Last night, as we request of each other often, Keith asked me to "tell him a story". After ten years of marriage, this little practice of ours still uncovers hidden gems - seemingly insignificant moments from our childhood that we managed to never share before, that somehow always reveal something about who we are and how we got here. I've learned everything from favorite moments with his siblings, to lingering regrets, to unspoken goals from these simple, yet intimate, conversations.
My memory yesterday evening was of my house on Animas Street, in Trinidad. Our old brick house had a wrap-around porch, with three front doors. One of the doors opened into what was made into a television room, with imitation-wood paneling that reached the middle of the walls, with maroon wallpaper scaling up the rest of the walls, with little blue paisleys. Another door opened into my mother's piano studio, and Dad had a sign made for her, with the words "CON BRIO MUSIC STUDIO" burned into wood, handing from the window. (Occasionally, a stranger would knock on the door and ask if he or she could record an album there.) The third and main door opened into the living room, where our blue Montgomery Ward couch set lived, along with a little wooden trunk my mother picked out at a second-hand store, in Pueblo.
I lived in that house from fourth grade to sixth, and you don't realize how much of your development happens in that time span, until you lie awake, staring at the ceiling in the dark of the evening, telling your husband everything you remember learning in that little house on Animas Street during those crucial years.
It was in that house that I saw my Daddy lying in bed with a yellowed bruised jawline, because a criminal had knocked him out onto the street the evening before. Small town cops don't usually have backup, but for some reason - he did that night, and the other officer had been able to call an abundance and save him from further violence. I marveled repeating this incident to Keith, as I never remember being terribly concerned for my father. He was invincible to me, and I accepted that he would make it and be okay.
I remember the big, open window on the second floor of that house. It looked out over the whole neighborhood. One evening, my mother was awoken by loud noises outside and looked out that top window to see a riot breaking out on our street, with our young neighbor at the helm of fist fights and damaged property. She called the police, and one of my father's favorite stories is still the night he got to push that kid up against a wall and say, "I'd like to introduce myself to you; I'm your new neighbor. You're under arrest".
My mother and I were standing in the tiny upstairs kitchen of that quirky house and she was washing a dish and I was dishing out gossip about a teenager who was newly pregnant. She stopped, looked at me, and said, "You know that sex isn't bad, right? It's just that God made it for married couples, and it can have consequences outside of marriage". I had no idea what sex was, but I knew by her mannerisms that what she had said to me was important.
My brother slept in a pantry. And I was jealous. The home had previously been chopped up as apartments (hence the term "upstairs kitchen"). It was so cool. His room was lined with puke-yellow linoleum and his closets were all the shelves. It had a slanted ceiling and was just big enough for his little twin-sized bed. He and I would play in the front yard, one of us would rule "grassland" and the other would rule "sidewalk land". I once made him cry so badly (he was 5 or 6) that I forced him to take a nap and then worked to convince him he had just had a horrible dream, and I hadn't actually been that mean. I also hit him in the head with a baseball bat in that front yard. I'm sorry, Michael.
There was a little boy and his little brother that often roamed the neighborhood with no parental supervision, and though I couldn't have understood the full implication that they didn't have a good home-life, even a child could understand there wasn't much in their favor. I was mostly welcoming and accommodating, but once in our alley, we were all playing basketball and I was mean to Jeremy to impress a cool kid from school. I hit Jeremy and allowed myself the attention of laughing onlookers. I have felt bad for the 23 years since that day, and often wonder where sweet Jeremy, without a parent to care, ended up.
It is no wonder the old hymn asks, "Tell me the stories of Jesus, I love to hear". It is no wonder that the Messiah would choose for His life to be told in a collection of snippets, written from the varying perspectives of those who lived alongside Him. Salvation itself is brought to us in the piecing together of a life, each chapter an individual lesson, each verse its own moment, woven together to show us this One we call Jesus, Father, Abba, Savior.
You can post every meme you want about moving on from the past, looking towards the future, and living in the present. But I present to you the possibility that everything you need to know about who God is and what your purpose is lies not in anything grand, but in the remembrance of a million little parts. God created me to be Keith's wife, and Madelynn's mama, but it was only possible if I was first a little girl in a little brick house, sitting on those old fashion registers until I could no longer take the heat on my bottom.
My prayer for you this week is that you might look to the ones you love, and ask them to tell you a story.
