I think we’ve arrived at the place of noticing. Settling in doesn’t just mean that boxes are eliminated and we know what each drawer holds; it also means that our personalities are coming out of hiding (you know, that shell-shock of change that personalities tend to hide from.) There’s a little tiny sense of day in, day out. Just a little. But enough. Enough that I’m starting to actually recognize my moods. Like I said, my Self is finally coming back.
And we’re standing back like observers, captivated by the emergence in each other: Ah, so that’s how you think!
Yesterday he said to me, “I’m sorry you’re not having a great day.”
I answered, “I’m having a fine day, actually. It’s just a quiet day. You know.”
Later, after more observation, he finally admits, “I guess I never knew you were so moody.”
I laughed. “I think I tried to tell you more than once: they say I’m melancholy because Iam!”
And it occurs to me that no, he doesn’t know what a good but “quiet” day is. And he probably doesn’t understand my being on the verge of tears every time we take a walk and I see the large expanse of green fields and fading summer. Somehow I know that God thinks it’s quite the joke, watching us watch each other, trying to figure out what in heaven’s name makes us tick.
Now we’re learning to love one another even with our polar-opposite differences. Someday–wonder of wonders!–we’ll love one another because of them. Someday we will have lived enough life together that we’ll have been touched and blessed by the very differences that now confound us…and we’ll value them more than our own strengths.
What a crazy thing marriage is. It’s far too lofty of a concept for mere man; God’s fingerprints are all over the design!