One Flesh

We sat across from one another in the food court yesterday, munching on our pizza and visiting. I looked at dearest one and said, “I’m not taking this for granted.” Our eyes locked as I said it and mine grew a bit teary. We both knew I wasn’t talking about the pizza. I was talking about us.

In just less than two weeks we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of our engagement. We had met for the first time 8 days earlier; dearest one driving over 2000 miles to come meet me in person. We had been pen pals for a time at ages 14 and 16 and then broke off communication for nearly 4 years. Within the first week of leaving home I wrote to him only to read in his return letter that he was engaged to be married. I didn’t hear from dearest one again until after he broke that engagement. Within days of our own engagement he drove back home and I stayed put. I would be finished college in a few months and we would see each other then. In the end, 5 months to the day of our engagement, we stood before the Justice of the Peace and made our vows. We were young, naïve and foolish. In love with the idea of someone loving us. I was an atheist and he lived on the dark side. Statistics would have put our marriage in the category of “not a candidate for longevity.”

We were married 5 days when I had my first and only blackout from drinking. We hadn't spent enough time together before marriage for dearest one to have any inkling that I might have a drinking problem. Eleven days together and one staggering drunken binge could be normal for any college student, right?

But this really isn't a post about my drinking. It's more a post about one of the reasons I drank and how that area of my life is being healed. It feels like a miracle and a gift.

I've sat here a while trying to figure out how to put it into words.

But words fail me. Maybe I'm not meant to write about it at all.

I have written here and here andhere about my sexual past and current struggles. I don't know how God works but I feel freed. Not that the struggles have disappeared. God knows that. But somehow dearest one and I have finally become one flesh.