We were both children of in-between spaces. Maybe that’s why we clicked so fast. We were undergrads in different cities and were introduced to each other by a mutual friend. I (Brian) wrote the first letter, but I couldn’t wait so I called Gail before it even arrived. Somehow she didn’t think I was strange and we talked for 5 hours that first day. Countless letters followed, hours and hours of late night phone calls. And then we met. We were married two years later, expecting our first baby by 23 and 2 more little ones in the next 5 years. In the next 10 years, there would be too many moves, 3 graduate degrees, and huge decisions about where to move next. But those are just the numbers. The numbers don’t tell the story of the difficult

conversations, the sleep deprivation, the wondering if I (Gail) was going to be home with the kids forever or how we were going to be present for our boys and still pursue the vocations and gifts we felt God had called each of us to. The numbers don’t point to the still difficult conversations we have about life together, to the ways we’ve had to discover how race and gender press in on the other and how the patterns of our lives together are shaped. Our journey together has been trying to figure out how we can reflect on who we are and carve out a little space for the sake of the other, and ourselves, to become. It’s a journey we unwittingly found ourselves on that first day in September and it’s a journey we are still on everyday.