When our kids were small, we read Cowboy Dreams to them. The story captures a little girl’s fascination with cowboy life and her longing for a real horse.
She studied cowboy greats from the cinema and sang cowboy songs. She visited the grand toy store F.A.O. Schwartz and the stuffed pony on display there, big enough for her to mount. At home, she threw a makeshift saddle over the stairway railing just like Roy Rogers threw a saddle over Trigger.
Days passed. Months passed. Years passed. Her cowboy dreams kept a spark of hope alive for the real “someday” deal of a pony.
In 1978 I married a young Bible scholar whose fascination with God’s word sparked a longing to visit the Holy Land. For years, the pages of Biblical Archaeology Review fueled his musings. He read the issues from cover to cover and found it hard to part with them when he was done. They remained on tabletops and in baskets and later filled boxes in the garage.
Some dreams are hard to relinquish.
Houses. Mortgages. Children. Church. College tuition times three. Illness. Responsibilities. Reality. Days passed. Years passed. Decades passed. Youth passed. One day, he quietly disposed of the boxes.
Like the Israelites who wandered 40 years in the wilderness, the Bible scholar and I have wandered 40 years in this marriage-adventure gift from God. Of this we are certain: When and how God chooses to reveal his hand and heart remains a mystery.
Yesterday, January 1, 2018, at 4:40 p.m. our plane touched down in Tel Aviv.
Morris Sampler 