Three-Legged Race

Dearest Rachel –

Since my dad served on the board of directors there (and our family, while decidedly middle class, wasn’t exactly rolling in cash for big-ticket vacations on the regular), I spent a lot of my summers as a kid camping in northern Wisconsin, at Fort Wilderness. I won’t say it was my favorite place in the world, like you did about Middle Bass Island – granted, that was more due to my being something of a “great indoorsman” than any particular failing on the camp’s part – and as a result, I let go of the place in favor of your precious island once we were married. But that’s not to say that I never got to show you the place.

I don’t know when they started the program, or if they’ve continued it in the years since, but for a while, they held a singles retreat on the weekend of Labor Day. We went to it at least twice after I graduated from college; each time, our status as singles was suspect at best. The first time, it was more acceptable, as you hadn’t necessarily expected me to pop the question while we were there (I think by that time, it was merely a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if,’ but the timing was still something you hadn’t anticipated), but as an engaged couple, we kind of rode the line of what constituted ‘single.’ The second time around, you may have tried to make it a part of your bachelorette party; I know Elizabeth came up with you, but I can’t recall about Ellen or any one of your other bridesmaids making it up there. And I think we may have gone a times or two thereafter, more as de facto leaders of the singles group at church than as actual singles, but at that point, it really didn’t count, and we stopped after no more than two such visits.

I don’t know which year this happened, but I can vividly recall that, among other things, one of them included a number of competitive games, including a three-legged race. Naturally (to us, anyway), the two of us teamed up to run, and no one seemed to object to the pairing, despite perhaps a little good natured ribbing. After all, it had either been no more than a day or two since our engagement, or a week to go before our wedding, so we were an odd pair out among the group.

And just from looking at the two of us as we were fastened together for our heat of the competition, we posed no significant threat. I was never particularly athletic, and have always been in less that the best of shape (and had I been told that I was probably in the best shape of my life at that time, I surely would have had a good laugh at that; it’s mortifying to think that I’d still need to lose sixty pounds yet in order to get back to that size), while you, though light and nimble, stood nearly a foot below me. I could rest my head on yours, if I wanted to. By all rights, we should have lost, and badly.

But we had an advantage that no one else there had; we knew each other well enough to know how to walk, and even run, in sync with each other. Despite our visible differences in size, both vertically and horizontally, we managed to win all of our heats decisively, to the point where suddenly, people were on the verge of complaining about our unfair advantage over everyone else. Of course, by then, the matches were over; there were no prizes save for bragging rights (which, apparently, I’m still treasuring more than thirty years later), and there wasn’t anything much to be done about our alleged advantage.

***

So, how did we manage to do that, especially in light of the fact that, physically speaking, we shouldn’t have been able to?

There might’ve been the slightest bit of a clue from my days of being in marching band back in high school. We had to listen to the drumbeat in order to stay in step; but not only that, we needed to keep an eye on those in front of us, alongside of us, and in what we were taught to call our ‘diagonals’ in order to make sure that we were properly aligned as we marched along in formation. Of course, this isn’t something that you learned, not having had such an experience in high school. However, as a guy, it was more something I needed to learn, in order to interact with others; how to read and keep in step with others around me, rather than going my own way. Somehow, this learned behavior allowed me to mesh well with you, as I paid attention to where you were as we walked (and ran) along.

But shouldn’t that same training work just as well with anybody else? After all, we hadn’t even known each other for three years at this point; by that standard, I should be on a closer wavelength with any of the friends you left behind for me than I was with you then. If my training would have been enough, any one of them should be every bit as much a match for me as you. And while each of them has something I lack in life – Ellen with her mind and memory, Erin with her energy and optimism, and Kerstin with her spiritual side and mothering instincts toward Daniel – none of them quite manages to sync up with me. It may be that, just as I learned to pay attention to those around me, you did likewise out of a desire to do so, even without training; the mere fact of ‘wanting to’ can, in many cases, make up for a lack of innate ability, or even drilled-in practice.

***

I doubt that, despite all my efforts to get into shape (even if it proves successful beyond my wildest dreams and aspirations) I’m likely to be running in another three-legged race – and even if I were, that I could find a partner to run with so well, regardless of the apparent imbalances between the two of us.

Of course, whether I actually ever find myself in a literal such race isn’t the point; what I would wish for is someone else to be so closely aligned with that something like that could come so naturally despite our differences. For us, it was so easy and straightforward, I had (and still have) a hard time understanding that other people have such difficulty with it. But I’m starting to realize that I got more than lucky by finding you. I may not always recognize when God leads, but given the results, He certainly had a hand in tying the two of us together.

Now, if only He could find me another partner, so I don’t have to remain on the sidelines for the next couple of decades.

And with that in mind, keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.