Of Stillness and Storm

by Michele Phoenix

  “It took my appetite away,” he said, remembering our first meal at the Alpenblick Gasthaus. “There was such a strong urge to … to connect with you, that I couldn’t eat until I’d touched your hand.” He shook his head. “It felt juvenile, but …”

  I recalled the silence that had preceded the gesture. A trace of uncertainty in his eyes. The question asked with fervor and sincerity. “Is it okay if I hold your hand?”

  “I remember,” I whispered. He brought my hands to his lips and I heard children giggle as they hiked past our vantage point.

  Sam launched into a somewhat condensed version of the dreams I’d heard about for nearly five months. He had no desire to walk the well-traveled paths worn bare by the small-thinking believers who had come before him. But he knew he couldn’t do it alone. He’d discovered in me, he said, an element that felt like completion. Like wholeness and possibility.

  “I …” He hesitated again. It took me aback. Sam wasn’t the tentative sort. “I’d love to see what this relationship could become,” he said. “I’ve prayed—” He laughed. “I’m praying right now!”

  “I can tell by the sweat on your forehead.”

  “I haven’t given a lot of thought to the type of woman I’d want to pursue, but I’ve always—from as early as I can remember—I’ve always known that she’d have to love God as much as I do. That’s why I got tangled up in the faith stuff back there. Because it’s the only real standard I’ve ever had.”

  “That’s a pretty tough thing to measure.”

  “I know. I know it is. But my faith—it motivates everything. You know that about me.” Anticipation lit his eyes again. “I just need to hear you say you feel the same way.” He held my gaze, waiting for my answer.

  “You make it sound like faith is a career plan.”

  “No—that’s not what I mean.” He shook his head and seemed to search for the right words. “But what we do for him is evidence of the relationship, right?”

  “I tend to think that who we become because of our faith is more important than what we do to—I don’t know—to prove it.”

  “Two sides of the same coin,” he said. “If we’re truly committed, he’s going to use us—right? In ways we can’t imagine.” There was excitement in his smile.

  I reached past the semantics to our common faith identity, itemizing the spiritual pillars on which our beliefs rested. They were all there—our foundations complementary or shared. The smaller things mattered less when the same certainties sealed our spiritual unity.

  “I love God,” I said. “He’s been there—since as far back as I can remember. But coming here?” I let the fullness of a deeper faith wash over me. “Coming here has made me experience him in a more … I don’t know. In a more intense and intimate way. So do I love God?” I looked Sam straight in the eyes. “I love him as much as I know how to, right now. But Sam, whether it’s as much as you do isn’t something I can quantify.”

  His hand tightened on mine. “Would you be willing to give up everything—everything—if he asked you to?”

  I felt something constrict in my spirit. “Everything?”

  He leaned in close, excitement in his expression. “Everything.”

  “God is the center of my life,” I said, squeezing the hand that still held mine. “And I’m not done learning. That’s all I can tell you. And if it’s not enough …”

  His smile was wildly hopeful. “It’s more than enough.” The look we exchanged seemed to blot out the sounds and sights that surrounded us. He let out a quick breath, eyes still on mine. “You live like you ski—with caution, for sure, but with … I don’t know. With eyes wide open. And I know I need that in my life.”

  “Huh.”

  “I’ve given this some thought.”

  “I’d be disappointed in you if you hadn’t.”

  “Lauren.” He cupped my face with his hand and I nestled my cheek into it. As his thumb skimmed back and forth over my skin, his warmth and conviction settled me. He brushed the hair from my face again with his other hand. “Will you let me pursue you? Court you. In a romantic, marriage-minded way?”

  I searched his face for hesitation and found only resolve and something that looked an awful lot like love. I looked into his eyes and saw a person I trusted. He was more than my “checklist guy.” This man with steadfast vision and ardent heart. This man with genuine compassion and avid mind. He wanted a relationship with me. He was committed to seeing where it led.

  The knight and stallion stories of my childhood, the roses and poetry daydreams of my youth seemed irrelevant atop a mountain in the Austrian Alps, face-to-face with a man who had seen enough of me to know me and wanted me enough to pursue me. I focused on the vision of a lifetime with Sam as my fear morphed into temerity.

  I smiled and expectation tingled through my spirit. “Are you sure?” I asked.

  He nodded. Lopsided grin.

  I hunched up my shoulders and giggled. “Okay!”

  We sat across from each other on the couch, surrounded by a crush of peonies, hydrangeas, and garden roses. There were vases on the coffee table and sideboard, and buckets lined up against the far wall overflowed with the peach, pink, and white blossoms. Every vine and sprig of greenery we’d been able to collect from our yard and the neighbors’ sat in pails and bins filled with water.

  We were two days away from what was shaping up to be a watermark event in the little town of West Lorne, Indiana, and Mom had finally shooed my aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents out of the house for the short drive to church.

  “Mom,” I’d said to her a few minutes earlier, emotion quivering in my voice, “I’ve been surrounded by people and chaos for three days straight. Can you go to the church for a while—and take everybody with you? I just need a few minutes alone with Sam.”

  I wasn’t much of a crier—never had been, really. So when my mom saw my emotions teetering, she knew this was serious. She immediately set a trip to church in motion and added enough items to the “prerehearsal to-do list” that I knew my boisterous extended family would be gone for a while.

  The front door closed, the chaos receded, silence descended, and the tears that had threatened moments before evaporated in the sudden stillness. There we sat, Sam and I, surrounded by enough flowers to stock a botanical exhibit. We just stared at each other for a few seconds, relishing the hush. Amazement and exhaustion dueled in Sam’s eyes. Amazement at the frenzy that had electrified my parents’ small home since our arrival and exhaustion from the frantic pace of preparing for a wedding more elaborate than either of us had wanted.

  “Are we having fun yet?” Sam asked.

  I tried to giggle, but it came out sounding like a groan. “This,” I said, “is what I tried to warn you about when you asked me to marry you.”

  “It’s just a little chaos,” he said, failing to sound blasé.

  “Aw, honey. You won’t see true chaos until Sullivan gets here.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t even imagine.” Sullivan’s presence in our lives hadn’t ended when we’d left Sternensee, and I knew Sam was still trying to make his peace with that fact. At least he’d gotten to the point where he could utter her name without visible twitches. Bless his heart.

  He opened an arm and gave me a grin. “What are you doing way over there?”

  I scooted over and he wrapped me into his chest. I sighed a long, relieved breath and nestled my face into his neck. This—this was the sanity I’d missed for the past few days. The time to be—to hold—to breathe.

  Sam kissed my temple and we slid down a little on the couch, relaxing into the silence. “Two days,” he said, his chin propped on the top of my head. I loved the sound of his voice and had since his first evening at Sternensee. Hearing it through his chest, punctuated by the beat of his heart and wrapped in the leathery-clean scent of his cologne was a heady sensation.

  I whispered, “Still want to marry me?”

  He leaned me back to answer the questio
n with the kind of kiss that left no illusion as to his intentions. His weight, as it settled over me, was a potent expression of his strength. I looked up into his eyes and felt contentment, like warm honey seeping through the static in my mind. It didn’t matter, at that moment, whether Grandma would finish hemming the bridesmaids’ dresses in time or the bouquets would get assembled or the church pianist would beat the flu. All I knew as Sam’s lips settled over mine again, as his arm burrowed under my back and his breath whispered over my face, was that this was the man with whom I’d spend the rest of my life.

  I pushed at his chest and squinted up at him. “You got your vows finished?”

  He squinted back. “What’ll you do if I don’t?”

  The metronome counting down to our wedding redoubled its ticking in my mind. I pushed Sam off so I could sit upright and focus. “You’ve got them written, right? Seriously, Sam, with everything we still have to—”

  “You’ll hear them in two days,” he said, leaning in again.

  I pushed him away. “Sam.”

  He sat back and let out a deep sigh, crossing his arms and contemplating my expression. “They’re written,” he said.

  Of course they were. Thinking he might have procrastinated was a testament to my precarious state of mind. “Can I hear them?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  “Come on …” I attempted a seductive smile. “What’s a couple of days?”

  “Exactly.”

  I sat cross-legged on the couch, facing the man who would become my husband, trying to capture the moment in such a way that I’d be able to revisit it, years from now, when memories of this vibrancy and longing would be a healing thing. I had no illusions about marriage being easy. I’d witnessed enough of them to recognize that truth. So I entered my own with eyes wide open, eager for the joys and challenges of twoness as I relinquished the freedoms and frustrations of oneness, confident in the vows that would seal us to each other.

  “Did you mention anything about obedience in your vows?” I asked, mock threatening. “’Cause if you say anything about you commanding and me dumbly obeying, I assure you my Auntie Lou will get up and march her walker right down that aisle and out the door before you’re done with your little speech.”

  “I didn’t say anything about obeying,” he said, taking my hands and looking too earnestly into my eyes. “But I had to say something about ironing my underwear. It’s a wife’s duty,” he said, his voice rising in a bad imitation of a charismatic preacher, “to iron them boxers and darn them socks and scrub them floors and quiet them shriekin’ babies so a poor man can think!”

  “Are you done?”

  He leaned in close enough that our noses were touching, adding in an intimate voice, “I haven’t even started on the topics of submission, head coverings, and the evils of contraception.”

  I rolled my eyes and laughed while he swiveled and lay down on the couch, feet dangling over the far armrest, his head in my lap. We’d had that conversation, of course. The one about submission and obedience. I’d heard the arguments against the vows all my life from irate women who found them belittling. We’d even discussed it in a class at Christschule, and the resulting debate had sent Sullivan into apoplectic disbelief.

  “Puh-lease!” she’d finally exclaimed. “Are you telling me that I’m the only clear-minded individual in this room who sees the chauvinistic bias of verses written for a primitive civilization? We—have—evolved.” She held the last word long and low. “Y’all are crazier’n an outhouse rat … and I am mindin’ my language!”

  I’d learned that frustration tended to deepen Sullivan’s accent, and it was reaching unparalleled depths. But when she said “y’all,” a Southernism she considered cliché and had banned from her vocabulary, I knew she was clinging to the last shreds of her civility.

  I understood the discomfort the traditional vows inspired. I’d wrestled with them myself. But this was Sam. As difficult as it might have been for me to make those promises to anyone else—this was Sam. I trusted his heart. I trusted his commitment to care for me in the Christlike way he did everything else. I could promise submission and obedience without qualm. Joyfully, even. This was the marriage I desired.

  “You’re an obnoxious man, Mr. Coventry,” I said, running a hand over his short, bristly hair. “But I’d be honored to darn your socks and iron your boxers.”

  “Much obliged, Mrs. Coventry.” He took my hand from his head and held it to his lips. “Mrs. Coventry,” he repeated against my skin, his voice softer this time. He strained his neck to look up at me. “We made it,” he said.

  “We made it.”

  What our time at Christschule had done for our spiritual development, the year since then had done for our relationship. When we’d returned to the States—Sam to Wyoming and me to Indiana—the only certainty we had was that we both saw something special in our friendship and were committed to seeing where it led. Beyond that, we had no idea of how things would play out.

  We tried to see each other every six weeks at the very least. Either he came to me or I went to him. We met each other’s families and friends, we deepened our understanding and love for the other’s world. We argued and debated a host of issues—politics, art, philosophy, religion. Sam’s knowledge base was so much broader than mine that I willingly surrendered, in the end, when topics were beyond the scope of my understanding. That scope itself was a source of disagreement. I considered it respectable, but Sam’s occasional rolled eyes intimated that he didn’t share my assessment.

  Despite our differences, we were diligent in our journey toward marriage, enlisting my pastor to walk us through the process. It felt like no personal, spiritual, or emotional stone had been left unturned.

  I let my fingers explore Sam’s face, the ridges of his lips, the indentation of his temples. This good, honest, earnest, respectable, and godly man was more than I’d ever dreamed I’d find. He was fearless in his convictions. Unapologetic in his faith. Uncompromising in his persuasion. Passionate in his dreams. Indefatigable in his commitment to help others and love well.

  I met his gaze with affection and amazement overflowing my eyes. He smiled. He’d seen these tears before. “Thank you for marrying me, Sam,” I whispered. And as he shifted our positions so we lay tightly wrapped on my parents’ plaid couch, his closeness cradled my dreams, his warmth confirmed my desire, his sureness blanketed old fears with love’s invincibility.

  It took nearly six years for us to conceive. The first was filled with expectation. “Wanna give it another shot?” Sam would say, leering, as I slipped into bed. I’d laugh and mumble something like, “Well, if we have to.” Our eyes would meet as we brushed our teeth or poured coffee or ate our toast the next day, and I’d say, “Do you think it took?” with excitement in the words, and Sam would lean in for a kiss and say, eye to eye, “Indubitably.”

  By the second year, we’d started charting my cycles on the calendar I kept in the kitchen’s junk drawer. Though we were dutiful in our attempts, part of me hoped that our pregnancy would come from the spontaneous, less methodical intimacy that still, when our guards were down, sent us focused and yearning to our bed, our couch, or the living room floor.

  Year three saw doctors’ visits and dire predictions and medical options that would insert science into our increasingly taxing pursuit of family.

  Sam laid out three pages of spreadsheets on the table after dinner one night, and I knew before he started speaking that this moment would bend our charted course.

  “Just over thirty-one thousand in combined college debt,” he said. “Another five years at the rate we’re going.”

  I nodded, aware that the income I was making as a freelance writer was doing little to lessen our debt. I sat across from him at the table and felt waning hope stooping my shoulders. “I could get another job.”

  He shook his head. “And quit again when you get pregnant?”

  “If I get pregnant.” We t
ended to live on different sides of the optimism divide. He’d anchored his bunker to a rocky outcropping of “It’ll happen if it’s supposed to,” and I’d erected a tattered shelter on the “What if God doesn’t want it to happen?” shifting slope of doubt. Neither of us had found our way to the “Trust and you will receive” mind-set of more emphatic dreamers.

  Sam must have felt my faltering hope. “If he wants us to—”

  “I know, Sam.” I berated myself for the sharpness of my tone. This wasn’t Sam’s fault. It was mine. My “inhospitable womb.” My recalcitrant body.

  He ran a hand over his face and went back to staring at the figures on the pages in front of him, lined up like sentinels between reality and dreams. “We can try the treatments …” His voice held a tinge of defeat, though I knew he intended it to sound firm and hopeful.

  “But we can’t afford them.” The resignation in my voice masked a yearning to hear him answer with a confident “We’ll make it work,” or a passionate “Money can’t stand in the way of becoming a family.”

  But Sam had an accountant’s mind. He approached finances from a pragmatic point of view and saw the eradication of our debt as a crucial precursor to whatever adventures the future held. His eyes sought the safety of the numbers on the spreadsheets he’d designed for reassurance. For support. For ammunition? “I just don’t see the wisdom in—”

  “Buying a baby?”

  I saw his determination falter. The subtle droop of his shoulders. A slackening in his face. “I want a baby,” he said so fervently that I had to believe him. “But with our current budget? Lauren, we can barely afford to begin our family the natural way. And if we add more debt …” He shook his head at the irrefutability of his analysis. “If we do that, there’s no way we’ll make it out of here in the next decade,” he said, his voice subdued but resolute.

  “Make it where?” Resentment crept its serrated edge into my voice. Since I’d first met him, Sam had had a glorious, albeit vague, vision of global impact, but try as I had to pry details out of him, he had never spoken of precise goals and destinations. Only in the ideals of a life of purpose and selfless investment. All he knew was that he had been called to something more, and he lived in that growing conviction, anticipating the marching orders he thought would become clear when we were finally debt-free. Both his dreams and mine were predicated on money—and at that moment I realized how starkly different they were.