...Not just any parrot...but a wounded parrot. One I found lying on the sidewalk outside my home when I lived in Silicon Valley and was about to enter into the black hole of adolescence known as junior high school.
The poor thing couldn’t fly. I was doing some yard work for our elderly neighbors, and the lady called her granddaughter to see if she would come over (since she apparently was good with birds). Turns out she was also good with unicycles, which I saw as she rounded the corner on the sidewalk and I said hello to my first big case of puppy-love.
She was the lovable tom-boy type. Popular, strong, independent, cute. I was the nerdy, orbiter type (those of you who have read “the game” KNOW who I was). The “friend” who was always there through the next 6 or 7 years of my teen existence. I wasn’t quite as ridiculous or consistent as Ducky, but in the back of my mind she was usually there.
Our senior year I finally got the nerve to ask her out to the senior ball. One day too late as it turns out (and boy that night turn out to be a disaster for her). But a day before graduation, I got to hang out and we said those cool bittersweet things you say to good friends, including that she indeed WOULD have said yes to me to go the ball, and it would have been a much better time. I got a kiss on the cheek and floated all the way home.
Flash forward to summer between my sophomore and junior year of college. I’m home working and said crush’s grandmother sees me and calls her granddaughter to kind of get us back together. We see each other off and on for a few months...and by which I mean we have one great date and good time one week, and she totally stands me up the next week. A few days later she would show up at my work with an expensive gift and tears in her eyes apologizing.
Being the naive doofus I am (and not wanting to wake up from my dream come true after 8 years of longing) it took me a while to figure out she was seeing someone else. What I didn’t quite know (but suspected) was she was seeing another girl.
When she told me I was the only man that could possibly be for her, I didn’t realize quite how literal she was being. Oh the irony.
Now I was pretty crushed and confused. This challenged all the beliefs I had been taught at my Christian youth group. As if that wasn’t stunning enough for a college junior (who’s relationship experience still amounted to not much more than pining over the Go-Go’s) I had this bomb dropped on me.
She was going to get married to her girlfriend. Her family had completely turned her back on her. I was her longest friend. She wanted me to give her away at the wedding.
Gulp!
Keep in mind, this was 198errrr something or other. This was not legal, completely underground. It was a bonding ceremony, but it meant the world to her and was pretty much the same as a wedding to her. (aha there is that connection).
I wrestled greatly. No easy answers here. Most of Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship friends were dealing with things like needing a good grade to keep up a scholarship. Sheesh, not a lot of help to found there.
It wasn’t much of a battle really. I (with great trepidation) very strongly said I loved and would support my friend and be there for her when all others fled. I walked her down the aisle (again makes for great conversation with the guys during that first big wave of weddings that happens right after college...)
“I got to be a groomsman for a wedding.”
“Well huh, I’ve been a best man.”
“I’ve only ushered, how about you, Kent?”
“Uhhhh...uhhhh....how’s the surf today guys?”
At the ceremony she had a brief shining moment of happiness and a new start on life (the life in union itself would be whole story unto itself, but that is not to be told now, if ever).
After the ceremony I had a rain cloud over my head and some very empty, lonely, frustrated nights ahead of me. I started working out like a fiend. I would be so riled up I would take off up the coast on my bicycle at 11:00 o’clock at night just to clear the cobwebs. No amount of praying or talking with friends or counseling could do anything for my anger and frustration and confusion.
On Easter (a couple of months later) I took a bike ride crosstown from UCSB to Westmont College. A campus my high school youth group used to go to as a summer camp and home to many happy memories. It was there that I first finally fell across the little chapel that you see at the top of this blog entry.
I bet you were wondering what that had to do with anything, after sitting through two full essay sized web blogs...congratulations! You’re rewarded, it all really does mean something... It was almost burned down last fall in the Tea fire, hence the scorched earth around it...also symbolizes the firestorm of controversy that I was referring to. (Really! Go back and read the first sentence of the first part of this blog to see if I’m bluffing.) Anyway, back to the tale...
It was there that I entered alone and went to the front pew of an empty chapel and sat, bowed my head, and cried and vented and silently yelled at God. I don’t know how she got in without me hearing her, but when I lifted my eyes a lady was right next to me in a wheelchair. She only said...
“Isn’t Easter wonderful. It reminds us of how much God did for us.”
I felt so small in that moment that I could have crawled under a caterpillar with fallen arches.
That was it. My angst was over. Totally. My head got screwed on correctly and outside of a semi annual Easter pilgrimage back to that place (for meditation, rest and soul searching) that chapter in my life was completely healed and put away.
Fast forward a couple of decades (give or take a year). I take Joy (my lovely bride to be) to said same chapel on Easter Sunday...where for the first time in my life I invited someone else to pray with me in my sanctum sanctorium, my private of privates. A pretty big deal this is.
We both bow our heads and after a time we both look at each other. The air was totally still and silent. There was a presence there, not unlike the one I encountered so long ago. Tears were rolling down Joy’s face. I can’t quite describe it...but we both were told the same thing, the same words written on our hearts. Even my Christian friends kind of look at me strangely when I describe this one to them. They don’t understand.
But we (Joy and I) do. It’s a big plus towards the equation that has lead us to answer in the vows we’ll be reciting this Saturday. It’s spiritual, it’s emotional, it’s commitment, it’s communal, it’s sensual, it’s partnership, it’s challenges, it’s holy...
...and it’s what marriage means to us.
