Thanks for Being You: A History of the Reverend and Doctor

Meet-Cute: a cute, charming, or amusing first encounter between romantic partners

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

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“Thanks for being you, I really enjoyed reading your profile and feeling affirmed that there are critically minded nurturing women out there :)” (Timestamp: Jun 16, 2013 5:50pm). These are the exact first words Gabby sent to the OKCupid profile of an amazing, brainy, queer, strong, hunky, gorgeous Christian social justice warrior working in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Later that day, Rachel sent a message back to a beautiful smart academic that simply said, “Likewise :)” (Timestamp: Jun 16, 2013 5:50pm). After a conversation about Disability Studies, Our Whole Lives, the book The Queer God, C.S. Lewis, Medieval Studies, and a mutual love of Chicago, Rachel asked this lady out.

“Gabby?!” Rachel cried from the train station, realizing they had unknowingly been on the same train together to their first date. Gabby stopped mid-street and turned around, hair blowing in the summer wind, her sky blue eyes seeing Rachel’s sky blue eyes for the first time and gasped. “I think this is our meet-cute,” Gabby said as the two of them walked into Starbucks for the first of many coffee and conversations.

“I know you are going back to graduate school soon,” Rachel said, sitting next to Gabby on the bed. “Well, I don’t want this just to be a summer thing. Will you be my girlfriend?” Gabby looked away and got quiet. Rachel stirred nervously. “You don’t have to, I’ll understand.” “That’s not it,” Gabby said, “I just feel like I’ve been waiting, getting ready for you to ask me that question for a long time; and the weird thing is, I feel like I’ve been waiting for much longer than just a summer. Like I’ve been waiting for you.” After a kiss and a laugh, Rachel said, “likewise.”

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“Is it fair to you to take a job at a Church that isn’t Open and Affirming?” Rachel asked after a call to minister in Maine. “We agreed from the start that our relationship would mean taking care of these kids and supporting each other. We should go because we will be going into it together.” Thus began the saga of life in a wooded seaside town with a lot of love and some grief, including Rachel facing down a police officer who had stopped Gabby (on the ground she was a “strange person” in the town; not the actual word used) when she was out with the kids for a walk. Later that day, when she found Gabby sitting crying in their bedroom closet, Rachel silently sat down next to her and there they stayed for half an hour because they were in this thing together.

“What excites me about us,” Gabby said to Rachel while they were driving down the beach in Maine on Valentine’s Day, the dark waves crashing on the rocks, “is that we aren’t just bound to each other by love but we are both pulled together by a love of a road and a horizon bigger than either of us. I think we will go the distance.” Rachel just smiled because she knew something Gabby didn’t. Later that night when Gabby went to jump Rachel’s car when it “broke-down” at the Church, she saw the lights on in the sanctuary. Opening the door, she saw Rachel singing the first verses to “Origin of Love.” Gripping the pews to keep from passing out, Gabby found her way to the end of the aisle where Rachel knelt down, ring in hand. “Will you marry me?” Rachel asked. “Yes. Yes. Yes!”

“I say this to all of Rachel’s churches,” Gabby remarked after the family moved to Connecticut for a new calling, “She is a warrior. Her job is to watch the whole Church’s back and protect it. But my job is to watch Rachel’s back.” People usually laugh when she says this. She means it. Months later, they were driving down together to Washington DC for Gabby’s Ph.D. dissertation defense. “Your job is to defend your research and your field,” Rachel said, “my job is to defend you.” Gabby laughed. Rachel means it.

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“For all we do, all we become,” Rachel said, holding Gabby next to the grave of J.R.R. Tolkien, “it’s because we stand on the shoulders of giants.” As the culmination of a pilgrimage around England, visiting Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, C.S. Lewis, and William Shakespeare, there was something quieting and humbling touching the tree that grows out of the grave of the beloved author ornamented with trinkets from generations of previous pilgrims; testament to the way we light the path of one another as we struggle to find the road.

“I don’t say this to all my clients, or really any of them,” the Marriage Consular said to Gabby and Rachel during their final wedding prep session, “but you two are the most in love people I’ve met. I mean it. I think you can handle what life throws your way together.” Rachel and Gabby held hands and smiled. They think so too. After months of preparation for the ceremony and a life-time of preparation for one another, Rachel, Gabby, and the kids are gathering together with friends and family to say vows that affirm the love, mutual respect and support, partnership, and home they have built together. They still have each other’s back.

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