“If you want to use the cabin to think and talk this over, you’re welcome to it,” said our good friend who was standing right there after Dan got the news of his escalating cancer.
Two days later, on a cold spring day, Dan lit a fire that would begin warming the cabin. We donned layers and walked upriver to the spot where we said, “I do,” beneath towering trees.
Before Dan and I were married, we spent a day at a conference center in the Ochoco Mountains. He was finishing up a major electrical project and I cleaned the smaller of the two lodges.
We had lunch with the conference center directors, and then completed our assigned tasks. “That was fun,” I commented on the drive back to town.
I’ve always thought of myself as brave—not afraid to try new things or meet new people, not afraid of making a major life change.
Although it happened over a short stretch of time, Dan and I fell in love slowly. While hiking wilderness trails and browsing through hardware stores and cruising on his motorcycle and eating food truck cuisine and volunteering with the shower truck and trekking through soft powder on snowshoes and eating ginger spice cookies from the Old Mill District.
Beautiful old things catch my eye—weathered furniture, picket fences, barns. This gorgeous old truck with its fat fenders and bug-eye headlights.
“That was fun,” I said to Dan as we drove home. “And part of the fun is our crew, isn’t it?” He agreed.
We read all the books there were to read. And we built all the towers there were to build. And we bundled up and took a couple walks in the snow.
What if we could collaborate with those whose skin color, ideology, or religious beliefs are different from ours—for the sake of dialogue, and serving the needy, and finding common ground?
Brené Brown, an American professor, lecturer, and author, said this:
It takes courage to say Yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.
Dan and I are very good at playing. Which apparently makes us quite courageous.
Dan and I have an amazing contractor and crew—Ben, Randall, Billy, and Cody.
But they’re awfully messy.
Copyright © 2025 Marlys Johnson
