LOVE FEARLESSLY

LOVE FEARLESSLY

7 Stories of Passion, Grace, and Healing in the Adventure We Call Marriage LOVE FEARLESSLY Table of Contents

How We Met 3 Love in the Time of Scarlet Fever 8 Let Love Win 12 Your Love Story Isn't Over Yet 15 What My Husband Desires Most 20 When You Feel All Alone 23 Love for Love's Sake 26 LOVE FEARLESSLY How We Met

I was seventeen when I first heard Dan’s voice. It was the summer of 1996 and I was driving down a South Carolina highway with a group of friends. One of those friends grabbed a CD from his collection and started raving about this band called Pain that he’d recently discovered. Seconds later my future husband’s voice came pouring out of the stereo. I just remembered that this week. I can’t tell you how much I love the fact that not only do I remember the exact moment when I first heard Dan’s voice, but that I first heard it while I was on vacation in South Carolina — the place with which we’d eventually fall in love and endeavor to put down family roots. How about that? I wouldn’t actually meet him, though, for over a year. The next time I heard him, and the first time I saw him, was at The Gilman in Berkeley, California on October 9th, 1998. He was already up on stage performing with his band when I walked into the club with two of my girlfriends. One of them leaned toward me and whispered that she thought the trumpet player was cute. No, no, said I, he has nothing on that lead singer. Love at first sight? Pretty close, truth be told. Later that night, as I was standing in a friend’s San Francisco kitchen, I saw him walk through the door, blue hair and all. My heart LOVE FEARLESSLY skipped a beat, the butterflies hopped to it, and I immediately found someone to get lost in conversation with – as you do when you’re nineteen and trying to catch the eye of some cute guy. Dan eventually made his way over to me and struck up a conversation. Now I think he would want me to let you know that he did this by cleverly and oh-so nonchalantly walking past me, pretending to glance around the corner to look for someone, turning back around, and starting up a conversation with little ol’ me because he just couldn’t seem to find that friend of his. What are you going to do? We hit it off immediately and spent the rest of the evening defending our right to privacy against his commune-loving bandmate and generally trying to impress one another with our witty banter. He needn’t have bothered. He had me the minute he realized that I was in pursuit of a Woodchuck Apple Cider that no longer existed. He handed me his newly opened bottle (the last of the party’s cider coffers) and I was his and it was love. Sadly, he had to travel on to his next show so he left town and I had nary a kiss to remember him by. So I wrote him a letter! (Oh, you don’t even know how much I wish he would burn that thing. No woman should be forced to live her life knowing that a letter she wrote to a boy when she was nineteen years old still exists.) LOVE FEARLESSLY

Lest you think that he raced to the post office with his response hours after he received my communiqué, let me save you the suspense. It would be another four months before he got around to writing me back. Four months. In fact, his response arrived just days before he was due to return to California for more shows. I’m sure you will all understand how this might have led me to believe that he simply wrote me back to avoid awkwardness. I savored every word of his letter, read it 583 times, and told my friends that there was no way I was going to that show. I went to the show… …where I stood behind my 6’6’’ friend the whole time Dan was on stage so that he wouldn’t be able to see me. It was an awesome show. It really was. And I spent the entire time hiding. After the show I sat outside with my friends laughing, chatting, and yes, continuing to hide. They, of course, mocked me mercilessly and told me to go inside and find Dan. And I told them that would never, ever happen, not in a million years. And then the Holy Spirit got all up in my business. You think I jest. Ha. I didn’t even know the Holy Spirit yet but nevertheless he lifted me up out of that chair (and I mean that quite literally) and pushed me back LOVE FEARLESSLY into the club and into Dan’s arms for one of the sweetest, most tender hugs I’ve ever received. It was at that moment that I knew. It was him. I had found the one whom my soul loves. (Props to Song of Solomon.) I invited him to a party. He said yes. We sat together in the back seat of a friend’s car. My heart thumped. He asked me what my favorite song in the entire world was. And I said (wait for it): Brimful of Asha. No, I really did. I know you think I’m lying. I wish I were lying. But I said Brimful of Asha. And he said, “Really? You think that is the best song ever created?” And I, not one to undig my heels, assured him that yes, it was. I even included an eloquent defense of the song. Because, don’t you know, everyone really does need “a bosom for a pillow.” Did he have something against world peace? He assured me that he did not, and all was well. When we got to the party I noticed a gash on his hand and offered to clean it up and put a band-aid on it. It was at that moment that he reports that he, too, suspected that he’d found the one whom his soul loves. (You’ll have to ask him why he required an extra three hours to come to that conclusion. I have yet to get a satisfactory answer, I’m afraid.) LOVE FEARLESSLY

Finally, despite the many people milling about, he managed to get me alone. And then the pizza got in the way. In the words of my determined now-husband: “By the way, when you came back into the stereo/dance room with your pizza slice, I knew I wanted to lay a smack on you, but I had to time it just right in between your bites. It was like trying to catch a swinging trapeze. I had to wait ’till the pizza was sufficiently far away from your mouth to avoid a midair collision, yet I had to be sure the bite you’d just taken was adequately chewed up, otherwise we would have had a real mess on our hands. Well, thank God, calamity was avoided, and all-in-all I think our first kiss went rather well.” I did, too, and so the rest is history. One month later I flew into New Orleans and spent two weeks traveling around the southeast with him and that August I moved into my first apartment in Mobile, AL to be near him. There was that little issue of him thinking that he might be being called to the priesthood but I sorted all that out with God in short order (wink) and we were married on a cool October night in 2001. It was true: we had found the one whom our souls love. LOVE FEARLESSLY Love in the Time of Scarlet Fever

I used to think love was freshly picked Magnolias, playful puddle jumping, and holding hands in the rain. I thought it was sweet nothings and kisses behind the ear. I thought it was letters penned with passion and odes to love carved into sand. I thought it was skywriting, fireworks, and kisses that make cartoon hearts pop out of the besotted. I still do. But, oh my goodness, how those things only scratch the surface. Our entire little family of eight (save the baby) came down with Scarlet Fever this weekend. It was just about as unpleasant as you would imagine. Misery, thy name is Scarlet Fever. Thankfully, there were a couple of smiles mixed in, too. Like the moment my little Lucy stood up on the top of her bunk at bedtime and dramatically announced that it was a good thing she had medicine because without it she would have “DIED because Scarlet Fever is a VERY SERIOUS DISEASE.” Thank you, Velveteen Rabbit. So, smiles, yes, and also love. Love like this: I spent most of Saturday lying in bed while Dan held down the fort. I won’t lie — I was pretty relieved that he’d thus far been spared so that I could sleep, soak, and wallow. He cooked and cleaned, doled out LOVE FEARLESSLY medicine and wiped feverish brows, and he ran errands. He insisted that I sleep, sleep, and sleep some more. He served without ceasing, complaining, or seeking recognition. (I almost never serve without ceasing, complaining, or seeking recognition.) Later in the day we decided it was time to take the older boys to the ER. They left well before dinnertime and stumbled back in after bedtime. The boys gathered around me on the couch — while Dan made one last run to the pharmacy — and regaled me with tales of their ER adventure. At one point, their eyes got very big and they told me in hushed, serious tones that when the doctor had looked at their Daddy’s throat she had pronounced him the sickest of all. The sickest of all. That’s right. My “healthy” husband who had been keeping the family afloat while I slumbered was in truth, every bit as sick as the rest of us. He never said a word; never uttered a complaint; never even sat down to rest. That, my friends, is love. Sometimes it’s all that other sparkly stuff, as well, but when you get down deep into the heart of it, love is profound self-sacrifice offered with a sweet kiss, a wink of the eye, and a tender smile. (And I’m pretty sure those last three things are optional in a cherry on top kind of way.) Someone once asked me (innocently) why husbands and wives praise their spouses publicly. Was it just to brag? LOVE FEARLESSLY

I don’t think so. At least not all the time. There’s a lot of talk out there (some of it coming from yours truly) about how very hard marriage can be. That’s not a bad thing. I think that being honest about our struggles helps others to feel a little less alone. It’s good to know that the valleys are normal so that they don’t seem quite so cold and dark when you stumble upon them. But that’s only one part of marriage. A marriage on its best days will light up the sky far more brightly than any man-made fireworks. To see another selflessly (and often at great cost to themselves) pour themselves out for you — and to feel that irresistible urge to pour yourself out for them — will take your breath away and make you wonder at God’s love for undeserving you. At least it’s always had that effect on me. People need to hear these happy, hopeful stories, too. Marriage will stretch and challenge you in ways you never imagined — absolutely — but it will also bring you more joy than you once thought it was possible to possess. The more challenging moments will not only pale in comparison to the happier ones but truly and in some mystical way, the good times will transform the bad times into things of beauty. Sometimes only in retrospect and in a “I’m grateful for the growth opportunity” kind of way, but still. The interplay between the two is really something. LOVE FEARLESSLY

I could go on and on, but I’m all drugged up and who knows where and when that would end, Plus, I should probably run and duck because when Dan sees that I wrote this, he will surely send the pillows flying my way. He’s not a huge fan of my sharing the sweet, selfless things he does with other people. Plus, I have a VERY SERIOUS DISEASE to combat. LOVE FEARLESSLY Let Love Win

I just heard this silly rumor that some couples don’t fight. It’s true! Word on the street is that there are couples out there for whom a good old-fashioned argument simply isn’t on the menu. I’ll let you in on a little secret: Dan and I are not one of those couples. Don’t get me wrong — on a day-to-day basis we’re patient with one another, know how to pick our battles, and we conquer animosity with love and mercy. It’s really pretty awesome, actually. But we’re also both extremely passionate people so on those very, very rare occasions when the wind blows in the wrong direction and we’re both caught off-guard on a bad day? Well, let’s just say that we’re not afraid of a little honest dialogue. This used to kill me. How could two people so in love turn on one another so quickly? Where did these arguments come from? And what did that say about us individually and as a couple? Much has been written by women far wiser than I about how to fight fair. I think such exhortations are fantastic and should be implemented as much and as often as possible. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that until and unless God himself chooses to transform me and Dan (and the way we argue), no amount of advice is going to make a difference. LOVE FEARLESSLY

If we hit that red zone, all encouragements to take a step back, to breathe, and to view this process as a quest for truth fly out the window. But you know, over time I’ve made peace with that. Sometimes you just have to accept the ugliness and patiently wait for God to redeem it. Which, as you know, he always does. It was in learning to accept this reality that I was able to see (with a little help from my adorable husband) that it wasn’t the actual arguments that were the worst part of our altercations, it was the aftermath. The real damage was done after the fight. It was during that vicious cycle of hating myself for all the unkind things I’d said, wallowing in that guilt until it became unbearable, and then revisiting all the things Dan had said to me (just to ease my guilt) that our union took the most devastating blows. Do you know what happens when you get stuck in that cycle? Grudges, hurt, and resentment become etched more and more deeply into your soul making healing and true reconciliation that much harder to bring about. Do you know what else happens? Evil wins. In the eyes of evil, I don’t think the fight itself is viewed as the primary victory. Truthfully, I can’t help but to suspect it’s seen as small potatoes. The real win occurs when the couple can’t move on from the argument, when they refuse to accept the mercy that God desperately LOVE FEARLESSLY wants to show them (and to pass it on to one another), and they allow the hurt, pain, and guilt to fester and to slowly eat away at their marriage. Fights happen. They happen between almost all couples. That’s just the reality. I’m not saying arguments are good or shouldn’t be resisted, I’m just saying that they’re hard for most of us to avoid entirely. When the storm dies down, though, and the seas settle, I’m learning to let them be. To let every thought that crosses my mind, and every action I take, be oriented toward a return to sweet, sweet peace. I’m learning to let love win. LOVE FEARLESSLY Your Love Story Isn't Over Yet

I was chatting with a close friend on the phone the other day about the ways in which my marriage has blossomed in the past year or so. She knows about some of the struggles Dan and I have faced, and the demons with which we’ve wrestled. “I wish I could write about the things I’ve seen and the ways that the love — not just romantic love, but true hardcore agape love — has grown between Dan and I.” I said. But many of the details are things I don’t feel comfortable sharing with the world at large. Many of our battles are unknown even to her. “I just wish I could encourage all those couples slugging it out and slogging through, and who’ve resigned themselves to a life of the same, to not give up hope.” Well, that I can do. I don’t have any brilliant advice to give — other than to encourage you to cling steadfastly to hope — and I don’t have any terrible compelling stories to share — other than to tell you that through my own marriage I’ve seen God’s generosity and mercy at work firsthand — but I will say this: Your marriage has as much potential as God has power. Maybe things are darker than you ever could have imagined and you’re sitting there wondering whether you can endure another fifty LOVE FEARLESSLY years or so of this. Maybe you want to check out and take the next plane to Antigua. Or maybe, like me, you’re completely smitten with your spouse and always have been, but simply weren’t prepared for the many small crosses of marriage. Maybe you’re wondering whether the minor (and sometimes not-so-minor) irritations and misunderstandings that dot your days will ever abate. Maybe a subtle but ever-present distance has grown between you and your husband. And maybe you’re missing all that wildly passionate love that once had the power to cover a multitude of sins. About a year ago I wrote this: “Much has been written by women far wiser than I about how to fight fair. I think such exhortations are fantastic and should be implemented as much and as often as possible. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that until and unless God himself chooses to transform me and Dan (and the way we argue), no amount of advice is going to make a difference. If we hit that red zone, all encouragements to take a step back, to breathe, and to view this process as a quest for truth fly out the window. But you know, over time I’ve made peace with that. Sometimes you just have to accept the ugliness and patiently wait for God to redeem it. Which, as you know, he always does.” LOVE FEARLESSLY

That reflection about how God always redeems the ugliness? It was written in faith. At that point Dan and I were still very much at the mercy of the red zone. I almost can’t believe I’m saying this, but it seems that might no longer be true. I think we’ve had maybe one noteworthy argument since then? And it didn’t even involve the shattering of champagne flutes. How about that? The Divine Physician worked on us for a long time. He tested, challenged, and stretched us out of our comfort zones again and again and again. By the grace of God alone we did make some progress. We became a little more humble, a touch more patient, and our trust in God grew bit by bit. But you know, saint-making is a lifelong process. Most of us don’t wake up one morning and realize that at long last we’re finally holy enough to be exemplary wives and husbands who only ever treat one another with kindness and perfect respect. But do you know what can happen? God can gaze down from between a break in the clouds and see two fallen, undeserving people doing their best to make this whole marriage thing work. He can see them battling it out day after day, begging him for mercy and reprieve, and he — in all of his incomprehensible goodness — can say, “Yes.” “Yes, I will infuse you with more love for one another than you ever could have imagined. Yes, I will tear down the silly walls that stand LOVE FEARLESSLY between you. And yes, you will have your happily ever after — though it may look a little different than your young, naive mind might once have imagined.” Does this mean that we will never again experience marital growing pains? I highly doubt it. I’m sure God has more refinement in store for Dan and me. Perhaps our biggest challenges are yet to come. But some sort of crazy heavenly grace has rained down upon us and we are a different couple than we were even a year ago. The best — albeit unsatisfactory — way I can think to describe it is that it felt like for the first decade or so of our marriage we were learning how to be a team. And maybe during the really tough games (read: seasons of life) we didn’t always like our teammate all that much. Maybe we passed the ball to them with just a little too much force in the hopes that it might sting a little when they caught it. Slowly we started to figure out how to work together, though, and things seemed to chug along just a little more smoothly, day by day. We even started scoring the odd point here and there. But then one day, it’s like God lifted the blinders from my eyes, and said, “See! Do you see this man? Aren’t you in awe of his skill? Of the way he carries this team? And protects you on the field? And doesn’t he look cute in his uniform?” (Not that the latter was news to me.) So, you look, and at long last you see. And he sees. You see each other with all the love, charity, and affection that God always intended. LOVE FEARLESSLY

(Or a good portion more of it anyway.) And you win at the championship game of love. Sure, the game may have been rigged when God decided to ordain your victory. And yes, more challenging games are probably yet to be played. But when you have a teammate as amazing as yours? Bring it on, world. Bring it on. We’ve got this. Maybe my somewhat flawed analogy doesn’t resonate with you at all. Perhaps you and your husband have been frolicking hand-in-hand through fields of dandelions from day one. But if you find yourself even the slightest bit demoralized by how very, very hard marriage can sometimes be, please don’t give up hope, sweet friends. Your love story isn’t over yet. LOVE FEARLESSLY What My Husband Desires Most

“Cars may wreck around us, stocks may rise and fall, clocks wind down, but it’s not enough to distract us from each other as we chatter and ask and talk like two parts of a steamroller engine. I touch her and she touches back. She cares about me. She encourages me. She likes me, not for certain things I do, but precisely for what I am. I am what she loves. And she is what I love. How about that?” (The above is excerpted from a journal entry Dan wrote while we were dating and later shared with me.) About a year ago, I asked Dan to identify the things that he would most appreciate my accomplishing during any given day. I had come to the place that so many busy women do where I had to accept that I couldn’t do it all every day. If the house was immaculate, dinner was probably coming from a box or delivery; if dinner was sublime, you could see evidence of the care I took in preparing it all around the house; and if the kids had enjoyed a day full of rich activity, in all likelihood neither dinner nor the house would impress. I wanted to know: If I have to pick and choose the things I can tackle each day, which are most important to you? Would he rather have a clean bathroom or an empty laundry basket? Sparkling floors or a delicious dessert? LOVE FEARLESSLY

He answered: All I want is your love and happiness. And maybe the occasional slice of pie. Everything else was secondary in his mind. His sweet, simple answer was a reminder to me that the tasks I can accomplish with my hands – while important — should be secondary to what I can give with my heart: love, encouragement, support, affection, and pride in him. In a world that is all about doing, it’s so easy to forget that what most every husband desires most is a wife who adores him, believes in him, and wants to be with him. Because it’s so easy to forget, it occurred to me recently that perhaps I could use a reminder. Something that I can return to again and again to point me toward the goal. When we are trying to get in shape, we often have a picture we use for inspiration; when we seek to grow closer to God, we might have a prayer or passage that we turn to for guidance; and when we seek to get our finances in order we have a budget we follow to keep us on track. Why not look for something that paints a picture of what it looks like when I love well? Yesterday morning I pulled out my box of love letters from Dan to reread. As my eyes traveled over the excerpt above I knew that I had LOVE FEARLESSLY found my gentle reminder and guide. Those words capture perfectly what my husband most treasures. When he wrote those words we were living 2,338 miles apart. For the most part, I had nothing to offer him but my love. I couldn’t help him with his daily tasks or bring him medicine when he was sick. And yet, what I could give him brought him more happiness than a clean kitchen ever could. This is not to say that all of those wonderful practical things that we can do for our husbands are unimportant. I think they probably appreciate them more than we could ever know. But if at any given moment I suspect my husband could not honestly write the words that he penned those thirteen years ago, then that’s a sign to me that it’s time to put everything else aside and get back to basics until he can. After all… I am what he loves. And he is what I love. How about that? LOVE FEARLESSLY When You Feel All Alone

One of the blessings of my having chosen to write almost exclusively about marriage for the moment is that my inbox is flooded with beautiful, heart-rending emails from women who are fighting day after day (and often against all odds) to create loving, life-giving unions. Some of those emails share sweet stories or funny anecdotes but by far the majority of them all tell a similar tale: I feel so alone. These women share with me how much it hurts to read and hear about happy, thriving marriages when their own partnership is suffering, their marital boat is taking on water and threatening to go under, and their husbands seem far away and distant. These emails touch my heart not just because I feel for you, but because I feel you. Despite my tales of smashing champagne glasses and such, it sounds like this surprises many of you. A close friend of mine was having a conversation about the difficulties of marriage with a friend of hers and my name came up. This friend of mine shared that Dan and I had been through our fair share of really, really hard seasons and her friend expressed shock. She had the impression that my union was all sunshine and roses. Sometimes it is. And sometimes it’s not. LOVE FEARLESSLY

But I get how some people might be surprised by that because most of us (myself included) make at least some effort not to trash our significant others if we can help it. As much as we’d love to share the latest offensive thing our husbands have done (and husbands – believe you me, I know this goes both ways) with anyone and everyone who will listen, we try to stop ourselves. We may not always succeed, but we try because we know that there are two sides to every story, that insulting our husbands ultimately tears apart our marriages, and that when push comes to shove we’re a team and you don’t throw your teammate overboard (I mean, not unless he really, really deserves it – wink, wink). Keeping personal marital rifts largely to ourselves is right and good. But it’s a cross (often a huge, heavy, painful cross) because when we do this well we can end up feeling alone and isolated. When all we see are spotlights being shone upon the heights of marital ecstasy, the shadows can feel incredibly cold. I don’t have any solutions for you. I don’t know how to fix it. In fact, I think this is precisely why they say that marriage is sanctifying – because there isn’t always a way to make it better. Sometimes it just really hurts and all you can do in those moments is grit your teeth, bury your head into the chest of your loving Savior, and let him hold you. Today I simply wanted you to know that I know. LOVE FEARLESSLY

Our crosses are all going to look a little bit different but we all have them. Every single last one of us. So, when you see a sweet sister today and a little voice tells you that despite all outward appearances she might be struggling, give her a hug and send up a little prayer because goodness knows, even if you’re wrong and she’s doing okay at the moment, who couldn’t use a little extra love and spiritual support? And if you’re the one who’s suffering today, please believe that you are not alone. Truly, we are all in this together though the darkness can feel cold and lonely and our seasons may not always be in sync. You, sweet friends, are incredibly strong and brave and I love you. I just really, really love you. Keep on fighting the good fight, loves! LOVE FEARLESSLY Love for Love's Sake

I made a resolution last week: To love for the sake of love. I just wanted to throw more goodness out there into the universe. (A little sappy, I know.) It started out as one of those silly, spontaneous challenges I sometimes give myself. I didn’t put a lot of thought into it and nothing in particular gave rise to it. I just decided I wanted to do it. I wanted to offer one of those smiles that has the power to turn bad days on their head to the grumpy cashier at the grocery store . I wanted to say ‘yes’ more to my children – yes, we can paint! Yes, we can decorate cupcakes! Yes, you can dance in the rain! I wanted to give rest to my weary husband. To bring him wine, take his tasks, make things shine, and kiss his sweet lips. I can’t always do these things. Seasons of want are a frequent visitor to my life these days. I feel like I’m constantly take, take, taking. Sucking up everyone else’s energy and cheer with my physical and emotional exhaustion. I know that nurturing new life is nothing to sneeze at, I do, but after a while your throat tightens and forms a lump and your eyes start to water just because someone stopped for 2.67 seconds longer than they needed to so that they could hold the door open for large, lumbering you. LOVE FEARLESSLY

Sometimes I want to be the door holder; the one to toss handfuls of love into the air ready to be caught by anyone who might need a spot of goodness in their life. And so I did because for once I could. It was so gloriously wonderful. And surprise! As it often is with these things, I was by far the greatest recipient of the fruits of this endeavor. Warm fuzzies followed me here, there, and everywhere all week long. As I sat nursing Charlie to sleep, watching him hungrily gulp down milk, and sniffing his delicious neck, I wondered: why did this small love dare bring me so much peace and joy? Was it simply because when you throw a little extra love out there into the world you’re bound to get some in return? Was it the satisfaction of helping someone? Or of conquering small love-squashing demons? Yes, yes, and yes. But also this: I learned that if I can love without expecting anything in return, without counting myself among the martyrs, and without gritting my teeth through the duty of it all (though sometimes that’s the best you can do and I am certain that the angels sing at the sight of your faithfulness), things feel just about right in my small world. Because as it turns out, loving for love’s sake – just because He who is love thinks it would be pretty cool if I cooperated with Him on all this love creating business – is pretty hard to beat.