Boy Meets Girl

For Jon on our 11^th Anniversary

(This post is part of the Redemption Story Project, which you can view here. )

In the fall of 1997 I sat in front of a Northwestern College library computer. I was talking to it, the computer that is, giving the fat monitor and its mystery-to-me software a piece of my non-techy, English Major mind.

Sitting at the computer next to me was my husband-to-be. We hadn’t met yet. I didn’t even know his name.

He, on the other hand, knew my name, though he didn’t tell me at the time. As he told me months later: “The other football players were talking about you in the cafeteria and they pointed you out and told me your name, but I couldn’t tell you that!” . . . .

So this boy-stranger sat in the chrome-and-plastic library chair next to me, and in the midst of my computer tirade, he leaned over and whispered in my ear:

“The problem isn’t the computer. It’s the person staring at the screen . . . .”

I turned from the blue screen in front of me and wide-eyed stared at the brazen, blond-headed freshman leaning back in his chair with a smirk on his face. He was wearing a gold chain round his neck and a white T-shirt with a picture of the cartoon-character-Hobbes gleefully flushing little-boy-Calvin down a toilet.

I couldn’t let this big boy’s insult linger too long in the air, so I glanced past his blue eyes to the computer screen behind him, and seeing a muscle-flexing picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger I responded,

“Well, at least I’m not a metal-head!”

And with a toss of my shoulder-length brown hair, I turned back to my computer, propped my elbows on the desk in front of me, and stared straight ahead.

But this boy leaned across the open space between us and gently squeezed my flexed bicep with his fingers, saying, “Wow, it looks like you work out!”

I recoiled, flinging my tan bicep towards my chest, nearly smacking myself in the face with my own hand. My cheeks flamed as I said: “Don’t touch me! You’re a stranger!”

And the boy laughed saying, “Hi. I’m Jon, what’s you’re name?”

“Becca” somehow escaped my lips, and he replied, “Well then, now we aren’t strangers. I know your name, you know mine.”

And so, we met for the first time in the NWC computer lab, in 1997, and the rest is history. . . . Sort of. (Is it ever really that simple?)  

He was 18. I was 19, and as Jon puts it, “We were really immature back then!”

But from that first moment in the computer lab, I liked the fresh football player from Northern Minnesota. He was funny and honest—he didn’t try the flatter-a-girl-to-get-her-to-go-out-with-you kind of crap. He didn’t perform. He just was . . . himself.

That computer-lab-encounter year,  Jon and I began “accidentally” meeting up at the library to “study.” That’s how I found out he was a public-schooled German Christian with a back-woods vocabulary and a philosopher’s mind. He didn’t care about grades and he always asked why. I thought that--asking why—made him a rebel, and I wanted to be a rebel like that.

And I, I was a homeschooled Preacher’s kid from the Midwest who cared about pleasing my parents and making straight A’s. I was a prisoner to other people’s opinions, forever an actor on a stage—performing the dreams and desires of others. But secretly I longed to  live the God-given beauty of my own breath, thoughts, and feelings.  

With Jon, perhaps for the first time in my life, I could just breathe and be the me that God created.   

We laughed together, ran miles of road together (I left him on a park bench in the middle of nowhere, once, and he still ran after me), drank way too many mochas at Caribou Coffee together, and talked about our mutual struggle to fill the hollow spaces in our hearts with God.

And, somehow, Jon saw in me what so many others didn’t: I longed to draw God close, but I didn’t know how, was too scared to try. So, out of fear, I kept God and others from filling the open, hollow spaces in my heart.

And, just as he did in the computer lab so long ago, Jon reached across the hollow, open spaces in my heart, drawing me close, talking about God and life in a way I’d never heard before—intimately, personally.  After our first summer home from college, Jon shared how he talked with God as he worked alone all summer, re-building his Dad’s garage. He shared how his talks with God led him to change his college major from Kinesiology to Bible.

And even though Jon’s parents thought his degree-changing was “crazy,” he took that step of faith because he knew God was in it. And that school year, as I watched Jon follow God’s plan for him, I realized Jon’s faith was for real—his own, separate from his parents.  

But my God was inextricably tied to my parents. The God I knew lived in my parents daily sermons and the pages of the Bible. God did not live in the day-to-day joys and pains of my life, my heart. Or, at least, I’d never felt His presence in that flesh-and-spirit kind of way.  

But I wanted to know Jon’s God—a God who lived close, intermingling flesh and spirit.

And ever since the day Jon and I finally became one flesh at Immanuel Baptist Church,  a country-like church in a the heart of a Minneapolis neighborhood, he’s shown me what it means to know God like that—in flesh and in spirit, in head and in heart.

And the very thing that drew me to Jon back in 1997—his ability to see, share, and pursue the heart-honest-truth about God and Self, no matter the cost--has freed me to do the same.  I’ve come to know God in the day-to-day of my life’s joys and pains. I’ve learned to see God move in flesh and spirit, drawing me close, and closer still. 

And with a husband like Jon, I know the next eleven years will bring more Calvin-and-Hobbes humor, more rebel-like discussions over a cup of Starbucks about the whys of life, and an even deeper awareness of God-with-us, every day, every hour, every moment.

“And the two will become one flesh, so they are no longer two but one.” (Mark 10:8)

Happy 11^th Anniversary, my love. 

 

Related Posts: Husband Love, Making He/She, We, 

Redemption Story Project Writing Assignment #6

"If God truly is good beyond our wildest imagining and if God takes evil and uses it for good, then how God redeems the tragedies of our lives will be nothing sort of glorious. We may not see the redemption in this lifetime. But then again, God just may do the redeeming right now. Our tragedy is also our redemption. God allows tragedy because he can use it to soften our hearts and make them more his own. . . . We can't love in a way that is truly selfless until we are broken. "(To Be Told, 96).

Part 1: Think back over your life to instances of "shalom (peace) shattered," when tragedy, no matter how minor/major, struck? Think about the first kid who hurt your feelings/called you a name in school, think about hurts from your parents (intentional or not), think about different forms of loss you've experienced (loss of relationships, loss of a loved one, etc.) How has God used tragedy in your life to draw you to himself?

Part 2: Write out the story of one of your life's tragedies. Capture how you felt/responded to the situation at the time. Now, think about and then explain how God has used that tragedy for good in your life.

What's in a Name: From Ugly to Beautiful

(Read the purpose for the Redemption Story Project here.)

When I was ten, Dad pastored a small church in the Midwest and our family lived in the parsonage behind the church—a mud-brown two-story surrounded by dirt roads and cornfields. On meeting-free mornings, Dad read aloud a family devotion before he walked down our winding driveway, across the church parking lot, and into his hole-in-the-wall of a church office.

One warm September morning, as Mom and I and my younger siblings sat upright at the kitchen table, Dad read aloud a devotion on Names. When he finished reading, Dad just-for-fun pulled out a Greek/Hebrew dictionary and, starting with my youngest brother, looked up each person’s name and commented on how we reflected our Name. As I waited for my name-reading, I could hardly sit still, my skinny-girl legs stuck to the wooden chairs that were once my Grandma’s, and I wondered: what does Rebecca mean? Am I really like my name?

When Dad finally looked at me with his grey-stone eyes and read: “Rebecca—a woman whose beauty ensnares men,” his grey-stone eyes squinted with laughter as he hit the table with the palm of his hand, and from the other side of the table, Mom snort-laughed as she preached: “Rebecca—you should never use beauty to ensnare a man! Only bad girls do that sort of thing!” and feeling awkward-weird about all the laughing, I timid-asked, “Can I see the dictionary?”

I pulled the dictionary close, and looked down at my name--R-E-B-E-C-C-A--and the picture of a pretty Israelite woman with rings on her arms and a clay pot in her hand, and the words beside the picture: “A woman whose beauty ensnares men.”

And I didn’t know how to feel about this name of mine---Should I be ashamed? What on earth does “ensnare” mean? . . . . Am I beautiful like this clay-pot-carrying lady in the picture? But in the face of Dad’s palm-slapping laughter and Mom’s snort-preaching, I buried my questions deep in my heart, buried them until the flowering of teenage dreams and desires made me wonder anew: Am I beautiful?. . . Is beauty bad?

Then five years later, on yet another warm fall morning, I was fifteen and the questions buried deep in my ten-year-old heart were pulled into the light of day as I stared at my face in my dresser mirror and wondered: am I beautiful? Is it bad to want to be beautiful?

On that Saturday morning, I curling-iron-curled my hair and dressed in a cute parent-sanctioned outfit, hoping for a chance to walk across the street to the Old Car Show in the park where I knew I might meet a few cute boys my age (a rare occurrence when you’re a homeschooled, church-going girl of fifteen.)

I remember Dad walking into my pink bedroom, taking one look at my cute outfit and curled hair and asking: “Where are you going?” And me saying: “Well, I was thinking I could take the boys [my brothers] to the car show across the street.” And I remember my Pastor-Dad’s stone eyes flashing fire as he spewed: “I know exactly what you’re doing! You’re getting all dressed up so you can get the boys at that car show to look at you! That’s the kind of thing ungodly, bad girls do—try to get boys to look at them! That sort of behavior makes you Ugly!” And the look on Dad’s face said without actually saying it: ‘you are Unlovable! You are Ugly!’

In that moment Dad seared a new Name onto my fifteen-year-old-heart: Ugly and Unlovable.

But in my secret heart I yearned to be known by another Name: Beautiful and Loved.

And for years I warred with God and my parents—wanting to be Beautiful and Loved, not wanting to be Bad and Unlovable, Ugly.

And my parents—out of fear of outer beauty leading to reputation-marring sin—didn’t explain that God made outer beauty “very good,” but that inner beauty is even better because it reflects He who is forever-Beautiful.

To make my parents happy, to keep myself from being Bad—I chose to take on the name Ugly, to wear it on my secret heart, to feed the lie that to be acceptable to God and my parents—to be Good--I must be Ugly.

 I carried this secret name with me to college, to my first job, and into my marriage. I wanted to be Beautiful—acceptable, loved, worthy—but believed I was Ugly at the core. And I lived up to my secret-heart-name by pursuing mediocrity in my passions—running, writing, hosting, speaking--and deflecting the heart-felt compliments of my husband (and others): “I love you, you’re beautiful!” with self-deprecating words and thoughts: “I’m Ugly. I hate myself!”

I didn’t understand that my real name was not Ugly, but Redeemed and Beautiful, because He is the Beautiful Redeemer.

But as scripture says, “He has made everything beautiful in it’s time” (Ecc. 3:11), and in His Time, God entered my life Story and showed me my real name: Beautiful and Loved.

And, gradually, over time, with the help of my husband and others who saw me as God Named me—Beautiful and Loved—I began to take risks in my passions—to run races, to write out my heart-honest-thoughts, to start book clubs and plan parties—and to accept my husband’s love-words as true, replacing self-hatred and self-absorption with embracing Love.

And I’m still on that journey—to living in light of my real name, the name that God—the great Redeemer—has seared upon my heart and the heart of every woman, every person  he creates:

Beautiful and Loved.  

Related Post: Naming and Becoming: Birth

For Personal Reflection: What inaccurate/wrong names were you given as a child? How did God re-name you when he redeemed you? How are you working to live in light of your real, God-given name?

Redemption Story Project: Writing Assignment #3

Part 1: What are your families’ foundational stories? In other words, what stories tell you who you are as a family, your family characteristics, the rules by which you live?  What stories are most frequently told in your family at holidays and reunions? What stories are rarely or never told—are avoided or marginalized? What false stories are told to cover up family secrets? What stories does your family tell about you? Are the stories told about you accurate?

Part 2: Pick one of your family stories and write it out. Spend some time at the end reflecting on what truth—good or bad—this story reveals about your family and/or you as a person.

When Little Eve Bit the Apple

(This is Writing Assignment #1 for the Redemption Writing Project. You can view the first post in this series here. .)

I was five, or maybe four, and sitting in a folding chair in the last row of a church auditorium in Dallas, Texas, the city where Dad flew mail airplanes in the day while he studied for his Seminary degree at night. And on this warm Texas night, sitting inside the cool 1980’s church auditorium, my four year old self gazed across a sea of empty chairs to a mostly bare stage. Center-stage stood a crude wooden table, and on that table, in a wooden bowl, sat four waxy-bright red apples.

During his Texas-seminary days (and beyond), Dad acted in church pageants—playing the part of Peter or Herod or Joseph. I never saw Dad more alive than when he was on stage acting real anger, fear, love, or hate. At home, Dad was like a star in a night constellation—so distant, so cold—and I wished that my vibrant church-pageant Dad was my at-home Dad. And perhaps Dad’s church-pageant days is where I got the idea that wearing a mask—hiding the true self behind fake feeling—is the way to really live.

But on this particular night in Texas, I was sitting in the church auditorium after a pageant practice, and as my parents chatted nearby, my tummy grumbled, and all I could see was that bowl of red apples on center-stage. They were beautiful to the eyes, and I wanted one.

I knew these apples weren’t for eating, at least, not for me. But as my parents laughed with fellow-pageant people, I found my black patent shoes hop-skipping up the aisle to the front of the auditorium, and as adults mingled round me, I hopped onto the stage and wandered towards those Garden-of-Eden apples on the handmade table.

Beside the wooden table, I stood on my tiptoes, gazing up at those red orbs of sweetness. My tummy growled. I was just going to look, but then I thought: “Who would notice one tiny bite?”

So in a flash I snatched one apple, the biggest, dug my front teeth into the flesh, and then quickly dropped the apple back in the bowl—bite side down—and dashed off the stage and back down the aisle to where my parents stood visiting.

And, in my memory, as I stood behind my mother’s red dress, a robed figure (one of the other actors) walked onto the stage, picked up a microphone, and in an ominous Edger Allen Poe voice, he said: “Who took the bite out of the apple?”

And my heart panicked: Did he see me? Will he tell my parents? Where can I hide?

How can a person hide the truth in the wide-open world when everyone’s watching?

There was no good hiding place in the back row of the church auditorium. So I hid in the wide open by standing behind my mother’s red skirt and looking at the ground.

And when the robed figure left his microphone, grabbed the apple, and made his way down the aisle, stopping at each person asking, “Did you see who took the bite out of this apple?” I hunched my shoulders and prayed God would make me invisible.

When the robed figure walked up to my parents, I held my breath and prayed I wouldn’t be branded the naughty-apple-biter. I stared hard at the floor—hiding my naked face, fearing my guilt would betray my crime.

And the robed man chuckled as he stood beside my mother and me, his robe hem brushing against my little leg, and he said to my parents: “Just who, do you suppose, took a bite out of this apple?” And my parents chuckled knowing chuckles . . . .

And I—little Eve in the flesh—hid my eyes, refusing to stare at the naked apple marred by my white teeth.

And in my memory, I was never “found out,” at least, no one in-my-face accused me of being the naughty-apple-biter. But given the knowing chuckle-laughs of my parents and the robed man, perhaps they knew all along and just wrote off my crime as the silliness of a hungry four-year-old.

And I can’t help but wonder—is that when it began? The covering of naked shame by hiding?  Perhaps the hiding did start then, but I can’t know for sure . . . .

But this I know for sure: over they years, I traded the clumsy hiding tactics of my four year-old self—averted face and eyes—for the veneer of God talk and God actions. I hid an empty, hurting heart behind the words: God is sovereign, God is good! I hid a heart at war with God by singing in the choir and teaching Sunday School.

Just like Eve in the garden, I bought the lie that I could hide my naked shame and hurt from God.

But God wasn’t fooled.

For the truth is: “Light has come into the world, but [everyone] loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.” (John 3:19-20).

Just like Eve in the garden—I hid for fear that my deeds and words would be exposed for what they were—empty and lifeless.

But God’s word also says, “[Jesus is] the light of the world. Whoever follows [him] will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

And it would take a myriad of years and much pain before four-year-old Eve grew up and traded empty, lifeless words and deeds for walking in the Light of Life . . . .

For those of you on the writing journey with me:

Writing Assignment #2

Part I: . Look up the meaning of your name in a book or on the internet. What personality traits does this meaning suggest and how do they relate to who you are? What aspects don't fit you? Why were you given your name? (Relative, biblical character, athlete, etc) What is the significance of your family name? What names have you been given (such as peacemaker, dumb jock,, slut, brain, trouble-maker, etc.) that do not fit who you are? What name do you desire God to call you? According to scripture, what does God call you?

Part 2: Think of a scene in your life where you were given a name, called a name, or lived up to your name (good or bad). It should be a scene that contains strong emotion. In your writing focus more on your emotions in the scene and try to capture them in your writing. Think about how the emotions affected you  physically and try to capture that as well. At the end of this scene, reflect on how this event with Naming affected how you view yourself, for good or ill.