When I was sixteen I heard a voice behind me whisper "You will marry John Odhner." I turned to see who would dare to say such a thing... and saw no one.

I filed the memory in the manila folder marked "Forget it" and went on about my high school centric business.

Yet five years later, when the same young man started to lasso my attention, I remembered, just barely, and wondered. God did a remarkable job of coaxing me with invisible threads into a popcorn flinging relationship, knowing full well that there would soon be a mess to clean up.

Raising nine children has been messy, especially as I was not the only one doing the flinging. But the joyful feelings are stored up inside me, and I even know the combination to the storage unit.

Today I learned that they have the ability to raise the temperature in their brains 10 degrees when they swim in frigid waters. I have the ability with my own heart, if I remember to use it.

One of the ways is music. Start singing a song that we love and the skies fill up with celebration.

The second one is touch.  All it takes is a warm toe under the covers, to know that we are in this together.

The third is nature. Something happens when we simply open the door and step into the world, especially if one of us has the IQ to look up.

Fourth is our own photographs. I was looking at some the other day and felt the rewind button pull me into our past. I looked at us then and held the moment. We have a shared history. Then is part of now, and part of where we are going.

Fifth is laughter. We played a silly word game today, and watching John laugh is as expansive to my heart now as it was when we had no backdrop of problems to distract us.

I have a new manila folder now. It is marked "Remember it."