Sowing Tears and Reaping Joy, Chapter 2

Ed and I were on-again-off-again through college1.  Then, after I married an Army officer at age 22, he stalked me like a jealous boyfriend.

He showed up in our bedroom when dying sunlight seeped through the blinds and illuminated our naked bodies. “Remember what you ate for dinner? You look like you have a food baby.” Ed was vicious.

He showed up in the bedroom every single weekend morning. “Get out of bed, lazy fool. You’re better off going for a run than cuddling with your husband.”

He showed up in the kitchen, leaning over my shoulder. “Why don’t you serve him a double portion, then you can just eat a tiny bit. Or better yet, just make yourself a salad.”

He showed up in the living room when we wanted to watch a movie. “How can you sit there and let calories slowly turn to fat? At least do some sit-ups while you watch TV.”

Ed spent so many years badgering me, that I’d forgotten what it feels like to be hungry, what a genuine craving is, how to cut a pie at Thanksgiving, scoop ice cream for birthday cake or share a Papa John’s pizza with my husband. I turned to Ed with every choice, “Am I good or bad if I eat this?”

My husband, Patrick, hardly knows it, but he is my knight in shining armor. He is my God-sent hero, consistently coming between Ed and me, severing that fatal attraction. Patrick first took me out in college. Despite my selfishness, confusion and divided loyalty, he never criticized or left me. Much like Jesus, he quietly, patiently loved me, capturing my heart piece by piece until there was nothing left for Ed.

The Army moved us to Fort Lewis, Washington, in 2008. From there, Patrick deployed to Afghanistan for a year. Ed visited occasionally. I tried to resist him, enlisting the aid of a therapist and a dietician. I limped along, above the dangerous line on the doctors’ weight charts, but far below what my body needed to stay warm in Washington.

Alone one afternoon, I ventured down to Percival Port. The Olympia Farmers’ Market on the edge of the Puget Sound is renowned. I parked blocks away behind a used furniture store then followed the calls of vendors and the flocks of hippies toting their recyclable bags. Rounding the final corner, I stopped, awed by the spectrum of colors and the vibrations of life emanating from the market.

A red, three-sided barn crouched over rows of rough wooden tables. Like a huge umbrella it defied the gray, wet skies of western Washington. Craftsmen and farmers’ booths spilled into the bulging parking lot. On one end was a seller of herbs. Lavender, basil and dill mingled on the breeze. I ducked beneath a low hanging fuchsia plant.

The apple man at the far end of the market’s breadth became my favorite by season’s end. He stacked apples and mushrooms three crates high in a large square around himself and his gray haired father. Once in a while, his young son helped on a Saturday afternoon.

“You’ve never tried a Honeycrisp apple? That’s a crime! Oh, and did you see this mushroom? It sells for $35 per lb. You can’t buy them anywhere else in Washington!”

Between the apple man and the herbs were cinnamon roasted nuts, Emu lotion, tables toppling beneath the weight of bountiful harvests. Beets, broccoli, cucumbers, squash and vegetables I’d never heard of. A crabber set up his booth when he was in port.

I watched the crowds around me milling, smiling and tasting. Hippies in their tie-dyed scarves and dreadlocks held an air of life-hunger mingled with indifference toward social expectations.

I peered inquisitively at the sellers, faces round and rosy with contentment, satisfaction and pride. Food, bounty and harvest were the source of this joy. There was gratification in dirty fingernails and well-fed waists, smudged cheeks and tired backs. Happiness found in the fruits of hard labor; in sharing flavors and nourishment. Sharing life. And this was good.

My fingers tingled with excitement. I felt invited into the community that began with seeds and soil and culminated in a colorful feast. My cell phone vibrated against my thigh.

“Hello?”

“Hey Abby, it’s Megan.”

Megan and her husband were the only two people I knew in the whole state of Washington. I have no idea why she called, I plowed over her words in my enthusiasm.

“Can you come over for dinner?” I could feel the market’s energy seeping into my pores, suddenly I would burst if I failed to release it. “I’m at the market and I am going to buy oysters and red wine. Please, please come join me?”

Life is a two-step, an organic thing. It must be received and it must be re-gifted. Held too long in tight-fists, it will die.

Life cannot be controlled, manipulated or malnourished. Life cannot be lived alone, but Ed’s greatest ally is solitude. Life will not tolerate Ed.

Ed, anorexia, began to withdraw when my husband bravely entered my life. As friends encircled me, I felt the pulse and freshness of life. The more I pressed what little life I had into the hands of others, and hungrily accepted the relationship they offered, I reaped joy a hundred fold.

Things were changing, a harvest was coming. But what of the famine years? What of the starved intimacy of marriage, the languishing closeness of sisterhood, the wilted camaraderie of mother and daughter and the shallow, neglected friendships?

God was about to show me that He can restore even ruined relationships. Redemption was only beginning.

“Most laws condemn the soul and pronounce sentence. The result of the law of my God is perfect. It condemns but forgives. It restores - more than abundantly - what it takes away.” Jim Elliot

First published at Haven Journal, March 28, 2013