The
greatest adventure of my life began thirty-three years ago this past
Saturday. It was the anniversary of the day Ginger and I were married,
August 11, 1979. It was, by the way, the hottest day ever recorded in the
history of South Carolina. As is typical for that time of year in the
South, it was a day graced by a late afternoon thunderstorm. I could see
the steam rising from the still-wet slate steps of the church when I arrived,
just before I ran up them to avoid getting wet and slid all the way to the door
narrowly averting complete disaster. And it has been an adventure from
that moment on.
It
has been an adventure that has been some of what I imagined it would be when I
made vows about the rest of my life at an age I couldn’t possibly have had any
idea what that meant. We have made a home in nine different places,
including twice in New York City. On more than one occasion we have put
everything on the line for what we thought we were called to do. We have
traveled together, and didn’t wait for old age to do it, including a trip to
Paris for the weekend, to Korea to pick up our first child, and to Amsterdam to
introduce our children to something important to us (it helps to have worked
for Delta once upon a time). We’ve gone whale watching in Hawaii (I
think, though I’m not sure, that we actually saw one) and walked on the pink
sands of Bermuda. We’ve been to the equator and sat at an outdoor café in
Copenhagen late into a night during which the sun almost never set. We’ve
had tea at Buckingham Palace and attended a reception with the Archbishop of
Canterbury.
I’ve
been the proud spouse at a dinner honoring Ginger for being one of the three
teachers of the year in the Atlanta public schools. We’ve waited by the
telephone together when search committees were meeting to issue calls.
We’ve made plans to be missionaries in South Africa and changed those plans to
answer a different missionary call in Eastern Kentucky. Those were all
part of the adventure I thought I was getting into.
That
expected part of the adventure, though, turned out to be small potatoes, a very
small part of the adventure it is to choose to spend one’s life with
another. The big adventure turned out to be looking at my bride in her
wedding dress for the first time, a moment I remember with the greatest clarity
long after most of the other details have faded. The big adventure turned
out to be what it felt like when the social worker told Ginger that a baby boy
had been placed with us and she couldn’t remember how to get to my office to
tell me about it. Or watching through the night by a monitor keeping
track of every one of our infant son’s heartbeats in the first few hours after
he had been diagnosed with bacterial meningitis. Or holding each other
when we heard that our other son, not yet even home for the first time, had pertussis
half a world away.
The
real adventure had to do with the stresses of over-extended credit cards.
And signing the first mortgage papers and contemplating what it meant to look
30 years into the future for the very first time. And getting my first
benefits notice from my employer informing me of my “normal” retirement date at
which point I would have 41 years of service.
The real adventure turned out to be in what is way less than exciting. It turned out to be getting to a point where we completed each other’s sentences. It turned out to be waking up in the morning together to find out which new muscle hurts. For that matter, it turned out to be just in waking up in the morning at all.
The real adventure turned out to be in what is way less than exciting. It turned out to be getting to a point where we completed each other’s sentences. It turned out to be waking up in the morning together to find out which new muscle hurts. For that matter, it turned out to be just in waking up in the morning at all.
The
real adventure has to do with discovering I really am my father and she, her
mother. It has to do with discovering that she could choose to do one
thing and I something else, without either of us being threatened. It has
to do with realizing my life really is not adversely affected even if she never
does learn to load the dishwasher right just as her life goes on even when I
put the toilet paper roll on the holder the wrong way (at least I put it on the
holder).
The
real adventure is in trying to determine, over the whirring of my own CPAP
machine, whether the snoring next to me is coming from Ginger or Annie (an
important difference as the answer elicits different responses). It is in
struggling to decipher what Ginger has just said without having to ask that it
be repeated for the third time. It is in discovering new over-the-counter
medications for ailments not previously known to exist.
The
real adventure turned out to be in the quiet. The real adventure turned
out to be sharing the same favorite place, a cottage in the mountains of North
Carolina, the beauty of which is that there is nothing there to do.
The
real adventure is learning that relationships, even long ones, are not things
that can ever be taken for granted. The real adventure, to my surprise,
isn’t in achieving anything or going anywhere. The real adventure has
something to do with learning to empty oneself for another, to die a little to
self and be born in a new and unexpected way somehow more whole and alive than
before. It is in the lesson of self-giving for the sake of love, and finding
that it is in self-giving that I become more who I really am and certainly more
true to the image of God.
The
reason the everyday ins and outs of being married for thirty-three years are
such an adventure is that they are the closest most of us get to the life of
God, the self-sacrificing life of God founded on love alone, the Trinitarian
reality that the Father is not the same as the Son and that the Son is not the
same as the Holy Spirit, but still the Father is no less God, the Son is no
less God, and the Spirit is no less God. The risk that makes adventure so
exciting, so much an opportunity, and so much to be desired turns out not to be
a financial risk or a risk of life and limb. It turns out to be a risk of
the heart. It turns out to be a risk of self.
I
realize that not everyone has had the good fortune to have an adventure like
this. My parents did not. Few of our friends do. It is an
adventure that turns out to be a fairly rare thing. It is an adventure
that is extremely fragile.
But
it is also an adventure, the opportunity for which is renewed over and over for
all of us. It is renewed for those of us who have been at it for
thirty-three years each and every day. Our thirty-third anniversary,
which was Saturday, was not a certainty as late as Friday. Our
thirty-fourth looks a long way off from here.
The
same is really true for everyone. It doesn’t matter, I think, whether
previous adventures have ended badly. Adventure calls nevertheless.
Legal definitions of who can be married and who can’t, I have no doubt, do not
matter at all. The adventure is one of living in community, whatever form
that may take in our lives, whether that be with one other, with a family of
whatever definition, or a chosen community. Lifelong relationships, I’ve
learned, are not for sissies. Growing old together turns out to be the
greatest adventure of all.
Peace,
+Stacy
