A generation ago important messages were always written... on paper that you could hold in your hand, with ink that left its mark for years or decades until you came back trying to remember. Ethereal hopes were captured and sent across the miles to be read by the person you cared about, yet the words were there for you to rediscover after a lifetime, when memory shifts and slides into forgetting.

Aubrey and Sanfrid Odhner wrote to each other almost daily for thirty months, while they explored their friendship, fell in love with each other's minds, and decided to marry. In thousands of pages of tenderly transcribed devotion, they poured out their dreams and spiraling aspirations. Unfettered by things mundane, they shared on a level that pierced through to their core.

 

Sandy proposed in 1947, but Aubrey did not answer him for a year. She wrestled with a decision that would change the course of their eternities. They married in September of 1949,  filled with idealism and ideas, eager to evangelize and start a New Church school in Detroit.

 

Yet there was conflict in the society about the plan. Half of the members felt passionately that a school was the obvious step for the three dozen children who came to church. Others felt just as strongly that it was not a good idea, and a minor civil war erupted. It would be many years before a school was established, so Aubrey and Sandy moved their family back to Bryn Athyn, where their children could attend the elementary school.

 

Their marriage was blessed with children, yet the reality of many difficult pregnancies was a sharp contrast to the relationship they had so enjoyed on paper and in their imaginations. This reality came chock full of responsibilities, long hours, exhaustion and a two hour commute to New York where Sandy worked in advertising. His battle with alcohol took a toll on their family as well, making him irritable and less tolerant of noisy children. Together they built their dream house, an open and spacious home better suited to a young couple in love than a family with little boys.

 

Then they reached a turning point when Sandy lost his job, and one of their children needed special schooling. Aubrey returned to the work world, teaching in the Girl's School that she adored. Sandy started to work on his book, something he dearly wanted to do. Yet looking back Aubrey wonders about the unspoken erosion of his self respect, when she became the breadwinner, and he was faced with what may have felt like failure. Teaching and museum work became very absorbing for Aubrey, and she immersed herself in it, perhaps to the exclusion of her marriage. Their lives were consumed by thoughts, study and research, yet there was no space left for feelings.

 

Her days were crammed with meetings, classes and appointments, but there was an underlying fear of sharing how they felt. Almost as a reflection of this need to close doors, they moved to Pendelhouse, a large home whose many rooms offered options for hiding, and shutting each other out, in contrast to the openness of the valet they had built together. Sandy escaped to his books, and Aubrey to her teaching.
 

In the last four years of his life, Sandy stopped drinking, which was an enormous and blessed change, yet he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He softened, and became easier to live with, but Aubrey was still caught up in the hectic pace of her job. She became the Girls School principal just a month after he died. This kept closed the door of grief, for her lost husband, and for what her life might have been.

 

Another twenty five years slipped by, brimming with children, grandchildren and community involvement. Then in His unobtrusive way, the Lord coaxed Aubrey to go back to those letters, miles of words that had silently followed them from house to house, keeping mute vigil of loving conversations, growing wisdom, deep commitment, honest sharing. Here in her hands was written proof of what had been so completely eclipsed by a lifetime.

 

Sandy loved her! His love was profound, from the depths of his soul. He loved her wisely, wishing every good for her, gently leading her, cherishing her. For decades he had been entrenched in intellect and philosophy, yet here was his pure goodness. Aubrey was overcome with love for him and from him, spilling tears on every page, as she rediscovered the man she had been gifted to know half a century before, the man now thriving in heaven and eagerly waiting for her. She felt his presence as she read, and could imagine his arms around her.

In its origin conjugial love is celestial, spiritual, holy, pure and clean, more so than every other love which exists from the Lord in angels of heaven or people of the church. Moreover into this love have been gathered all joys and delights, from the first to the last of them. Conjugial Love 57