Friday, October 12, 2012

Soul Mate

susan-bryon

The Charming and Beautiful Susan and I were not soul mates when we met. It wasn’t instant.  It wasn’t magical. I remember it was a warm, muggy night when we met. There were wine coolers and an overused deck of cards. I wasn’t wearing a shirt. Susan had just gotten off of work from her job as a waitress at Pizza Hut. Her room mate was flirty and smothering me and I was competing with two other guys in my neighborhood for Susan’s affection.

There was no magic. No romance.

We were both stumbling around in the dark. That was twenty-seven years ago this month. Susan was 19. I had been twenty for about a week.

After years, trials big and small and hardships unimaginable, by the grace of God, we're together. We've become soul mates.

Working through this life with your mate refines you. With each trial or test, your relationship together moves to another level of depth of knowing each other. If you fail a test, don’t worry. There’s a make-up test. You get a do-over. But if you take a pass – if you won’t endure – you miss out.

I hope this doesn’t sound like arrogant lecturing. Leave me a comment if it does. What I really want to do is to exhort you, friend, to dig in and dig deep. You have a friend that you share a life with that can be known and loved more than you can imagine if you decide to give it everything you got without expecting anything in return. This is where the relationship moves into overdrive; the turbo kicks in. Shift up.

God is creatively redeeming every facet of your life through this relationship. He’s making all things good. That’s what He does. He makes good things. He makes things that bring Him pleasure. That’s you. That’s your spouse. That’s your family.

God is good all the time. I can't say it enough. He’s fashioning your relationship together to look like a work of art. It’s unthinkable to think He can make anything less than a priceless masterpiece.

Climbing onto the bus after being home sick for a week

I know it doesn't look like it, but Allie is super happy in this pic. She's yelling an exciting greeting to Jordan, her attendant on the bus.


Watching some Disney on the iPad

Monday, October 01, 2012

Happy Face

allie-face

Allie is wearing this happy face quite a bit lately. She’s turned a corner. We have new meds in our routine that are both managing pain and healing up damaged tissue. This has brought a ton of morning stress relief for Allie especially and the rest of the house. Allie sets the mood for the whole house. That’s just how it is.

The above picture was taken on a recent walk that included some swing time. We haven’t been on the swings since school started back up. Allie burst with excitement.

I experienced something weird this week. I’m learning that normal for us, what we’ve come to know as normal over the past five years, is not normal. What I mean is that we are in a routine and are arranging our lives in a way that is functional for us including going to church and school and around the neighborhood. Everything fits and makes sense to us. But the other day, Allie had a one-on-one interaction with another kid about her age that had never been this close to a special needs kid. This newness for the visiting kid was hard for him hard to process and created some weird awkwardness for the child’s mother.

I’ve touched on this a little bit before, but this recent interaction weighed heavily on me. I started to realize that this is never going to change as long as we bring Allie around new people. The temptation for me is to withdraw into a reclusive and protective little world with Allie at it’s center; a place where Allie doesn’t have to deal with new relationships.

Allie, however, is personable and has no awareness of relationship nuances. I want to tell Allie to look the child or parent in the eye and greet them with polite confidence. But she’s way ahead of me. She can’t talk, but she squeals with excitement that puts everyone at ease. Whatever is going to happen next will be new and fun and exciting. She’s not worried. She engages.

To receive the Kingdom of God, you have to be like a child. No guile. No agenda. Just excited about a new friend. Allie is an awesome ambassador of the Kingdom of God. I can all learn from her example.