There are a lot of disadvantages to a long-distance relationship. From the time I first took a serious interest in Laura to the time we were married, we only spent about 10 weeks together in person. We spent the rest of that two-year time period on different continents. We never really had a first date, unless Skype counts. We couldn’t celebrate birthdays or holidays together. You miss so much of the person when all you experience of them is their words on a page.
However, there are also some advantages. Like, Laura and I have a record of the vast majority of the conversations we had as we were going from knowing next to nothing about each other to being husband and wife. Like, we have a literal record. It’s 763 pages long in a Word document, single-spaced, in Ariel size 10 font. That’s over 425,000 words total, written over a period of 21 months. We wrote 20,238 words a month back and forth to each other, which works out to an average of about 675 words every single day.
And for better or for worse, each one of those 425,000 words is both saved on a hard drive (on a couple of them, actually) and printed out in a really thick book, and whenever we feel the urge, we can go back and relive at least snippets of almost every day of the journey we walked from being strangers to a married couple.
And let me tell you, after 14 years, it’s weird to go back and read words that you can’t deny you actually typed but that you’d love to be able to blame on the fingers of another. Yet there they all are in all their infamous glory. One black mark on a white page after the other. A testament to days gone by. And despite all those words of which only the young and naïve and self-important are capable, she still married me. God’s grace is beyond my comprehension.
We’ve changed a lot since that first email 14 years ago. (And how thankful we both are for that!) And God hasn’t changed a bit. Amazing.
There are so many things you’d love to forget yet so many things you need to remember. For me it’s not so much the words but the feelings that all those words conjure up within me afresh as I read them now these 14 years later. I remember sitting at my desk in my college dorm room well past midnight, hunched over my laptop screen, opening my AOL account with anticipation, hoping that a new message from laurapgil@hotmail.com was waiting for me. I remember opening each email with intense anticipation. I remember at times I would read the email as fast as I could to see what it might contain and then go back and reread it, much more slowly the second time, to really soak in every single word.
Then it was my turn to respond. We were writing back and forth in Spanish in those days. I only now realize how much of a dork I sounded like in my mediocre high school Spanish. How I agonized over the grammar and structure and vocabulary. I wanted to get it just right, to show her only the very best of myself, yet, especially now looking back, I see how much grace and patience she showed me. Yet she never once belittled or faulted me for butchering her beautiful language. She would regularly tell me to ask if I had any questions about anything she had written. I learned a lot of language over the course of those 425,000 words. I learned a lot period over the course of that time.
It’s good to remember. It’s good to take stock of the change that has taken place both in you and around you. In fact, if you’re ever going to notice change, you’re going to have to stop from time to time and take an account. As is the case with growing children, change is never experienced in the moment. It’s something you only realize looking back and comparing your now to your then. So we human beings write in journals and keep photo albums and make pencil marks on door frames with names and dates by each one and keep old emails. We look back, once again breathe air that we thought was gone forever, and find ourselves suddenly aware of all that’s changed, both in us and outside of us, for better and for worse.
And it’s good to remember the good. (That last sentence is mainly a reminder to myself.) Oh, sure, I was a dork and full of myself and naïve back then. I’m sure I’ll say the same thing in another 14 years. But I remember the irresistible pull a certain Spaniard exerted over me that resulted in my pursuing her like I had never sought after anything else before or since—that God-instilled instinct that she had awakened within me to seek someone fit for me, the realization that it is not good for man to be alone. I’m convinced God smiles every time he watches another good love story unfold.
I know why I went after her like I did. I know why I wrote my half of those 425,000 words, spending hours agonizing over every last one. I was playing my part in the theater of God. Men pursue women with a passion unmatched in human experience because Jesus pursues his people with an even more intense passion. I was, to a very small degree, acting out the love of Jesus for his bride with every email I pounded out, with every ounce of anticipation I felt to hear something—anything—from a person I’d trade my right arm for. I have a shadow of an echo’s worth of understanding of the deep love that Jesus has for us because of what I’ve felt for Laura.
It is good to remember. Especially after 14 years, 12 of which we’ve been married. It’s good to remember the rush, the excitement, the thrill when the intensity and the genuineness of our feelings rise and fall. Because unlike us, Jesus’s fierce love never falters. Jesus will love us with all his might to the very end, just like he loved his disciples to the very end. That is, of course, also a part of my role. Not only is Jesus’s love passionate. It’s committed. It never walks away, and that is so because Jesus is a man of his word. So, too, then, am I to mirror his unyielding devotion to us by maintaining my unyielding devotion to Laura.
That means that while sparks may have started the fire, a fire doesn’t continue to burn off those sparks. It needs something even hotter and longer-lasting. Just a few weeks ago I attended my first online wedding. You read that right. Thanks, coronavirus and stay-at-home orders. The man who shared the message reminded the bride and groom that the person each of them was marrying that day was not the person that each of them would be married to in 10 or 20 or 30 years. No, he wasn’t predicting that they would get divorced and marry other people. He was merely pointing out the fact that when you’re talking about decades, it’s not off the mark to say that the you that you are now is not the you that you will be later on. The changes we all undergo can really be that drastic. Yet, the bride and groom were going to be held accountable for loving and remaining committed to each other no matter how different the future versions of themselves turned out to be.
As I look back and remember the young man I was and the young woman I ended up marrying, it is not an overstatement to say that we are different people now. I admit rereading some of those emails does rekindle old flames, and that’s a good thing. It is helpful to remember the excitement and revive it. But remembering old sparks 10 or 20 or 30 years later won’t be enough. What will allow the fire to keep on burning even when you wake up one morning 10 years in and realize that the woman who’s lying next to you in bed isn’t the same woman you married? Oh she’s got the same face (mostly) and the same name, but that’s not the young woman you wrote your half of all those 425,000 words to!
What keeps the fire going for decades? The speaker at the online wedding said that it’s our vows, those solemn oaths taken before God and the (even virtual) witnesses. Every day of my life I wear a ring that Laura gave me on July 19, 2008, as a symbol of those vows. On that day we promised each other that we would see this thing through, and we are bound by that commitment just as much today as we were then. Commitment does not snuff out the flames of passion. In fact, commitment enables long term passion. Our vows before God serve as the red-hot coals at the base of the fire. They store the heat and allow the new wood we add with each passing day, month, year, and decade to combust.
All that to say that young, passionate love is a beautiful thing. It is a living parable of Christ’s pursuit of his bride. At the same time, it is not the only thing we have or need to keep the fire alive over the years that eventually turn into a lifetime. It’s not all that Christ has to ensure he will remain faithful to his people. His passion for them is fueled by the promise he’s made to them. May it be so for Laura and me (and for you and yours) as the decades pass us by.