So This Is What It Means to Leave and Cleave

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife:  and they shall be one flesh.

~ Genesis 2:24

My dearest love,

Fourteen years after the fact, I think I'm beginning to understand in a deeper way what Dr. Brensinger meant when he preached in our wedding about leaving father and mother and cleaving to each other because we're made of the same stuff.  I didn't realize at the time that leaving and cleaving would become a theme in our marriage (isn't that what happens before you get married? you leave so you can cleave...but afterwards? you don't have to do it anymore, right?); but with the insight that 5,110 days together brings, I can now see how the cycle of leaving and cleaving has continued throughout our marriage.  And here's the important thing:  the strong cleaving we've done might never have happened in such force without the leaving--some painful--that we've endured.  Let me explain...

For the past fourteen years (fifteen and a half, if you count the total amount of time we've known each other), you have been the constant in my life--the only constant, in fact, besides God.  No one else has lived where I have, experienced what I have, made the friends that I have, been changed in similar ways like I have.  

When we met each other in Jerusalem during my semester abroad, no one from back home shared that experience with me.  But you!--you had tasted and seen and smelled and heard and felt the same sensations, and that bonded us tightly.  

Because of your persistence, when I returned to the States after that semester, to a place where no one *really* could identify with what I had been through, you came along!  You didn't drop out of my life--thankfully, you were much too stubborn for that ;-) --so as I finished my senior year of college, you became very much a part of that experience.  You were part of Israel, you were part of Messiah (even though you lived in California during that year).

Then, of course, we got married and moved to California; and suddenly the whole world changed for me.  My family, my high school friends, my college friends, my church friends--all of them were left behind as I journeyed into the unknown that awaited me as a newlywed in California.  I could get together with my roommates from college and have a joyous time, but they didn't really know me anymore--not like you did.  I could visit my parents and rejoice in their presence, but it wasn't the same.  You were now the sun that I revolved around, not them.  And so you and I shared California, just like we had shared my semester abroad in Israel and my senior year of college in Pennsylvania, making memories, making friendships, becoming independent, self-sufficient adults.  

Time passed, and we put down roots--strong roots, as we realize more and more--in San Diego's sandy soil.  We were surrounded by many people who knew us deeply, but none as deeply as we knew each other.  And no one there had the same heart for Israel that you and I did.

Next chapter of life:  saying goodbye to our dear ones in San Diego and returning to Israel to live in Tel Aviv for several years.  Once again, we made wonderful friends, but none of them knew the college Davene, or the California Jeff, or our Virginia wedding, or our San Diego friends, or any of our past (save what we told them, of course, but you know it's not the same).  Our Israel friends got a slice of our life, and we were blessed by them, and I hope they were blessed by us.  But yet again, it was time for a goodbye, time to leave that land, time to return to this beautiful corner of the world to plant ourselves in Virginia's good dirt.

It might seem that, in the five and a half years that we've lived here, we haven't done much leaving; but you know how false that impression is.  You, more than anyone, know the anguish we've shared as we've made the difficult decisions to leave a congregation in the spring of 2007 and to leave a different congregation at the end of 2009.  Even recently, there have been "leavings" of a different sort with friendships tested and strained.  

Through it all, through each of these transitions, through the heart-rending times of saying goodbye and being torn from friendships that were once meaningful and sustaining, I often think, "At least I have Jeff."  Late at night, as we seize quiet moments in which to pour out our hearts to each other, we'll sometimes remark, "At least we have each other" and "You're the only one who really knows me!"  

To tell you the truth, sometimes I feel like I don't belong anywhere!  But even in those moments of discouragement, I know that not only do I have a safe haven in the arms of my Savior, He's also given me a place of peace in your arms.  

Truly, that is my favorite place.

Truly, you are my constant, my rock, my soul mate, the only one who knows the different chapters of my life enough to understand the context of my sighs and longings and joys and celebrations.

Truly, the times of leaving have made me cleave even more to you.

Truly, I would do it all over again, just for the privilege of being your wife.  

Truly, the past fourteen years have been the best of my life.

Truly, this is a happy anniversary, because any day in the safety of your love is blessed.

Truly, I love you...forever.

~ blurry picture taken last evening by David Fisher who, at six years of age, doesn't charge much anything for his photo sessions but doesn't exactly guarantee the results 
 ;-)