Brilliant Surprises

Roatan surprises me sometimes. Ants occasionally squirt out of the faucet onto my waiting toothpaste. Bugs fly out of plastic-wrapped, refrigerated broccoli. My husband Clint can pick up copy paper at the office supply counter of the women’s boutique where I’m finding a great sport bra.

But maybe I surprise Roatan sometimes. And not necessarily when I squeal and fling my scuba bootie across the sand because some little cucaracha’s hiding inside.

It’s that I’m changing. I’m not the same woman I was when my foot first touched Roatan’s steamy tarmac. I’m changing, and I think the island is taking note. I can feel it winking at me, laughing at me, and sometimes pushing me in the middle of my back.

Clint and I were actually talking about this last night on our date. Not Roatan pushing me in the middle of my back. But change. In silly conversation, we discovered that we both have the same favorite color—red. And for the same reasons. Passion, fierceness, life. And the same second favorite color, too. Blue—because of Roatan’s ocean.

A silly surprise. How is it I could be with someone for almost 17 years and not know his favorite color. Maybe because our favorite colors have both changed.

And that’s surprising. The way we’ve both changed so much.

In the beginning we had the intrigue of getting to know each other, the romantic mystery of not knowing. Attraction exciting us and pushing us toward greater vulnerability. My reaching for his hand not knowing if he’d want to hold mine. His running into me on campus, not knowing if I was as thrilled as he was. Crying in each other’s arms on the top of the parking garage, because we both realized we couldn’t live without each other.

But for a while, maybe we drifted into a rut of cohabitating. Maybe we settled into assumptions—he wants to hold my hand and I’ll smile at that joke and we’ll always live together … and love each other.

Right now, though, wherever the push in the middle of my back came from—Roatan’s perceived paradise but sometimes purgatory lifestyle, striking out again just the two of us (plus the boys), doing something a lot like a mid-life crisis together—whatever it was, I’m thankful for it. I needed to fall forward onto my husband’s chest, back into his heart. I needed to stop assuming and start exposing my own heart in the wild way we did when we were dating.

Maybe it’s like watching biscuits bake as a child. They never ever seem to change! Your feet get tired and you get distracted. You stop watching and next thing you know—there’s the timer going off. And you feel like they went from being round, white dough balls to golden, flaky biscuits in an instant. They’ve changed.

I never want to stop watching. So the intrigue and romantic mystery can still arouse me every now and then. So I can feel like a giddy fifth-grader with her boyfriend of a whopping four days when I find out we have the same favorite color. Or when he holds me in the sprinkler water and I remember how strong he is.

I know, this sounds so elementary. I’ve read it a thousand times: There’s always new discoveries to be made about your spouse.

It’s so cliché. And it bothers me that it is. Because it feels so monumental for me right now.

And another cliché: Love takes effort. Duh. It’s just that somehow the effort of all the other things in my life left me to cohabitating … Let me rephrase more responsibly: I chose to use up most my energy in the other things and to just cohabitate with Clint, who, of course, would love me no matter what. Of course.

Well, thank God for that. Seriously. “I’ve always loved you, Jenny.” That’s when we were lying on the rug in the hall (of all places), crying in each other’s arms again, hit full in the face with the affects of cohabitation, realizing that we still can’t live without each other. And that we’ve neglected the silly, wild, romantic (and effort/time-consuming) things lovers do.

I have to say silly, wild, romantic things more often. And sometimes I have to put those words in his mouth. Author/comedian Becky Freeman does this. She used the word ravishing, actually. And well, I just knew I couldn’t use that word. But I made myself. With great embarrassment, “You just think I’m ravishing, don’t you.” The result was brilliant. Which is another thing we’ve recently discovered we have in common: We both love the way the British use the adjective brilliant.

I’m reaching out my hand to hold his. I’m kissing him for no good reason (our eight-year-old did tell us very loudly in a crowd at a water park last week to “Get a room," having no idea what that meant). I’m smelling the nape of his neck and squeezing tight. I’m laughing in the sprinklers and plotting my next move in the ongoing water fight. It’s feeling a bit like in the beginning, but so, so, so much better.

It’s work. It’s worth it. It’s ... like Roatan. Paradise sometimes with lots of everyday sweat and sand and aching feet and bugs.

... Thanks, God, for such brilliant surprises.