Friday, November 25, 2011

The Hot Water At Ten and If It Rains A Closed Car At Four

Hello People,

And a very merry post-Thanksgiving to all of you.  I hope that your Thanksgiving found you surrounded by friends and loved ones.  Hazel and I found out this Thanksgiving how hard holidays can be away from family.  That is not to say that we were entirely miserable or to request your sympathy, but living in a foreign country during the Holidays can be difficult.  It made me fully appreciate the family that we have left in the States, the football, the Asparagus Casserole, and the delight of entering the Christmas season collectively.  

With that being said, we have a wonderful loving God who, despite my best efforts at doom and gloom, never ceases to amaze me with His goodness.  Hazel and I have been married for going on four years now.  Four wonderful years of driving each other batty and loving every minute of it.  I remember when I met Hazel. She was sitting in the coffee shop of a local church.  Actually, I remember the first time I ever saw Hazel.  My family had not yet moved to her home town and it was nowhere near a done deal that we would be moving there, but there we were looking around and there she was on a poster for the local Youth Group. I specifically remember thinking when I saw that poster, "Yeah, I could move here." When I met her a few months later in the coffee shop, there she was, this shy pretty girl.  I loved that.  Anyone who has met me will know that I talk enough for two people so maybe it was just natural that I would gravitate toward a person who didn't feel the need to let slip every passing thought.  We barely spoke then, but I remember it vividly.  

A little while later found me scrambling toward my favorite back left corner seat of a big van (the perfect spot for sleeping) heading to do block parties in Miami and who was sitting on the same row opposite from me?  This same quiet girl.  I think we may have carried on about three conversations during that whole 12-14 hour bus ride uninterrupted, but I saw her.  I was amazed by her, quite honestly.  Here was a girl who didn't need to be loud, who seemed to be actually genuinely bashful and who could devour books with the same enjoyment that made me listen to OK Computer and think, "Yes. This is it!"  And I thought, this is an individual that I want to know.  I won't deny the attraction, but it was not just attraction that made me want to get to know her.  I was fascinated.  Here was a girl who seemed to be seeking God's will and not just her way, which was something that I had not seen very much before.  And she was so shy that for the next week we barely talked.  I resorted to leaning over with a pen one evening during supper at a restaurant and scribbling a silly note on her paper placemat.  For the rest of the week I think thats all we did, just scribble notes and pass them back and forth.  

I remember a big moment in my life, maybe the big moment in my life came when we got back from that trip and she came to tell me goodbye.  I think it was then that it hit me just how much I liked this girl.  I had a sort of crisis then.  I remember thinking, "She's leaving for college in a few weeks.  Just be her friend."  I imagined seeing her every so often when she came home from school; the conversations held between rows of seats at church smiling and thinking of what might have been and then that inevitable day that she would bring someone back with her.  My mind's reaction to this imaginary friend was not polite.  There was this big moment, very much a sort of "Prufrock" moment of asking myself, "Do I dare disturb the universe?" when I told myself, "Chances are she will break your heart."  I remember so clearly the realization that if I didn't go for it, if I didn't disturb the universe, my heart was going to be broken anyway. 

Now here we are, six years later.  We manage to talk a little more now.  We are no longer restricted to silly puzzles scribbled on random bits of paper though we still have those papers, all of them, and pull them out occasionally to remember.  Three years of marriage and I am so very grateful. I am grateful to a loving Father who loves me enough to send His son and to give me a life abundant.  I am thankful that God thinks enough of me to send that quiet, shy, pretty girl to love me and to be loved by me.  

This year is stretching us in ways that I don't think that we could have imagined being stretched.  We are far from family, as I said, during the holidays, and yet God has provided us with family here as well.  Hazel and I hosted our first Thanksgiving celebration of our own this year.  Who would have thought that six years after meeting, Hazel and I would be living in Telmar and hosting a Thanksgiving feast with families from the U.K and Korea in our home? Yet here we were.  And you know what? It was wonderful.   What an amazing loving God we have!  Let us thank God every day for His infinite blessings that, even in the midst of trials, are so much greater than we could ever deserve or desire.

2 comments:

  1. You guys have such a beautiful story. :) God is so faithful!

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  2. How sweet! We all missed you too but enjoyed hearing about your first Thanksgiving in Telmar. Love to you both-
    kw

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