Sunday Morning Serenity

Marriage is a strange and mysterious institution. You meet this person who is quite likely your opposite, in many ways. You fall in love and marry, and then a whole group of people who would be strangers to you, under other circumstances, suddenly become your family. You now have a family-in-law. But the "in-law" part doesn't really cover it, if you're lucky in that area, as I am. Dave's family treated me like family—true family—long before we married, so our relationship was always more "in-heart" than in-law. Early on, I struggled with what to call his parents. "Mr. and Mrs. Luesse" seemed far too formal, but "Leroy and Mary Ann" didn't seem right, either. So I settled on "Miss Mary" for her and, because Dave's dad had such a great sense of humor and loved mischief in general, I named him "Gorgeous." It was always big fun to greet him with, "Well, hey there, Gorgeous!" He used to greet me with, "There's that Southern belle!" I won't hear that again for a while. My wonderful father-in-law went to be with God early this week. Dave and I just got home from St. Louis, where we've been saying a difficult and painful goodbye to his dad. I've been amazed by his mother's strength. On our way to St. Louis, where his parents had moved into an independent living community, we stopped over in the small Illinois town where they had retired over 30 years ago. I was walking around in what was left of the snow outside, taking a few pictures of the golf course surrounding their house, when I spotted two beautiful trees, side-by-side. They looked as if they had intentionally planted themselves there together. And I had to smile. Miss Mary and Gorgeous. Looking at this picture after we got home, I thought about that passage from the Book of Ruth—"whither thou goest." Ruth was actually talking to her mother-in-law, but what she said has become, in many ways, the definition of a Christian marriage:

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee,
or to return from following after thee:
for whither thou goest, I will go;
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge:
thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God . . .
Ruth 1:16