12 Years Today

pendulum hammock swings of opposites attract
rolling us to kiss in the sanity in the middle
to meet my high school crush on the college boy
flashback squeeling around the house
writing in my journal to you...
"Dear God, send me a boy LIKE Cody Baker..."
like some 1950's Gidgit apple pie movie
with letter sweaters, going steady and
tailored ponytail perfection
only I didn't fit the flawless Hollywood plastic mold
in my freckled, awkward, ball of nerves bag of bones
so I kept teetering on the edge of my seat
waiting for the movie to end
anticipating the rock in the stomach rejection
like the white knuckled seconds before a crash
but twelve years later, he's still here
determined to raise a family, fix some faucets,
love my flaws, repair a brake leak, increase my laugh lines
and lead us all closer to You.
Our opposites can overheat and boil over
walking off in a huff and propelling deep angry breaths
but in every pendulum swing
every inch of space between
every dizzying sway challenge
our ying and yang will roll to the middle
cradled in our future woven by You
to kiss in the middle of a paradox.


"Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years." Simone Signoret

"If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others."
Philippians 2:1-4

"People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on 'being in love' forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change -not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last... but if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest." C.S. Lewis

"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband." Ephesians 5:31-33

"That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger." George Eliot