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“Keep working on it until you do. Because I mean it, and I’m not going to change my mind about that or about anything else.”
“You keep saying that, but you don’t understand, you haven’t seen, you just don’t know —”
“I don’t have to. When you say that you’re going to do something, it shouldn’t depend on circumstances. I suppose there are times where you can’t do what you say you’re going to do because circumstances change, but when you’re loyal to someone, it doesn’t matter what they do. When you make vows to someone, it doesn’t matter what they do.”
“That’s a code of conduct I’m just not familiar with.”
He kept his eyes on the road, driving in North Dakota wasn’t hard. It was mostly straight, the roads were wide, even if they were a little rough because of the difficult winters and all the freezingand thawing that happened. Still, because of the straightness of the roads, sometimes it was easy for a person to get complacent, and to not pay attention. He didn’t want to get so wrapped up in the conversation that he forgot to drive. Not that he ever had that problem before, but Alaska was different.
“Well, I can’t say that I’m perfect. I had the feeling earlier that you seemed to think I am, and maybe we can talk later. But, I’m not. You saw what a mess I made with Sondra. That’s because of me. Not because of her.”
“I would lay some of the blame at Sondra’s feet,” Alaska said, and there was humor in her voice.
He chuckled, but he didn’t agree. He could have headed that off back when it first started, if he’d only opened his mouth and said something that would have been a little bit difficult, but true. Instead, he took the easy road.
“That’s an example of how sometimes we don’t do the hard thing that we know we should, and it ends up complicating things even worse.”
“I’ve done that a lot in my life.”
“A lot of times the hard road is something we avoid, but usually we don’t regret taking it.”
“I agree”
“Anyway, that’s off the subject. I mean, we can talk about it if we want to, but I just wanted to make sure that when I’m saying ‘our’ kids, it’s not something that bothers you. Because I want to think of them as ours.”
“No. It actually makes me feel good. Like you truly do care about them and are interested in us.”
“I am.”
“That makes me happy. But it increases that feeling of feeling like...like God is playing some kind of weird trick on me. I don’t want to wake up and find out this is all some kind of dream, because that’s what it feels like. Too good to be true.”
“We’re going to have hard times. Things aren’t always going to be easy. And, I think we as humans have a tendency to get used to things, and they don’t feel so special anymore.”
“You don’t think this will always feel special to me?”
He shook his head. He was almost certain of it. Things that were new and exciting eventually lost their glow, and then they just felt normal, and humans had a tendency to continuously go after the things that made them feel fresh and exciting, rather than sticking with the same old same old.
“Maybe that’s one reason to try to keep affection and respect in our marriage, the way my parents did. Not that I want to hold them up as some kind of goal for us. Just... I think they were onto something when they made sure that they were careful with each other. That they treated their relationship as precious.”
“I think you’re right. I’d really like to try to do that, and from where I’m sitting right now, it seems like an easy thing, but I suppose most people start out thinking that it will be easy, and then... It doesn’t happen.”
“No. People get angry, they get annoyed, they start thinking that they made a mistake, that the things that are wrong with their spouse are too hard to accept, or that they could find a better person somewhere else and they start looking around. I think that’s partly what dating does to our culture.”
“Dating? You think there’s something wrong with dating?”
“I figure that it’s just practice for divorce. After all, we check out this person, are with them for a while, tire of them, and then we go to someone else. They’re the next best thing, until we decide we don’t really want to be with them anymore either, and we see someone else who catches our eye and that’s totally acceptable. I mean, our culture even encourages it. ‘You should stay with someone who makes you happy.’ That type of thing. But that’s the exact opposite of what marriage is supposed to be. So we’re not really practicing to get married, we’re practicing to get divorced when we date.”
Maybe he should have just kept his mouth shut. He had some really odd ideas, things that went against what everyone else in the world believed, even Christians. And, he obviously shocked Alaska.
“Maybe you’re not going to want me to help you raise your kids after all, if I’m not going to want them to date.” He said that with a smile, but there was a seriousness behind his words that she seemed to catch.
“No. What you said just made sense, although I’ve never taken the time to think about it. I can’t really think of any argument to present to you to make it sound like you’re wrong. Because... The only thing I can think of is how are you going to find the person that you want to marry? But here I am, sitting beside someone I never dated in my life, and I’m married to him.”
“It’s kind of funny how God works if we let Him, isn’t it?” he said, with a lifting of his lips.
“So you think that all of these terrible things that happened to me was God working?”
“Do you think it wasn’t?” She sat there for a moment, processing. Then she said,
