“You scrutinize my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before there is a word on my tongue,
Behold, Lord, You know it all.” (Psalm 139:3-4, NASB)
I sat in a grungy Exxon Gas station repair shop estimating the dollars remaining in my bank account. I’d come in for a brake job, but it turned out I needed rotors, too, with the old pair having rusted in place. This was no surprise. I’d paid five hundred dollars for the 1995 Nissan 200sx six years before, and my mechanic at the time told me the car would see me through college. I’d graduated two years before, and still the car kept creaking along, despite the flaking paint and creeping corrosion. This repair would nearly deplete my bank account.
Still, I had a new job, part-time and low paying though it might be, so I sat opposite a couple of beverage refrigerators and waited, the young, aspiring writer in the midst of editing my first book. I might have been strapped financially, but I was ardently in love and had brought along a copy of my not-yet-fiancée’s undergraduate honors thesis, which introduced me to a writer named John Donne. Given that Donne wrote poetry and I couldn’t identify meter, even using a tape measure, I began reading Abby’s thesis with modest expectations.
However, I quickly found myself captivated by this writer I had not known. He was a politician, priest, and poet with a dubious past, having twice ruined himself: first by squandering his inheritance and second by rather undiplomatically destroying his career when he secretly married his patron’s niece against the wishes of her father.
“He was a politician, priest, and poet with a dubious past, having twice ruined himself.”
Donne faced a struggle between his love for writing and the necessity of providing for his expanding family that forced him into patronage and was later pressured by King James into priesthood in the Anglican Church, despite his Catholic family background. He loved the literary art but was buried in tedious commissions, in work he didn’t want but needed, while his art lay neglected. Meanwhile his marriage was tainted by the deaths of five of his twelve children and the death of his wife, which left Donne to wrestle with despair, suicide, and his faith. These losses and others undergirded much of Donne’s writing for the rest of his life.
As I read the thesis, and the mechanic in the garage bay banged away at my rotors in iambic pentameter—for all I knew—I wondered at Abby’s fascination with Donne, with the way she seemed drawn to him, as if there was oneness of spirit somewhere. I finished the thesis, as the shop foreman called my name, I drained my bank account, and drove home to my rented room.
***
I thought little of John Donne for many years, even as I struggled along with my writing, ultimately shelving my aspirations in favor of buying a small auto detailing business, which would provide amply for my expanding family. The labor was tedious and menial, requiring little gumption but rather an abundance of endurance. I listened to books obsessively as I worked, but wrote only in the margins of life. In one of those marginal moments at the keyboard, I felt divinely compelled to remember this moment in the Exxon gas station and John Donne.
When my wife and I were dating, God was generous in affirming that we were supposed to get married. When I doubted our future in the midst of a rocky courtship, He would confirm our trajectory, often through Scripture but also through other means. Still, it had not occurred to me that Abby’s thesis on John Donne might be one of those signs, one I had entirely missed at the time—it was as if the sign had been there, but now years later the light illuminating it had been flipped on.
As I wrote and reflected, the parallels between John Donne and me became increasingly apparent: We both fell in love with women whose fathers opposed our unions, we both had children quickly after our marriages, and we both wrestled with a desire to write even as we placed the needs of our growing families first.
“We both wrestled with a desire to write even as we placed the needs of our growing families first.”
The longer I reflected, the surer I became: before my Abby met me, she understood much of what I would face because she knew John Donne. Speaking about Donne once, she told me, “He wanted resolution to the tension between providing for his family and his art, but he never found resolution—he found peace with God. That tension propelled his art, both his preaching and his writing, forward.”
***
A few days after my epiphany about John Donne, Abby and I had a massive argument, the kind of argument that shook our marriage to its very foundation. We’d had four children in five years and were at odds about how we were going to grow our family going forward.
We had argued many times before but never with this intensity. Our prior fights were simply rain showers by comparison; this was a monsoon flooding me with uncertainty. The wake of emotional devastation after this argument left me unsteady and unsure where to place my feet. I doubted our marriage; I questioned whether we had made the right choice in getting married to begin with.
In the midst of my doubt, I was reminded of John Donne, that before we started dating, God was preparing my wife and I for each other. What’s more, I realized how God had reminded me of John Donne just days before this argument. It was as if the reassurance came even before the doubt; the answer was there even before the question could form. I clung to truth and to John Donne, and I found my footing again.
Over days and weeks, Abby and I worked through our differences, after apologies on both sides and many, many conversations. We endured and our family grew gradually from four children to six, each one a blessing and a challenge, each one a step deeper into dependence on God.
“We endured and our family grew gradually from four children to six, each one a blessing and a challenge, each one a step deeper into dependence on God.”
As the years move by, I reminisce on that day in the Exxon station learning of John Donne. The scene is forever etched in my memory. I overlooked it at first, that sign I missed, but I remember Donne now and how God readied that sign before I needed it most.
To see more from Luke, visit his website postjadedmk.com.
