“Is this getting to be too much for you, hun?” It was somewhere between the hours of 2 and 3 and we hadn’t yet been up the whole night. We’d gone for a walk around the dining room, trying to get relief from the pain after tossing and turning had not been working. The kicker in all this was that her surgery knee was completely fine. Small amounts of ache and drainage but after months of being barely able to walk and counting the too many days until surgery, now she had a different problem.

“Well the short answer is, I love you.” These are not odd words between us, although it usually comes out “love you” and then I say it to her back. I didn’t need to bring this up and Lord knows I’ve already said it, but I had to say again about the time she bought us groceries. She spent $282 or something outrageous. I could not believe someone would spend that much money, that people even had that kind of money to spend. And then she had taken me and spent it on us. She’ll still send us money. $500 at Christmas.

“These could’ve been my parents”, I’m thinking to myself. Not really, I think also, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been that way. Anymore this has nothing to do with him. I’ve heard about his life and see the pictures of his kids. There comes this point though where you’re no longer thinking about past people. He is not the one who has loved me now for two decades, the person who has graciously let me come here without even a halt or hesitation. I am not going to indulge these thoughts, these memories.

He is not, I am positive, even thinking about me, a fact that helps even more to bring my thoughts into submission. There were three young men I loved in high school, and this particular person was one of them. Sophomore, junior, and senior year. After that he went to Lincoln, where Barbara went also, another friend I was sometimes jealous of. I’d known him longer, I hope she knew that, but she was still nice. For whatever reason he didn’t end up with her either. I knew his kiss count and it was absolutely ridiculous.

But he was not, for me, marriage material, something we could sense, think, and talk about back then–I’m sure he doesn’t even remember. Great fun, yes. Someone to hang with and ride around in his truck with. He wouldn’t wear a seatbelt and was proud of not doing so. He’d blast his songs and songs by The Dixie Chicks and I wanted to be right there with him with whatever so-called pillow of blue bonnets. One time I was, in the back of his truck, and then another, and neither time could we rightly indulge.

So we didn’t very much and this drove me crazy, this taking of turns where neither one could be free. But it was fine because it wasn’t meant to be for us anyway. In marriage you needed someone responsible. And that was our problem, we were too much alike. Who would actually do the dishes? Who would be the serious, the ordered one? I went to camp and forgot all about home, about all these people who’d meant so much to me before. I don’t remember ever officially breaking up. I just came back and was different.

One time I asked Josh, not too terribly long ago, “What was it that attracted you to me? Like what was the thing that made the first big impression?” He said it was my faith, that I seemed like an actual, genuine Christian. And then I told him what mine was, that he was humble and had a servant heart. I woke up in the morning and said I wanted him next to me. It was dark, around 5:11, and another hour before I’d hear back. This time I’d left early to return to my man. He was in the kitchen helping Ron with the deliveries.