The Shining Barrier

Nine years ago last night, we met at 5 o'clock in a church in Little Rock that is now a high school and promised to share ourselves with each other for the rest of our lives. We were babies! I was 21, Christian 24, and we were so eager to have our special secret, the secret of our love, made known. It had been a twisted year and through it all (to borrow Sheldon Vanauken's title from A Severe Mercy) we began our own tale of severe mercy.

Backing up to the summer of 1998, Christian had been gone that summer as a backpacking guide for his second summer at Ute Trail Ranch and I was about to be on my way to Tallinn, Estonia. He had just gotten in from Colorado a day or two before I was supposed to leave for a year. I will never forget saying goodbye to him and to those at the airport on that sultry August afternoon. I kinda hate the Little Rock airport. That airport holds the memory of the last hug I ever gave my dad. I've often thought back with regret that if I'd known it would be our last hug I would have taken my backpack off and I would have let that hug linger and possibly even not gotten on that plane.

It's taken me about ten years to release that as best I can.

Christian had been interviewing in LR some that fall of '98, going back and forth with whether to use his double major in finance or accounting for his career. When he came to town, my parents would put him up and keep him up talking for hours, so Christian has told me. My dad had gotten a phone call from Christian October-ish, who said he was coming to town, and wanted to see if my parents would meet him for a bite. They did and after dinner as they left Christian in the parking lot and got in their car, my Dad told my mom that, "he hated to get his hopes up, but he sure would be proud if Christian became his son-in-law one day." He obviously knew something that I didn't even know then. I love that he knew that before I did.

So, this time (Dec.) ten years ago, Christian was about to fly from LR to see me in Estonia after staying with my parents for a few days. They had loaded his bags up with instant cappuccino, warm clothes, my favorite scented lotion and body wash that Christian and my dad had gone to the mall together to get! Ha! That is such a great picture in my mind. Before he knew it, Christian was off to Tallinn. I am forever grateful that he got to see and share that part of my life.

Okay, so fast forward another year. I'll skip the part about the part where Dad got sick. I'll do my best to muster up that kind of strength in March. So, there we were, on December 18 of 1999. It had been nine months both since I'd abruptly come home and since Dad was gone. We were getting married! Off to Banff the next day! Hoorah!

As a wedding gift, a friend had given us A Severe Mercy and had written this on the inside cover:

"It would be cheesy and too cliche to use this chance to tell you how much y'all mean to me...but just realize you both mean a great deal to me.
Elizabeth, I greatly respect how genuine and courageous you are.
Christian, I admire your loyalty and gentle spirit.
As a couple you two personify how young people should love each other - like I really know! But, I do love y'alls relationship more than any I've seen in people our age. It is y'all that this book most reminded me of. I cherish you guys individually and as a couple."
-Reed

I read the book immediately and felt it captured exactly the type of love we had.

So, here is one of my favorite excerpts that I dedicate to Christian and to our Shining Barrier:

It was a mild winter afternoon, this day of the crisis. A crow cawed in the distance. Encircling the glade were the trees of the park, their bare branches reaching upwards. In front of us was the round placid lily pond where once my little ships had sailed. We talked deeply, not about the already-settled matter of secrets but about justice between lovers and about how to make love endure. What emerged from our talk was nothing less, we believed, than the central 'secret' of enduring love: sharing.

'Look,' we said, 'what is it that draws two people into closeness and love? Of course there's the mystery of physical attraction, but beyond that it's the things they share. We both love strawberries and ships and collies and poems and all beauty, and all those things bind us together. Those sharings just happened to be; but what we must do now is share everything. Everything! If one of us likes anything, there must be something to like in it - and the other one must find it. Every single thing that either of us likes. That way we shall create a thousand strands, great and small, that will link us together. Then we shall be so close that it would be impossible-unthinkable-for either of us to suppose that we could ever recreate such closeness with anyone else. And our trust in each other will not only be based on love and loyalty but on the fact of a thousand sharings - a thousand strands twisted into something unbreakable.'

Our enthusiasm grew as we talked. Total sharing, we felt,was the ultimate secret of a love that would last for ever. And of course we could learn to like anything if we wanted to. Through sharing we would not only make a bond of incredible friendship, but through sharing we would keep the magic of inloveness. And with every year, more and more depth. We would become as close as two human beings could become-closer perhaps than any two people had ever been. Whatever storms might come, whatever changes the years might bring, there would be the bedrock closeness of all our sharing...

(skip a few paragraphs and a poem ahead)

...Later we looked back upon that day when sharing was born as the day when, earnestly, hopefully, gaily, we began to raise the Shining Barrier. The Shining Barrier - the shield of our love. A walled garden. A fence around a young tree to keep the deer from nibbling it. A fortified place with the walls and watchtowers gleaming white like the cliffs of England. The Shining Barrier - we called it so from the first - protecting the green tree of our love. And yet in another sense it was our love itself, made strong within, that was the Shining Barrier.