Where mercy leads

Dear Vance,

This is a letter I would have written 18 years ago if I knew then what I know now.  Remember how I fussed over which flowers for the wedding; should we use a flower cake topper (we did- no this isn’t a test to see if you remember); basket weave icing vs. a rolled fondant; the type of food we were going to serve at the reception  (which in the end didn’t matter much since we DIDN’T have much food at the wedding); my Dad having us change our wedding clothes in separate bedrooms at the house- (really?!? we were legally wed for goodness sakes)!

Remember looking for our first and only house every weekend for year?  As you said, I would have bought ALL of them and made my mind up too quick.  True.  I can make a rapid decision.  Remember all the nights and weekends we spent working and remodeling that house? Remember all that?  Well, the house is paid for now, the floors are scratched and scuffed from the numerous things I have dropped on then.  There is a hole in our bedroom ceiling where the pipes burst two years ago.  The tile is cracked in the kitchen and sink has dings.  Remember how we bathed Davis in that sink until he was 9 months old.  Not because we scared to put him in the bathtub but because we didn’t have a functional bathtub.  Everything we did is starting to show its age again.  Like the Good book says, moth and rust will soon destroy.

We replaced those windows last year and installed plantation shutters.  We had to replace the frame to our back door after the little robbery incident.  The door we have opened a thousand time to go to ballgames, school, church, let the cat out, the backyard and sometimes just to get fresh air when one of us (usually me) was having a melt down. 

We live in home after all, not the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Real live people live here, not wax figurines.

We never have installed knobs on our kitchen cabinets, but as you will most certainly attest that has never stopped me from leaving them open.  We never have put gas logs in either fireplace, but blankets work just fine and we both agree HD TV is the only way to watch MLB.

Remember when you found my beloved Sebastian dead on the bed and I was 10 ½ months pregnant and you decided that perhaps a better way to tell me was from the pay phone down the road at the Quality Mart?  Yeah, we still had pay phones back then.  Remember how that cat hated you?  I don’t why; he was a perfectly normal psychotic kitty.

Remember the first day we brought Davis home from the hospital?  You carried him around all the rooms in the house to introduce him to his new home.  Remember how he never cried once in the hospital but cried the entire first night we had him home?  Remember how I decided finally at 4 am, that I was defying the lactation nurse nazi and giving that baby a bottle.  I completely gave up on the notion of nipple confusion and turns out he ate just fine.

Remember Davis’ first steps, watching countless episodes of Teletubbies and Thomas the train, playing basketball in the living room as well as baseball.  Remember how the tooth fairy forgot to come one night and we told Davis that she called and said she was sorry she was so busy, but she would BE SURE to come the next night.

I think I heard you say last week we have watched Davis play over 550 baseball games.  That’s a lot of time watching grass.  We only have three seasons left and then he is off to college.  Hard to believe isn’t it?

Well, we have had our share of crisis, you and I.  We have had our share of fights.  We have had our share of messes to clean up, some we made, and some we didn’t. Sometimes we probably didn’t think we could make it. 

We have learned to put up with each other’s faults, like my compulsion to have clean towels every day and my need to make hospital corners when we make the bed.  I have learned you don’t make rapid decisions but when you do, they are good ones.  You have learned to put up with my inability to load a dishwasher or fold t -shirts.  You still leave notes to remind me to shut the door.  You don’t complain too much about me feeding the birds on the porch and I just overlook the piles and piles of envelopes and overstuffed closets. I don't really care how much basketball you watch or football and I have learned to play some of your silly games you love to make up.

But we are building a marriage, you and I.  Not with wealth and not with luck, and not by ourselves.  It is only by the mercy of God.  With mercy leading us, through the tears, the laughter, the sick days, the hurt feelings, the winter blues, we have built a marriage where mercy leads. 

This is the marriage mercy built: the bruises and the scrapes are really just souvenirs of a marriage lived full and loud and messy and richer than we dreamed.  Because, really if we knew what we know now we would have been to scared to walk out of that church that day.  And all the love we had that day could only take us so far and it was mercy that led us and love was the strength in our legs and grace was dropped on every footprint.

I have come to appreciate marriage for what it becomes: a storyteller. It carries a life all its own reminding me of all the life I might otherwise forget.  Look we will never be the poster couple for a marriage seminar, and you won’t see our faces or story scattered all over books on how to make a marriage last, but when I think about it, this has become my dream, not when we put those shiny gold bands on each other’s fingers, but over the years as we have gotten bruised and loved up.

Mercy has led us… Happy Anniversary…and may mercy leads through many more…

All my love,

Kathleen