For the Love the Hope!

By Elaine Johnson

There is no more concise way to say this: The one and only thing that kept us together was HOPE! Some would say their marriage was built on “hope and a prayer.” Some would say “blind faith,” “the support of friends and family,” or above al else “their mutual eternal trust in Christ.” I would agree that all those things are major contributors, but I remain convinced that Hope offers the clearest understanding of why we (my husband of 52 years and me) stuck it out. We are now convinced, despite the piling up of year upon year with little to show for al our hard work, that it was hope that sustained us. It was hope that fueled the effort to finally stumble our way into a darn good marriage!

When I was a child, I spent many hours sitting on two kitchen stepstools - those “ole timey” ones with steps that folded out - well-worn with their red finish dulled and scratched. I used the stool for singing and I could sing tune after tune for hours at a time. My grandmother, who lived with us, would occasionally order me to stop, but lots of times I think she just tuned me out and went about her daily work.

Grandma wasn’t much for conversation, though she did make profound observations on rare occasions. Once she told me that she could not understand how I could sing and smile so much, living in such an unhappy house. Well, as an adult I figured out that the majority of arguments between my parents probably would not have happened at all had it not been for my grandmother keeping them all stirred up.

My dad told me once that my mom had agreed to go to church with him after they were married, but my Grandma nipped that in the bud. My Grandma told me that my dad had been unreasonable to think mom could go to a church, presumably not a Baptist church, with him because Grandma was President of the Mission Baptist Union at her church. My parents fought all the time, mostly about religion and mostly in their bedroom, as it the walls weren’t so thin that we could hear every word. If the fight was about me, such as whether I would be allowed to go to Scripture Memory Camp, I mostly went downstairs, climbed into one of two old iron beds which were the coolest place in the house for summer sleeping) and covered my ears. I picked the coziest bed on the south side but, looking back, it was a strange choice because it was right underneath my parent’s bedroom and I could hear every mean word they said to one another.

Now about how I kept smiling despite my parent’s contentious ways. As a child I took my smile off like a hat when I went out of the house and put it back on when I left. The one thing I can say is that is was definitely not fake. It was totally natural, as if my heart recognized “this is a happy place” and “this is a sad place.” The very moment I let go of the front porch screen door and heard that delightful slamming sound, I felt happiness in my whole body!

Fast forward to 1965 and my first day at the University of Oklahoma. I walked across the Franklin House cafeteria with my new roommates and a huge nervous smile on my face. Inside me were a jumble of feelings - excitement, anxiety, fear, loneliness, and insecurity. But, by then, the smile had, for a long time, been automatic. I had smiled through all those sad days with my parents fighting over religion. I smiled as I watched my mom, who I was so close to, begin that decline into the slippery slope of Alzheimer’s at 56. I had pasted a smile on my lips when I entered classrooms, marched in the school bad, and practiced for school plays. I believed my smile was a gift - my gateway to having friends and appearing “normal” when my life was anything but that. Though I smiled, the cloud over my head seemed heavy enough that I could almost reach up and touch it.

Little did I know at the time that the love of my life was watching me as I smiled my way across that cafeteria. In that first glance, he was drawn to my smile. The thought had occurred to him that I must be a very happy person - spontaneous, carefree, easy to like, and of fun. We met that very evening at a hootenanny. My new roommate and I were watching him and his friend play ping pong when they asked us to join them. Later, my friend whispered, “I think he likes you.” Well, she was right.

Jack came and sat himself on the floor next to me. We stayed in constant communication from then on. Life seemed good for the most part. I kept my smile on the outside, and the sadness about my mom on the inside. Except when it broke through with news from home, like the day I got Dad’s letter that mom’s behavior had become so impossible to manage at home that she was now being cared for in the Oklahoma State Hospital.

During courtship, one our wedding day, and beyond, we had been clueless about the requirements for a successful marriage. We had no pre-marital counseling. My family urged us to “go ahead, your mom would want you to go through with the wedding.” Just one month prior to our wedding date, her physical body bid us farewell.

My grief oozed out slowly over the course of a lifetime. It was like sludge piled on top of a lot of childhood emotional neglect, filling the crevices of my day-to-day comings and goings. That awful sludge - bit by bit, year after year - oozed to the surface and disrupted the “normal” flow of life. (what is normal, anyway?) All that time I longed for closure, longed for the tears that would not flow. It impacted my marriage and my ability to relate to my husband and children. It affected my freedom to connect to who I was, my ability to walk with a lightness of being and my ability to make honest and wise choices that would form a lifetime of meaningful pursuit.

Jack had his own baggage, his own story to tell, though suffice to say that the younger versions of the both us us were naively counting on changing our history into something better - anything less lonely and more promising. However, that natural ease of conversation that accompanies the socially adept and confident remained elusive. We remained guarded, keeping under lock and key all the unspoken dreams of what could be. And, so, we continued through life undeservedly blessed with three beautiful children, yearly family vacations, juggling careers, and keeping our kids’ activities and church obligations manageable. The years flew by as my husband and I cultivated the next best thing - the appearance of a successful marriage and lifestyle.

The day of reckoning for us as a couple began in 1975, lasting 17 years. I refer to that period as our “desert wanderings.” In the early 70s, a close friend had an affair with our pastor. He had for years functioned as the heartbeat of our church - caring, energizing, tireless service, and much loved. For me that boundary between this mortal, fallible man and Jesus himself became blurred.

As if that one experience were not enough to shake me to my core, it was followed in closed succession with a second event of equal or greater magnitude. My “mother-wound” was laid bare when an invitation arrived from the University of Colorado inviting me to participate in a research study on a rare form of early onset familial Alzheimer’s. Prior to the arrival of that letter, I had no idea that my mom’s conditions was linked to a dominant gene carried roughly by half of my family. While my branch of the family in central Oklahoma had angrily chosen to ignore obvious, the more progressive branch in Beaver County had searched for answers and persuaded the University to launch a study.

Soon after the Beaver County revelation, I announced to Jack that I could not possibly listen to another happy Christian speech. Although surprised, he, too, left the church on that day. He told himself it was temporary and that I’d come to my senses in a few weeks. But, the desert wanderings lasted 17 years. During those years, I was often self-absorbed and emotionally disconnected from my loved ones, merely going through the motions of life. My husband, amazingly and insanely, held onto his obligation to remain forever useful and strong. He filled his time by becoming a long-distance trail-runner, while I filled my time with car-pooling kids, my nursing career, and bouncing in and out of counseling.

Our desert wanderings ended dramatically in 1995. That was the year I spoke with my very gifted counselor about the empty space in my heart for God. My counselor could not relate, and a very awkward discourse ensued. I left him and prayed this prayer that very day:

God, I’m not doing another thing to make you love me. I do not believe You can love me. I have felt unlovable my entire life. I have done all I know to do, worked as hard as I could to be a good person. I am not doing another thing! If you want me, you’ll have to come and get me.

I shared a bit of my story with a new neighbor and she prayed with me in my kitchen. Another person called me on the phone, by mistake, beginning with “Honey, I’m prayer for you.” (She meant the call to go to an elderly invalid she was ministry.) That was the beginning of a 90-minute conversation, during which time she advised me to ask my husband to take me to the church of his choosing (which I did).

Jack and I became closer to one another as we began traveling down the same spiritual path and supported one another in spiritual formation. Our lives changed from black-and-white to living color: two senior citizens, 50 years into our marriage, began collecting marriage-focused devotional books. We found ourselves in deeply meaningful conversations. As we learned more positive ways to handle disagreements, our love for one another grew. Recently, we have been asked to speak at marriage classes about the hope that has finally blossomed in our marriage - the hope we kept in sacred trust simply plodding along for 50 years. So, who was the girl with the radiant smile? Was she a fraud and a fake? I think not. I know not. That smile began in grade school, if not before. It was there when I slammed the screen door and joined the neighborhood gang to pay. It spoke of freedom and release from the tension that seemed palpable at all times within the four walls of my childhood home. It was non-pretentious as breathing itself.

I believe my smile is a gift from God. From childhood and beyond, it served as a tiny seed of hope. That hope remained dormant in many dark and stormy seasons of my life, and in the longer season of dry desert wanderings. When all hope seemed gone for a happy and fulfilled marriage, in the 9th hour, hope blossomed! Surely there is no other explanation but God’s creative genius: the binding together of two hearts with nothing but a seed of hope. One heart belonged to the most irritatingly logical of men with the most illogical of reasons to remain married. The other heart belonged to the most illogical girl on the planet with the most confusing of smiles. But Jack was a “sticker.” And, when all hope for a happy and fulfilled marriage seemed non-existent, that seed of hope suddenly broke through crusty ground into full bloom!

These days I choose not to look back, except to rejoice in the story of our lives. I’ve got too much catching up to do. As best I can, I plan to balance all those dreary days with busy, fulfilling, joyous, happy ones. Turns out, there’s more living to do at age seventy than I thought! Why waste time wallowing in the past when God is as near at the next breath, and life is all around in the present moment? I pray I will make the most of my time this day. It’s all one ever really has.

Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as fools, but as wise, making the most of your time.

Ephesians 5:15-16, The Bible

For the Love of Hope was written by Elaine Johnson and originally published in House of Hope, a publication of Retreat House Spirituality Center. You can purchase a hard copy or ebook here.