We were at my mother-in-law's briefly this weekend. She had a lot of old photos out, as she often does. As I skimmed through a pile of familiar faces, I ran across a couple not-so-familiar. It was Ron and me when we were very young, in our early twenties. At first I almost didn't recognize us.
I had never before seen this photo of the two of us. We had bright eyes, whitish teeth, red lips, dark hair. We looked happy. Seeing those young, fresh, colorful versions of us really took me aback. It has been a long thirty years since then.
It pricked my conscience, seeing Ron so full of life, and looking quite handsome. Lately he has been pretty sapped. We both have. Like the couple in that picture, we still have the deep-down desire sometimes to do something crazy. But our latest attempt hasn't panned out. And unlike the young us, we feel that we are running out of time.
Marriage is ironic because you join your life with someone you want to spend most of your time with. Then you both go off in your separate directions and spend most of your time apart, because of work. I wrote about this a long time ago, saying how I wished that Ron and I could work together.
Well, recently we decided to try something different. We thought maybe we could be houseparents for needy children. We even thought maybe God wanted us to do that. We could do it as a family. We could serve God and serve others and work together. It seemed like a wonderful idea.
So we visited some children's homes. We filled out applications, went on interviews, traveled to four states, met a lot of good people, and saw a whole new world. We really wanted to do it. But it turned out the only place we wanted to go, we could not. And that was extremely hard.
So now I'm thinking about Ron and me, and how I can be a better wife and mother, serve God and serve others, and do the best I can here. But we still have to slog through this disappointment. And I don't like feeling this way.
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