The most captivating day of my life…

Whenever I meet a married couple, I always crack the ice by asking, “How did you two meet?”  This never fails to bring about an intriguing story of colorful (or not) locales, intersecting circumstances and humorous character bents. And since I am spending my 51st year telling yarns of my own life, I could not leave out the tale of how I became gratefully ensnared by the keeper of my heart.

A familiar female voice was calling my name, but I could not see her face. That’s because it was coming from the student side of the dining hall tray return, a small, rectangular, stainless steel-trimmed opening that brought me the remnants of the Ambassador College lunch du jour.  It was my job, a sophomore diminishing my tuition bill by working in the school kitchen, to remove from a plastic conveyor belt the cluttered trays of greasy plates, bowls and glasses. I would then load them into “Hobart,” a gigantic, shimmering, commercial dishwasher that kept pace with the clamoring task of cleaning the dishware of 400+ happily-fed college students several times every single day.

I crouched down and craned my neck to try and see the face through the tray return, but it was hidden. “Yes?” I responded. The voice calling my name then asked me a question, her accent deeply Southern. “Um, Mark? I was..um…wondering if you would be my…um…date this Friday night?” A huge sense of disappointment came over me, because as it turned out, I was already taken for all dating occasions for the upcoming “turnabout” weekend. “I’m so sorry!” I told the voice.  “I’m already booked.” And just as that tray return delivered grief my way every shift, I had to send grief back through to that angelic voice. But she received it in stride. “OK, I’m sorry I waited too late.” she said. Me too, I thought.

Now I would imagine the reader is somewhat confused. Turnabout weekend? Dating occasions? What kind of college was this? Well, it was unique, to say the very least. It was an extremely conservative, church-operated university located in the plains of East Texas. It would take a hundred pages to write about the church my parents had attended since I was 8 years old, and its theological strangeness. Looking back, I now deem it a cult. Not the snake-charming, Kool-aid drinking kind, but it was the kind started by a self-proclaimed, prophetic, larger-than-life personality, whose solo riffs on Biblical interpretation were never to be questioned. Briefly, Saturday was the Sabbath, not Sunday, and thus from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday we were to rest, and to not participate in school sports events or watch television. Church services were on Saturdays. We didn’t eat pork, or shellfish, or anything found in the list of “unclean” animals in the books of Moses. We didn’t celebrate Christmas or Easter but observed rather the holy days of the Old Testament. And we tried in vain to adhere to the Law – believing our salvation was in our own hands and not in God’s. It was a hybrid of Jewish legalism, Seventh Day Adventism and tel-evangelistic marketing.

Now this church had two Ambassador College (AC) campuses: one in Pasadena, California where the church headquarters was also located, and the one I attended, 100 miles east of Dallas in a tiny town called Big Sandy. At AC, the culture was eerily Stepford Wives-esque. The purpose was to train all of our impressionable young minds to be Ambassadors for Christ, but only in dogmatic, brainwashing manner.  They were teaching us how to try to convince the rest of the world that our theological stance was correct and all others, Catholic and Protestant included, were unknowingly heretical. The fact that all of this enlightenment was not a millennia-long understanding of Scripture buttressed with input from the minds of centuries of saints was never challenged. It was all from one man who labeled himself God’s true apostle. And that my friends, is the very definition of a cult. However I was much too young to see beyond all of this.

Back when I was a senior in high school, I had yet to figure out what I wanted to do in life.  And though I was also accepted to Georgia Tech, my dad talked me into attending AC, “for at least one year. Then if you don’t like it, come back home and head on over to Tech.” I still remember my technical drafting teacher’s response when I told him where I had decided to go. “Damn it, no!  Don’t do it!  You’ll never go to Tech if you go there!” He was right, it turns out, although I did eventually end up at the University of Tennessee studying architecture (see other post). But let’s aim for getting back to the original story, because looking back, that Arkansan voice was the sole reason I believe I was guided by God to head to East Texas.

I do however need to briefly explain what I mean by “turnabout” weekend.  Again, put your mind in context – conservative, fundamentalist, controlled! On any given weekend at AC, there were three dating events (for lack of a better word): (1) Friday night dinner accompanied with an assembled Bible Study of students and faculty; (2) late Saturday morning brunch followed by afternoon Sabbath services (church) with students, faculty and local “believing” residents, many who were employed by the college; and (3) Sabbath dinner paired with some sort of Saturday night event, like a barn dance, a movie night or a crazy game night of Bunko or some other meet and greet silliness. Now, it was expected that the AC boys would ask the AC girls if they could escort them to these events .  And don’t DARE think of getting “paired off” with only one girl for these dates.  That was allowed only for more senior students, who had counseled with a faculty adviser about their plans to become engaged. I cannot make this up – it was LITERALLY 1984 and here I was in the midst of some Orwellian darkness – or at least some Victorian model of courting. Now “turnabout” weekend was when the girls were allowed to ask out the guys for those three weekend events.  It was a fun time, because secretly we knew it was “in the face” of tradition; it wreaked of rebellion, and we craved it, no matter that it was deemed from on high as legitimate. And in all fairness, it was nice to have the girls chase you for once instead of the other way around.

The girl who owned that beautiful voice just happened to be Sandie Wells. She and I met and worked together in the kitchen that Fall, but she was a freshman salad bar girl, cutting up provisions for the day and making sure it was stocked during mealtimes. I had spent my freshman year in the landscaping department helping to take care of the college’s breathtaking grounds (God don’t like no shabby gardens).  It was there I learned to drive a Kubota tractor with a small trailer like a professional, collecting fallen tree limbs, weed-eating creek beds and feverishly raking leaves for hours on end. But I also learned that to work outdoors in the middle of winter was idiotic, and if I could prevent that from occurring my sophomore year, I would do what it took to escape – even if it meant washing dishes with Hobart. Again, God did have a plan for me!

Now there is one more little AC tradition I need to tell about called “Sabbath notes”. Many late Friday nights were spent in your dorm writing a few lines of appreciation to your friends on campus.  These ranged from creative and colorful cards of encouragement to simple letters of friendship.  Most of the recipients of these memos were of opposite gender of the senders. Hey, give me a break.  We were still teenagers, most of us, and we could write secret messages of adoration to hotties and crushes with the best of them. When we were finished writing our notes, we gave them to the dorm’s resident assistant (RA) who then took them down on Saturday morning to the cafeteria.  There they were distributed into makeshift mailboxes, one for each dorm and every student.  After Saturday morning brunch, most students would hurry down the hall to pick up their love (er, Sabbath) notes, saving them to read after church services in their dorm rooms, to be encouraged, be grateful, or be excited (wink) about what someone may have written to them. Remember, these were the days long before laptops, smart phones and texting. I remember many times this being the highlight of my week.

I had yet to build up the courage to ask Sandie out on a date. I had watched her sashaying out to the salad bar more than once, and teased her about her braces a few times in the kitchen. On one occasion I crawled into the large double-door juice freezer in the back of the kitchen and convinced the dining hall manager to have Sandie retrieve some juice.  It was cold and dark in there, but a minute later she opened the door opposite the one I was hiding behind, and just as she was about to reach in, I leaned over and said “Raaaawwwww!!!!” You could hear her scream throughout the entire building. It was a great laugh for all who heard, but it was also a secret message from me – “You are something special.” But still I had not asked her out.  I suppose I was afraid of rejection from someone so beautiful. And I had also recently broken up with someone with whom I had been “paired off” and I was not in a hurry to date anytime soon. In fact,  I had told my Mom and Dad I was done with girls for awhile.

Apparently I was too popular (not really, but I’ll take what I can get) to have any vacancies on turnabout weekend, so I came up with a very creative plan. Since Sandie had already tipped her hand by asking me out, my risk was minimized. I then created a fancy “rain check” and disguised it as an innocent Sabbath note addressed to Sandie Wells, Women’s Dorm 1. I drew it like a store coupon and it said something as simple as this: “Good for one date with Mark Loudermilk, Men’s Dorm 4.” Cheesy, I know.  But you have to remember the environment.

The next time I saw her, she was wearing that braced smile of hers, carrying the rain check, cutting right to the chase, “Can I claim this for next weekend?” “Of course, ” I replied. “How about we go to brunch and church services?” We agreed and it was all set.

November 3, 1984 changed my life forever. After church, we sat outside and talked for nearly four hours non-stop. We had a lot in common, a lot of differences too. But we talked as if we had always been friends. It was just so easy. I was so attracted to her voice, her big blue eyes and her selfless disposition.  They say opposites attract. I have always been, and still am to this day, combating selfishness.  But this girl was, and still is, completely self-LESS.

I remember calling my folks not too long afterwards, “Hey Dad, forget what I said about my hiatus from girls.  I think I’ve met someone who completely knocks me over.  Only thing, she’s from Arkansas.”  I don’t know why I saw that as a negative.  Maybe I thought of myself as a big city Atlanta boy, and Arkansas was just, well, country! But my father reassured me, “Son, your grandmother is from Arkansas!” I chuckled, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” My paternal grandmother was from Arkansas, and she wasn’t a hick. It’s crazy what arguments you have with yourself when you are 19 years old.

From then on my search was over. I spent my walks across campus dying to see her. And when our paths crossed we would stare, as if in slow motion, as if we had a tiny secret that no one else knew anything about. I would check my work schedule in the kitchen to see if we were slated for the same shift, giddy as a girl when we were. One Saturday night we rode along with some friends into Longview, about 30 minutes away, to a dance hall called Monaco’s and we danced until we had just barely enough time to fly back to school before curfew. I still get chills when I hear the saxophone at the beginning of Careless Whisper, a song by Wham!, as that was the first song to which we ever slow-danced. And we uncomfortably annoyed our friends who had gone along as chaperones by kissing in the car the entire drive back to campus.

I still remember when Sandie’s parents came in December to take  her home for winter break. I could tell she was proud to introduce me to her Mom and Dad.  And Amy, her mother, seemed impressed with me too.  It would take many more years for me to impress Bill. But now that I’m a father of daughters, I can understand.  I certainly appreciate the patience he had not to kill me while he waited to be won over.

But Big Sandy was only a two-year campus.  You could apply for an additional two years in Pasadena, but after my second year I was ready to move back to the real world. Sandie still had another year to attend. It took us a total of three years before it all worked out for us to be married.  There were two years of long-distance, heart-wrenching longing for the day we would be together.  Those months were interspersed with long letters, long phone calls, long drives and long weekends to see each other. Even our car on our wedding day displayed the alternate FINALLY MARRIED. November 15, 1987 we said “I do!” and it has been a beautiful, painful, joyful, treacherous, glorious matrimony.  If you really knew what “for better or worse” truly meant the day you exchange rings, you would be scared out of your mind. But that of course is where total commitment comes in and takes over.

We have given life to two completely beautiful daughters, both creative geniuses, who challenge us and help mold us into better parents and better spouses. We’ve lost two other children to miscarriage and have walked together through losing all of our grandparents. As for the church that we both grew up in and which introduced us to each other, we finally heard the message of grace one year at a Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, just before our oldest daughter, Rachel, was born. I’m grateful our girls did not have to grow up in the environment we did and I’m thankful we were rescued from that tyranny. A few years back we both lost our jobs due to the recession within a day of each other and walking through all the craziness that ensued almost train-wrecked us.  But we weathered that storm too. Our youngest daughter, Amelia, was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at the age of 10 (exactly as I had been) and that has strengthened us in different ways as well. Now our girls are almost college age, ushering in a whole new set of events that promise to pull us closer together.  As one person I admire said, you are the only two people in this thing together!

There are just a handful of days in my life in which I cherish the memories so jealously – and ranking near the top of them all is the day that shy voice called my name through the tray return. I was completely captured that day, and I’m still a prisoner – throw away the key!