There is moon matter on the right but there is nothing on the left. I know this because my eyes tell me so.

 

Some of us are married to people who seem like they are only half here. The rest is somewhere out in space. But sometimes people are forming in the shadow of what looms bigger and monopolizes our attention.

 

One time my autistic son took the Lord's name in vain. That is a no-no at our house but apparently not at school where he spends half his waking hours. I slumped. Considering my track record for even getting Benjamin to look both ways before he crosses the street how was I going to explain this rule about Someone whose name I hold sacred, Someone he cannot see?

 

While I was stalled in this holding pattern, his older brother took matters into his own hands and sat down beside Benjamin. In a calm yet emphatic voice he delivered a speech about respect and God, with a few caveats into "How would you like it if..."

 

I had mistakenly thought that my little boy could not change his behavior. But there is more going on inside his head than meets the eye. 

 

Yet they were committed to the promise they had made back when it felt easier and each of them found a way to stay the course, lonely as it was. The wife decided that she had no hope of being married to her husband in heaven but she believed some woman would be. She could be kind to him for her sake, and maybe someone would be kind to the man she would spend eternity with until she found him. The husband did not believe that he could grow in this marriage. They could barely carry on a platonic conversation much less speak from the heart. But he could work on himself. He focused on that task.

 

Then the world turned on its axis. The couple woke up six moons later and realized that they were in love again, in some ways for the very first time. 

 

 

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Photo by Joe Lindsay