Over the next couple of weeks, I will be offering a taste of my memoir, The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press, here on my blog. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined. Keep checking back for additional chapters.
1. A Photograph
She’s wearing a floral blouse; open wide at the collar, and accompanied by a tan vest. Her thick hair actually looks more reddish than brown in the photograph. It was short enough to let the bottom of her ears peek out. That summer I watched as she let it grow out to a richer, more luxurious length. Her nose was the very model of perfection; pert and turned up just slightly at the end. Sadly, the photo does no justice whatsoever to her warm blue eyes that were accented with tiny specks of gray. Still, they are bright and alert. Friendly. Sincere. They conveyed the eagerness and the innocence of youth in equal measure. God. How many times did I look into those eyes and see all I needed of heaven?
One thing not lost to the photographer’s haphazard work was her smile. It wasn’t her broadest smile, or her fullest smile. But it was a smile nonetheless.
Ah, her smile. Everything I loved could be found behind it. To say it warmed my soul would be an unimaginable understatement. Her smile was literally the only approval I sought in this world. I strove, happily at first and painfully later, to earn it. When it was finally taken away from me, I lost the only barometer I had by which to measure success or failure in any and all things.
I was rudderless. Adrift.
The photograph is wallet-sized, and I kept it in my wallet for over twenty years. Maybe twenty-five. Yes, even after I married another woman.
It wasn’t like I looked at it every day, or every month, or every year for that matter. But it was always there, a silent reminder, usually tucked safely behind my driver’s license. Her smile, which grew increasingly worn and damaged over time, was always there to console me every time a police officer pulled me over to the side of the road and demanded my identification. That, because of my heavy foot, was something that happened more than I would have preferred. I was so accustomed to looking at that face in that photo that I had forgotten until quite recently what she had written on the back. The photo wasn’t such a silent reminder after all.
Here’s what she wrote:
Sean,
What can I say? It’s me! Keep this to remember me by,
Love, Kathy 78-79
Love, Kathy 78-79
From the vantage point of the year 2014, those words were incredibly rich in irony.
What can I say? It’s me!
Kathy gave me the photograph on May 8, 1979, the day I first asked her out on a date. For years, we would celebrate it as our anniversary.
I wonder what Kathy would have thought if she knew that moment was literally a dream come true for me. That I had treasured every glimpse of her, every word she had spoken for years. Would that have scared her? Or would it have pleased her? I had consistently pursued her with a shy certitude for nearly two years. Did she know? Did she see the longing in my eyes when my tongue was too tied to speak?
Keep this to remember me by.
Those words struck me as utterly absurd at the time. I would never need a picture to remember her by. Even then I had every reason to believe I was going to win her heart and marry her. We would have a family and grow old in each other’s comforting arms. Together, we would inhabit a shared present where no memory, no matter how pleasant, would be needed. At that moment, I was more certain that I would marry Kathy Gardiner than John Calvin was that his soul would fly to heaven after death. After all, Calvin relied entirely on predestination for his fate. I felt I had both predestination and free will on my side. My free will, that is. Sadly, her free will took her in another direction, which meant that, ironically, all that remains of our relationship now are memories and a few photos. Like this one.
Her words were more prophetic than she could have possibly imagined when she wrote them.
Love, Kathy.
Unbelievable. She actually used the L-word. On the first day of our relationship! And she probably had to do so. I needed her to utter a word of such monumental power to break the wall around my sheltered heart and encourage me to invite her to go to the movies that upcoming Friday night.
The ultimate irony, however, is that she never used the word love again during our four-year relationship to describe her feelings for me.
Although I loved her as much that very first day of our relationship as I did on the last, it still took me six months to build up the courage to actually say the words. She did not reciprocate in kind. A few days later, she quietly told me she only wanted to say those words to one man. The man she would marry. I was certain I would be that man. She wasn’t. And she was proven correct.
In the years to come, she offered me many sweet and comforting words that made me feel secure and loved beyond measure. Still, she never used the actual word love to describe her feelings for me again until February 16th, 1994, an unremittingly dark day of sorrow. It was eleven long years after we had broken up and five years after she married someone else and became a loving mother of three children. Still, she didn’t say it to me, but rather she said it to two old friends of mine.
Kathy was my first love. She changed my life forever. Whether she intended it or not, she became the spectacles through which I viewed the world. And love.
But that’s not the only reason I held onto the photograph. It also served as a symbol of my personal relationship with the Lord. In a strange way, I kept her photo on me the way other Christians keep a cross dangling from a chain beneath their shirts.
My conversion to Christianity and my relationship with Kathy are completely intertwined. I can’t honestly discuss either relationship without referencing the other. I learned everything I know about God, His Will and what was expected of me in return during that relationship and its immediate aftermath.
The Lord made me a promise about her; a promise that would reverberate through my life. Even if it didn’t come true.
Other Chapters:
Chapter 1 - A Photograph
Chapter 2 - My Death
Chapter 3 - Childhood
Chapter 4 - Saved!
Chapter 5 - The Promise
Chapter 6 - The Mission
Chapter 7 - Mission Accomplished
You can get a copy of the whole book here:
Other Chapters:
Chapter 1 - A Photograph
Chapter 2 - My Death
Chapter 3 - Childhood
Chapter 4 - Saved!
Chapter 5 - The Promise
Chapter 6 - The Mission
Chapter 7 - Mission Accomplished
You can get a copy of the whole book here:
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