Remembering the When. Celebrating the Now.

On my wedding anniversary, I found myself browsing through old photo albums on Facebook. I’d looked through pictures on my phone, but recent photographs of my husband and me didn’t seem to do the trick. We looked tired and bedraggled—maybe because we are tired and bedraggled at this point in our middle-aged, parenting lives.

I needed to remember who we were before old knees and young children took over. Before weekends were determined by playdates and baseball games and soccer tournaments, when the “we” of our little family was just the two of us.

I needed to remember the when so I could celebrate the now.

Eventually, I found it: a photograph of him and me standing on a northern California beach. A rock jetty encircled a calm pool of salty water behind us; soon we would have a conversation that changed everything.

I penned this memory on Instagram:

We’d only been dating for a month or so when I hopped in a van to go hang out with and speak to a hundred teenagers for a week in Mexico.

Sure, the whole experience was fun, but more than anything, I realized that I missed him. Like, he’s the first person I want to call when we cross the border kind of missing him.

But because we met online, I didn’t know if my missing-him was the same as his missing-me. I mean, did he have any other women in his hopper? Was he dating anyone else on the sly while I spent a week not showering hives that covered my body? (Cement. Don’t ask me to mix it).

But then, there we were: back together, sitting on a beach in Pacifica. I asked him about his hopper, you know the one potentially filled with lots and lots of women.

‘I’m not dating anyone else, nor do I intend to ever date anyone else.’

NO HOPPER CONFIRMED.

I looked him in the eyes.

‘You’re planning on marrying me, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am.’

So, there you go, folks. An origin story, and today, an anniversary story too.

The memory is funny, poignant, and decidedly us. I tend to circle and wrap my way around entire scenarios, letting my imagination get wrapped up in ideas and ‘what ifs’ that don’t tend to hold too much weight when all is said and done. I call it a strong writerly bent toward fantasy and the little things not everyone notices at first glance. He, on the other hand, calls the whole thing just plain ‘interesting.’ Why read into what isn’t there? Why not let the blatant truth present before us be all we really need in the end?

Here’s the thing, though: sometimes remembering the when is crucial to celebrating the now. I don’t know if this is truer than in the life of faith.

Nearly four decades ago, I knelt beside my bed in a slanted-ceiling attic bedroom in Tillamook, Oregon.

‘I wanna ask Jesus into my heart, Mama,’ my mother remembers me telling her one evening. She told me to do as she did; I got down on my knees and clasped my hands in prayer. I closed my eyes, whispering words to a God who somehow morphed holy ways into my heart.

Minutes later, I galloped around my bedroom atop a stick pony. Jesus lives in my heart! Giddy-up! I shouted. When a bout of cowgirl’s delight knocked over a porcelain tea set, the pieces scattered across the room.

Tears streamed down my cheeks, all previous joy gone.

I may not have a picture of me praying that prayer with my mama or skipping across my bedroom after saying ‘yes’ to Jesus, but I find myself remembering that story in moments of disbelief, when the life of faith isn’t as easy as it used to be. After all, ours is often not a one-time decision, but a long and winding journey of belief and disbelief, of ignorance and understanding. And sometimes I need to look back on where I’ve been to celebrate where I am now.

Mine is a journey of the American Baptist tradition and a handful of evangelical denominations. It’s a voyage of spiritual evolutions and deconstructive detours before eventually finding a home in the Episcopal Church.

I don’t know where the rest of this faith journey will take me, but this much I do know: like anything else in life, sometimes we have to look back and remember the when so we can better celebrate the now.

Anniversaries and bedside Jesus-moments alike, might it be the same for you.