On the Common 130
Twenty-five years.
Hello and welcome to Thursday.
Over the summer I started rewatching the 90s show Northern Exposure (available on Prime). It is a quirky small-town story about a community in Alaska. Most of the characters arrive on your screen completely developed. I find it to be a hilarious and heartwarming diversion from the yelling political coverage on the TVs at the gym. Try it, you might like it!
The Part Where There’s an Essay: Some Reflections on Twenty-Five Years
Last Wednesday night, David and I went down to the street we’ve been visiting for dates since we moved here twenty years ago. When we arrived, North Davidson Street was a tiny seed of an idea of an arts district. There was one restaurant we loved, discovered a few months after we moved here: Cabo Fish Taco.
Having moved from California, I spent some time being discouraged by the food scene in Charlotte when we got here. One day I had driven forty minutes to a taco place that sounded good, only to discover that it was permanently closed. Everywhere I looked, there were chain restaurants or one-offs dedicated to macaroni and cheese and barbeque.
When I ate my first shrimp taco on North Davidson Street, I knew I had finally found something. After our meal, as our waitress left the check, I stopped her and said, “I’ve been looking for a very long time for a good taco. Thank you so much.” I might have welled up with a tear in my eye. She hesitantly said, “Ummm…you’re welcome…” while backing away slowly.
We had a good time recalling this meal when we were down on North Davidson last week. Now the neighborhood is bursting at the seams. It’s hard to find a place to park. Apartment buildings are springing up around the boundaries of the central street, and Cabo Fish Taco has some stiff competition on the block, beginning with the Italian place we visited. So much has changed in twenty years.
As North Davidson Street has grown, so has our family here in Charlotte. We’ve had two more kids since we got here, and we’ve secured a network of friends who feel like family. It is good to stay in one place—especially after our first five years were marked by so much change.
One rhythm we’ve picked up over the past few years is counseling newly married couples at our church. We have a specific small group set aside for this discipleship opportunity. The couples meet here once per month, every month for a year. Then they “graduate,” and we move on to the next group.
Now that we’re in our third group, we joke with each other (and with them) that the secret to leading a successful newly married group is confessing that long-married people argue with each other, also. That’s it. That’s the whole deal. “Yes, we also fight. Yes, still. No, there’s nothing wrong with your marriage.” It is hard to live at peace with people all the time, and we most often hurt those who are closest to us, taking them for granted.
One of the most helpful concepts I’ve stumbled across concerning marriage was pointed out by Tim and Kathy Keller in their book The Meaning of Marriage. The original quote is from ethicist Lewis Smedes:
When I married my wife, I had hardly a smidgen of sense for what I was getting into with her. How could I know how much she would change over 25 years? How could I know how much I would change? My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed—and each of the five has been me. The connecting link with my old self has always been the memory of the name I took on back there: “I am he who will be there with you.” When we slough off that name, lose that identity, we can hardly find ourselves again. And the bonds that connect us to others will be frayed to breaking.
The idea that we’re married to different people—who are all the same person—over a long period of time is so true. Geography, influences, and circumstances change. We mature and grow. We let go of things and pick up others. Along the way, it is the promise—the covenant—that holds the center together.
“That’s what the promise is for,” so says Andrew Peterson in his 2010 song “Dancing in the Minefields.” The promise is for the days when in any other relationship, you’d leave—the days when it’s harder than you dreamed. Without the promise, who’s to say who will stay and who will go? By God’s enabling grace, we go to bed and try to keep the promise for another day. Day on day, week on week, and months turn into years.
I’ll just close with this song—Zach and Maggie are probably more recognized as a part of the Gettys’ band than as their own duet, though they rightfully deserve your attention. Here’s their song “Settle Down,” which is both hilariously realistic and also warm and grateful for a marriage in many seasons. You can hear the entire song right here, but here is a short video with Zach and Maggie baking cookies along with the song…adorable:
For the Anglophiles
This is an older article, but it’s finally out from behind a paywall: In Secular UK, Evangelical Alliance Experiences Record Growth. It’s an interesting picture of the landscape for evangelicals in the UK:
“…we don’t have quite the same marrying between evangelicalism and politics. That is quite liberating. We have a member of Parliament for the Labor Party and a member of Parliament for the Conservative Party serving….”
Reads & Listens of the Week
An older piece of encouragement from The Habit: On Getting a Late Start.
This was such a nice remembrance of the Paris Summer Games: Merci, Paris. We needed these Olympics.
The value of beautiful homemaking: “I would suggest that homemaking today remains a form of skilled craft, in which a woman—or a man—uses experience and intelligence to create something that is both beautiful and functional.”
with a sweet introduction to a new sibling: He is a most exemplary young man.
No matter what laws or governments say, men can only know and come to care for one another by meeting face to face, arduously, and by the willing loss of comfort. — Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound
And so many of us thankful for this 25-year marriage :)