Category Archives: Marriage

The Marrying Kind, Part I

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I’ve been thinking about Nate all day. Of course I think about him every day, but today it’s been hour-to-hour. For some reason I’ve been focused on the day we got engaged, 41 years ago this month.

Nate was in the U. S. Army at the time, based at Ft. Riley, Kansas. We’d been maintaining our relationship long distance for many months and needed to be together. So when he arranged to get away from the base, I took a train from Chicago to Topeka.

I had an inkling he was going to pop the question that weekend, because he’d sent a mysterious package to my Chicago apartment with clear instructions not to open it. Instead I was to bring it to Kansas.

When you’re in the Army, you don’t have much say over where you’ll be when. He’d ordered the ring on his last trip home, and rather than risk letting it arrive at the base, he’d sent it to my address. I knew enough not to ask questions.

Nate and I had met on a blind date during our senior year in college, dating sporadically until graduation. But the Viet Nam war was raging, and he had a low draft number. To avoid being drafted, he participated in ROTC and hoped for Officer Candidate School.

It had been two years since we’d graduated, but during that time we hadn’t spent much time together and hadn’t talked of marriage. It had been a relationship based on letters and occasional phone calls, during which we’d both dated others and hadn’t yet talked of commitment. But a strong friendship had solidified.

When Christmas of 1968 arrived, however, we’d gotten together over the holidays, and the relationship took off, and by March we were “dancing around permanency.” I decided I shouldn’t proceed without getting some counsel and went to Dad, the logical, reasoning parent.

Without checking any notes or taking an old, dog-eared list from his wallet, he responded with seven or eight check-points for me. He said he’d used them before he married Mom, and it had worked out “pretty good.”

I remember his top five, which he listed in importance:

(1) Make sure he’s a Christian.

(2) A strong sense of humor will be an asset.

(3) Watch to see how he treats his own parents.

(4) Good general health will lessen the stress in marriage.

(5) Marry someone who will bring to the relationship what you don’t have.

Nate passed with flying colors, and we got engaged that July, 1969, in Kansas.

As soon as I’d said “yes” and he’d put the ring on my finger, he ran into the bathroom, emerging with a big smile, a dozen red roses and a fully decorated double-layer cake with lit candles! “I figured we’d want to celebrate, and this was all I could think of!” He was a man in love.

Throughout the train ride home, I stared at my engagement ring, bursting to announce our plans. And to this day it’s my favorite piece of jewelry.

I don’t think I’ll ever take it off.

“Treat your wife with understanding… She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life.” (1 Peter 3:7)

Look-alikes

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Today I was rummaging around for one of those snap-shut eyeglass cases to protect sunglasses in a beach bag. Since Nate was always careful with his glasses, I looked in his top dresser drawer, and sure enough, there were five snap-shut cases, just the way he left them. One had reading glasses in it. Two had prescription sunglasses. One was empty, and the fifth surprised me. Inside was a small, shiny pair of scissors.

Although Nate occasionally complained about the noise and debris of his school-age children, he didn’t nitpick his adult kids. There was one exception, however. Over the years he couldn’t hang onto a small pair of scissors he kept in our bathroom medicine cabinet and blamed different kids for its repeated disappearance. Eventually he’d always head for Walgreens to buy another one.

Today I discovered how he’d permanently solved the dilemma. He’d bought a scissors and hidden it in a glasses case, which made me laugh. But why did he want tiny scissors anyway?

In all the years we were married, although I often heard about his scissors disappearing, I never asked what he was cutting. Now I know. Tucked in with the scissors was a tiny comb resembling a Barbie doll accessory. It reminded me of something that happened at a wedding reception three years ago.

A young girl came up to us as we stood chatting with another couple, balancing our appetizer plates. Although we didn’t know her, she asked to take Nate’s picture. Would he mind? His quizzical look made her finish his thought. “…because you look just like Donald Trump!”

As I took his appetizers from him, Nate reluctantly agreed. The young photographer asked him to point his finger as if he was saying “You’re fired!” Nate did, albeit without enthusiasm. The rest of us enjoyed the moment much more than he did.

On the way home, he talked about the girl and her photo. “I hope it doesn’t turn up on the internet.” But my surprise came when he added, “I get that all the time downtown.”

“You get what all the time?” I asked.

“Get taken for Donald Trump.”

And that, I decided, was what the scissors and mini- comb were all about. When his brows got too bushy and the likeness became strong, he’d trim and comb them neatly. He wasn’t interested in being taken for Donald Trump.

Folklore says everybody has a double somewhere. I don’t believe it, because God is creative enough not to have to “ditto” anyone. But the concept of doubles is intriguing. Celebrity look-alike contests abound, and the side-by-side photos do grab our attention. Some people even develop flourishing careers based on looking and acting like someone they’re not.

In reality, each of us is exactly who God made us to be.

And he wants us to be ourselves, but makes one exception. He gives permission, actually urges us, to become look-alikes of somebody: him. Although we don’t need a scissors or a mustache comb to develop the resemblance, we do need something much more difficult to acquire: a non-stop attitude of sacrificial love.

Now… if only that were available at Walgreens.

“Imitate God… in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ.” (Ephesians 5:1-2a)

Hankie-Help

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Rhett Butler was never without a handkerchief when Scarlett needed one, because he was a classy guy. Having a ready hankie was the mark of a true gentleman.

Nate was a gentleman, too.

I can’t count the times I needed his hankie-help when we were away from home. Coffee spills, make-up gone awry, tears at a funeral or sticky fingers. The uses were endless. His hankie was usually out of his suit pocket before I’d looked up from my sudden need, and he never gave a thought to the fact that he might want it later himself and find it soiled by his wife.

I can remember watching my mother put a handkerchief in her purse each time she went out, noticing that my father had one, too. People of that generation didn’t use Kleenex with abandon like I do. They were “thinking green” well before it was the thing to do.

I also recall shopping with Mom to buy a bridal shower gift. She selected a handkerchief made of gauzy white linen fanned out in a square flat box and wrapped in tissue. The embroidered pink roses on one corner were matched by a pink edging all around. As a young girl I knew the bride would love it and wondered if she might even carry it on her wedding day.

When we were cleaning out Mom’s drawers after she died, she had quite a collection of beautiful hankies. But short of using them in an art project, we didn’t know what to do with them. Times had changed. Although I remember every elderly auntie tucking a handkerchief in her dress sleeve  with the decorative part showing, today’s women were different. And Mom’s hankie supply went to Good Will.

I can see how hankies are wonderful for mopping up moisture — from eyes, noses, clothes, children’s faces and unnumbered other places. And life is fraught with messes that need this kind of attention. Although I’ve never owned my own hankie, I was delighted to be married to a handkerchief-carrying gentleman. I needed him, and I needed his hankies. Both helped me clean up many a mess.

Sometimes I think about the Lord and his expertise at cleaning up after us.   Throughout the Bible he mopped up a variety of disasters, and he’s in the same business today, offering his services to those of us who keep messing up. And the best part about his cleaning is that it isn’t just surface work. What he offers goes deep into the heart and fixes up what cannot be touched with a hankie but is far more difficult to clean. It’s the buried soil of sin.

But the beauty of God’s mess-mopping is that once things have been cleaned up, he’s willing to let the past stay in the past. Although I don’t think God actually forgets anything, he does promise not to keep bringing up the messes we’ve made. They’re as good as forgotten.

I still remember quite a few of the wet clean-ups Nate’s hankies helped me with, and many of the handkerchiefs show stains to testify of their histories. Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, Nate never brought these things up to me again either. Like Rhett Butler, he was just happy he could help.

” ‘Come now, let’s settle this,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow.’ “ (Isaiah 1:18a)