The Bells

Have you ever heard God? I have, but most times I’ve really had to listen hard.

Twenty years ago, I had just come on active duty with the Air Force, starting a lengthy love-hate relationship with the uniform. At the time, I’d just graduated with a Political Science degree from West Virginia, and shortly before that, I met my wife, Missy. Neither of us were interested in finding love at that point in our lives, but as often happens, fate had other plans.

Missy and I met at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Morgantown, West Virginia over spicy chicken, a Buzztime trivia terminal, and beer. It was February 1995, and by June I’d be leaving for McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Washington. The orders were cut, the move-out from my old bedroom in Maryland was scheduled, and graduation plans were in-place. All I wanted was to get out of there without a hitch. It didn’t happen.

I tried hard to think of Missy as a “last fling” before going out into the world, but she grabbed hold of my heart and wouldn’t let go. And she was hot. And I liked it. The day I graduated, I also got pinned with a shiny set of gold second lieutenant bars, and she was there cheering me on. It would be the first time of many more to come. Not long after, I pulled out of the parking lot of Missy’s apartment at Pierpont House feeling a depressed melancholy that would seldom be matched in all my years of service. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I wondered what would happen to us? Where would we end up? Would she move to Washington to join me? Or was it all going to turn into a great big heartbreak? I was sure I’d had enough of those, but there I was. Everything was a monstrous question mark.

The next six months were the longest of my life, and they dragged by about as fast as molasses on a winter day. I got an apartment and decorated it with plastic milk crates and the furniture that used to be in my bedroom as a kid. My mom flew out a little over a month later and bought me a crappy pink and brown couch from the Salvation Army (which, despite its awfulness, remains the most comfortable couch I ever sat on). Every morning I got up and put on my Air Force BDU’s, then went to serve my country with the hope that I at least looked like I knew what I was doing (I didn’t). Throughout, Missy was not far from my mind.

Email was a very new thing, so we communicated the old fashioned way — by phone and snail mail. I longed for her. Everything was new, and I pined away for something familiar — her. We sent each other peppermint patties, packages, and sappy love letters. She visited me in Washington that August, and it felt like oxygen. She also told me she’d come out again, but wouldn’t move in with me until she had a ring. So I went shopping.

That October, I picked her up at Sea-Tac and brought her right to a special spot near my place — it was a beautiful location in the woods near the apartment, and I had it all planned out. I even brought a couple old towels to kneel on while I gave her the engagement ring. After she finally figured out I was not some axe murderer who’d brought her to a secluded wooded area to kill her and dispose of the body, I got down on my bath towel and proposed marriage to her. She of course said yes.

The next March 30th, we got married in Parkersburg, West Virginia not far from Missy’s childhood home. Her aunt decorated our reception beautifully, and each table had a smattering of small silver bell-shaped confetti. You know, like glitter — the kind that get everywhere.

This is where God comes in.

Somehow (unbeknownst to either of us), several of those silver wedding bell-shaped pieces of confetti made it into our overnight bags at the hotel we stayed in that night. We left for Washington a day or two later, did the honeymoon thing, then went about our new life together. A few years later, the Air Force relocated us to South Carolina, and it was there that a shiny wedding bell confetti first showed back up. At the time, we probably thought it was funny, since we hadn’t seen one in a couple years. In fact, we probably forgot they even existed — after all, weddings and receptions are often a vivid blur of high-speed memories for the new couple. But nevertheless, there it was, right there beaming at us, reminding us of the day we got married. After that, we kinda forgot about it again.

Several years later, we moved again…and there was another wedding bell. Over the next decade-and-a-half, the Air Force moved us a total of fifteen times, and on every one of those changes of assignment, another bell showed up somewhere. Sometimes they revealed themselves on the packing end, other times the unpacking end, and sometimes both. I can remember one move where we found one at the bottom of a box we’d been unpacking, and once when we relocated to Alaska, it was outside smack in the middle of our new driveway.

This past summer, I retired from the Air Force at the end of my tour at the Pentagon, and when it came time to move out of our home in Burke, Virginia, guess what showed up again? Yup — another bell. This time, it was on the floor of our master bedroom as we packed up our bedding and clothes. It wasn’t the only one either — another showed up in Missy’s closet. I saved it and tucked it safely away in my wallet, determined to do something with it, and I had just the thing.

About a year before retirement, Missy and I decided to settle in Wirt County, West Virginia near her family. Her parents’ farm had been a place we’d come back to often throughout our time serving, and it became a welcome haven of peace and decompression for both us. Out in the country, it was quiet and tranquil. What better place to build a house? When the masons began laying bricks, we were there. That little silver bell I’d saved went into the first brick laid, right on the corner of the house. It was the start of our new life, in a house that we could finally own and it seemed totally appropriate to put it right into the wall. Nobody would ever see it, but we would both know it was there. When the construction was completed last month, we moved in and began unpacking. There, on the dark hardwood floor of our home, was a glimmering bell-shaped piece of confetti, glaring up at us, reminding us of the day we were married in 1996.

Neither Missy nor I are too overtly religious, although we are believers. As a kid, I can remember asking my mom why we couldn’t hear God talking to us? After all, we said prayers and talked to Him. Why didn’t he answer us with words, in English? My mom told me something that has always stuck with me: God does talk to us — we just have to listen for Him. She told me He speaks to us in the way the grass grows, as we view a beautiful sunset, or as parents experience the miracle of the birth of a child. God also talks to us in other ways — even through an unanswered prayer. He will speak when we least expect it, bringing hope to the hopeless and love to the otherwise unloved.

Every one of our military moves was difficult, and as we got older, had kids, and accumulated more stuff, they became even more stressful. Our last move was probably the hardest. The stress of a new house, new jobs, and transitioning out of uniform hit us pretty hard, and our marriage, while strong, was pushed nearly to the breaking point. It was then that God showed us our bells again. We took it as a message, as if He was saying, “I’m still here and you’ll be OK. Have faith.” It was the same message we’d had through every move before, but this time it was needed more than any time prior.

You’ll often hear people ask couples who have stayed married: “What’s your secret?” Hollywood power couple Will Smith and Jada Pinkett recently commented that their secret was simply that you should never give up.

I guess that’s fine, but I would argue that it’s more important to simply have faith — not just in yourself and your partner, but also faith in the divine. Each of us is grossly imperfect, and in our hectic and throw-away world, it’s easy to forget faith. We get wrapped around the axle about silly stuff that doesn’t really matter much in the end, and we often find ourselves in doubt or even feeling a catastrophic sense of despair. Certainly, I have felt it — I still feel it, and sometimes it’s completely overwhelming. Marriage is hard. In fact, it’s nearly impossible. But when Missy and I feel like it’s circling the drain and wonder if we’re gonna survive, we just listen for our bells.