the heart of the matter

I went to see my therapist a few weeks ago. My therapist married David and me, so I'm having a hard time talking about the "bumps in the road" because I'm afraid he'll be kicking himself -- "Why did you agree to marry them? Big mistake!"

Not that David and I are having trouble. We flew through the first year of marriage. In fact, we were concerned that we weren't fighting more. Are we doing something wrong? We asked ourselves. I think it's really because we're well suited for each other, we're older so we've already worked through a lot of things, we're older so we know how to communicate and resolve conflict, and we're just old...so we don't have the energy to fight. But seriously, I do say a prayer of thanks whever I hear about my friends' knock-down-drag-out fights with their spouses. Maybe we're just quietly sweeping things under the rug. But I don't think so. I think we just have a way of making each other laugh when we fight. I often find our fights so ridiculous that I start snickering, and then he breaks down laughing, and that's pretty much the end of it.

But I was concerned about how it's hard to talk about our faith. I hear my friends say how they talk to their husbands for hours about a sermon, or about a God-book they're reading. David and I aren't like that. For me, I've been on the journey for so long, I think my faith, at this point, is too deep for words. How do you describe a God who is indescribable? How do you explain the miracles you've experience in your life without sounding ridiculous and trite? And for David, I think his faith, born out of deep pain and hitting rock bottom, is too fresh and raw and new that he also doesn't have words for it, either. I deliberately chose someone who wasn't steeped in the Evangelical tradition -- because I'm a recovering Evangelical myself and I can't bear to hear the cliches, the pat answers, the certain language the skews faith in one way that seems stale and staid to me. Believe me, I dated enough men who had all of the right things to say, but didn't have much else to show for for their faith.

I've longed for a new language. For a new way of talking about God. My counselor explained that he thinks we're both aiming for an authentic faith, and that our hearts are experiencing that connection, even if our words aren't yet. I like that. It's like when we sit in Mass and both of us start crying because of the words of Christ in a song we're singing: "I am for you. I am for you. I am for you, You are mine." YOU ARE MINE. For two people who were single for so long and didn't feel loved...hearing that God is for us, no matter what, is a healing balm. We don't have to discuss it. Our tears say it all.

Or, when we went to the funeral of my 41-year-old friend, Sara, who died of breast cancer in July. We celebrated the life of someone who was seeking God until the end, when her body finally gave out from the tumors eating away at her liver. We were so moved by the memorial service, the hope, the sadness, the inspiration to live like Sara did....that we couldn't say anything. I started talking about it, but the tears came and I couldn't talk and David leaned over the restaurant table, took my hand, and said "I know." And I knew he did know. He so often knows what I'm thinking, feeling, because he's thinking and feeling the same things. It's spooky, but cool. To be known. To have a spiritual communion that is often too deep for words. To have someone say "I know" without you even having to articulate what you're feeling. To seek an authentic relationship with God that is so beyond all of the cliches, and the rationalization. That's what it means to me to have a soulmate.