Thanks, Matt and Chatti!

We were very serious about our engagement party.

See how serious we are?

There we are. Cute, huh?

Every woman has a story in her head of how she’d like to be romanced. You, reading this, may happen to be the one woman in the whole world who doesn’t have a story like this in her head, in which case, shame on me for making sweeping generalizations. Maybe it’d be better to say that, at the very least, I always had a story in my head about how a man could fall in love with me. If any of the boys and men I was interested in had asked me what I wanted them to do, I could have easily mapped out a scenario for them that would fit the picture in my mind just perfectly.

However, there was a consistent story that I came back to, year after year, crush after crush. It went something like this: Future husband sees me from across a room. We could have been at a party together, or in an airport headed different directions, or at a concert, or riding in an elevator to the top of the Empire State building. The location was, of course, immaterial. What was important is that I caught his eye and took his breath away (and all those other clichéd sayings that fit this description perfectly).

Immediately, he falls in love with me. He doesn’t even have to talk to me—he just knows. You know, he knows (whatever that means!). He walks across said “setting” (room, elevator, concert hall, airport terminal…) and strikes up a conversation with me. He’s awfully nervous and totally fails at winning my affection within five minutes. Sorry, bud. I decide I’m not interested and he proceeds to drop whoever he was with to follow me and try to win me—it could be for a day, a week, a month, a year.

But I’m not interested until suddenly, I realize I love him and we get married almost instantly. In my mind, there’s almost no separation from the moment I know I love him and the time we get married. (Was I not remembering that weddings are big events that take months to plan?)

Anyway, the important parts are that:

1) he fall in love with me by my sheer outer beauty alone,

2) he pursues me and I am not as interested in him until,

3) I fall in love with him at the last moment of the movie at which time we…

4) get married and have boatloads of children (yes, I did say boatloads. Did I leave that out before?) who are, of course, entranced by our love story, which we tell them over and over again NOT to repeat EVER in a MILLION YEARS.

Phew! You traveled into the mind of a WOMAN just now—did you make it out, okay (alive?)? The funny thing is that, as logical, as thinking, as philosophical and reasonable as I can be, this story literally shaped every interaction I had with men. I would meet a man and hope that this story would happen. I would be on the lookout all the time for “the” man. I look back and realize that this is foolishness, but what I see in this is a true desire to be loved and wanted. Women are motivated by this desire above all other desires. We want to know that we are beautiful, and I think it’s hard to describe the truth depth of what that means, but this story gives you just a small taste.

The irony of all this is that, naturally, this was the complete opposite of my story, the one that God actually gave me, the one that includes a real live flesh man (ahem, Jeremy) and real live flesh me. The story God gave me was real and true and difficult and better than I could dreamed up. It seems that God continually humbles me in this way—what I imagine for myself, for my life, doesn’t come close to the beauty of what God has in store. But it always looks different—every time. (God makes me laugh at myself a lot)

So here’s the story of how we got from point A (“the meeting”) to point B (“dating”): we became friends. I started to attend the Bible study where we had met every week. I went to every social activity these people planned, every event at Jeremy’s house, and every prayer time. I hosted Lent events at my house and birthday parties for myself (that first year, I had a beat poetry birthday party ). I made pancakes for everyone and invited people over for game nights. I played Frisbee golf, which I am terrible at, and laughed at myself, which made everybody else laugh and enjoy themselves. I talked with Jeremy a lot.

I should tell you, I didn’t just go to Bible study because of Jeremy. He was a curiosity to me in the beginning—I wouldn’t say I was in love with him by any means. How could I have been? I didn’t know him. But I was certainly enraptured—the sort of way I expected my storybook man to be for me. And what I found in that group was deep friendship. I made friends with many of the women, one of whom Jeremy had pursued and almost dated (almost!) the month before I got to Colorado and arrived in their small Bible study group. I felt at home for one of the first times in my life—my life that included going to four different elementary schools by the time I hit fifth grade—and I knew that God had carved out this group for me to be a part of.

Kristina, who was part of this group and is still one of my dearest friends, once told me, “Liz, it felt like something was missing in our Bible study before you came, and then you arrived and we realized that it had been you all along!” This was the beauty of what God had prepared for me in Colorado Springs, and it extended far beyond Jeremy Grant.

However, meeting Jeremy scared me. During college, I had experienced a lot of heartbreak, the worst of which occurred by guy friends unintentionally leading me on so that I assumed they were interested and they had no inkling of it. The most biting example I can give is that one day, when I took a guy friend out to Denny’s to tell him I liked him, and when I did, he told me he liked me back. Thinking we were now dating, I went home elated. The next morning, he asked me to go for a walk with him, during which he clarified that when he’d said “I like you,” he’d meant like a friend likes a friend—not anything more.

That story typifies my college experience of men, and as soon as I met Jeremy, I was filled up with fear. I did not want to spend my time pining after a man who would never find me attractive, interesting, worth asking our or spending a life with. So, almost as soon as I met Jeremy, I decided I wouldn’t spend any time alone with men at all—including him—for 4 months. “I need a break from heartbreak!” I thought to myself.

In the midst of this, God arranged for us to go swing dancing, purely by coincidence. Jeremy held my hands and spun me around and told me I was a good dancer. We laughed a lot. He watched me walk to my car afterwards.

And then I decided that I would tell no one of my crush, and I’d do everything I could to keep it a secret from Jeremy. I wouldn’t call him. I wouldn’t ask him to lunch. I wouldn’t write him notes (a bad habit I got into in college). I wouldn’t even pray for him—I’ve found that praying for someone can bind your heart to them, and I wouldn’t have my heart bound to a man who didn’t even know I cared for him. Nope, men were off-limits! I thought that all those things would kill my crush—they did not. I noticed that Jeremy was very careful not to lead women on, and I admired him more.

I kept trying to give my crush up altogether, to be free of it. When my friend told me that Jeremy had pursued her, I was hurt and sad. “God, what am I doing? Please take my feelings away!” I prayed with utter seriousness. He did not take them away. And in fact, that night, Jeremy left a message to see if I wanted to spend time with him and another group of people. He doesn’t remember it, but it gave me hope that my crush wasn’t without purpose.

I sat next to him in groups, but tried to avoid looking only at him when he spoke. I invited him to every group event I planned, and he came to every one. On one Lent breakfast I held at my house, he and my friend who he’d pursued were there together. He called her beautiful when she was in the bathroom, and I could have cried. And then that afternoon, he and my friends Anthony and Kristina and I all went Frisbee golfing, and he talked and laughed with me the whole time.

I was confused and frustrated by my feelings, but I just couldn’t let them go. He asked me to lunch over email to talk about a children’s book he was writing, and I turned him down and told him I’d decided not to spend time alone with men. He never emailed me back, and I knew he hadn’t been “asking me out,” but only asking me to partner with him as an artist.

I invited him to my birthday party and he was the only man to come. But for some reason, I left that night thinking that he wasn’t interested and I was wasting my time. I went home after my internships, between April and May of 2009, and I talked with God about Jeremy for a month. I asked him to either take away my feelings or do something—by that point, I’d been hoping for something between us for four months. I didn’t want to spend all my time pining.

I remember watching “Dan in Real Life” by myself one night. When I got to the end, I started to cry. “God,” I asked, “couldn’t you give me something beautiful like this? Family, marriage—these things are beautiful. They’re from you. Please, can you give this to me?” I remember looking at the clock just before I went upstairs—it was 11:55PM.

The next morning I checked my email. I’d decided not to email Jeremy at all when I went home, and so I hadn’t talked with him in weeks. But that morning, I had an email in my inbox from Jeremy, asking me how I was doing and what I thought of a book he’d leant me. I checked the time on the email—it was sent at midnight the night before. As I was praying that prayer, Jeremy was writing me that email.

God kept my hope alive. When I left to go back to Colorado in early May, I felt that God was giving Himself a deadline, for my sake—“Give me until August,” I thought I could almost hear Him say. “Okay, I’ll give you until August. But if something doesn’t happen in August, I’m walking away from Jeremy forever. I won’t even be friends with him,” I decided.

I got back in May and Kristina had arranged a “welcome back” party for me at TGI Fridays. I drove to the restaurant and the whole way prayed that Jeremy would be there. He was waiting for me on the sidewalk as I drove up. “Hi!” he told me, and gave me a big hug. When he left later that night, he said, “Stay in touch, okay? I’m glad you’re back.” I felt like I’d come home to him.

We emailed almost every day for the next few weeks, and then I found out about a Christian Arts conference that was being held at Glen Eyrie in early June. “I should invite Jeremy,” I thought, but I couldn’t do it. The deadline approached day by day, and I couldn’t make myself tell him about it. Finally, two days before the registration was due, I emailed him all the details.

“I know I should have told you about this sooner,” I said in the email. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to go.”

“How long do I have to decide?” Jeremy asked me.

“You have today,” I said. And that night he told me that he’d go.

That weekend at the conference was the first time we’d been alone together in six months of friendship—we danced, we went on walks, we prayed together, we read books to each other, we talked about art and ministry and life and family, and we laughed a lot. Our eyes were opened to each other in a way they hadn’t been.

I remember that Jeremy brought me coffee one morning, just the way I like it, without asking me what I wanted in it, and I started to wonder if he was interested in me.

A friend at the conference asked me, “Are you guys dating?” And all I could tell her was, “I don’t know.”

The funny thing was, though, that most people we met at that conference assume we were already married. Many of them were from other states or countries even, and when they met us, we introduced ourselves together as both being from Colorado Springs, and our last names both start with “GRA…” with means that when they glanced at our name tags, they might not have noticed that our last names were different. We learned at that conference to specifically tell people that Jeremy lived a block away and I lived “way up north”—it usually helped it we pointed north to differentiate our two homes.

At one point, Jeremy said, “Hey, everyone thinks we’re married.” I just looked at him and said, “Yep.” Neither of us laughed.

At the end of the weekend, we went out with some people from the conference to Jack Quinn’s and Jeremy bought me a drink. And that’s when I knew that his heart had changed.

Who is this guy? Oh yeah, the man I fell in love with...

Here is the continuation of  the story of Jeremy and I ending up together (woo hoo!). I’m not sure how many parts this will have, but probably two or three more. This one’s a bit longer but directly follows our first meeting at “The Mill.” (oh, the irony!) Again, this is unedited– I’m just trying to get it out in words/ on paper (Jeremy hasn’t even read this yet!). Hope you enjoy!

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Chad and his friends took me back to my car and told me that they’d had fun. “We should hang out!” they said. “How about you come to this bible study we go to?” Sure, I said. I wanted to make friends with some women, I told them—I didn’t want male friends. “I’ll call you on Wednesday about it,” Chad said. “It’s at 7.”

“Okay,” I said, overjoyed that I had a social engagement on the calendar. I could wait five days to make more friends…but I’d be counting down the hours!

On Wednesday around 4PM, Chad called. “Yeah, Liz, I don’t think I’m going to go today. But you should call this girl (insert phone number here) to get directions if you still want to go.”

I hung up the phone and my eyes widened. This was a test—could I do it? Could I go even though I didn’t know anyone who’d be there? I dialed the number he’d given me and left a message—“Yeah, hi Kristina, you don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Chad’s… kind of. Well, we met last Friday. Anyway, he invited me to this Bible study tonight. Do you know where it is? I’d like to go, but I don’t know how to get there. I just moved here and I don’t know anybody. I’d like to make some friends. Um, anyway, call me back.”

I took a shower before I left for the Bible study, and when I got out, I saw that Kristina had called me back with directions. I still hadn’t even spoken to anyone who was going to be there. “What am I doing?” I thought.

I wrote down the directions on scrap paper and got in my car. My makeup was immaculate. I was wearing a cute dress I’d bought a month before. I felt naked. I started the engine and drove to the bible study. I was 10 minutes early. It was at somebody’s house, and I parked out front and sat in my car for 10 minutes, talking to myself and praying. “God, I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know anybody in there! What am I doing? This is crazy! Help!”

Somebody drove up, parked, got out of their car and walked into the house. Then another person. Then another person. Finally, I decided—“I’m just going to do it,” I told myself. “What do I have to lose?”

I got out of my car. Someone was walking toward the house. She turned around.

“Hi!” I said. “I’m Liz!” She didn’t say anything but kept looking at me.

“What?” she finally said.

“I’m Liz. My name’s Liz,” I said. It was dark and I couldn’t see her face. She walked toward me.

“What’d you say?” she asked.

“I’m new. My name’s Liz. Is this where the Bible study is meeting?” The girl laughed—“Oooh. I thought you were teasing me, because my name’s Lis too.”

She started walking toward the house again. “Yeah, I’m going to the Bible study too. Come with me.”

We walked toward the house and rung the doorbell. Then some other people pulled up and said, “Hey, what are you guys doing? It’s next door.”

“Oh,” Lis said.

We walked across the driveway and went inside with a whole group of people, a bunch of guys who I decided were mildly cute (“They have potential,” I thought). I walked into the entry way of the house and Jeremy passed by to say hi to everybody, and when he came to me he paused. He gave me a look that meant, “Do I know you?”

I said, “Hi! I don’t know if you remember, but we met at the Mill last Friday. Chad invited me to Bible study,” I said, hoping that he’d at least remember who Chad was even if he didn’t remember me.

“Okay,” Jeremy said, obviously not remembering me. “Well, we’re glad you’re here.”

I slipped off my shoes and walked into the living room and sat down on one of the dining room chairs—you know, the nice kind that people only use on nice occasions or to accommodate extra guests—next to a nice looking girl with long blonde hair.

“Hi, I’m Liz,” I said.

“I’m Rebecca,” she said.

We made small talk and I decided that I liked her. She looked honest.

After a few minutes of introducing myself to everyone within the vicinity, Jeremy called the group to order.

“Hi, everybody! Thanks for coming. We’re going to get started now.”

Everybody quieted down and finished their conversations.

“We just got back from a prayer and fasting retreat, as you all know, and we felt like God was telling us to do something different. We’re going to transition out of studying Acts and move into a study of the book of Mark. Every week, we’re going to read the whole book through and fast together on Wednesdays, and then we’re going to discuss what we learned—sharing observations, research we’ve done in commentaries, and that sort of thing. And we’re doing this because we want to experience Jesus—not just talk about him. We want to get to know him better.”

My eyes grew wide. The night before, I had been asking God why he’d brought me out to this place—I had no friends, no job, no reason to be out here. In fact, I only knew three people: my grandmother, my aunt, and my uncle, and they had to be friends with me because we were related! I was lonely and frustrated—why did I have to start over? “Why did you bring me out here, God?” I asked him.

And then, remarkably, I felt like God answered me—“I want to show you who I am.”

At this point, I think it’s necessary to explain what I mean and so diverge from the story a little bit. Let’s talk about this “God answering me” phenomenon. Now, God doesn’t always talk back to me when I pray to Him, and when I say that God “answered” me, it doesn’t mean I heard a voice or that a lightning bolt wrote out words on the sky or that a finger wrote an answer on the wall. I usually mean that I have an impression that I’ve learned to trust as something outside of me— Orthodox Christians call this informant the Holy Spirit.
And, believe it or not, the Holy Spirit—or even the fact that I believe in something called the Holy Spirit—is vitally important to my love story with Jeremy. You see, I believe in a God who is in perfect, united, loving relationship in Himself, that he’s three separate persons joined as one. I do not believe in three gods; I believe in one God, a three in one, and many people have tried to explain it well before and failed. I think if I tried to explain what I don’t fully understand, I would fail too, and so I won’t bore you with unhelpful metaphors.

However, I believe that the failure to explain the Trinity comes from an inability to live in the depth of that united relationship as human beings. We can’t possibly know each other as if we were the other person. It’s impossible. Yet the desire still exists to become one—distinct and united—with the one person that you love most. Sometimes, I wonder if there would be a way for Jeremy to crawl inside my skin so he could know how it feels for me to blink or burp or cry. But as it is, we cannot love or even know another person in this way. It is not possible for us. But we can still hope, and that’s where love for God and for another person is born.

All this to say, I will refer to this inexplicable phenomenon often (the Holy Spirit) as one who speaks back to me. You don’t have to believe me. That’s okay. But He is a vital player in the rest of the story, so I just thought I should warn you to be skeptical ahead of time. J

Now, back to the drama. Jeremy had said, “We want to experience Jesus by studying Mark—we don’t just want to talk about Him, we want to get to know Him better.” My eyes grew wide because I believed that God had talked with me the night before and had told me that He wanted me to know who He was, and that’s why He had brought me out here. At the time, I’d understood that to mean that I’d get to know a thunder and lightning Job kind of God, you know, the type who’s smiting livestock and pouring down wrath in fire from heaven. Yikes! Who wants to get to know somebody who does that? No thank you, I’d thought. Spare me the trouble.

But when Jeremy said that, about knowing Jesus, I knew that I needed to go to this Bible study—even though I didn’t know one person there, even though I didn’t have any concrete reasons for staying, I knew I needed to commit to being there every single Wednesday for the next three months (remember, that’s how long I was planning to stay in Colorado Springs).

I prayed a silent prayer—“Okay, God. Show me who you are.”

Aside from feeling convinced that God was telling me to go to this odd Bible study every week, there was one other thing that caught my attention—and it was the man who was delivering this message to me. Jeremy was wearing a thrift store wool Christmas sweater, with zig zags and stripes in every direction. It was ugly and I loved it! I couldn’t take my eyes off of this man, in fact! He was praying deeply for his friends. He was leading the Bible study group—he happened to give a mini-sermon that week from the book of Mark, to show us what Mark had meant to him that week and how it might impact us. He shared from the passage of Jesus calming the storm. Thirty minutes into the Bible study, I found myself pondering two questions:: the first was, “God, who are you?” and then, “Who is this man?”

Moreover, he was cracking jokes right and left, and they were funny. I wish I could remember more specifics about all this, but what I do remember is the impression that sealed the deal for me. Somewhere near the time I finally left the bible study (after having met and talked to anybody who would talk to me!), Jeremy made fun of himself— he hunched his back and wiggled his fingers and pretended to push up an imaginary pair of glasses at the bridge. Then he talked in this funny mad-scientist nerd voice, and we all cracked up.

Now, I feel I must be completely honest in this narrative, and so that means I need to include times I believe that I heard from God or had impressions from the Holy Spirit, even when I myself can feel incredulous about it (which I do, at times! “Do I really believe I heard that?” I find myself asking, and I always come back to a belief that God does speak to ordinary people like me, and that I believe that God spoke these things to me.). I should say that I do not believe in love at first sight. I believe in infatuation certainly, but what happened on this first night of Bible study does not fit in any of those easy categories.

When I left the Bible study, I left knowing that I had met my husband. I wrote it in my journal that night—I felt amazed, at peace, and scared all at the same time. “I just met my husband,” I wrote in a letter to a friend, “and I’m afraid to admit it, but I’ve never been more certain about anything in my whole life!”

When I told Jeremy this (much, much later—after we were engaged), he said, “Women always say that. Everybody likes to say they knew beforehand.” But in his mind, they couldn’t have known. I believe him. I think that happens a lot.

But I believe that this was different. Truly, I believe that the Holy Spirit showed me that so that I could be prepared by Him to marry Jeremy. There were a lot of things that were keeping me from being ready to marry Jeremy, or from being ready to date him, and God used that knowledge to give me faith.

But more than anything else, I believe God gave me that understanding as a gift, plain and simple. Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t do anything about it. I just waited. I decided at the time that I’d forget about it, and if it never happened, oh well. No harm would have been done. But if something happened, then it would have been true and a gift from God.

In the end, it was real and true and that is what is more important than anything else. Believe me or not on this—I won’t be offended if you take issue with it. Frankly, it is difficult for me to believe. But God calls us to have faith in Him that is beyond our capacity of belief all the time. That’s His way. And to the best that I can, I will walk in it.

However, as this is an honest narrative, you should know that there is a whole year and a half that comes before the peace that I found in this. In fact, as I’m sure you can imagine, all of this opened a new can of slimy, wiggly worms. “What do I mean thinking ‘I just meant my husband?’ How can I be certain about that? Where did that come from? Was that you, God?” I thought. I was launched into a whole new set of fears. And immediately, I decided not to spend time alone with any men at all because of it—“Not until May,” I thought. So that way I had at least five months to process everything and to try to forget about Jeremy because, I thought, never in a thousand years would a man like that love me.

This photo was taken by a friend of ours, Richard Seldomridge of Wapangy Imaging. Check out his stuff!

A Meeting: Part 1

Where do you begin to tell a love story? Does it start on the day that you meet him or the day that he tells you he loves you, or does it begin much earlier, before either of you were born, with your parents and their parents, or even earlier, at the beginning of the world, when molecules were racing around and life was first created?

Jeremiah Edward Grant and I, Elizabeth Charlotte Graves, met in January 2009. I wish I could recall the day offhand, but of course, I can’t. It seems we always forget the days that are most important, because we never knew they were so important at the time. Jeremy was born in 1985; I was born in 1987. I was born in Illinois; he was born in California. He moved to Colorado when he was six, only thirty minutes away from where my aunt and uncle lived—they got married four blocks away from where his parents bought a house, and for years, my uncle worked at the MCI building near Garden of the Gods, only two blocks away from the house where Jeremy grew up.

Jeremy loved to draw, and his mother, noticing it, encouraged him. She homeschooled him, but had artists friends from church tutor Jeremy in art. By high school he was taking advanced classes and winning awards. He illustrated an entire series of Sunday school curriculum for Summit Ministries. He won a local art show.

My parents noticed that I loved stories and read to me when I was young. In elementary school, I wrote stories (which I also illustrated, of course). In my second grade report card, my teacher told my parents that I was an excellent story-teller and that I had a wild imagination. By high school, my father, who was educated in journalism himself, was teaching me that editing was a part of writing. I still remember the day when he read one of my papers during my sophomore year and told me he wouldn’t change a thing.

Jeremy went to a college in Arkansas; I went to a college in Illinois. My grandmother started pestering me to do a program called “The Institute” at Focus on the Family. The pressure increased around the end of my freshman year. She wanted me to apply for the fall of my sophomore year (2007). I refused. That fall of 2007, Jeremy attended the Institute after he’d graduated from college.

During the summer in between my junior and senior years in college, I went on a school trip to England. We studied literature at Oxford, hiked in the Lake District, and visited art museums in London. That summer (or was it the summer before?), Jeremy also went on a school trip. He visited London and France, studying art and culture and eating lots of European cuisine.

We never met. In spite of all these funny coincides, we never met– not until the January after I finished college. My last semester had been hard, the hardest one yet, and instead of following through on my original plans to stay around the Chicago area, I felt that God was opening a door to come to Colorado Springs. My aunt emailed me and said, “Liz, I know you already have a Plan A, but in case you need a plan B, you can come live with me and your Uncle Ron for free out here. We’ll feed you and you can work with me at Goodwill.” I told her that no, thanks, I already had my life figured out. And then two weeks later, I emailed her back to see if the offer still stood—it did.

Three weeks after I’d taken my last exam, I drove halfway across the country to go live in their basement. I knew only three people in Colorado Springs: my aunt (my mother’s twin), my uncle, and my grandmother. I cried on the way to Colorado, because I knew that my life would change forever. And it did.

Meanwhile, Jeremy had graduated from college, had finished his time at the Focus on the Family Institute, and was looking for graphic design jobs. He started pursuing a job working as a graphic designer for a ministry in England. But as the process stretched out for months, he started to realize that he really wanted to stay in Colorado Springs to connect to his church. “Sorry,” he told them. “I’m not interested anymore.” And he planted his feet in Colorado Springs. 

However, I came to Colorado Springs ready to move away. I didn’t want to make new friends or live in a new place. I wanted what was familiar. But before I’d come, I’d made a commitment that I’d try anything out here, that I would say yes to everything (within reason) in this new place. So when my aunt started dropping hints about a guy named Chad—“Liz, he’s really cute and smart and not dating anybody…”—I sighed and said that yes, I’d go to the Mill with him. I wanted to see what it was like anyway.

(What’s the Mill, you ask? It’s a young adult church service put on by New Life Church. Yes, that New Life Church. Basically it’s a gathering of 1,000+ young people in Colorado Springs, and at the time, I thought it would be a great way to make new friends.)

My aunt and uncle arranged for Chad to take me to the Mill on the second Friday after I’d arrived in Colorado Springs. I met him there. He brought a friend, thank goodness. We sat through the singing and listened to a man talk about one of the ten deadly sins, and then, another man came up to say hi to Chad. “Liz, this is Jeremy.” I was distracted. We shook hands and smiled, and excused myself to go ask one of the New Life people to pray for me.

Just that morning, I’d been struggling with God about staying. I’d just arrived, but already I wanted to leave. He kept impressing on me the story of Abraham and Isaac, how Abraham was called to give up Isaac to death, without knowing the reasons of God. I did not know God’s mind. But I went up for prayer and the prayer minister said, “I think you need to give something up to God. I’m reminded of Abraham giving up Isaac…” I knew that I needed to be open to staying in Colorado Springs and not leaving at the first chance I got.

I walked back up the aisle toward Chad and the other guys and passed that guy Jeremy on my left. We saw each other and smiled, and I congratulated myself on not being attracted to him, even though I knew he was an artist.

Chad and his friends decided to take me to dinner. We went to a restaurant and talked for two hours. Chad kept mentioning that Jeremy guy—“Man, I wish Jeremy were here. Do you know what he’s doing, Evan? We should call him.” And he told me stories about Jeremy—about his art, about his spiritual life. It seemed odd to me, but from Chad’s stories and high opinion of Jeremy, this man I hardly knew intrigued me. I tried not to think about it.

The good news is, I’M ENGAGED!

The better news is, I’m still writing. (just kidding– it’s really hard to say which is better )

I’ve switched focus and am writing Our Story (you know, the type of story you have to capitalize when you talk about it). I’m going to be posting it on our WEDDING WEBSITE, so check it out! I’ll try to also post the story here, as I write it.

To get to know the most attractive, most wonderful man I know, check out his flickr page. He is an artiste, truly.  Also I love him.

Slightly edited…

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He had a scruff about him. A hitchhiker was walking down I-25 in a suit, the type my dad wears to the office. That was odd enough, but then he was dragging behind him a rolling suitcase, you know, green with an expandable zipper and front pockets, the type airport security might search  if he tried to bring it on the airplane and stewardesses might tell him needs to go in the belly of the plane, below his seat, instead of in the overhead compartment, where he’d hoped to put  it. The highway’s shoulder was not smooth by any means—he pulled his suitcase determinedly over rocks, sticks, clumps of grass, wild flowers, gravel, dirt, anything that was in his way.

Meanwhile, cars barreled past him at 80 miles per hour, heading north, and he was walking—almost strolling—south. My aunt decided he was going toward the airport, although she told me, “He must have missed his plane. It would take ten hours to get to the airport that way!” 

She didn’t stop though, because she was having people over for dinner that night and needed to turn on the grill for the chicken, and I didn’t go back later to pick him up or anything after I’d heard about it, or even go to see if he was still there. I didn’t know him, and I wasn’t too bothered by the thought of him on the side of the road in the dark, walking opposite the speeding traffic. 

But he didn’t seem to care either. Actually, now that I think of it, I don’t think he was even asking for a ride. He didn’t stand with his thumb out. Instead, he kept plodding forward, one foot in front of the other, one tug after another, seeing his goal in his mind. 

When he reached his destination, I imagined that he would set his suitcase down, facing up toward the heavens, and sit on it. He’d untie his laces and remove his shoes, and he’d lie down on his back, shut his eyes, and fall asleep. But until he got there, to that long imagined rest, he would not be kept for anything.

(this stunning oil painting of the train I rode to Chicago is by a former roommate, Charity Kittler. Check out her Flickr!)

I’ve posted this story before, but I just revised it today, so I think it’s better. I’d like to know what you think.

Again, as introduction, this piece came out of a true experience. I went to college in Chicago, and this happened on one trip to the city. I could hardly believe what was happening at the time and basically recorded the whole thing. I hope it moves you like it moved me.

The title is in flux, so if you have any ideas, feel free to post them. My ideas are either to keep it as “Fire in my Bones” or to change it to “I Spy” or “For Julie.”

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            She and I shared Chicago as our destination. Meanwhile, Peter, Mona and I were taking a lazy Sunday, a break from classes, homework, and college living. Our train made stops along the way to the city, most of which we ignored except to point them out to Peter, who was determined to memorize them.

            “Peter, Glen Ellyn.”

            “Villa Park.”

            “Oakbrook.”

            “Lombard.”

            “Maywood.”

            I watched towns roll past my window like they were projected onto a screen. I relaxed my neck and rested it on the pane, feeling every bump in the tracks. I shut my eyes. Mona and Peter were laughing.

And then we stopped suddenly. I looked for a sign next to the tracks to tell us where we were, but I didn’t see one. “That’s odd…,” I thought. The man in front of us didn’t even look up from his newspaper.

We waited in our seats, still relaxed.

“They must have been ahead of schedule,” I said to Mona. “They have to wait for the trains in front of them to get a good lead, I bet.” 

We weren’t impatient; the jazz festival would continue into the night, and we could eat Moroccan food anytime. We played I Spy:

“I spy with my little eye a blue overcoat…”

“I spy with my little eye brown leather shoes…”

“I spy with my little eye a newspaper…”

Finally an announcement.

            “What’d he say?” I asked Mona.

            “He said we were going to be delayed, and apologized for the inconvenience,” I said.

            “Did you hear why?”

            “No, I missed it,” I said.

            We’d all missed it.

            “Did he say something about a fatality?” a man with a blue coat a few seats away asked us.

            “I thought he might have said fatality,” Peter said.

            “The system must have crackled,” said a woman with brown leather high heels. “That can’t be right.”

            People started to get off the train, coming back as scouts with reports.

            “I saw two girls out there, and one girl was crying while the other talked on a cell phone,” one red-shirted recruit told his friends who sat above us on the top level of the train. I looked at Mona. Her eyes were big.

            “Maybe it was an animal and they saw it,” said Peter.

            A half hour passed. Whisperings echoed through the car. No one talked loudly. The man in front of us kept looking at his watch, and the woman with the high heels was on the phone.

            “No, I don’t know,” she said. “The train hasn’t moved for a half hour and nobody’s getting off. We’re somewhere in between. I’ll call you later.”

            The man in the blue coat stood up and walked toward the doors. From my window, I watched him walk out the doors and onto the pavement, toward the front of the train. I wondered what he was looking for.

            Another half hour and another announcement: “We know the train is full—we have 700 people riding to the city today—but please don’t get off the train. We’re waiting for the coroner to arrive, so we’d appreciate your patience. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

            The coroner. For a few seconds, everyone was quiet—nobody whispered to their neighbor, nobody made phone calls, nobody even moved. Then a resurgence of noise: more people started to stand up and walk toward the double doors to get off the train. Still waiting, Peter took off to explore, our shoeless investigator. “Be careful,” we said to him.

            Mona and I waited, though for what we weren’t sure. We chatted as if this was part of the planned Chicago trip, as if we weren’t scared.

            “I hope Peter’s okay,” I said after a few minutes. We looked around but couldn’t see him.

            “I’m sure he’s fine,” said Mona, unconvinced.    

            Then the conductor got on the microphone: “The coroner and investigators have arrived.” He said we just need to sit tight. Sorry for the inconvenience.

            I looked out the green tinted window across the street and saw Ted’s Auto Repair, Maywood appliance, and a church with a green fabric overhang. A rusty fence. A street light. A torn down building. On the other side of the tracks, a boarded up restaurant boasting gyros, hamburgers, hotdogs and breakfast. “I spy with my little eye…,” I thought to myself.

            “Okay everybody, the investigation is just about over,” said the conductor again. “Just hang tight until we get more of this… cleaned up.”

After two hours, Mona called her roommate to pick the two of us up. We didn’t want to go to Chicago anymore.

I went out onto the platform with her. At the front of the train, we saw a white sheet surrounded by a flurry of uniformed policemen. Closer to us, yellow tape marked where the public’s curiosity must stop. A crowd had gathered there anyway, mostly boys from the town, some on bicycles.

            Peter found us.

            “What happened?”

            “She jumped.” I blinked.

And then—“Is she okay?”

“Do you really want to know?” Peter asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Mona.

“I think I do,” I said.

Peter continued slowly: “They only found the bottom half of her body, and that half is missing a leg. They don’t know where the rest of her body went.”

Mona covered her mouth.

“Did you…see anything?” I asked.

“When I came out, her tissue was still on the tracks—her skin, her muscles.”

I shut my eyes.

“I had to look away; it was too horrible, too real. I can still see her. But you can’t see anything now, except for her dress underneath the train.”

            He pointed toward the yellow tape further down the platform.

            I looked down at my feet.

            “Julie” was sprayed in white paint on the black cement, her makeshift gravestone.

            “Mona, I have to try to see it.” I said. “I know her name.”  

            I walked toward the police, one foot in front of the other.

            Her dress—black and white, soot-dirty tatters—lay still on the tracks. I owned a dress the same color that I’d bought on clearance a year before. I wore it to go swing dancing and I would come home dripping sweat from my back, arms, legs. Mona and I went together once and we rode home with the windows open. On the way to the dance hall, we hadn’t wanted the unruly wind to spoil the curls in our straight hair, but on the way home, it cooled us, reminding us that our blood flowed hot, that life was wild sweat.

            But her dress no longer moved tight with her body in a swing dance spin. The wind could no longer reach it beneath the wheels of the train. It was cold, still, lifeless, alone.

            And Mona and I drove home that day desperate and thankful, windows down.

AKA The piece formerly known as “Summer Vacation” newly edited…

I wake up without purpose. Where is everyone? I walk down the hall in bare feet to my parents’ bedroom and knock. I crack open the door and glance around the corner. I close the door and walk down two sets of stairs to the basement. My feet feel cold on the tile. I step into my brother’s bedroom door, and then into the bathroom, and then back up the staircase. I open the door leading to the garage and notice the cars are gone. I press the black button next to the light switch. The garage door creaks and wakes up the dog, who’s been put to bed in the laundry room. I notice the oil stains on the driveway. No one’s here.

So then what shall I do today? I can’t think of anything. It’s my summer vacation. I haven’t spoken since the night before. I haven’t even opened my mouth yet, not even to brush my teeth. I hear the dog scratching and whining, trying to get out of the laundry room. I sigh and walk toward the door, open it, and then seat myself in front of our kitchen television set. I stare at my dog, who’s sniffing my feet; he doesn’t bark and I don’t speak. I press a button and a screen flashes to life. Little people are walking around inside the set, talking to each other. They have a dog, like me. My stomach grumbles; I ignore it. My knee itches; I scratch it.   

Two hours later, I stand up and rub my eyes. I decide to eat breakfast. I walk three feet to the left and pull the pantry door toward me. I stare at the shelves, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. Quaker Oatmeal Squares? Life? Cheerios? Oatmeal Squares today. My hand pulls out the box and takes apart the cardboard—it is unopened. My mother must have only bought it this week at Safeway. I turn my head and neck and shoulders and hips slowly and move toward the cupboards above the stove—an about face. I choose a bowl, one with yellow and blue flowers painted on the inside curve. Made in Spain. I tip the cereal box at an angle and catch the oat squares in the porcelain dish. They clink against the sides as they fill up the inside unevenly, a boulder field, an avalanche. I place the cereal box beside me on the counter and turn toward the refrigerator in the corner. I grasp the silver handle and jerk the door open; it sighs. I feel the hair on my arm rise. The cold wakes me enough to reach for the gallon of milk, skim like my family likes it. My arm drops from the weight, my bicep tightening, milk sloshing at my side, and I carry the gallon toward my bowl. I twist the lid. I tip the jug and milk floods the boulder field. All of a sudden, my oats are floating. They’ve changed into buoys, rafts, even a collection of islands, each alone beside the others.  

I reach for a spoon and notice the green numbers on the microwave. What happened? Is it really almost lunchtime? I place the milk back in the fridge as my oats soften. They begin sinking to the bottom of the bowl. I slide open a drawer and select a spoon, one with a long handle. I stir my milk, watching the oats change. I push my cereal away from me—I don’t like soggy oats. I lean back. I stand up and set my cereal bowl next to the sink—my mother hates it when I don’t put my dishes in the washer, but there it sits, milk pooling in the bottom, stray oats floating on the surface, barely touching; I feel like the oats.

I decide to make myself a turkey sandwich. I gather the materials from the refridge and set them out in a row on the counter. I spread mayonnaise on one piece of wheat bread. I cover the whole surface. I place the turkey on top and fold the bread in half. I bring my lunch with me into the TV room, two rooms over. I step barefoot across the floor and collapse into my corner of the couch, by the armrest, feeling my form fit into the cushion—the cushion remembers me. I set my plate beside me, balancing on a cushion, and turn on the television to retreat. No more decisions.

I see a mother and daughter banter before me until I feel like they’re talking to me; I’m one of them. My dad has run out on me, I’ve been born out of wedlock, my mother sleeps with men she hardly knows, and I have boyfriends who are bad for me. I have a witty reply to every question. I have an endless wardrobe and a growing bank account. I watch movies with my mother every Friday night as we gorge ourselves on junk food. One episode precedes another until the marathon concludes with a cliff hanger. I snap to—what was I going to do today? I don’t remember anymore. It is four o’clock.

I walk upstairs to my bedroom and grab a pair of socks from the floor. I sit down on the carpet and pull them over my feet. I pick my Converse from the closet and wiggle my feet inside the canvas shoes. I tie my laces with both hands. I clammer downstairs in a sudden rush and open the garage door. It groans. I take my keys off their hook and walk to my car. I drive to the library to see if I can pick up the DVDs of the television series where it left me—I have to know what happens. I park in the closest parking spot and step into the revolving doors. I go around once. Then I go around again—I have no destination. I go around a third time, pushing the bar forward with my palms, and this time step into the quiet of the library. I walk toward the nearest librarian to ask about renting the next season.

“Sorry, all we have is checked out.” I’m annoyed, but this has been my only human interaction all day. I’m almost relieved.

I walk out of the library and into the parking lot and unlock my car by hand. I open the door and start the engine. I turn off the radio and listen to nothing for a few minutes; then I drive home. I pull my car into the garage. I remember that I had forgotten to put the dog in the laundry room. I see that my mother has arrived home from wherever she’d gone.

“Good day?” she asks when I come inside.

I shrug.

She is making dinner in the kitchen. I lean on the counter, watching her grate cheese for tacos, moving the metal grate up and down over the block of cheddar. The shredded pieces fall into a bowl beneath her hands. I think about the characters from my television show while she tells me about the accident she and my brother saw on route 50. I say I have to go to the bathroom and walk toward the TV room. I sit down next to my brother who is already watching something. We sit side by side without touching until my mother yells to us from the kitchen.

“What?” my brother says.

We ignore her.

Then she’s in the room—“Dinner’s ready! I called you three times.”

“Okay,” he says. Neither of us makes a move to turn off the television. My mother takes the remote out of my hands and I don’t fight her. The television flashes to nothing. We turn our heads to look at her.   

“It’s getting cold,” she says.

We sigh and pull ourselves off the couch.

Over dinner I suggest to mom that we should have family time later.

“Do you want to watch a movie?” she suggests.

I can’t think of anything else to do so I nod. That night we fall asleep in front of a glowing screen. The next morning I wake up from a dream about oatmeal and wish I could go back to sleep.

I will never forget her fuchsia dress.

We shared Chicago as our destination. The train made many stops along the way, most of which we ignored except to point them out to Peter, who was determined to memorize them.

We called them out.

“Peter, Glen Ellyn.”

“Villa Park.”

“Oakbrook.”

“Lombard.”

“Maywood.”

And then we stopped. We waited. We weren’t impatient; the jazz festival would continue into the night, and we could eat Moroccan food anytime.

Finally an announcement.

“What’d he say?” I asked Mona.

“He said we were going to be delayed, and apologized for the inconvenience.”

“Did you hear why?”

“No, I missed it.” We’d all missed it.

“Did he say something about a fatality?” a man a few seats away asked his neighbor.

“I thought he might have said fatality,” Peter said.

People started to get off the train, coming back as scouts with reports.

“I saw two girls out there, and one girl was crying while the other talked on a cell phone,” one blue-shirted recruit told his friends who sat above us on the top level of the train.

A half hour passed.

Guys started getting off the train to look underneath the tracks.

Another half hour and another announcement: “We know the train is full—we have 700 people riding to the city today—but please don’t get off the train. We’re waiting for the coroner to arrive, so we’d appreciate your patience. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

Still waiting for the coroner, Peter took off to explore the train, our shoeless investigator.

Mona and I waited, though for what we weren’t sure. We chatted, seat partners, as if this was part of the planned Chicago trip.  

“The coroner and investigators have arrived,” the conductor informed us. We just need to sit tight. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I looked out the green tinted window across the street and saw Ted’s Auto Repair, Maywood appliance, and a church with a green overhang. A rusty fence. A street light. A torn down building. On the other side of the tracks, a boarded up restaurant boasting gyros, hamburgers, hotdogs and breakfast.

“Okay everybody, the investigation is just about over. Just hang tight until we get more of this… cleaned up.”

After two hours, Mona called her roommate to pick the two of us up. Chicago didn’t seem worth the wait. I went out onto the platform with her. At the front of the train, we saw a white sheet surrounded by a flurry of uniformed policemen. Closer to us, yellow tape marked where the public’s curiosity must stop. A crowd had gathered there anyway, mostly boys from the town, some on bicycles.

Peter found us.

“What happened?”

“She jumped.”

“Is she okay?”

“They only found the bottom half of her body, and that half is missing a leg. They don’t know where the rest of her body went.”

“Did you…see anything?

“When I came out, her tissue was still splattered on the tracks—her skin, her muscles.”

I shut my eyes.

“I had to look away; it was too horrible, too real. I can still see her. But you can’t see anything now, except for her dress underneath the train.”

He pointed toward the yellow tape further down the platform.

I looked down at my feet. “Julie” was sprayed in white paint on the black cement, her makeshift gravestone.

“Mona, I have to try to see it,” I said.  I walked toward the police. Her dress—fuchsia, soot-dirty tatters—lay still on the tracks. I owned a dress the same color that I’d bought on clearance a year before. I wore it to go swing dancing and I would come home dripping sweat from my back, arms, legs. Mona and I went together once and we rode home with open windows. On the way to the dance hall we didn’t want the unruly wind outside to spoil the curls in our normally straight hair, but on the way home, it cooled us, reminding us that our blood flowed hot, that life was wild sweat.

But her dress no longer moved tight with her body in a swing dance spin. The wind could no longer reach it beneath the wheels of the train. And Mona and I drove home with the windows down, desperate and thankful.

But frankly even art blogs–mine specifically focusing on writing and shyly branching into other mediums– are a “dime a dozen.” In other words, they are cliched and stale, all important perhaps but most unnecessary.

So why read mine? Well, I should be up front: I am not the Hemingway of our time. I am not Tolkein or O’Connor or Dillard. I am not even a puny Herbert. I am simply myself and that is all I can be. I write what I know to be true so that people know they aren’t alone. There is a God, there is hope; there is pain, there is sin. I hope that something I write (or, if I can be optimistic, create) resonates with something deep inside you that longs for connection. And perhaps, if I’m lucky, I might even get a chuckle out of you.

Here’s to us!