Behold, the people behind the messy parenting. Our first date was 15 years ago today.

15 years is a long time to live with someone - anyone - particularly a boy from Wisconsin who left a giant piece of wood in the closet that I banged my foot up against today. This is how we roll. He the woodworker and I the writer, and I know if our habits were reversed and computers no longer existed, he'd be yelling at me for all the paper cuts he'd receive from the journals and scraps I'd leave all over the place.

But the writing - like the handcrafted furniture and toys and frames that dot our life across two continents - is about us. Two broken people who love hard amidst the daily mess, and the little people who inhabit the stories.

It's not clean and it's not perfect. But I can live with that.

Where does your story begin?

The Old People

We sit on the hardwood floor, facing eachother, surrounded by half-opened wedding gifts and torn pastel tissue paper. My pen in hand, he reads aloud to me:

"Wine decanter," and who it is from.

I write it down for the thank you list.

We are on the third floor of an old Chicago brownstone. Our first apartment; our first home. The wedding was the week before and we are just now opening and reading and laughing and dreaming. We are married now, and the proof is in the cards and the bows and the matching pillows paired on the bed.

I slit open a small white envelope and take in the image of entwined hands, the typed sentiments, and the tiny signature written in the far right-hand corner of the page: the old people.

"Who are the old people?" I ask him, laughing.

He knows. "My grandparents." The only ones living, who couldn't make the journey, who I'd only met once or twice before. In all honesty, I wasn't sure they knew my name.

"Oh, the old people," I say, and smile. Old people who sign their cards the old people must have a story. And they did. A story of a farm, and a dozen children, and of loss, and of celebration. Of prodigals and companionship and the passing of time.



We give them their first great-grandchild and he meanders along the dirt rows of their farm, chasing barn cats. They meet and hold the girl - "Oh, look at that hair." - before we whisk her across the ocean. But while we are away the old man goes Home and we mourn from afar. The old woman still sees more great-grandchildren, laughing at their names (and we laugh, too, at our earnest originality in naming). And our children remember her and sigh with heavy eyes when she goes Home, too.

But she was ready, we say. She missed him. She is finally where she wants to be: with Jesus and with Grandpa.

A dozen years from the start we reminisce, sift through the wedding box and find the card with entwined hands. Inside hides a crisp $20 bill and it is signed,

the old people.

We laugh and laugh. "How did we miss this?" we ask. Because we know the time is soon, he writes the old woman to thank her and to tell her that we'll do with it what they would've done: go out for coffee, sit side by side, and talk about our story.

For father's day and everything after

I've told this story so many times, it's become classic and renowned and certainly an ironic way to begin a marriage.

He untied my shoelaces and that was it. I knew then and he knew it, too.

When I tell the story, I remember the details. The way my head laid against the dorm room wall, cradling the phone, as I smiled and tried to remember the real name of the boy we called Tico. The girls across the hall, behind their own door, stifling giggles with hand-covered mouths. The MASH games (girls in Bible college play this best, because there is no harm, no sin in it) that had us living in Vegas, driving a blue Honda with four children and an apartment.

Part of that came true. There were four children, though only three are here with us. There was a Honda, though it was red and lived in Oak Park, IL where our love first creaked and groaned under the strain of imperfect unity and immature lovers. There have been apartments, and houses, and more apartments, yet still no Vegas. There was Chicago, and Kansas City, and Dublin instead, even more unexpected than Vegas could ever be.

But I digress. The details are this: He had a side part and I had uncombed curls (the image above is a rarity: I presume I combed it just because I knew I'd see him). He wore ties and I wore plaid flannel. His were creased khakis and mine were combat boots and a skirt with poppies. He'd had no heartbreak and the sutures on mine were just beginning to heal.

In chapel, my feet were on his chair, before I knew his name. He untied the shoelaces and I looked at him and thought without thinking, "Surely not him. He has no idea." When the giggles and the whispers hushed and I sat down beside him on that next day, he looked at me, called me his future wife, and in that moment it was us
against the world,
the school,
the giggling girls,
the frowning boys,
the painful past,
the unsure future,
the parents who no doubt would be doubtful,
against all odds.

It wasn't angry unity, but a united front. Thick and thin. Through my pain and his arrogance, to think it would be easy but to know for certainty that it would not.

And here it is: together we are nearly 12... still children, with growing pains and changing voices. His is stronger now and mine is singing new songs. We don't yet know who we will be or where we will go or how long it'll take us to get there. But between the two of us and the children we try to lead and protect as the divine gifts they are, we make no mistake:

He is the father here, following the Father of our future, and I am the mother who sings the songs that point us Home.

I should be sleeping...

...but Asher's not, so I gotta wait him out before I hit the sheets.

The man is away in London right now at the NFL game. I'm glad he got to go, but I hate being alone in the house at night. Ever since I walked into my mother's empty house (aged 18) at 3 am in the morning minutes after it had been ransacked by thieves, I just don't do well home alone in the dark. I mean, I really really hate it. Which just goes to show you how much I love him. :)

So when the man's away, I try to stay up as late as possible until I can't keep my eyes open any longer and then no longer have the wits about me to be too afraid to sleep. I do this one of two ways: by watching movies and tv shows downloaded from iTunes, or playing on the internet. Tonight is internet night and I have found myself completely drawn into the world of a baby boy who died three years ago.

I'm not quite sure what it is about this story that intrigues me. I mean, there's the God component. I saw the family on Oprah a few weeks ago and I knew just from the sound of the story that they were believers. Then there's the fact that I just gave birth to my own son, who for some twist of fate or luck or providence is totally, completely healthy. (I always wonder at the supposed randomness of God's works. I mean, I know it's not random, but I really do wonder why He chose me to be the mother of healthy children and yet He chose others... well... it's too hard a question for me, I guess).

And then there's that the baby's name is Eliot. This was the name we chose for the baby we lost in 2005. I've never told anyone that, that that was the name, anyway.

Even though I only discovered this story now, years after the fact, I desperately wanted their Eliot to live. I am completely enraptured by this story, by the pictures, by the faith, by the grief. I really don't know why. I do know one thing, though. This family knows God in a way I don't yet know Him. For that, I long...