Love Thy Neighbor and Marvel At Their Shape

We slept in on July 4th. Probably the first time in our marriage that I put my feet to the floor before he did on a free day off. Typically, he’s up no later than seven and will have walked our dog, bathed the plants, and listened to a podcast before my eyes recognize the place in their sockets. But when he sleeps, that boy sleeps. As if the universe visits him in a Tarantino dream and assures his busy mind that his projects, his tasks, his joyous pursuits, will still be there an hour from now. Around ten-thirty, I made sure he was alive, snuck into the kitchen and threw together my favorite breakfast – a toasted bagel, a slab of cream cheese, and a cucumber tomato medley sliced up thin, seasoned with a pinch of Everything But the Bagel. Trader Joe’s did the world right by that garnish. I ate alone and tried to shake that wrong-side-of-the-bed feeling. I was sure the moment he woke up, I’d be annoyed but not at him. “At what,” he’d say and I wouldn’t know. I never know.

I took my filthy feet to the shower and cranked it hot. We talked about showers the other day and how wildly different a relationship we humans have with them. I hate showers – I like smelling nice and feeling clean, but I’ve always agonized over the energy it takes to complete a full shower routine. It’s a whole thing, and there’s not much in it for me other than silky hair, which will betray me tomorrow. Besides the universal time suck, it feels like a completely frivolous disruption of an otherwise fine and productive day. A well of depth and story and even the labor of chores paused for primitive, meaningless washing. Ryan asked, “Do you not value the sliver of time it gives you to be in isolation with your thoughts? It’s the only six to ten minutes of my day where I can hear myself think and physically close the curtain on whatever else is happening outside. Just feeling what I feel and knowing what I know – things that don’t usually happen outside of a shower.”

I laughed, not at his innocent question and explanation, but at the juxtaposition of his shower time against mine. I spilled the beans that some people spend entire days in solitary confinement with their thoughts and that a shower likely serves as an escape, albeit short. I’ve been tortured and seduced by the world and its problems from dusk ‘til dawn, so the grease on my body tempts me just inside the vinyl liner, and the circus waits for me on the bath mat within earshot. For ten minutes, I might as well have no pulse. I stand there and let my shoulders curl over. I’ve already memorized the label on the shampoo bottle, but I read it again. I pull my hair out in droves and watch as each string untangles itself from my fingers, snaking its way into the drain. I plan what I’ll wear for the day and touch myself, aloof. An intimate discovery for some – the scrubbing of skin – is a detachment of sorts for another. I marvel at the enigma that what’s in it for him is exactly opposite of what’s in it for me.

But I digress from my original story – still having to do with exact opposites and showers. Star-crossed lovers. A 7 and a 4. We had a full day ahead, fireworks, friends, food, and fun. You get it. I got in the tub to hopefully cover the stint of bad attitude on a holiday. Not twenty seconds later, I heard him rustle around and get the dog riled up. He was surprised at the time like he’d won a world record. “Let’s get a move on!” He says this excitedly with the toothbrush squeezed between his teeth, hands thrown up in the air.

I continue minding my own, and then I hear him from the closet. “Should I go for it? Come look real quick.” Surely whatever this is can wait, but I peel the curtain back and peer my soggy head out anyway. He’s draped in this jersey mesh shirt, still with tags on, buttons down the front and collared. It has yellow and red and blue and green flowers all covering it, and he’s been waiting for the perfect time to make the debut. He puts his sunglasses on in the bathroom and gives me finger guns. He can’t believe how breathable the sports material is. I tell him to go ahead and wear it if he wants to wear it and then get back to my abandoned shower. It’s halfway over and this attitude adjustment is slow going.

I’m in the middle of conditioning and I hear him start another sentence. “I think I want to take a picture of my tattoo, throw it on Instagram and just say, ‘GO EAGLES’.” He snickers to himself, which is the only pure reason for any of his jokes. The tattoo he’s referring to is right on his shin, a fist red, white, and blue with USA small on the wrist and stars on the cuff of the sleeve. He went to a tattoo parlor last year with his brother and 100 dollars, popped a token into the Get What You Get vending machine, and out came this one, no changing it. His fate sealed in permanent ink. This type of roulette exists only in my nightmares, and people, nay, my husband, does it for sport. For recreation! Don’t let me think about it for too long.

“Did you hear me? Do you get it?” He asks across the silence from the sink. I told him yes, I heard. “Well, I just figured you would have laughed if you heard my joke. Since you didn’t respond, you must not have heard.” 

I unraveled. “Do you have any idea what’s going on in the world right now – in the world at large?” I started on about the complete sham of independence. Enlightened him about concentration camps and the separation of families here, and then I stopped. My shower was over. “You know what, just go read the news sometime. Educate yourself. And to sum this up, probably don’t share your funny joke today.”

I sloshed my feet across the faux hardwoods, and slung a towel over my hair. We looked at each other in passing and smirked. An abnormal ending for something that perhaps would have turned into a knock-down-drag-out on another day. I think I was stopped in my tracks by our explicit polarity and amused by it. I believe we’re being turned from the same kiln but we are not the same and no amount of turning will make us the same. That’s fascinating. Being forged to eventually resemble Christ in his fullness but taking on the opposite of His shapes earthside. Both beautiful and useful and neither of us wrong in our makeups. 

In relationship with Ryan, that might mean troubling him over the things of this world. There are things that ought to trouble us. Demonstrating a heavy heart and letting him squish his hands around it. Waiting with him when he wants to be but isn’t yet meant to be delivered from distress. Pleading with the Lord to give us the gift of anguish when we’re incapable of recognizing the pain of our brothers. And on occasion, that might also mean laughing playfully at his jokes in the shower on the 4th. His buoyancy resurrecting my weight, teaching me how to just give it up for a minute. Wide-eyed about the wonders of life, the unspeakable joy of the Lord as our strength. His youthful idealism, similarly fragrant of a God who’s good-natured and sovereign.

What’s in it for him is exactly opposite of what’s in it for me, and that’s a good thing. We need both. I’m not one for pithy platitudes like ‘opposites attract’ and I’m not trying to ride that horse, but I am trying to see how marriage to Ryan has been a holy endeavor. I hope I’ll see all of my life that way – work, neighbors, homemaking, kids. And I’m wondering if it might encourage one or two others who sometimes feel like they’re jamming round pegs into square holes. Encourage us that no amount of turning in the kiln will make us the same so we can quit force-feeding each other the shape that makes sense to us and just trust that the shape they’re taking is better than the one we’d planned for them.

If it’s a holy endeavor, it’s separate from our own linear outcomes and devoted to that which is always right. Infinite wisdom is unconcerned with chiseling squares into circles or sculpting four corners into being for our fitting pleasure – he’s preoccupied fashioning us into a faultless Image we can only see through veil right now. Prone to different sin, coping with different hurt, we really are star-crossed lovers doomed from the start. It’s no wonder we’re stopped in our tracks by the unworkable gulf between us. But I hope we’ll see God’s kindness in that. The goal is not uniformity among men or even unity within us, but it’s union with Christ and on our way, I hope we can be amused at each of the opposite shapes that will make Him up. Truly fascinated that with lovingkindness he has drawn us, the whole bunch.