice (in a choir or congregation, not a solo).

But there is also music in my creativity (in the craft room, not the kitchen).

My music is in my ability to turn my business talents into funds that further the work of the Lord.

My music is to love my husband with abandon, committed to his good with every fiber of my being.

My music is to mother my special children with kindness, compassion, strength and support.

My music is to explain, educate and equip the world for my extraordinary children, with humor and grace.

My being sings best when I am allowed and allowing myself to be me. My passions, my heart, my talents, who I am. Not who anyone else wishes me to be. Not the perfect pastor's daughter I still expect myself to be. My narrative. My own words. My own tune.

I am just a flower in a field, dancing before the Creator, petals spread to the sun. Doing what flowers do best. Exactly what they were intended for.

"I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live. As long as I have breath, I will sing unto the Lord." Psalm 104:33

To my son, who moves me to poetry

(written November 2001; published November 2017 in honor of Daniel's 16th birthday)

You are not yet born. In silence you squirm and wiggle, long since too cramped to kick and punch anymore. In darkness I think of you, sucking, sleeping.

Your father says “good morning” to you in the sleepy half-waking time after the alarm goes off. We have waited for your first movements of the day every day since the first time you woke up with us.

Your name will be . . . IS . . . Daniel, although that is one last delicious secret that your father and you and I share. No one knows but the three of us, and you won’t tell.

It is November, my favorite month now for more reasons than the rustling leaves and the colors and the crisp, cool air. I cannot wait to show you this incredibly beautiful world.

When will the baby come? People ask. I smile. He is here. Right here between us. They still think of you as impending, but you have already been Daniel for almost nine months. I feel like I have an inkling of your tiny personality, of what you will be like and how you will look, although of course I cannot know.

I love that you leap at the sound of your father’s voice when he speaks, just like my heart does when I see him coming towards us. You already love him as I do. We cannot help ourselves.

I dream at night of how you will feel against my skin, all warm and wet, a living thing sprung from my body, created in love by your father and I. Will you be quiet and wide-eyed? Startled? Or loud, protesting with vigorous lungs your abrupt and painful removal from the haven you have enjoyed so long? If I were you, I’d weep, I know.

I dream of what it will feel like, the sensations when your tiny, perfect mouth searches for and finds my breast, and of the joy that will flow from my body with the milk.

I see myself handing you to your father, who cannot contain his tears as you grasp his finger. It is love at first sight, instant and forever, and it draws the drops to our cheeks with its purity. His eyes were wet the first time he told your mother he loved her, too.

I have an idea of how empty I will feel when you are no longer folded up inside me, your little concert of movements my constant companion. You can never go home again. Like something received that comes in a tight box and never quite fits back in again the same way.

These emotions are too much for me. Ever since I stared, unbelieving, at the stick, two pink lines instead of the familiar one, my fingers have been frozen. I have not tried to write. Now, a week? A day? An hour or two? Before you come, my thoughts unthaw, and the words trip over themselves. I never could type, certainly not fast enough to keep up with what pours from me now.

My arms ache to hold you. The rubber dolls in the baby care class received what I would have lavished on you if you had been there to practice your bath time. The end of class: do we have any questions about parenting? I have to work hard not to laugh, though I do smile. How can you cram “parenting” into three hours? We will just have to learn together, you and us.

Somehow I think we will be just fine.

a house I'll never have

We were on a cleaning kick, spurred by a summer unexpectedly off-track. Canceling our trip to Thailand with just one week to go left us with an awkward, three-week hole in the middle of our summer. We handled it in different ways. For my son, it was three weeks to spend with his nose in a book, having just been introduced to Ray Bradbury and Mark Twain both. For Mike, three weeks to catch back up with his cycling, which had to be set aside for a while due to throwing his back out earlier this year. For me, three weeks to try to catch my breath, start talking to someone, and make some health changes.

We did not fill the weeks with plans.

My daughter, the social butterfly, did not see the three weeks as a gift. I encouraged her to clean her room so she could have friends over, a motivational tactic that almost always works like a charm. And I gave her a box and told her to put any outgrown toys in there for delivery to charity.

Five boxes and two garbage sacks later, I caught on to the fact that my daughter was at a crossroads during this summer of thirteen. And she was ready to take a more grown-up path. And no matter how I resisted admitting it, as I painted two coats of "Apple Creek" aqua blue over the pink and white daisies that I painted on the nursery walls of a certain precious baby, it was time. My heart had more cracks in it than the old plaster walls, by the time we hung the hot-pink sparkly sheers and plumped the turquoise chevron throw pillows.

She keeps exclaiming how nice it looks and how much larger the room feels. It really is amazing how much good it does the spirit when a room is brightened and freshened.

I told her it's a lesson she'll never forget, and practice for the day when she's putting together her own place and trying to make wise decisions about space and light and movement. How she loved that. I love that her eyes light up at the thought of being a wife and mom, of the little oasis of calm and love she'll build for her family. I love that she thinks I have done that for ours. Someday all too soon she'll begin to see where I've failed at that mission, but today is not that day, and I hear her humming happily as she puts just the very best pictures, posters and trinkets back into their places.

Her zealous purging is infectious. Her brother contributes outgrown clothes and asks for some new, non-Star Wars bedding and curtains. It doesn't hurt so much when he does that, because we've already been through the removal of the Thomas the Tank Engine theme from that bedroom. And when your child towers over you, you accept the inevitable a little more with every gangly hug. It still hurts a mother's heart, but it's such a slow ripping-off of the band-aid.

Mike begins to clear out his books and sell them on Amazon (if you're looking for obscure historical tomes only a history professor could love, you know now where to find them). The stacks by our computer area grow and shrink on a daily basis and he gets his steps in by walking to the post office. And I add odd kitchen things, outdated decorations and unused clothes to every box I tape shut to be carried out to the car, from thence to a charity shop and hopefully into hands that will make better use of them than we have.

It is catching, and it feels good. But I hang on to more than I give away. And as my hands open closets and drawers and my eyes scan the contents, time and time again I happen upon things I have saved for a house I'll never have.

Vinyl verses for the walls in a different house, with an actual dining room.  A shower curtain and towels for the downstairs bathroom that never was. Picture frames, wall organizers, a huge cork board for the office of my dreams. Antiques and vintage linens for a home large enough for steamer trunks and pie safes and cedar chests. A second Christmas tree with no where to be put up.

The dishes alone, that I have saved for some glorious future china cabinet and fancy sit-down dinners, take up so much space in my kitchen that there isn't room for the everyday utensils. I have never actually used the tureens, the platters, the pasta bowls, but I bought them for a house that doesn't exist.

Oh, someday it might. But for right now, they are all silent reminders of ingratitude, discontent, and money that should have been spent elsewhere. We have tried to put our money where our priorities are: Christian education, college funds, family trips, world travel, sacrificial giving to our two favorite charities, and missions through our local church.

I thought I was a cheerful giver, but my little unopened, unused treasures stashed in every closet, drawer and tote give away the fact that I long for a mansion not over the hilltop in heaven, but right here on earth where moth and rust corrupt.

My life NOW, cluttered with things I've hoarded for the future. Things that take up space both physically and emotionally, out of place in a life that should be lived lightly and purposefully. Suddenly I feel the weight of all these things I have gathered to myself, hoarding them for a life we do not live, in a house we do not own.

And it's time. Like my daughter, over-ready to leave childish things behind, I am suddenly ready, too.

a room full of silence

Another serial sexual predator exposed, another set of victims attacked. This story is so old it has decomposed.

"Why didn't they speak up?"

Only those who have not been abused would ask that.

The rest of us know you have no idea whereof you speak. It makes us angry, it makes us sad, and most of all it just reinforces the desire to stay silent.

Your ignorance is showing, and it goes to show the strength of my belief in the power and meaning of words that I'm even bothering to try to correct you. Because you don't know--you can't know--what it's like. The forces that seal your lips closed when your mind is screaming are many and varied. Do you want to hear our reasons? Ok. You read these reasons and you decide which one of them isn't good enough.

 

We don't talk --because people don't believe us when we do.

We don't talk --because of how people reacted when we did.

We don't talk --because nobody did back then.

We don't talk --because we saw what happened to that girl who did.

We don't talk --because we saw there was little or no justice for the ones who did.

We don't talk --because we could not bear to admit the truth even to ourselves.

We don't talk --because we were trying not to rip our families apart, then or now.

We don't talk --because it's a story our own children are too young to hear.

We don't talk --because the statute of limitations means there will never be any justice.

We don't talk --because our beloved child is a product of rape.

We don't talk --because we fear retribution from the perpetrator or his family.

We don't talk --because everything we've ever said or done or worn will be picked apart.

We don't talk --because in spite of it all, no matter what the circumstances were, no matter how many years of therapy we go through, no matter what we know now about the healing to be found in Christ, we still believe there was something we did or didn't do that caused this to happen.

 

We don't talk because our voices have been stolen, taken from us by force, discarded like trash, suppressed to the point of extinction.

There are those of us who have carried this secret for so long we don't remember how to speak. Those of us who were children find we have a silent room inside us, which has never heard the sound of our own voices.

 

Which one of those reasons isn't good enough for you to leave us to our own timetable of speaking out?

Which one of those reasons gives you permission to think we're "exaggerating" the trauma of a pain you've never encountered?

Which one of those reasons makes you think it's ok to blame the victims for anything at all in this matter?

 

Maybe you should think about it this way.

Which one of those reasons would be enough to keep you silent?

news that changes nothing

I've turned into one of those people who blogs to process stuff, and as I struggled with some recently-received news, I wanted to head straight for the keyboard and get it all out.

But I had to wait--not only because my loved ones deserve time to hear things and process in their own ways, but also because, as transparent and real as I try to be about my journey, there are some things that are just a little too raw and real to talk about right away.

I finally have a name for what I've been experiencing, which has been above and beyond my severe adrenal fatigue (which way better now, by the way!) Puzzled by the panic attacks and chronic anxiety that persisted and even worsened as I rested, I finally went to see someone. And I heard words that were a surprise and yet not surprising at all.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

Panic Disorder.

When I got myself home from the appointment and turned to the internet for answers (oh, come on, you do it, too), I read descriptions that matched me perfectly. This was not just a case where reading stuff on the internet turns you into an instant hypochondriac. I really have those things.

So yes, that IS me, I am so sorry and so FLABBERGASTED to say.

Flabbergasted is the best word.  Webster's Dictionary says it conveys "astonishment with bewilderment and dismay." Yup, and a fair degree of hysteria, to boot. Have you EVER heard of anything more ridiculous? I've actually got agoraphobia. I mean, seriously? Come on! Who GETS agoraphobia?

Apparently, me.

Even now I'm both laughing and aghast as I type this outrageous, wildly improbable occurrence. How on EARTH does something like this happen? What turns an active Christian businesswoman, wife and mom, into someone who can't even go to church, let alone get on a plane to speak at a conference, or even sit in a restaurant with friends for lunch, in the space of about twelve months?

It's dumbfounding. Yet, here we are.

Anxiety attack on Aisle 4. Panic episode in the school pickup lane. Rescheduled reservations finally cancelled altogether.

Well, we'll be picking this apart for a long time. But in the end, my reality is exactly what it was the day before the diagnosis. It's news that doesn't really change anything.

You don't just "get over" agoraphobia by yourself. I cannot make depression disappear by willing it to go POOF! I can't drag myself out of this panic pit and overcome anxiety with heavy doses of sheer stubborn. That's really comforting, actually. To hear and to know, finally, that I cannot fix myself. I've had thirteen months of intense struggle and interrupted life to arrive at a place where it is clear and undeniable that I need outside help and intervention.

And as there always is, there's a grace in that moment of letting go. There's a peace that tempers the grief, when I release what I wish was true, and accept what actually is true. The truth sets us free.

Sometimes we get news that changes things, but alters nothing about God's goodness or His ultimate plan for us.

Sometimes it wasn't truly a surprise, but we still have to experience the shock... and process the grief.

And always--never sometimes, but always ALWAYS, for the believer-- there is a grace and peace for that moment.

Even the ones that flabbergast us.

not what you signed up for: to my spouse

I know this is not what you signed up for.

I didn't sign up for this, either.

On good days, I know you know that.

On bad days, I'm convinced I've ruined us. That my weakness is going to spell the end of your love for me. That no marriage can survive these bouts, these see-sawing seasons of up and down, happy and sad, well and unwell.

That your long-suffering, incredibly patient and loving nature will finally reach the point of no return and you'll come to the conclusion that whatever you saw in that laughing girl long ago is irretrievably gone. My panic disorder has changed nearly everything. It must have changed your love for me. 

I wonder constantly what you really think. I am on high alert for exasperation identification in your voice. I imagine a tinge of impatience coloring your words. I read into everything you say. Is it now? Is now the time when I've finally exhausted the love of my spouse? Is this it? The beginning of the end?

All this brings home to me the miraculous love of Christ for His bride the Church. He DID sign up for pain and suffering, betrayal and death. He knew in advance His people would wander, play the whore, turn to idols, lose faith and disobey at every turn, and yet He still signed on the dotted line.

There was no vague line about "in sickness and in health" or "for richer, for poorer" in His vow.

There was no naive ignorance of what the future held.

There was only, "I love you so much I'm going to defeat death itself to save you." 

You have the harder job, my love. My job is to to love you and respect your role as the leader of our home. Dearest, you make it so easy.

But your job is to love me as Christ loves the Church, to the point of dying to redeem her (Ephesians 5:25.) Loving me more than your own life (vs. 28.) That kind of love blows the mind. We both know no human can ever live up to that. But I see the seeds of that kind of love in you, a clearer kind of picture lived out right in our home. Each marriage intended to be a living example of Christ's unselfish, undying love for His bride.

Honestly? I have a hard time trusting the God of the universe to have my wellbeing at heart. I have an even harder time trusting any human to truly, honestly put my needs above their own. But over and over, time and again, your choice to wake up next to me and face whatever comes together quiets the voice in my head that tells me I broke us. The one that would have me believe there is a bottom to the well of your love, and the bucket has surely scraped up the last drop for the last time.

Be patient with me, beloved. Keep telling me what is true when I can't trust my own thoughts. When old demons rise to re-fight battles I thought I'd already won. I feel so guilty for being part of what God is using to refine you. Let my season of weakness be a tool for both of us, to bring us closer to Him.

No, this is not what we signed up for. And I long for the day when it all makes sense because we're finally in blood-bought, blameless fellowship with Him, face to face, the veil gone and at last in complete accordance with His plan. So clearly the only way it could have worked. So plainly motivated by a love beyond comprehension.

When God shows us what HE signed up for, and we all marvel at the perfection of His plan.

the bathroom fairy

Today I was looking at our bathtub and wishing the Bathroom Fairy would come and redo our shower surround. And fix the water damage next to the baseboard, and replace the floor vent with the chipped paint. Paint the walls to disguise the plaster cracks again, and while he/she was at it (do you suppose the Bathroom Fairy is a boy or a girl?) I have never liked that pedestal sink.

Well, I take that back. I did like our sink for a very short time and for one reason only.

It's wide and shallow, and when I brought my baby girl home from the hospital, she had her first bath in there because it was just the perfect fit. She didn't stay that little for very long, but I loved that sink during that sweet interlude. 

I haven't thought of that in years, but now as I stand in our bathroom with my mental list of all its deficiencies, I look at that wide, welcoming basin and remember running hot water first, to take the chill off the porcelain. Then draining it out and adding cool, until it was the perfect temperature for my little pink pumpkin. Instantly I'm transported back to the little excited jerk of her limbs, the way her black-olive eyes widened and how my voice soothed her and she didn't cry. I remember trying to keep my grip but not hurt her slippery little self. My fingers remember the rose-petal texture of her precious little folds and perfect little features. And how good, how GOOD she smelled afterward, just exactly like a baby should.

I stand in the bathroom and wipe the water puddle from where it always collects behind the faucet. I have done this many times a day for years now. Doubtless the people who "flipped" our house didn't level it correctly in their rush to get it back on the market. Or maybe it's an engineering design flaw that no one caught until it drove people like me quietly crazy over the course of a decade or so. No one but me ever seems to wipe it up, but as a mom I'm just thankful for the evidence that they washed their hands, and hold my peace as I sluice away the soap drips.

Oversized and ill-suited to our humble abode, the sink was there when we moved in, freshly installed, and we had no choice in the matter nor leftover money to change it after the fact. At least it was plain white and not some hideous avocado or harvest gold. With time, we learned to walk around it with just a certain sway so as not to catch the jutting corner with our hip. Call it the hula of the powder room--after fifteen years, we can do it in the dark.

Fifteen years that sink has stood there, ungainly but efficient. I washed my baby in the basin. Cleaned up after sick kids. Clogged the drain after an over-zealous buzz haircut. Sterilized the combs after a lice scare. Washed ink and paint and paste and glitter off my hands. Garden dirt from my fingernails, car grease from manly elbows, flour and batter from my little cooks.

That sink has watched my son learn to shave, seen my daughter's first lipstick applied and the countless trimmings of a certain silvering moustache that gives the best tickly kisses.

I wring out the washcloth and hang it to dry. My hand automatically straightens the towel, then I reach to flip off the light, taking care that my wedding ring doesn't gouge the wallboard again. I leave the sink and a faint, ghostly whiff of--is that Johnson's Baby Wash?-- behind me, in damp darkness.

I always did love that sink.

how I met your father

My children have heard the short version many times. It's one often told around here, the student and teacher who fell in love at first sight. I'll admit to a tingle of anticipation when awaiting my turn at parties where the topic of "how did you two meet?" comes up, because our story is a good one. I love to tell it.

This is the story of how I met your father.

I walked into Old Main at the university a couple of days before classes started for my sophomore year. And there he was, walking down the stairs to meet me at the bottom step just as if we'd rehearsed it for a play. A mutual friend introduced us, and the rest is history... quite literally. My husband is a history professor.

Because of the strict rules at our school, and my tender age (I was eighteen), we had to get permission from the administration and my parents, to date. It would make the story even better if he had been MY teacher, but I never had him for a class, which is good because I know they'd have denied us dating privileges, for good reasons.

But he wasn't, and so we did, and the rest is history. Our first "official" date was November 4th, which we remember now more because it became our daughter's birthday 8 years later. By Thanksgiving Break, I told my mother if he asked me to marry him, I'd say yes with all my heart.

When the audience is still interested, sometimes I continue with some other fun bits. My parents were highly suspicious of this supposed paragon of manly virtue, somehow still unattached at age 25 (unheard of in our circles, adhering to the Biblical injunction against premarital sex tends to help us get serious about choosing a mate early in adulthood). Something MUST be wrong with him if he hadn't been snatched up yet. But my brothers, both attending the same university, had met and liked him. The administration (mostly friends and fellow alumni with my parents) had nothing negative to share. And his pastor even went to far as to say that if he had another daughter, he couldn't be happier if she chose to marry Michael Zwolanek. High praise, indeed.

It's a good story. But there's more than just the couple of cute sentences we share at parties. There's a world of learning and loving and leaving that brought us both to that magical moment at the bottom of the stairs in Old Main. He'd been hurt before and wasn't excited to dive right in again. Rejection had made him start to wonder if there was anyone out there who would get his jokes and keep up with the conversation. Busy as a brand new teacher prepping for his first full-time gig, he wasn't looking for love that hot and sticky August afternoon.

That fall, I was still in the lingering throes of a romantic, forbidden relationship with a young man, sustained by long, passionate letters and the occasional anguished phone call. I'd told my parents I called it off, but it wasn't true, and for two years I had lived with the emotional strain of a big lie hidden in plain sight.

How love hurt in those days! Nothing about it was smooth.

My parents strove to honor God and asked for daily wisdom. I knew my mother had been praying for her children's future spouses since we were babies. Their objections were not slight or superficial, however badly I wanted them to be. I believed God would never ask me to disobey parents who were honestly following Him, but I let fear and loneliness stop me from severing the ties. Being in love, even unhappily, made me feel exciting and wanted. being urged to follow my heart was so tempting. But in the end, I couldn't do it any more. 

I wrote a final letter with reddened eyes, dropped it in the Student Center mail slot and hurried to leave the building.

And who should I instantly meet on the sidewalk except a certain handsome history professor.

My memory may be faulty but I'm pretty sure the heavens opened and a beam of light shone down on his head while beautiful music played. Ok, maybe not.

And I may have imagined the sudden flight of doves as well.

But you get an idea of the elation that filled my heart when I let go of the ill-fitting relationship I had clung to for so many lonely months, and accepted that God's dreams for me were bigger than my own.

I'd thought the counterfeit "love" I was experiencing was wonderful-- oh, wow--I had no idea what love could actually be like. I had no clue it could be so joyful, so pure, so certain.  Before, every moment of stolen joy was tainted with angry sorrow. Love with nothing sinful to impede it or cause concern is at once breathtaking and ecstatic and steady as a rock.

Michael and I just celebrated our twentieth anniversary last month. The love I had for him on our wedding day was a drop in the bucket compared to the love that has matured over unending bills, deaths in the family, scary diagnoses, the terrible weeks of early parenthood, intensely stressful times at work.

It deepened to a new level just last week, when my health issues caused us to cancel the trip of a lifetime, a free all-expenses-paid trip for two to Thailand, seven days before we were to leave. And he never uttered a single syllable of reproach or frustration. Not one.

That is love on a level that I can only hope to aspire to someday.

It's love that reminds me of my Heavenly Father,

Who welcomes the prodigal back with a party.

Who sits on the lip of a well in the dusty heat of the day to meet a woman who shamefully sneaks up to draw water when it's least crowded.

Who with two minutes to spare welcomes a repentant thief into Paradise despite an entire lifetime of utter waste and wickedness.

So that is the story of how I met your father.

And our marriage is the story of how he points me to mine, time and time again.