9

August 9th 1998 was the first time Lindsay and I went on a date. Today it has been 9 years since then. We were between our sophomore and junior years of high school. I was getting ready for what would turn out to be a poor season of Tomahawk football, while Lindsay began participating in a state bound cross country team.

I had used every excuse I could think of to get over to her house except for the obvious and honest one, namely I had somehow become completely enamored with her and that by merely being in her presence the world somehow seem a bit more magical.

We spent that day, August 9, 1998, water skiing and tubing behind her parents vintage and yet stellar Baja ski boat. Her then little sister, now preparing for her first year as teacher in Baldwin, Wisconsin, had a friend over and so the four of us took turns taking laps around Lake Nokomis.

That evening I hung around long enough to earn an invitation from her parents for dinner, which turned out to be some tasty grilled chicken breasts and a couple of side items. Trying not be awkward, we made our way above the patio the overhanging balcony and looking across the lake I asked her if she wanted to go mini-golfing, which Texans I have come to learn often call putt-putt golf.

We went and the rest is history. I remember the night well including my confessing that the reason she was beating me was because I couldn’t concentrate. Which as cheesy as it may seem for one high school sweetheart to say to another on their first date, was completely true. I was Cinderella at my proverbial ball. The fairy tale had just begun.

At moments like these, Lindsay and I do a fairly good job of reflecting. We frequently return to the question that goes something like this, “when we first started dating did you ever imagine that this…” “this” of course being the current chapter in this perfect story that we get to call our life.

Today after Lindsay got home she took some time to play with Roy. She evoked from him a laugh that I had not heard before, but that was so powerful that it disturbed my Thomas Merton reading. I set the book down grabbed the video camera and shot about a minute of footage. I listened to him laugh and for some reason the thought that crossed my mind, was that, Roy is our creation and that he is his own person with his own laugh. Roy is better than all the cars we will ever have, all the homes we will ever have or even the best jobs we will ever have. His presence in our life reaches down to the deepest parts my soul and elicits emotion in me that I did not know I had.

Tonight I got to bed thinking that I would have never dreamed of this in my wildest dreams…

grace for 9 years and God’s grace for 99 more