Greetings from the world's largest theme park, Melanoma World! It's roughly the size of the Middle East, contains an awful lot of Arabs, and has a median temperature of 127 degrees farenheit. It'd been well over a year since my last entry, due to the intensity of the struggles and situations in which Jenni and I have found ourselves. There has been little emotional energy left for sitting at a keyboard and relating things already known to all the key players. Even so, it's a handy way to keep many people updated on what's going on in the far-flung webbing of my life, and it might even preclude the need for repetitive e-mails. Besides, out in the desert, the demands on me are considerably less than once they were. It's been an opportunity to rededicate myself to a number of personal projects which had been forced into the background before my deployment in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Ooh, ooh, I have a great rant on the subject of whether the war with Iraq was just or not. Don't know when I'll post it, but I'll make it a separate entry for ease of access.
The most ultimately significant change in my life occurred January 18th, 2003. My heart felt so overstuffed with happiness it probably took up most of the space in my torso; if I had allowed myself free reign to smile I probably would have pulled a muscle in my face and fractured my jaw; and Jenni and I were married. That was easily the happiest day of my life. Jenni is the sum of everything I have hoped for and dreamed of and prayed for my whole life, or at least since I was ten. Rocky was the road leading to her, and filled with near misses, false signs, and more than one washed out bridge.
The story after Jenni and I started dating is too long even for me to tell at this point, although I'd be willing to iluminate portions of it at a time, but it has been a time that has proven to us who are true friends are, what the revealed natures of many people in our lives are, and how to rely on God and each other. The entries prior to the long journal hiatus are evidence of some of the struggles we endured. It wouldn't be politic at this point to describe the battles with much of Jenni's family, and the cruel, selfish ways they hurt her and tried to manipulate her for month after month, but for the sake of historical accuracy and given the personal siginificance of their behavior to Jenni and I, it will be documented along the way. For now, I don't wish to relive that much politicking, spite, and anger.
Accordingly, there are so many other things to discuss. It's ironic in a way, but Laura was right about Jenni. Before Jenni broke up with Chris, when Laura was strongly encouraging me in Jenni's direction, she told me that the Jenni who we knew with Chris was only a flickering candlelight compared to the Jenni she had the potential to be inside. Having a fair degree of experience studying girls in abusive relationships, whether physically or emotionally, I kept my hopes strongly in check, knowing the difficulty of breaking the cycle once formed. In the years since, I have seen Jenni grow tremendously in strength and confidence and stature, ever reinforcing Laura's prognosis. It's a process that will only continue as time passes, just as Jenni has much to teach me about gentleness and thoughtfulness.
Jenni is sweetness and life and femininity personified. I wrote over a year ago that whoever marries her will stay young forever, and that truth is even more evident today than it was. Life was nuts before I got deployed, as we were in the process of planning a wedding, dealing with Jenni's first year teaching, buying a house, and starting my classes, not to mention dealing with her family. Jenni has a website up to keep me updated about what's going on in the house, the improvements she's made, how our housemates are doing, etc. It's hard being separated this way, but we're working through it. The number one human factor which helps is e-mail access. If we relied on the mail system, we'd never hear anything from each other that didn't have a month of lag time, and anything I responded to in a letter from her would be two months old by the time she got it. What's ultimately going to keep us strong is our mutual faithfulness and trust in God. No matter what circumstances we may find ourselves in, or what struggles we face, a Christian's security and peace comes from knowing that God, with all His attributes of love and immutability and faithfulness and goodness, omniscience and omnipotence, etc., is our Rock. Our peace can't come from Earthly situations. In fact, pretty much all life promises us is pain and death, and if anything good happens along the way, great. Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. So when tragedy or hardship befalls us, it is the unchangeable truths of God which sustain us. Even if life consists of constant suffering from birth to death, how does that ultimately compare to all of eternity spent in paradise with God?
An uncomfortable truth is that hardship is often in our spiritual best interest. When everything in life is dandy, as it has seemed to be sporadically through my life, I forget to rely on God, unconsciously thinking, "What do I need God for? Everything's fine." It's when things turn for the worse that we realize we aren't meant to be alone, and that we aren't the ultimate power in the universe after all.
So, it's going to be hard for a while, but not as hard as it would have been without God's support, and our faith in Him.