marriage

May 22, 2013 By AmandaBeth

(The Long Center / Blue Lapis Light Production)

I am blessed to know creative people. People who understand the need to create, and honor their gifts, and offer sacrifices with a brush or a song or a poem. So a few nights ago I spread out a blanket in front of the sweeping Austin skyline to watch one of my friends dance, thirty feet off the ground, like an eagle taking flight. The choreography was amazing, with dancers zip-lining off the roof and prancing on suspended platforms and circling large pillars on harnesses that reflected their every move on the outdoor ceiling. Through the red light it resembled devils at war, prancing and leaping and crouching low.

And the silks, oh the silks. Without a harness at all, these incredible species of human beings climbed and bowed and swayed and made love to dangling ribbons from the sky, their bodies covered in nude bodysuits adorned with dazzling crystals, and they were the most perfect renditions of angels I’ve ever seen. The daring moves made me gasp and draw in my breath tight as salt ran down my cheeks. Sometimes it was too much, like pictures of children being pulled from wreckage and placed in their mother’s arms or soldiers returning from war. I could scarcely take it in.

And then the duet began, man and woman both dangling in the sky. She was holding onto him as he swung her free and they twirled and climbed and she trusted his grasp, her back arching and his legs splitting strong and they were so deliciously intertwined. And the concept of the marital union pulsed through my veins, remembering St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians about how two are forged into one.

A new-age voice came pulsing through the speakers, and though the rendition was new the lyrics were penned in 1752, and I’ve sung it since childhood, and I knew that God was there and is and forever will be, even through storms and death and the rubble of tornado tears.

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake 

To guide the future, as He has the past. 

Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake; 

All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Because sometimes it’s not enough to express love in words. You have to open your eyes and see it, and shut out the world to hear it, and open your heart and feel it. Sometimes you just have to acknowledge that it’s all too mysterious to explain, and there’s no reason to trust, except you know you must, and you do, and you somehow survive. God is not simply my friend, or my teacher, or level-headed adversary. He is not just a crutch for my weakness or a pillow I grasp up in the long nights.

My God is the creator of the universe in which I stand. He displays love in ways I cannot understand, mercy in a way that I do not deserve, and tears for the lost that is deeper than I can fathom. And I accept this love, and the creative spirit, and the sweat that flows out of the pores of his children. I applaud loud, and stand, and bow my head in thanks.

After the dancers swept across the stage and said their goodbyes, I pointed my car toward home. In that dark and quiet night, I was thankful for the ability to accept mystery through the loud cacophony of life. Love was born into the world at night with a star blazing, and mystery abounded. Such love prayed for the cup to pass in the hours which we comfortably slept, but God bled out our sin into darkness once again. Against the backdrop of the world then, and now, and what is to be. But the rising, it was revealed. The son, He rose. And the beauty that resulted was blinding.

Be still, my soul. At least long enough to take it all in.

Infinity, plus one

April 19, 2012 By AmandaBeth

“I sure love your daddy,” I said to my daughter once as we were walking hand-in-hand though the grocery store parking lot. Sometimes I do that – say things I’ m thinking out loud. It often gets me in trouble, like when I’m judgmental or harsh or wish someone would move the freak over in the fast lane. But this particular day I was thinking about her father. My husband. The man I love more each passing day of our almost thirteen-year marriage.

“You love him more than anyone in the whole world?” she asked. “Like the entire earth?” Her little hand was clutching mine as she looked up and squinted through the sun. I’m wondering what she’s getting at, like if we lived on a smaller planet I’d just sorta hang out with him. Maybe buy him a soda or get him a ticket to Sea World.

“Do you love him more than me?” she asked.

The question hit my face like a slap as we walked into the grocery store. Right there by the pineapples. How do I answer such a question? How can I possibly explain such a love while picking out grapefruit? This was my first-born. My precious child. I was the center of her little world.

“Well it’s just different,” I said. I was really hoping she’d just let this go so I could head to the cheese section in peace. But she was so fixated on my response that she flat-out ignored the free samples. This was serious. I could have just said I loved them both exactly the same – children like for things to be fair and equal and perfectly symmetrical. Half the pie. We each get a balloon. Three candies each. But I couldn’t lie. Not to my own child.

My daughter and I gush a lot. It makes my husband roll his eyes and leave the room, mostly because it’s (1) annoying; (2) loud; and (3) insanely repetitive.

“I love you a million times,” I’d say to her. Of course she loved me too. Except a million zillion times, plus infinity.

“I love you that much, plus one,” I’d say.

I do love her so. I have an immense longing to protect my children at all costs and surround their world with freedom and creativity. And they love me, to the extent they know how. It’s so innocent. Full of happy bubbles and sparkles. It’s so squeaky and pure I wish I could bathe in it. But my daughter has so much yet to learn.

I met my husband our last year in college. He was a fraternity boy with political ambitions. He wore beat-up, red wing boots, pulling his hat low on his head to cover up his red, tired eyes. I was drawn to him in a strange way that ignored all consequences. His crooked smile kept flashing through my mind all the moments of my days, and the world was somehow off balance without him in it. That was how things always were with us. From the very first moment we spoke, it was like that big wheel in Lost where all time and space shifted. We didn’t really have a choice. We were all but helpless participants in God’s master plan to yoke us together, one pushing and one pulling in all the right moments. I melted when he touched me. I would have followed him anywhere, to the very ends of the earth. No matter what the size.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my children with an emotion I didn’t know existed until their faces were raised to meet my eyes. My throat closed up when I saw their bodies like tiny angels and thought I wasn’t worthy to own such beautiful things, even for such a little while. Sometimes I stop folding laundry or scraping old oatmeal off cereal bowls and just look at them, my sweet precious little children, basking in the glow of the everyday. They are the big miracles of life.

But someday, they will go. They will take the extra china and good thread count sheets and beg me to make them cookies, but they will still leave. Some other mother, who rocked and held and loved their child as fiercely as I have loved, will send their offspring out into the world and the two will meet. And I will be but a memory of past days. The woman of remember when and you just won’t believe. Then, it will just be us, my husband and I, rocking away on the quiet front porch, alone. Or sitting in some café in France, drinking wine with grins on our faces.

I suppose when my daughter is older, after she struts headstrong into her own separate world, she might understand. After she survives her own youthful heartbreak and finds a partner who feeds her soul. Maybe then, she will know the answer, standing in the produce section, with refrigerated air blowing into her face and melon in hand, how to answer a question from her child about the intricacies of love.