“Nana, will there still be room for me in this little bed?” asked one of the grandbeans.
I made her hop up on my new twin bed. “Don’t grow anymore,” I said. “Not an inch, so there’ll always be room.” She giggled.
The mattress movers had just carried her grandfather’s and my big bed out and my little one in. Now our bedroom had two single beds, one a hospital–style air bed that clicks and whooshes and goes up and down at both ends. A bed designed to relieve pain - the Preacher’s pain, constant, unrelenting.
A few years earlier, I had written an article about sharing a marriage bed. In our case, at that time, a double bed. Not a king, not even a queen. I described conversations in the dark, holding hands under the covers, lying awake listening to the antique clock chime, wondering if our child would ever come home. I wrote about the comfort of having someone at arms’ reach. Someone to laugh in the dark with, to cling to during the raw seasons of life when nothing makes sense, but an embrace helps.
Marital intimacy means so much more than society and popular media makes it. The bedroom is also a place to refresh and recharge in the presence of God’s best gift to spouses: each other. It should reflect the sanctuary of marriage – a refuge and respite from the world’s stressors. A sacred relationship, where both husband and wife are fully accepted and unconditionally loved.
God slipped that little article between the covers of Reader’s Digest. Somewhere people are still reading it, not knowing that a few years later, life changed for the Preacher and me. His health crisis meant that for six months, we couldn’t share a bed at all.
I recall sitting beside his hospital bed, aching to crawl in beside him; pining for his nearness and assurance that all would be well further along the West Nile Road.
Instead I learned to be the one-sided hug-giver, the good-night kisser, the tucker-inner, and the bedtime pray-er.
When he returned home, we shared a bed again. Felt whole again. Then, five years later, cancer sent him back to hospital and treatment centre. But once more, by God’s grace, he returned to our big bed.
Bodies betray us. Gradually his chronic West-Nile related pain increased. He tossed. He fomented in his sleep. Finally, he couldn’t bear the touch of even a light blanket. Two beds seemed best.
We have shoved the twins up close. Close enough to hold hands, to hear mumbled dream-conversations, to connect when lonely. After forty years of nearness, that matters.
Once we got over the discomfort of breaking in different mattresses, we realized something: we’ll be okay. And we are. Because God’s design for marriage is more than skin on skin. It’s also heart on heart, hand in hand, and tea for two at three a.m. if needed. It’s growing old in twin beds, perhaps pushed together. Most of all, it’s letting Jesus lead you through the dark.
