Tag Archives: marriage

November 11, 2009 · 4:00 AM

Homeless

It’s been one of those days when I constantly wonder how I am going to function for the next five minutes.  Mike and I are wading in the cloudy waters of trying to purchase our first home.  Turns out no matter how orderly your affairs are, the banks and the government can still sneer as you squirm under their magnifying glass in the sun.

Dealing with mortgage paperwork today grew so simultaneously intense and depressing that I had to leave work.  Granted, leaving at 3:30 when I show up at 7:15 isn’t that big of a deal, but it felt dramatic.  I hurried out of the building and then walked slowly through the rain to my car.  And then I wet my face with my own tears for the entire ride home.

It seemed the tears and the rain weren’t enough to rinse my attitude, so I thought a run would be more effective.  It didn’t feel like exercise; it felt like survival.  I ran straight into the wind and dared it to take me down.  I thought surely it would.

It’s funny how much faster my thoughts come when I’m motoring down the sidewalk.  It’s like my legs force my brain to crank out negativity at twice the going rate.   That might sound counterproductive, but in fact it serves to cut my overall catharsis in half…thirty minutes running equals one hour of crying.

“Hey!”

I glanced up quickly to see who had hollered at me.  I saw a man with long dark hair, holding a Coors Light in one hand and a bag of his possessions in the other.

“Hey…”  I barely replied, since speaking to strangers on the street tends to freak me out.   He was standing under a busstop for protection from the rain and I was approaching, about to pass by.

“Beautiful,” he said quietly.  I looked at him again.  What?

“BEAUtiful,” he said again, this time more emphatically.  I’ve been called various lewd things by people on the street before, but this word wasn’t among them.  And oddly, this didn’t seem creepy, because he didn’t seem to mean it to be.

It took me a couple of paces to consider this, but by then I was past him so I hurridly glanced back.  He gave a small, humble smile.  Somehow, incredibly, I felt it was fully intended for me to feel loved — not by him, of course, but by God.  I know that comes across as though I am on my fourth martini to be writing that, but I really believe it.

Sometimes I put God in too small a space and then I lecture Him by saying He can only reach out to me in three specific ways: prayer, the Bible, and trusted friends.  Then He promptly ignores my lecture and shocks me by using a scraggly stranger to call me beautiful on the street.

And let me tell you, beautiful I was not.  My hair clung to my face from the rain, my clothes were soaked in water and sweat, and I was probably as red as a cosmo in a cold glass.

I started to cry as I ran, which is just as awkward as it sounds, especially when there are forty cars crossing Mercer in rush hour traffic.  I imagined them in their cars saying to their passengers, “What’s with that girl?  Running must be REALLY hard for her if she has to bawl just to get through it.”

It occured to me as I ran that this is just one day.  I am moving through life with burdens and struggles like anyone, but I am running.  I’ve got legs to carry me and a heart that’s still pumping.

It doesn’t really matter where we live, if we get the condo we’re trying to get, or if we rent for the next ten years.  That doesn’t define us.  Just like the man under the busstop, we’re essentially homeless in this world.  But that’s not so bad when one of your own calls you beautiful.

I rounded the corner onto Fairview with a refreshed ferver.  I abandoned my hostility, looked at the sky and sprinted all the way home.

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October 14, 2009 · 6:00 AM

“…and you must be MRS. Reph.”

Last week I attended a political dinner which concluded a conference Mike helped to organize.  Mike serves as treasurer for the Evergreen Leadership Conference and works all year for this one-day event.

That he participates shouldn’t really be surprising. That I looked forward to attending may be.

You probably wouldn’t know it if you met me now, but I used to have my heart set on being a senator.  I’ve been involved in political activities since high school, and always assumed that I would go to law school, serve privately, and establish a public presence before finally running for senator — and then I’d get married.

Well, that didn’t work out, did it?

It’s nobody’s fault but my own.  I chose other pursuits, realized I had no interest in law school, and that was that.

Still, this dinner last week was a bit of an out of body experience.  As I watched him interact with people and run the event, I couldn’t believe it wasn’t me.  I, too, have lived and worked in Washington, D.C.  I have hob-knobbed with politicians and attended political events.  I have walked the halls of the House of Representatives and the Capitol building as an intern.  How did I end up as the arm piece?  (Not that I am, though I do try to dress to impress.)

Most people expect the uninvolved ladies to be somewhat mindless.   I choose not to be insulted by this.  It’s an opportunity; when a group is discussing health care and I make a thoughtful comment, I can see the tiny eyebrow raises and metaphorical jaws on the floor as if they’re exclaiming, “She reads the paper!  You don’t say!”

Meeting people in this atmosphere is the place where I feel most acutely the “extension” part of marriage — the surreal feeling that people are looking and talking with me not as who I am, but as an extension of my husband.

As much as I love talking politics with the general public, I do have my limits.  For instance, a gentleman seated next to me at dinner the other night was going on and on about how homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed in church until they’re no longer practicing their lifestyle.  I replied that if all people weren’t allowed in church until after they stopped sinning, the place would be empty, but he refused to see my point.  Soon, I was boiling below the surface.

These are the moments when Mike lightly taps my arm in the “it’s not worth it,” gesture, and I simply let the man finish his thought.  I nod politely, and transition by commenting on the approaching dessert.

I think this is where I lose my footing in the political sphere.  You see, I am much more pro-Jesus than I am pro-Republican.  I am loyal to my faith, not my political party.  Jesus is not part of a political group, so I do not want to align myself too strictly with something outside of Him.  However, I can see that this line of thinking can quickly lead to being utterly passive, and that is what keeps me engaged in moral/economical/social issues of the day.

For now formal involvement isn’t my pursuit.  However, it will be a long transition to let go of that part of myself, and realize that this other role, this seeming second-place as wife, is just as valid.  Perhaps more so.

The unexpected blessing is that political events aren’t as hard as when I did them alone.  It’s almost like Mike whacks away at the underbrush and then I just have to walk through.  Since people already know him, by the time I meet them it’s like they already accept me; all I have to do is not ruin that impression.  Previous to marriage, I did all my own bushwhacking.

When Mike and I got together, we both loved that the other was as into politics as we were.  It was such a bonus, because so many people we’d each dated completely didn’t get it.  But we didn’t really dive deep enough to see the obvious:  there may be two senators for each state, but there probably shouldn’t be two senators for each marriage.

Two of the people I respect most in this world, Skip and Cyd Li, assured me that marriage does not mean I fade away, only to be glanced at as an accessory to my mate.

“You are NOT wallpaper,” they said emphatically one night while having dinner at our place.  “We want to see you get your law degree and run for city council and move your way up.  If you don’t want that, fine.  But don’t dismiss it just because Mike has those same interests.”

This advice is only believable because Cyd lives it every day.  Her marriage to Skip, who is partner in a major Seattle law firm, doesn’t stop her from buzzing all over town with her own projects and passions.  She gives to people as much as he does, but uses her own gifts.

I suppose that’s why I’m fine with redefining success for myself.  Mike may decide never to pursue a seat, or he may become even more involved tomorrow.  I have to be at peace with where I am apart from that.

Besides, it’s no secret that I handle criticism about as well as I handle getting lemon juice in my eye.  Mike has thicker skin.  He’ll handle the lemons.

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August 19, 2009 · 6:00 AM

Arrivederci

Today I leave for Europe for two weeks, and this is significant not just because it’s insanely awesome, but also because it’s awesomely insane.  Let me tell you why.

Three years ago, in the summer of 2006, I had coffee with a friend the day before I left with my family to go on a cruise in the Mediterranean.  Now, in the summer of 2009, I am married to that friend, and he is joining my family on a cruise in the Mediterranean.

When I realize things like this, when I actually stop and process that this is my reality, I only have one thought:  God is good.

At small group last week, Annie reminded me that this is an “Oprah full-circle moment” for me and Mike.  I replied, “Isn’t that so typical of our God?  He does spectacular things and then puts it right on your plate so you can’t ignore the work He has done.”

I like to play a little freak-myself-out game called, “What If Someone Told Me?”  In this case, what if during coffee with Mike someone told us that a year and a half later we’d be married?  What if while exploring Rome someone told me that three years later my husband would be staring at the Trevi Fountain with me?  And that husband would be Mike Reph?

What if?  I’ll tell you what if.  It would have made me completely slack-jawed in disbelief followed by a crack-addict-like binge of yelling and running around the fountain, freaking out entirely.  In a good way.

It’s nice I didn’t know.  That would not have been good for American tourism abroad.

Actually, if I had known that the coffee with Mike would prove to be a catalyst for intense reflection on life/singlehood/marriage/relationships, I might have seen that this would naturally lead to us being together.  I might have just turned to him, in a knowing way, and said “Arrivederci,” which in Italian means “until we meet again.”

Let’s back up.  A couple of months before that coffee, Mike told me he had feelings for me.  I was dating someone else, so I turned him away.  When I was honest with myself, I knew that I adored Mike…but he wasn’t yet the man he could be.  And I didn’t want less than his best.

But at our coffee date he had just returned from traveling through Costa Rica and Nicaragua, where his sister and brother-in-law were missionaries.  It sounds crazy, but after that trip he was a different man.  He was settled in who he was, who he knew God to be, and what he wanted in life.  And this sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s completely true and inexplicable:  my hands shook and my heart raced for 45 straight minutes — but I didn’t know why.

The next day on my way to Rome I journaled and journaled about what could have made me physically react so strongly.  I knew something was up, something had shifted, and things weren’t going to be the same when I returned.

Throughout the trip I realized my reaction had less to do with Mike than it did my own commitment-phobia.  I was freaked out because I knew this was someone I could be serious about, and the prospect was threatening to my “strong and single” self.  As I processed this through, I started to see how much could be gained by stepping into this adventure; the wild journey of walking the mountainous roads of relationship with a man.

I didn’t return to the states ready for a ring; it wasn’t that dramatic.  There was no sudden need to be someone’s girlfriend.  The progress was that I was no longer afraid of it.  As minor as that sounds, if you knew me then, you would have thought I’d had a brain transplant while in the south of France.

Apparently, in my absence, God had been working the same magic on Mike, because after my return when we saw each other at a funeral, he claims that he saw me across the room and knew beyond any doubt that he would marry me.  It was as if the entire world stopped and he was bolted to the floor.  He was that certain.

In my life, what could be more awesomely insane?  Our story is unexpected and finely-woven and as loud as a bandstand, all at once.

Last week we were in Kirkland running some errands, and Mike took me to the same Starbucks where we had that fateful coffee date.  He wanted to acknowledge that surprisingly important piece of the puzzle.

It feels like that date was decades ago, and yet I can recall the expression on his face as we hugged goodbye and he told me to have a great trip.

Arrivederci.

Until we meet again.

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