This poem appeared in the Deseret News Today (April 24, 2008) in an article titled "Making Ourselves a Perfect Fit in Marriage" It is worth reading it all:
http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695273083,00.html
You don't arrive at marriage, lonely hearts.
The wedding's where the lifelong journey starts,
Forced to travel with a clumsy fool
Or trot along behind a receding dream
(You had to stop and help me when I tripped,
While you would never stick to my passionate script),
Using one another like an ill-made tool,
Like ox and antelope yoked in a single team.
And yet ... somehow, together, we managed to pull
An empty cart straight uphill;
And look -- the creaking, rickety thing is full
Of crockery, old rags, a child or two.
At the start, knowing nothing, we said "I will,"
And now look at all the things I made with you,
All our baggage, all our breakage, art
By unskilled artisans, yet beautiful,
Yours and mine, no matter how peculiar;
New and strange, no matter how familiar.
Some passages were merely dutiful.
Who could know, on our ignorant starting day
That, pulling such a long and weary way,
The man, the woman, strangers side by side,
Would end the trek inside each other's heart,
Trading forgiveness and repentances,
Finishing each other's sentences,
Only to be stranded,
The team -- for now at least -- disbanded.
Now we see how all the road maps lied:
Our destination was the yoke we shared,
Badly at first, but by the end well paired.
And only when you died did I leave my home
And pointlessly, empty-carted, roam.
You don't arrive at marriage, lonely hearts.
The wedding's where the lifelong journey starts.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
CAROLE MCRAE
Carole McRae has been a part of my relationship with Mike from the beginning but I met her for the first time last December. When Mike and I were dating and over the years I have heard lots of stories about Carole because she was an important part of Mike's mission to Eastern Canada. Mike baptized Carole's husband. I have heard so many stories about how people were always drawn to Carole; how she fellowshipped in the mission; how she helped the missionaries with kindness and refferals; how hard she worked in the church organization. Over the years Mike and Carole have touched bases on occasion through letters and phone conversations and lately via e-mail. A few years ago Mike and I actually took a trip back to Montreal to visit the mission haunts but Carole and her new husband were on a couple mission to the Ivory Coast at the time and so we did not connect. Last December Carole and her husband made a trip to Utah and we were able to have them to dinner and spend an evening in the mission journals and scrapbooks trading stories. Carole has become my friend also and I wanted to introduce her in this picture that we took when she visited our home with her husband Gary. They are both an inspiration and a testimony of how God magnifies good people.
