We spent five nights in the Land of Enchantment - my husband and I - a month early for our third anniversary, and we’re lugging along 287 South now for our home and our dog. It was a memorable visit, although we didn’t have a huge itinerary like we sometimes do. Mostly we just lived and showered and woke as locals for the work week.

We would meet our fiery neighbor shaping away in her ceramics studio, her clay-hardened hands to the kiln, and she’d invite us to the house party happening that night. One friend of her group our age had gotten a billiard table, and they’d celebrate with a “pool” party, to which she’d attend in a full swimsuit. We bought four of her handmade plates and hoped that would make up for our regretful decline. We’d bump into her the following afternoon and exchange a few more stories at the donation-based consignment she’d recommended to us earlier.

We’d meditate horizontally next to a long-haired hippie at the Japanese spa and talk to him tipsy days later at the hotel bar. He slung an empty Ranch Water around and reminded us of an unmarried McConaughey. He lives in Terlingua but comes here to escape the heat. Well, that’s reason enough to go anywhere on earth, we tell him.

We’d walk through the rail yard in the morning for coffee and be tired again before noon. Maybe it was the hour time difference or the sleepy town or the elevation. Either way, we moved slowly and took long naps everyday. And we didn’t talk much.

I’m already very internal, relying heavily on the prodding of others to, left hand over right, slog the ten-mile rope out of the hat. Usually it’s Ryan hoisting me up by my bootstraps to engage, to tell him about my day, to reveal what it is I’m thinking about at the window. He’s pretty verbal, quiet on lengthier matters, but comfortable saying what he knows and what he doesn’t know in a day’s time. So what’s at stake when, for a time, neither party is forthcoming? Our marriage or perhaps the richness of it?

Both of us are pretty respectful in bowing to the silence, and if there’s nothing helpful to fill it with, we’re diligent to keep it. But something always comes, it always has - the reason it’s eating at him, what his coworker said. Guessing the temperaments of our children and what clothes they’ll choose for themselves each morning. Dissecting another one of my dreams that’s doing me no good and wondering how deep one has to get, how many night terrors before it’s enough to qualify for psychiatric help.

Those are, of course, loose cannon conversations. We have lighter ones. But how do you reconcile six days of togetherness and hardly any words at all? Was it unfounded, our being there? A waste of a perfectly planned holiday?

He’d turn his gaze up from a bite of crispy sea bass and tell me how pretty I looked in my red museum dress. I’d say thanks and we’d move along. As we walked like strangers through the crowded street market, I’d find his pinky and give it a squeeze. He’s still there, and in a swarm of pinkies, his is the only one.

The world seems fidgety right now about spending every day like it’s our last, hopscotching to our end with no breaks, wringing life’s towel for everything it’s worth. The absorbent urgency makes sense to me, or the sentiment does, but I needed a Xanax for how hurried I started to feel with him.

Do we have eternity getting to know each other like our vows proposed or will this, in fact, be it? We can’t know. Frustratedly, I would conjure a thing up to say, and it wouldn’t be mine or a prompting from the Spirit. Just a fuse of hot air into the atmosphere, contrived, taking up space and stoking the abhorrently forced fire.

We weren’t fighting or bored or glued to a screen, though any or all of those would have worked as excuses. We explored the land and were beside each other enchanted, and nothing compelled us to speak save what we instantly knew. The breeze felt nice, and we were full. He was handsome, and the houses quaint. We’d kiss with the windows open and then find sleep in a foreign place on our same, comfortable pillows we’d packed from home.

It’s our last sixty-degree morning, and I remembered a sentence, a burning bush. It happens that way, doesn’t it? Our minds and memories sifting through every word we’ve ever read until we’re left with the only clump of gravel that could - in an instant - convict, challenge, and change. You might recognize it from Eugene Peterson, but it’s credited to philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche in his book, Beyond Good and Evil. He says,

The essential thing in heaven and in earth is, apparently, that there should be long obedience in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance, virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality — anything whatever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine.

And my tendencies to rush what was here were all at once hushed. Not in a passive, sit on our hands and stay there sort of way. But in a peaceful, alluring one. Carpe diem later, but for now rest here. Tending, but not taking. Observing what we know and letting what we don’t fall around us.

There have been days, weeks, and months that we’ve lapped up and hoarded all that we could - all the love, lust, knowledge, and conversation that’d fit in our small vials until we realized again there’s still more to draw. Similarly, it’s been as a kid knowing Christ. Chewing scripture to pieces and hearing him loud. In the Land of Enchantment, though, when everyone’s quiet, can we buy back this time or is it gone for good? With still more to know, why not know it now?

When earth is chasing the lion and measuring their bounties, is it enough to just study his face? To eat together in a place far from home. To brush our arms against him to know he’s there in the crowd. To tell Him I’m tired and that the breeze feels nice. When we feel like slaves to the Atlantic, can we put down our buckets and use our hands for a drink? Drawing from the well what only we know and need, letting the rest fall away and trusting it’s being down there won’t be wasted for tomorrow’s meal. If this is truly what a life is worth, a long obedience in the same direction, surely we’ll arrive no more thirsty than before.

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.