Two Hearts Unite

I just haven't been sure what to write without boring anyone with yet ANOTHER story of Ice Escapades - that has been ALL that has happened around here for 9 days now! Ice and snow and rain and STUCK inside, TRYING to keep the house SOMEWHAT clean! Notice all my EMPHASIS!

So without concentrating on writing flair, but just factual details that I can get through without crying, I share this:

The past year with my husband has finally been like the honeymoon period you're supposed to get the first couple of years of marriage before the kids come along. We'll have been married for 12 years in April. This was not an oversight on our part, or laziness in our relationship (God KNOWS it's NOT that!), but because for the first time in a DOZEN YEARS we are finally just getting to be "normal." We still have problems, but they are the garden variety. Broken pipes, molding kids' attitudes, running out of underwear with no laundry soap left. Yes, we built a house this past year. We moved and we had our identity stolen, but we also finally had time to do it all AS A TEAM. You can't imagine what a big deal this is to me!

When we met, my husband and I were both in our twenties and living on our own. We had our jobs (he worked construction with his Dad's company; I was Promotions and Technical Director at a radio station) and our hopes to meet Mr./Ms. Right. We were ready. Our first year of dating was all the fun and discovery that it should be. He found out I'm neurotic about being organized (yeah, God's let me learn the futility in THAT the past 3 years!) and I found out that he snores and well, isn't so neurotic about cleanliness. (I had to show him the vacuum had a disposable bag after he had it for 8 years!)

And soon, he would also find out just how little real adversity I had ever had to prepare me for our initiation into married life. Just two weeks before our Big Day, I was coming into my apartment carefully lugging my GORGEOUS finished wedding gown when I caught the tail end of a message playing on the answering machine. I had missed too many details to understand the context of the information being spoken, but there was panic in my church friend's voice. I laid the dress quickly across my bed and picked up the receiver. "Nikki. Oh, thank God you answered! You've got to get to the such-and-such hospital right now! Greg is there by himself and something really bad has happened to his dad." My first question to her was of course what had happened. She didn't know. Then I asked "why is he alone?" "It's a long story" she said, "and you don't have time!" I asked her how to get to this hospital. (It wasn't one of the ones in our near vicinity. He had been taken there from a job site he was working on.) She told me as well as she knew which wasn't exact at all - and I headed out immediately. God must have shown me straight there because I just remember showing up there - finally - about 30 minutes later. I ran in and rounded the corner of a long hallway to find my intended with his head hung low, staring blankly, defeated. And without ever knowing what had happened, I nevertheless knew the outcome. We didn't speak, just hugged and cried for the longest time. A brain aneurysm had taken his father's life without warning.

The funeral was held 5 days later. Then, 3 days before our wedding, which everyone insisted go on as scheduled to bring a bright spot to their healing, the Murrah Federal Building was bombed 15 miles away from our newlywed home (which was Greg's already). The majority of our out-of-town guests were already here and experienced it. I slept through it. I was supposed to be next door to the the Murrah building that morning, securing our wedding license at the court house, but I was sleeping in to recuperate from the emotional drain of the prior week's events. Our pastor preached the funeral of one of the child victims the day before we were married. On top of it all, our actual wedding day brought record low temperatures and 4 inches of rain. It was to be an outdoor garden reception.

This was the day God helped me begin to practice the art of perspective. I didn't cry at the rain. It was so insignificant in light of our loss. I didn't care that everyone was discussing the bombing. Those people who perished deserved remembrance. They had lost their lives as well. And besides, as far as I know, every single person who was invited to our wedding showed up to support us! Many pitched in to make sure the indoor reception was nothing short of spectacular.

But the one thing that haunted me that day, for years in fact, was that my betrothed never looked me in the eyes. On a day so full of emotion, ALL KINDS of emotion, I was hidden from him most of the day for the tradition of not seeing the bride before the "big moment." When the big moment finally came and I walked through the double doors, I think he glanced just long enough to know that I was THERE, alive, and then no more after that. Through the entire ceremony, he stared at a single spot on the floor, never even looking at me. He couldn't. It was all too much.

I just wish I had realized that then. I took offense instead. I NEEDED for him to be wowed, to accept me in as his wife, to relish in my comfort. He needed my understanding. To be gone for 14-16 hours a day that first year or two, trying his best to run a company and support not just a new wife, but also 10 employees, his mother and her two dependent children at home. All this at the tender age of 26. I didn't really realize then how very young he really was. I was often mad at his absence (both physically and especially emotionally) instead of proud of his AMAZING responsibility toward everyone involved. We both made so many mistakes. We never had that time, that incredible bonding that's needed to become one flesh, a team. Our circumstances gave us the worst possible start, one that's already difficult for most newly married couples and multiplied it exponentially. What is a usually a time of figuring out differences and meshing lives together was for us, a time of sharing space but not problems, heart thoughts or often when work intruded so dramatically, even the bed at night.

YEARS of difficulty followed, mostly but not all related to this very rough base of circumstances. But here's the inevitable positive spin. We are newlyweds now! Not in the sense of relishing in each and every word and deed all starry eyed and stuff. We've been together too long for that, seen each other sick and angry and generally for who we really are. But we're becoming a team. We have problems still, but we are tackling them, finally, together. We are going on dates. And most importantly (and I'm crying while I write), we are looking each other in the eyes when we say "I Love You." And we smile when we do it. For now, that's all the romance I ask.