Juxtapose

Once there was a boy named Mark with a blue truck named The Tick.

He was a dairy farmer in Virginia.

One day he decided to go to a wedding of two dear friends, taking place in Arkansas. Also there were many other dear friends, such as a girl named Jen from Michigan and a girl named Cassie from Massachusetts.

He decided it made a lot of sense to streamline his trip and detour by way of Massachusetts. VA-MA-AR. Makes sense... right?

The wedding was a blast. Everyone stayed in a giant yurt and swam and roasted in the Arkansas sun for a week before the wedding. Cassie had fun and decided, later that fall, to make a detour down to VA on her way to, er... well. She just went down to VA. It was October, during Mark's birthday weekend, and they went all out and went to a harvest fest at Mark's ye olde Southern Baptist Megachurch of his youth. They took a really flattering picture together.

Before leaving VA, Mark's mother made a big deal about how Cassie and Mark should hug goodbye. Cassie got flustered and took a not-so-flattering picture. Mark managed to look somewhat possessive.

Cassie had, as many of her compadres had at the time, "Kissed Dating Goodbye" for the time being and refused multiple offers of a "dating" status from Mark. He visited anyways, like a champ, and finally, a year later on her birthday, sucked her in anyways with the gift of a handmade cow-tooth necklace. He was invited to the family 4th of July picnic like he was someone important.

Everyone went camping that summer and got really grungy up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Heidi and Sar and SJ came too! Cassie was really into Mark's sooty-smelling hoodie.

Nine months later, Mark proposed, Cassie said yes, and they spent the one Valentine's Day of their engagement days sick on the couch with a miserable flu and a cough that lasted a good three weeks (this was pre-Swine Flu days). Good thing V-Day is for suckers anyways, right?

Their wedding ceremony was 7 minutes long but the reception was longer and very fun. They went to Williamsburg, VA for a honeymoon where, in January, it was a good 70 degrees out every day, very fortuitous indeed.

"Pretty cute," she thought, "Good thing I kissed dating hello finally."

Since they got married, they've done tons of fun stuff:

They've gone to the beach.

They briefly foster parented a turtle, Omar, that was going to be squashed by traffic.

They've gone to Six Flags with one half of their favorite West Coast couple, Heidi and Josh, as well as with Cassie's favorite sister, Tess.

And they've eaten ice cream. Lots of it.

The end... or is it?

A deceptively chilly but sunshiney day. No plans until 1030 this morning, which seems like it is forever away at this point. Thankful that Christos anesti, alithos anesti, and He continues to live and continues to be risen, and continues to conquer death. Thankful for a faith that lets me celebrate His resurrection every day of my life, knowing that I live because He died.

Sad weekend at work. For a weekend that can be spent contemplating the resurrection of Christ, I spent an awful lot of time with actively dying people. Who won't be resurrected. This is their life, their chance at it, and now it's almost over for them. While you can never really know when your time will come, it must be pretty sobering to see it staring you right in the face when you do know it is imminently arriving to cut you off. I can see the sadness people have to see it coming, and the difficulty they have with reconciling that with the reality in their heads. Sometimes I don't know how to talk about this stuff, and I also don't know how to not talk about it, it eats away at me so much. Last night I was just thankful for a long drive home with Mark while he listened a lot and I talked a lot. He's good about that, and I needed it.

I did love yesterday, though, spent with people I know and love. I'm still full of food and time spent with my family, my grandparents, my aunt and uncle and their family, and the newest members of our family, the family of Drew's girlfriend, Amanda, who I already find myself loving after such a short time. Happy times.

Up early (again) after another late night of second shift (again). Crawled into bed beside a sleeping husband at a few past midnight after kicking off my germy shoes and peeling off my MRSA laden scrubs at the door. Awake for another hour feeling Baby doing yoga in my belly and mentally dotting the I's and crossing the T's of my shift. I'm always exhausted after work but I do wonder if there will ever be a time when I don't have to relive the entirety of the previous eight to fourteen hours of my work shift in my brain before I can fall asleep.

This morning... Dishes. Laundry. Food shopping. Reading my Bible and keeping warm in the sunlight by the bay window with my toes propped up on the heating duct to take off the chill. Drinking my Ovaltine and taking my vitamin like a good girl. Enjoying quiet. No callbells. Nobody detoxing and yelling. No suicidal patients. No angry doctors and no cussing nurses. No beeping heart rhythm alarms, no running for the crash cart. No seizures and no bleed outs. No excitement for today. Just quiet. I enjoy the challenge and the pace of work - the adrenaline and the gogogo - but sometimes just quiet is enough for one day.

Yesterday was, for both Mark and I, a good and bad work day. Mark's work day started at 6AM and was not great in the beginning but got better halfway through the day, thus improving my morning when I heard that it turned into Answer To Prayer Day. By this, I mean what we always mean when we call something an "answer to prayer" - that is, God answered "yes!" My work day started at 3PM and was, I guess, a God Answered No To My Prayer Day, which was okay too, and not entirely unexpected. Maybe it's pregnancy speaking here, but I'm starting to do less and less well at working 2nd shifts where I don't sit down and eat. I was doing crackers and OJ on the run, yes, but no food. I was tired and my patients were all circling the drain and I was just very glad to be home when I finally made it there at midnight. They call the shift 3-11 but I think they should really call it, "230-12 midnight shift," but that's not quite as snappy.

I was fully expecting to sleep in a little this morning after the two of us didn't conk out until one AM, but so far I haven't been able to. I made an angry noise when my alarm went off, but then I heard all the chirping birds outside my window and that woodpecker that is always hacking away in some tree around here. I haven't really liked birds at all, at least not since I did my Abeka science Book O' Birds in fourth grade and learned every state bird and how to color them and identify them with my geeky homeschooler binoculars. Still, I love them now in the mornings. They're my favorite sound to hear, to know that spring is coming, it's getting warmer, no more snow, no more dark.

I padded around in my big purple fuzzy bathrobe that Christine bought me as a shower present way back when, and I opened the screen door a crack to talk to Mark as he took out the trash to the curb and got into his truck to leave for work. I fell in love with today already. It's foggy out, the air is damp and warm, but it looks like the type of fog that will burn off and reveal clear blue skies mid-morning. Fifty degrees is not "warm" but it feels warm at six AM, and Mark got into his truck in a hoodie, sans jacket, making me so happy to be alive and well on an already lovely day.

Reading through my favorite book of the Bible this morning, Hosea, I came across words in the margin that I probably wrote ten years ago; "God fulfills the promises we make but can't keep."

I thought of Hosea and his sad but beautiful story where he marries a wife he knows will leave him for some lesser man, some lover who would be so disgusting that he would take another man's wife, someone's mother, into his own bed. But God gives the prompts, and Hosea goes back over and over again, buying her back with whatever he had, persuading her with love and promises that he did keep himself. God talks to Israel in this book using Hosea as His example, and He says, someday, Gomer-Israel, I will call you back and you will take it seriously. Someday, you will stop calling me "Master" as if I own you, but you'll call me "Husband" because I love you.

Then I thought of Gomer and how, I don't know. Maybe she was what we think of as this trampy woman, selling herself to men for whatever she could gain.. But maybe she was just a very lost woman, who looked a lot like me, never fully committing, always being drawn away by something that looked more desirable than a steady loving Husband.

I can't even think, can't fathom the possibility of leaving the comfort of my husband here, my best friend, my first love, for anyone else. To me, there is nobody better equipped to love me and care for me, and nobody I enjoy caring for and loving more than this Mark. I see him, I know him, we are one person yet distinctly separate.

...And yet to my God, who comforts perfectly, who desires my faith purely, who pursues me with blessings and love even when I am least faithful myself, I find myself always walking astray. And He finds me again, and again. He takes me to the wilderness, speaks quietly to me, and tells me, one more time, and one more time, and one more time, that I am His, and even should I ignore that fact, He will never even look, never think a thought about another besides me. Faithfulness. That's who my God is. He makes good of my marriage vows to Him even when I do not keep them myself.