In the summer of 2009, I spent a couple of months immersed in Italian culture through a brief study abroad program through the University of Oklahoma. As someone who has always loved renaissance art and whose maternal great-great grandparents were immigrants from Italy, this trip was a dream come true for me. Genealogy, traveling, amazing food, and my favorite artistic works from history combined to produce a truly “once in a lifetime” experience for this Oklahoma girl who had never been away from home for more than a handful of days at a time.

One of the best features of this trip was that we had an American professor who lived in Italy exclusively available to our cohort as a personal tour guide. And not just any professor. This man was a literal expert in renaissance art and wrote his doctoral dissertation on none other than Michelangelo himself. To say he was an “expert” still doesn’t seem to do his breadth of knowledge justice.

As we ventured through the various tourist attractions you’ve all seen on the travel channel (St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, the Duomo, St. Mark’s Square, the Doge’s Palace, the Trevi Fountain, and so many gardens and sculptures and cathedrals. So many.) our history-professor-turned-tour-guide was usually talking in our ears through wireless headsets, narrating the intricate nuances of the artistic and cultural marvels that laid before us.

I remember feeling pity as I looked at other American tourists who were struggling to understand their native-Italian guides when we had this incredible, English-speaking asset with us to gush over the minute details that made each piece of art profound and significant. The largely unknown facts (and even scandalous secrets) about the artists, cities, and governing authorities of those days, as well as some of the overlooked flaws in many of your favorite works of art that once seen, can never be unseen, were usually his favorite things to share.

In Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of “David” for example, the hands of David are disproportionately large compared to the rest of his body, as well as his head and … er… other anatomical parts … being disproportionately small compared to the rest of his body. Look it up. You’ll never unsee his giant hands again. You’re welcome.

Similar proportionality flaws are also present in Michelangelo’s famous, and my particular favorite, “la pieta” or “the suffering” which captures the solemnity of Christ’s slain body draped across his mother Mary’s lap. Mary, interestingly enough, is bearing the peaceful face of young child instead of that of a grown woman who had born and raised many children.

Did you know that Michelangelo painted the backside of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Truly, as if painting a graven image of the face of God himself wasn’t controversial enough at that time, he also painted God’s butt for everyone to see. And, as our professor reiterated through just about every piece of art, Michelangelo was known to have had quite the temper, did not like having his artistic license quenched, and would often paint hidden elements into his beautiful frescoes as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying, “I do what I want.”

(I might have a little Michelangelo flare in my bones. Haha.)

But of all the things I learned about renaissance art that summer, I think the thing that makes all of it even more mesmerizing is to imagine the time in history through which this movement was birthed… or rebirthed, which is what the word renaissance actually means – rebirth.

By the 14^th century, the (then) western world had endured almost a thousand years of famines, droughts, poverty, wars, diseases, religious abuse, illiteracy, cultural and intellectual decline through the loss of Greek and Roman philosophical studies, the suppression of scripture, and a slew of other offenses committed by ruling parties that, over time, thrust everyone but the wealthy and powerful into abject destitution.

“The Dark Ages,” as they’re commonly known, are generally accepted to have begun with the fall of the Roman empire in the 5^th century, ending sometime in the 15^th century when the Renaissance began to take hold.

But, as if the world had not endured a hard enough millennium, the Bubonic Plague struck Western Europe by the middle of the 14^th century, killing over 20 million people, one-third of the entire population on the continent of Europe alone, for which it so aptly became referred to as simply the “Black Death.”

Just by comparison, as of this writing, the world has currently lost approximately 5.6 million lives to COVID-19. That’s roughly the population of Chicago. Whereas, the current population of the continent of Europe is approximately 750 million people. Could you imagine a disease wiping out one-third, or 250 million people, from Europe today? By a percentage of total population comparison, the Bubonic Plague killed 50x more people than this coronavirus has. That was the extent of the “black death.”

Mass death, more lives lost than humanly fathomable, then or now, was the immediate precursor to the greatest cultural, intellectual, and religious re-awakening in recorded history.

Death preceded rebirth. Something must die before it can be reborn.

Jesus even said this to Nicodemus in John chapter 3 when he insisted that a man must be reborn in the spirit to see the kingdom of God. His message was simple: die to yourself and truly live – a paradox that confused even an expert of the Jewish law like Nicodemus.

Jesus himself died and then re-emerged, rebirthed, into a glorified state, and if we’re paying attention, I think we can find this theme of death and rebirth repeated throughout history and throughout our own lives as a constant underpinning to the story of humanity. If we keep pressing forward, eventually, even after the blackest of nights, will come a glorious dawn; a marvelous rebirth; not as before, but beautiful in a new and fresh and previously inconceivable way.

And I think that’s what I have been feeling well up in my spirit for the last two months – a tidal wave of newness and excitement and anticipation waiting to be rebirthed that would propel me forward in a new direction; into a new season filled with hope and joy.

But in order to get here, I first had to let something die.

And that “thing” was the dreams and the plans I had in my heart for how my life would play out.

I wrote about it last month, this engulfing disappointment for how my life has turned out after trying so hard to set myself up to be anything but a single mom of three kids. All I could see was the way things were supposed to be, what my family was supposed to look like, the things we were supposed to be doing, etc., and try as I did to hide it, ignore it, outspend it, and exercise it to death, that disappointment was eroding my soul.

My husband has been dead for four years, but last year, 2021, almost broke me. Through a hard introspective lens, I realized all the things I was doing in an effort to move myself forward were actually not for myself at all. They were vain attempts to make myself more appealing to someone who might be able to piece back together the broken vision for my life. When, all the while, God was trying to give me a new vision. I just wasn’t able to see it.

I had a mini identity crisis halfway through 2021 and cut 16” off my hair (don’t ever let me do that again y’all haha), I had to stop working out due to an injury, and then gained 25 lbs in self-loathing over it, and began to hide myself from the world again, lost and confused about who I was and where I was going, becoming increasingly convinced I would never be happy again.

After some intense counseling sessions in the fall, I finally realized I had to let this go. Let the old dreams die and lay them to rest, I just wasn’t sure how. So I did what I always do and wrote a blog; an honest and vulnerable snapshot in time of where I felt like I was stuck, and through that, something remarkable happened.

I realized that the thing that I thought had a death-grip on me was actually my prisoner instead, and in releasing the white-knuckled hold I had on the plans of my former life, for the first time in four years, my hands were actually open to receive something new.

Being trapped in disappointment was like waking up in a prison cell four years ago and staring longingly at the door year after year wishing I could leave; screaming at the door and hoping it would open; and secretly cursing all the happy people on the outside as they joyfully walked on by. All the while, never checking to see whether the door was in fact locked.

Then one day, I walked over to the door, slid it open, and walked outside like I was never trapped at all, and four years of internal misery seemed to dissipate the way midday sun quickly burns off a heavy morning fog. By the afternoon, you’re hardly convinced it was ever there at all.

And that’s where I find myself today, February 2, 2022, on what would have been my 9^th wedding anniversary. I’ve dreaded this day every year for four years. Truthfully, I didn’t really look forward to it while my husband was still living, being that I was pregnant on three out of the five years we celebrated, but I really did not like this day after he died. It’s always been my least favorite day on the calendar, because it encompasses a lot for me – the happy memories we did have, the bad memories I feel like I can’t share, love, hurt, disappointment, and ultimately the destroyed vision I had for my life as an individual. It’s all wrapped up in this one day for me.

The advent of this day every year has been like the anxious anticipation of a major storm system, gaining speed and intensity as frantic thoughts swirl over waters of deep, dark emotion like a hurricane in the gulf making its way toward land. And I’ve always done what you do for a hurricane – board up the windows, hide from the storm, and assess the damage after it’s gone, which usually took weeks to emotionally decompress.

Except this year, there is no storm.

No anxiety. No sadness. No nauseous anticipation.

Just peace.

And that’s how I know that I’m finally ready to live my life for myself again. Not for a dream I had a decade ago, not for the way things were supposed to be, not for any one person’s approval, not for any measurement of material success to keep up with my friends and their beautiful nuclear families.

Just for me.

Once upon a time, I was an adventurous, witty, determined, and unrelenting girl who refused to take no for an answer; who was always up for a challenge (or a spontaneous adventure); who would always find a way to get to where she wanted to be; who wasn’t afraid of hard work and wasn’t deterred by obstacles and roadblocks in life. The girl who called her parents at 21 years old and told them she bought a house. The girl who packed up her stuff on a whim and lived in Italy for a summer just to have the experience. The girl who was resolved to finish college with no financial help just to make something of herself (and largely because her college advisor told her she’d never make it… Ha!)

That girl had grit and passion and unrivaled zeal for experiencing the wonders of life. She was confident and capable; strong-willed and decisive.

But I lost her somewhere along the road, after marriage and babies… and babies… and more babies. Or rather, I buried her, and assumed the identity of what I thought I was supposed to be in our marriage, however untrue to myself that felt at times, just to keep peace and be the godly, submissive wife I was told I needed to be. But once the relationship was gone, I was left with a version of myself that I didn’t really like or know; that didn’t make sense; and that no longer worked without a complimentary role.

And much like the resurrection of the classical Greek philosophical studies had a lot to do with the cultural and intellectual revival of Western Europe during the Renaissance, I too had to excavate some long-since buried things about myself to reach this place of rebirth. Truths about the way God wired me; about my strengths as a person; about my value and my worth as a woman whether I’m married or not; about my beauty; about my capabilities; about my uniqueness and my innate desire to achieve and succeed and lead and make tough decision and do hard things. I had to figure out how to like myself again, standing alone on my own two feet, as the independent and confident person I was a decade before.

Deep stuff.

Scary stuff even, when you’re unsure how deep the darkness goes, but I think I’m finally there. Or Here. Because I’m no longer intimidated or ashamed by the broken pieces of my past. The relics of my former life – what seemed like meaningless shards of broken glass – are actually colorful pieces of my history, rich with experience and depth of emotion, just waiting to be arranged with someone else’s broken pieces to form a beautiful and complex mosaic that no one could have imagined or that could have even existed before that very moment.

Much like Michelangelo’s art, it’s the imperfection, the real and the raw, that summons our attention to the true beauty of the human condition, and oh, how beautiful it is to be human. To fall and get back up; to fail and overcome; to break and somehow heal; to die and be reborn into someone stronger, wiser, deeper, and more resilient than before.

I’ve spent the last four years honoring and memorializing my late-husband, and now I feel so firmly that time is over. That season has ended. I was widowed, but I no longer consider myself “a widow.”

An incident does not have to become an identity.

Loss is something that happens, but it doesn’t have to define who we are, what we are capable of, or where we will go in the future. It’s taken my therapist 10 months of repeating that for me to finally believe it.

I’ve spent the last four years afraid to look up from the pavement before my feet for fear of not knowing where I was going or if I’d even make it there.

Today, for the first time in a very long time, I have my eyes straight ahead scanning the horizon, and I’m more excited and hopeful about the paths that lie before me than I’ve maybe ever been.

Today I’m more at peace with myself and my imperfection than I ever thought I could be.

Today was my wedding anniversary – a sad reminder of what was, but now it feels more like a springboard beyond the pain I’ve endured to a full and adventurous and joyful future, wherever that may be.

As Paul said to the Philippians, “Letting go of what is behind me and straining forward to what lies ahead…”

The world may be in uncertainty and chaos right now, but I’m determined to squeeze every ounce of love and joy and passion out of the time that I’m afforded in this life no matter what the news anchors say.

I’m determined to take the risks and make the memories and build something uniquely beautiful for myself and my kids. We all hope that eventually someone will want to build something with us (Lord knows Lilly has prayed for this every single night for 18 months now), but even if that’s not the case, I’m going to rest confidently between the goodness and the mercy of God, knowing I gave this life everything I had, and that I refused to surrender my passion to a grave of disappointment and regret.

I’ll always be thankful for the five short years I was married to Chad, grateful for the ways our marriage helped temper my fieriness and pride and taught me patience and forgiveness and compromise. And I’m eternally blessed by our three children, but I’m now so resolved to believe that the best is still yet to come; that there is more love and opportunity before me than there is behind me, and this is a feeling I haven’t felt in a very long time.

I had to let a huge piece of myself die a cold and black death to get to this place, but this is my renaissance. This is my rebirth.

And I’m so ready for it.

Blessings!

Shannon

After-thoughts:

What things do you need to let die in order to be reborn? Have something you want to share? The light is the best disinfectant! Sometimes just sharing your feelings can untwist the knots in your soul. I’d love to hear your heart. Feel free to email me your story, send it to me in Messenger, or just comment below!

Anyone who knows me really well knows that deep at heart, I’m a hopeless romantic.

But not in the grand gestures kind of way. In the million tiny pieces, the hidden notes and whispers in a crowded room, and cheesy love letters on a regular Tuesday kind of way.

To me, love tastes better in bite size fragments when an ordinary day is infused with the extraordinary bliss of a spur of the moment notion of enchantment, often hidden, between two people.

I blame Disney and The Notebook in my formative years, but alas, I am who I am at 35, so I don’t fight it anymore.

2 years before dating Chad, I started a journal to my future husband, because I obviously have to write about my feelings constantly . I had no clue who it was going to be at that time, but the romantic in me thought it’d be so fun to log the journey as it played out in real life as I discovered who this mystery person was, our dates, the nauseating pining of love and all that jazz and I thought it’d be a cool relic for our kids or grandkids to have one day when we were old.

I wrote in this book a lot as a young, hopelessly-desperate-to-be-in-love, 20 something who was ill from watching so many of my friends get married. It’s mostly full of prayers about and for this man… and a bit of complaining about his seemingly tardy entry onto the grand stage of my life.

My plan was to give it to my husband on our 1st anniversary… but as some of you have heard us joke, mine and Chad’s first year of marriage wasn’t the wedding cake and butterflies we’d anticipated… for a lot of reasons that almost all come back to me… being stubborn and unyielding (he eventually broke this green horse… or more like the Lord did with three children ). Anyhow…

Sadly, I stopped writing in “our book” pretty shortly into our first year of marriage. It’s hard to write gooey things when you don’t “feel” gooey about it… and at that time, I wasn’t sure I wanted what I really felt permanently recorded anywhere.

As a writer and someone who loves truthful vulnerability, it pains me that I was too afraid to keep writing the real story of our love and our marriage, especially after our story was abruptly cut short so soon after it began.

I’ve often tried to fill in the gaps between then and now, to try to put to words the way he changed me, grew me, and made me a more lovable person, but it’s hard. It feels like I’m tampering with a time capsule before it’s supposed to be opened. Though incomplete, the book is sacred space.

About this time last year, I really started to feel my heart pulling me forward toward the possibility of the future more than I was being drawn to memories of the past, and while terrifying, I came to the conclusion that fear can only bridle hope in the dark for so long. Because once hope realizes it is actually the superior emotion, it must break free.

So on Valentine’s Day of 2020, ten years later, I started a new book… to a new person I don’t yet know, or if I do know, I am at the very least unaware of him in this regard.

I’ve been writing in it for a solid year now. It’s full of mostly prayers… and some complaining about how much I loathe being single (Not much has changed… I’d like to think Im less of a brat now though #thanksChad).

So today, I woke up feeling quite inspired… and well-rested… and decided I’d write two letters:

The first to Chad – a thank you for showing me what it meant to love someone selflessly and consistently, for being the fudge and sprinkles on top of my boring vanilla ice cream life, for giving me the three most beautiful children on the planet, for making me a wife, and for bearing with me while God was using him to temper me and teach me humility and grace and forgiveness and trust and teamwork.

The second was to a person I don’t know, and it’s full of hopes and dreams for a future that I can’t yet see, and quite honestly, am afraid to completely believe in, for fear of disappointment, rejection, or more heartache; a future I pray for but don’t yet understand when or how it could become reality.

I can see so much more clearly now, after losing Chad, that his reckless abandon in loving me so hard was motivated from his painful history of having loved deeply and lost before when his previous wife left him. He was terrified when he fell in love with me, (he told me multiple times ) because he didn’t think he’d survive loving someone that much again and losing them.

But like the true romantic and warrior that he was, he didn’t run in fear, he pressed in and loved me harder and held onto me tighter.

I can see now why so many things that would frustrate me didn’t matter to him – because his previous loss gave him the ability to understand what was actually a big deal and what was not; a perspective he’s taught me now, ironically, through his death.

I know now why he was so easy to get along with, why he would have climbed any mountain to get to me or gone to any length to please me…. because nothing mattered to him as long as we were together (and preferably in harmony haha).

When you know what you have is special, you’ll do whatever it takes to safeguard and cherish that relationship.

Embarrassingly, I now see that he knew how special we were long before I did, and he was willing to make sacrifices early on that I wasn’t because he loved deeper than I did… not because I was somehow vain and shallow, but because I couldn’t have even begun to understand the depth of his love for me not having been through what he’d been through.

He was more seasoned in the game of love than I was. I was a rookie, and it’s painfully obvious now in my memories.

And truthfully, the scariest part of thinking about loving someone again is picturing myself being on Chad’s side of the equation… loving someone more than they’re capable of loving me back, and the vulnerability that comes with putting myself out there coupled with the possibility of being hurt by someone or ambushed by life again, but like I said before, my hope for the future eventually silences my fear.

So while I’m stuck in this chasm between two love stories, I’ll keep dreaming… and writing… and praying… and trusting that God has a plan for my family.

Wherever you are today, I hope you are able to love and appreciate the special person in your life like they deserve to be loved and cherished. I pray you can look past each others’ offenses and keep moving forward to deeper love. I can promise you, 98% of the things you’re mad about wouldn’t matter tomorrow if your person suddenly disappeared.

If you’re single like me, I pray you have the faith to believe for the desires of your heart and the courage to reach out and grab them when the opportunities present themselves.

Until then, I pray you’re captivated by the greatest love story of all time – the love of the Savior who gave everything for your heart and soul, because it’s only through this love that we can truly appreciate the gift of love we find in one another.

Happy Valentine’s Day to my first love – My Dad – who never gave me an inch to question whether I was loved or valued by him, who cried on the phone with this 17 year old girl when her first boyfriend broke her heart, and who has been the most constant and guiding light of love and strength throughout my entire life.

Happy Valentine’s Day to my first husband, Chad Robinson, who loved me more than I understood, was the epitome of grace, forgiveness, and patience; who tried every day to be my best friend and show me Jesus; was just as sincere as he was silly; and left me a lifetime of sappy romantic memories to live on. I’m forever grateful for the ways you loved me that shaped the person I am today and the person I will become tomorrow.

And to the person I don’t yet know, Happy Valentine’s Day to you too, wherever you are in this big wide world.

Shannon

I was sitting there in the passenger seat of his small SUV staring out the windshield at the nothingness that grows alongside the highway in Eastern Oklahoma as he started the long drive back home. The car was quiet. We’d sang all the songs and talked about all the things we could think to talk about earlier in the day, and now neither of us had anything left to say.

Being with Chad was usually easy, but something felt awkward. The physical space between us in that compact SUV was small, but we felt miles apart in that moment; both eyes locked in the forward position, as if trying not to engage the other. I was confused, a bit perplexed, so I twisted the top off my pop and focused in on the gentle hum of the tires on the road as I contemplated how we even ended up here, 3 hours away from home on a random Saturday in September.  

It had been a bizarre day. Chad was tense, a little edgy, and seemed like he had been forcing himself to have a good time all day; a good time on this impromptu road-trip that he sprung on me the night before.

The day began bright and early at 8 am that morning. “Don’t be late!” he made me promise, “It’s a surprise!”

I was not ultra-enthused about being anywhere that early on a Saturday morning, being that I am NOT a morning person, but I desperately loved this man, so alas, I was there at 8…. ish and very curious to see what zany idea he’d come up with for the day. You truly never knew what you were walking into with him. We could have been getting on an airplane in 60 minutes or just going to get breakfast, but that was part of the fun… that I learned to love. He was a bit unorthodox and full of adventure.

“Close your eyes,” he said with some authority, almost immediately after I walked into his living room.

“What. Why?” I rebutted, as I made a frowny face. (I’m such a great sport haha).

“Don’t be difficult. Just close your eyes,” he replied.

So I stood there in his living room with my eyes closed for a few seconds, when he slipped a black piece of cloth over my eyes.

“Spin around in a circle,” he said next.

“What? Why? What are you doing? I thought we were leaving…” I began again.

“Stop being difficult. Just play along,” he said. I could hear the annoyance kick up a notch in his voice.

In all fairness, it was 8 am and I hadn’t eaten breakfast or slept enough for motion sickness games on a Saturday morning, but I obliged him and turned around in a circle one time and then stopped. He sighed heavily, grabbed my shoulders, and turned me around a few more times.

“Okay, point somewhere,” he said next.

“Point? Just anywhere? I can’t see… I don’t get it.. OMG what is going on!!” I snapped as I ripped the blindfold off my eyes.

“OMG why can’t you just play along?! Just pick a direction, Shannon. East or West. Don’t think about it. Just pick one….. Now!” he pressed, as he stared at me with this wild look in his eyes.

“Umm.. East?” I said hesitantly.

“Okay, we’re heading East,” he said, as he walked by me toward the front door, as if we had to leave right then.

“To where?” I questioned, as I followed him.

“I don’t know. I’ll know when we get there,” he answered.

It had only been about 5 minutes since I arrived, but this “surprise” was already starting to concern me.

We got in his Rogue, grabbed some breakfast burritos at Braum’s, bought a few drinks and snacks at the gas station, and took off down I-40 East, into the unknown. I expected the tension to tone down a bit once we finally got on the road, but there was still this underlying nag of pressure in my spirit.

We’d jam and sing to some fun songs, talk about God and what we felt like He was doing in our lives and the tension would subside for a bit, but then, we’d start talking about other things, and he’d find a way to bring up something controversial to debate, and we’d find ourselves right back in the awkward disagreement. It was this steady eb and flow of conversational tit for tat and frustration.

Time usually flew by with Chad, because he was always easy going and generally funny, but this day… this might have been the most mentally exhausting day I ever spent with that man.

We’d been in the car for over 2 hours, and I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired of seeing nothing ahead in the distance, knowing full well there was NOTHING up in the distance. We were literally driving to nowhere, and the practical part of me knew the farther we drove, the longer it was going to take to get back home.

I was hot from the sun shining on me through the window, I starting to get hangry, there were no food places in the foreseeable future, and he’d really just pushed me over the edge with this debate over the moral and ethical dilemma of freezing and destroying embryos for infertility treatments…

“What are we dooooinnnnggg?!” I blurted out. “Where are we going? Did you really just trap me in a car to argue with me for 3 hours? I like surprises, but this is … I don’t even know what this is. There is nothing East on I40. We should just go back home.”

“Well you’re the one who picked East,” he replied.

“Well if you would have given me half a clue as to what this entailed, I would have picked South and we could have been in Dallas by now!” I retorted. “But I don’t want to drive all the way to Arkansas just because I said East, so figure something out or just turn around!”

“Well what’s up ahead?” he asked.

“NOTHING. There is nothing out here but Lake Eufala for the next 50 miles!” I snapped.

“Okay, well let’s just go over to the lake and see if we can find somewhere to stop,” he suggested. “I packed us a lunch. I thought we could have a picnic somewhere.”

“A picnic… Okay…” I said quietly.

I was really up for anything that got me out of that vehicle. I needed to move my legs and have some personal space. Lake Eufala it was!

­­­­­­We drove another 20 minutes and finally made it to Eufala. I am really familiar with the area, so I navigated him toward the town so we could find a gas station and a restroom. We ended up finding a cute little antique shop and blew 20 or 30 minutes in there looking at random junk, which for some reason helped reset us both from the previous hour of misery on the road.

We got back in the car feeling a bit more relaxed and ready to search for a spot to have this picnic he had envisioned. If this man planned this whole random day for one picnic, then I guess we’ll have a picnic… even if it is the dreariest, mistiest, day in September you can imagine.

We cruised around Eufala Cove slowly and didn’t see anything even remotely promising for a picnic site. Oklahoma had suffered a record-breaking drought that spring and summer and the lake was the lowest I’d ever seen in it in my entire life. I’d spent many summers at that lake, but this particular fall, the low water levels made it almost unrecognizable. The cove where wakeboarders once competed was literally dried up. Docks that once floated were resting on cracked red dirt. It looked like a scene from a post-apocalyptic survival movie where people walk miles in search of water.

To make it even more unappealing, there was heavy fog that morning, so the ground was a little damp. The grass was all dead from the drought, the trees were bare, the water was gone, the ground was wet, and the sky was overcast with grey. There wasn’t a stitch of blue sky or sunlight to be seen.

We travelled 3 hours to have a picnic on parched ground under a bleak sky in the middle of nowhere. The writer in me could not help but see the irony and parallelism in this entire situation.

We drove over to another part of the lake in search of more appealing scenery. We found an area that had some new high-end lake houses being built, so we ventured up this steep gravel road to where they were tucked into the cliffside overlooking the more open parts of the lake, hoping to find a quaint spot to throw out our blanket.

But again, there was no where to set up our picnic.

I could tell Chad was getting really discouraged. He seemed really set on this picnic. He finally parked off to the side of the narrow gravel road we were on with a steep treed hillside down to the water just on the other side, which made me incredibly nervous, and he suggested we just sit out here… which was really nowhere.

“But you can’t even see anything from the ground over here. This is just brush by a gravel road…” I protested meekly. “Plus, this is all nasty red dirt from the construction, and I don’t want to get my new shoes dirty…. Can’t we just eat your sandwiches in the car? At least it’s not muggy in here,” I continued, trying to find a bright side.

“Yeah… sure,” he replied coldly, without even making eye contact with me.

He reached behind my seat and pulled out the most iconic woven picnic basket you’ve ever seen. He opened the lid and handed me a lukewarm sandwich and a tiny bag of chips. We both ate in silence.

“Is this all you brought?” I tried to ask kindly, but that mini sandwich just made me more hungry.

“Yeah, I didn’t plan on us being gone this long or being this far away from the City,” he answered.

I really wanted to start my next thought with, “I feel like lack of planning is the main theme of today….” but I just stayed quiet for a bit, trying to harness some empathy for his devastation I didn’t yet understand.

“Listen,” I started softly, after we’d both finished eating our meager lunches, “This was a really sweet idea. I can tell you’re really disappointed, and I’m sorry this day didn’t work out how you thought it was going to, but the point was that we were together right? Let’s just go back home. We can change clothes and go eat dinner somewhere. We could go see a movie…. What do you think?”

I’m trying hard to salvage this day.

“Yeah… we can do that,” he replied, without making eye contact or moving a muscle in his body; the crushed tone in his voice impossible to miss.

He put the car in drive and wound us down the steep pass back toward the town of Eufala, back toward State Highway 69, and back toward Interstate 40 for the 3 hour drive back home.

We were making our way down Highway 69, when he handed me a bottle of Root Beer – my favorite.

“I got this for you at the gas station,” he said kindly, but still with this wounded tone in his voice.

Right before we left Eufala, we stopped at a gas station to refuel and buy some drinks for the trip home. While I was in the restroom, he grabbed two pop bottles, one for each of us; glass bottles with twist off caps, unique flavors; nostalgia that harkened back to another time in American history, and he had this strange love for trying unique sodas.

“Thanks,” I said with a smile, trying to inject some happy into the atmosphere. He didn’t really accept it.

I held the bottle for a moment as I stared out the windshield trying to figure out how we ended up here; why he’d been so tense all day long; why this day was supposed to have been some fun surprise felt so strained. Maybe he’s having second thoughts about us. Is this the beginning of the end?…

It was way too early in the car ride back for my mind to spiral, so I broke my thought process, twisted off the cap to my Root Beer and took a sip.

“Oh these have sayings under the cap! How fun! What does yours say?” I asked him, trying to find anything to talk about that might get us back to center.  

He twisted the cap off of his bottle and looked at it… and looked at it…

“Well…. What does it say?” I asked again.

He didn’t respond.

Still driving, and holding the bottlecap between both hands perched at the top of the steering wheel, he turned his head toward me and looked hard at me for a moment, then back at the bottlecap. Then back to me again, then back at the bottlecap.

Then, without any warning at all, he slammed on the breaks and veered right. I heard our tires squeal as he came to a screeching halt on the shoulder.

“Chad!!” I yelled,” What in the world is going on?!…”

He didn’t answer. He just kept looking at his bottlecap.

“Well what does it say?,” I demanded, because I was really annoyed at this point. “It can’t be something worth almost wrecking us over!”

Without a word, he flung open his car door and marched around the back of the SUV toward my side. I watched him in the rearview mirror with wide eyes, entirely unsure of what was about to happen.

Is the car on fire? Is there a crisis I’m unaware of? Are we in danger? Does he just need a moment to himself? What could I have said to make him THIS mad?

My brain was coming up with probable solutions in rapid sequence when my car door abruptly opened. He forcefully stepped into the space between the door and me; his body language rigid and tense. I could feel the shock and uncertainty on my face.

“This day has been a nightmare. You made everything about this so difficult…” he began.

“This wasn’t my….” I tried to butt in.

“Just let me finish!” he said, as he put his hands up in a stop motion.

“I’ve prayed about this. I was SURE today was the day. And then nothing… NOTHING went like I thought it would. You didn’t want to play my game. You didn’t want to have a picnic. You didn’t want to get your shoes dirty. The lake was ugly. The ground was wet….” he continued.

I was really hoping he was getting somewhere fast with this, because this wasn’t my train-wreck of a “plan” for a date… and I was about to let him know.

“and I just thought, ‘You know what, God, maybe I heard wrong. Maybe today is not the day.’ And I had already accepted the fact that it just wasn’t going to happen, but then I read this bottlecap, and it hit me that none of this matters at all….”

“Stand up,” he requested, as he broke his thought mid-sentence, grabbed both my hands, and pulled me out of the car.

“Shannon Manek, you can be one of the most stubborn and frustrating women I’ve ever met in my entire life at times, but you’re my best friend, and I love you, and I know we’re supposed to be together, and I’ve been praying all afternoon for God to give me a sign, and just when I was ready to give up on this day, I read this bottlecap, and it says, ‘Stop Searching. Happiness is right next to you’……..

So ………………………….. will you marry me?”

Before I could process whether this was an insult or a compliment, he was on one knee with this beautiful shiny ring, the ring I’d always wanted, in my face.

I stood there stunned, obviously. Speechless.

“Well……….. say something!” he said with a combination of irritation and vulnerability all rolled into one.

“Yes!” I said, as I laughed nervously back at him, the bewilderment of this entire moment written all over my face.

“Thank God!” he exclaimed, as he pushed that beautiful ring on my finger and stood up. “I was starting to think you were going to say ‘No’,” he laughed.

We hugged and kissed and laughed at the ridiculousness of that day and the fact that he just proposed to me on the side of a random State Highway with cars whizzing by, 15’ feet from a dead Armadillo.

It wasn’t the proposal Hallmark Christmas movies are made of, but it was ours and there was a beautiful lesson at the foundation of it.

Stop Searching. Happiness is right next to you.

_____________

I was thinking about our infamous bottlecap a few weeks ago when mine and Chad’s engagement pictures popped up on my Facebook Memories from 8 years ago this November. We took a picture with it in our hands to commemorate the moment a bottle of pop changed everything.

I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between that miserable day (pre-bottlecap) where nothing seemed to go as planned and every attempt to improvise just ended with something equally disappointing, and this peculiar, frustrating, disappointing, and sometimes painful, year that many of us have gone through.

I think it’d be fair to say that 12 months ago none of us would have expected 2020 to turn out this way, when we were all getting ready to enter into this new bright and shiny decade of hope and prosperity. We all had plans; we had dreams; we had goals and vision for where we wanted to see ourselves.

None of which probably included covering your face in public, homeschooling your kids, being laid off from work, being disconnected from your family and close friends, being sick, being afraid of getting sick, and saying goodbye to people you love. All of that on top of the socio-political drama we’ve had to deal with, and I think 2020 has left us all disappointed, second-guessing the blessings we thought we were sure of this year.

“I just knew this was going to be my year, but then nothing turned out like it was supposed to… a year of provision turned into a year of hardship” reminded me so much of Chad saying, “I just knew today was going to be the day, but nothing went like I thought it would…”

‘Nothing turned out like I thought it would…’ seemed to hit particularly hard during Thanksgiving last week when I didn’t get to see any of the family I’ve seen every Thanksgiving for my entire life. So many of us had a drastic first taste of what this new holiday season will look like in 2020, due to forced separation, and some of us due to death.

But I think I can say this next bit with some authority, despite whatever circumstance you find yourself in today, because I’m no stranger to life not being what I had planned. Disappointment isnt unique to 2020 for my family.

When Chad suddenly died almost 3 years ago, 5 short years into our marriage, I had to come to terms with the fact that my entire life would not turn out to be even remotely close to what I had planned. Not just a day or a season or a year, everything I had envisioned for us and our family was gone in an instant on March 26, 2018.

Truthfully, I’ve spent 2 years and 8 months, as of this writing, learning what it means to find happiness in unexpected moments where there seems to be nothing but misery. Maybe that’s why the unpredictability and challenges of 2020 haven’t completely leveled me like they have a lot of people I know.

We’ve had almost 3 years of OJT at making the most of sucky situations here at the Robinson Casa. I won’t temp fate and say I’m a professional, but in some weird way, I feel like I was prepared for this or…. in the very least, a bit desensitized to the shock that immediately follows having your world turned upside down and all your plans ruined. We keep going, because that’s what we’ve learned to do.

If I’ve learned anything else over the last 3 years, it’s that happiness truly is right next to you… because happiness is an external feeling based on outside forces. Happiness is a temporary and fleeting moment of bliss. We chase moments of happiness like addicts chase their next high, thinking this is what life is all about, all the while forsaking what can bring us emotional stability and peace.

Happiness is a feeling; here one second, gone the next.

But joy… joy is constant. Joy is internal. Joy is a state of being.

Joy can be the refining lens through which we view life that sharpens our moments of bliss and softens our moments of pain. And once you realize how to let joy live inside of you, you figure out how to reach out and grab the happiness right next to you, no matter how the circumstances are masquerading it.

Wherever you are right now, Friend, however this season or this year is affecting you, this is my prayer for you:

I pray you feel the love of God surround you;

I pray you have the Prince of Peace inside of you;

I pray you rest in the sovereignty of the Lord over you;

I pray you see the hand of God go before you;

I pray you walk boldly with faith in front of you;

I pray you put the fears of this world behind you;

And I pray you let joy live within you, so that you can stop searching, reach out, and take hold of the happiness that is right next to you.

Blessings!

Shannon

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