Spring Break showed up just in time to whisk us away on an adventure. I had planned seven days of California Love for the four of us. I was excited to return to the good oxygen and see what part of myself and our family we would find on this trip.

We arrived in San Francisco and drove out to Sausalito for dinner with one of my childhood besties, Alisha, and her wife, Kelly. Looking out over the ocean across from the newlyweds, snuggled between my children, I was full of eucharisteo - total gratitude and thanksgiving.

Old friends make great mirrors. Our history with them can remind us of our true self. Twice, Alisha invited me to speak God’s love into her people - once during our first high school basketball practice together when she invited me to pray for our team and then again at her wedding.

Alisha and I met on the basketball court. Seventh graders, our middle schools played against one another on my home court where she lit me up for 20 points. Seventh grade girls don’t score twenty. Hell, our entire team wouldn’t score twenty points in a game. My dad, a division one Basketball scholarship athlete at TCU, went over to her after the game to tell her he would look forward to watching her play in high school and that she would no doubt be a scholarship athlete herself.

That summer, we invited her onto our AAU basketball team. She and I spent the summer alternating between bikinis and backyards and jerseys and gyms. Love and basketball. She eventually got noticed and picked up by the most prestigious team in our area. But the friendship was formed with deep roots and we stayed connected at the heart.

At the onset of my junior year, the varsity basketball coach at my high school clarified that I would never play for her. She was, as they say, just not that into me. I was considering transferring from my all-white, middle-upper-class high school to our cross-town rival. I was torn then about staying with basketball, persevering, or quitting. But at the time, as a naive sixteen year old, quit was another four letter word. Quit. Quitter. Loser. I had logged a lot of hours in gyms. I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.

I picked up Alisha for Wednesday night youth group at the First Baptist Church. The minister taught on the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat. I left feeling unsettled and she could see it. She wrote me a note that night that sits on my desk today, “You are my wheat. You should feel no burden.” A gracious offering from my young friend. That night laying in bed, I heard the Spirit, not with a decision telling me what to do but with an offering of Her own: “I am with you. I am inside of you. I am with you wherever you go.”

My parents put our 4,000 square foot house on the market, moved us into an 800 square foot, two bedroom apartment, and we rolled the dice.

Over the next two years, entrenched in the lives of my classmates, basketball teammates and coaches – black, white, Hispanic, gay, straight, determined, confused, poor, middle-class, alcoholic parents, abusive parents, dedicated parents, absent parents, loving parents, committed parents, honest, authentic, got-nothing-to-lose families – my life was forever changed.

This was my first revelation that there were worlds within the world, as they say. The beauty in diversity, the authenticity of those who had never been told to hide the family dirt, the joy of victory when you are the underdog, Kelly who lived with us when her parents kicked her out after finding a love letter between she and her girlfriend, the eye-opening reality of how over-resourced and privileged I was in every way brought a new gratitude and calling on my life. My parents were all in: dad the guardian and mom the caretaker. By the time we moved out of the apartment and into a rent house, I had three twin beds set up in my room for the crashers and mom was packing me a grocery bag worth of lunch for sharing. Together and With. Pure heaven.

I told my mom that though there were days I was scared, I knew this was where I was supposed to be. My main tools on this part of the journey were food, mechanical pencils, my car for giving rides, my parents for figuring hard things out, and our dining room table for feeding everyone. There were so many hard things to figure out in high school including my friends who were and weren’t coming out but were definitely exploring same-sex relationships.

These friends loved me. They accepted me. I was the odd duck; maybe the oddeset duck they had ever seen: spoiled little Christian white girl from the wrong side of town. Unlike any church I had ever been in or have ever been in, among my teammates and my friends, I felt the deepest sense of love and belonging. At Lewisville High School, I found my first crew. Thinking of them as anything but beloved and beautiful was never an option, no matter what the churches or the other parents or the systems said.

Alisha went on to play Division I Basketball just like my dad said. I went to visit her at UT in Austin, watched her run out of the tunnel with the smoke and the lights, like the celebrity she was in my heart. We came for parents weekend. We came for senior night. Together and With. And on May 25, 2014, when Alisha married Kelly, my whole family flew to California to stand witness, Together and With, over their union.

Alisha graciously included me as a speaker, to say whatever my heart could offer, on her big day.

Standing beneath an oak overlooking the valley, vineyards as the backdrop, Hope in the foreground, Alisha and Kelly said, “Yes, I do.” You could feel the energy of our collective love for the new couple. It was 2014 and our nation was still torn about this union, but we were not torn. We were Together. Neither bride’s parents were in attendance but my Mom and Dad minded the gap. They paired off with Alisha and Kelly and draped arms and love and Hope around one another. I can still see them, holding each other so close. Our Together was the salve for that night.

Sitting across from them now, on this Spring Break bonanza, I can see my Self.

Over the next seven days my children breathed Hope into my heart. Their smiles, their endless capacity for wonder, their youth and innocence, their belief in possibilities, even the way they shamelessly devoured dessert and made messes of themselves was like an IV of Joy shot straight into my heart.

Our children have so much to teach us about the journey to true self. In spite of us, they are fighting to remain as the made-in-God’s-image humans they were created to be. Mine were still young - only eight and five on this trip; they were not striving for anything, no one has told them their job is to accomplish great things. They are sponges soaking up ideas and experiences. They are not yet trying to become themselves; they are only being themselves. They are free.

I want to be free with them and I turn myself over to the magic of the trip with childlike euphoria. Our With and Together is more than I could have imagined. Our adventure is the only one I want to be on.

We played with an otter at the Aquarium or rather he played with us. The children ran back and forth across the length of his tank as he danced for them. They tell me I remind them of the otter. We kiss turtles. We find Nemo. We are fully immersed here, under the sea.

The next morning we visit Alisha and Kelly to tour their work facilities. This is what a thoughtful Millennial can do - create a work campus no one wants to ever leave. Everyone you pass looks like someone you think should work here. They all seem to be playing in their lane. I wonder where my lane is, if I’ll find it and recognize it when I do.

On our last evening in San Francisco we head over to Oakland to watch our hero, Steph Curry. The Golden State Warriors had lost their first road game when Curry hadn’t played well the night before. We feel sure he’s going to come through for us and he did not disappoint. Nor did the cameraman who spotted our poster and put the kids up on the big screen.

The next morning, we all loaded up in a sea plane and spent an hour up in the clouds together viewing the sights of San Francisco. Tucked in the middle of my two birds, I felt miles away from Fear or Loneliness. I thought this was the most fun I could imagine having. I thought, “we are enough. I am home with them.”

We ended the trip with a few days in the sun of Santa Monica. We rented bikes on the coast, played football in the sand, rode the iconic ferris wheel on the pier and ate cake by the ocean. I once was lost but now I am found. I was safe there with my arms around my children and my husband. Our Together and With was my salve.

“Soul to soul with an offering of love
We come here together
We are more than cells to survive
We are beggars with an offering to present
From near and far we have come
To offer the only valuable thing God bestowed on us at birth - our love.
We traveled. We called. We cried.
And now. We sit. Together.
Soul to soul. With our offering of love.
In our friendship we create a shared story.
In my case defined by literal and figurative seasons.
Summers on the road. Gym to gym.
Only children.
I could not tell you the score of a single game
But I will never forget watching Alisha run out of the tunnel the first time at UT
Or singing to her at church
With these lyrics which tell the story in all of our hearts:

Help me Lord not to turn away from pain
Help me not to rest while those around me weep
Give me your strength and compassion
When somebody finds the road of life to steep.
Somebody’s troubled and confused.
Somebody’s got nothing left to lose.
Not too far from here.
Somebody’s forgotten how to trust.
Somebody’s dying for love.
Not too far from here.
Now I’m letting down my guard
And I’m laying down my heart
Help me speak your love
To every needful ear
Somebody’s waiting
Not too far from here.

Each friendship here today has a story. A season.
And your presence here testifies to your
Offering of love for Kelly and Alisha.
At the end of this glorious celebration.
We will return to another chapter.
Another season of our lives.

As EE Cummings wrote:
“I carry your heart heart with me
(I carry it in my heart) I am
Never without it (anywhere
I go you go, my dear, and
Whatever is done by only me, is
Your doing my darling.
I carry your heart
I carry it in my heart.

By leaving our offering of love
With one another
We also take a piece of each other with us.

But Kelly and Alisha are writing a new story today.
One not defined by seasons,
But until death do they part.
And so.
Soul to soul. They stand. Facing one another.
With an offering of love.

After ten years into my own marriage
I can tell you I have no advice for you.
Even my parents, 42 years in, would not offer you a line about commitment or bliss.
But still they stand. Together.
Each day with an offering of love.
Some days the offering will satisfy your soul.
Other days it won’t seem like nearly enough.
Not to worry. Tomorrow is on the heels of today.
And we are witnessing you now
Saying, come what may
For all my tomorrows
I will offer you my love.”

California Love

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