The interplay between the known and unknown is where life happens. When John and I said "We do" our minds were saturated with the certainty before us. We were pledging our faithfulness to God and to each other, with a subplot involving children and jobs and houses that were as vague as a first year art student's sketches of a model that has not learned to stay
still.
Kids and addresses were part of our peripheral vision, but our eyes were on each other. Soon our heads began to swivel to either side as babies were born and his ministry required more than a bullet proof sermon like the ones that got A's in theological school.
Known: We got hitched.
Unknown: How we would survive.
It is a good thing really. If we had read the synopsis
of The Story of Lori and John on Rotten Tomatoes we would have been paralyzed with fear.
"Nine children including one with autism who will at times scream for hours on end and identical twins, years of borderline poverty living in a cockroach infested apartment, and a manic mother in law moving in all make for a rather unbelievable story line. The kids ping pong between homeschooling, private school, boarding school, public school and an alternative
high school that implodes when the principal lands in jail for child abuse. John's parishoners have trouble making up their minds whether they will follow like sheep, or tar and feather him. Otherwise pedantic scenes draw interest from the occasional hurricane, earthquake, polar vortex or flood."
Not knowing what is ahead has its perks. It can put off anxiety until you are actually in the ER, at the funeral, meeting the tow truck, facing the judge, signing
on the dotted line, or paying off the credit card bill. And having been all of those places, I can assert one thing. We did survive.
