By Callie Feyen
@calliefeyen

Sometime in January, 1992

I really did meet all my goals I set for myself this year! So what are my goals for 1992?

1. Get a boyfriend (not just ANY guy, but a REAL boyfriend).

2. Have a stronger relationship with God.

3. Continue to be the best at Drill Team.

That’s enough writing today. Gotta get ready for the Youth Group ski trip!!!!

The ski trip took place at Devil’s Head Ski Resort in Wisconsin, about a 3-hour trip from Chicago. When the Youth Group left, the city looked like a chocolate donut that had been sprinkled with powdered sugar. By the time they arrived at the resort, the van’s wheels crunched over thick white snow. New snow was falling when she climbed out of the bus, and while she stood outside waiting to get her luggage, Marcus, a boy she’d known since she was 5, drew a gloved hand across her cheek and said, “You have snowflakes on your eyelashes.” He swept higher, leaned in, and whispered, “How are they so long?”

“LUGGAGE!” the youth group director yelled, lifting the van’s storage doors. He told the group to find theirs, and meet back in the Common Room of the ski lodge for popcorn, hot chocolate, and the first devotion from the “Living on the Edge” series: How Do You Begin After the Lift Takes You to The Mountaintop?”

She hated those catchy titles that always came with the Youth Group devotions and Bible Studies. Somehow, they always ended up with the following one or two lessons: Jesus loves you so don’t have sex and don’t drink or do drugs. She loved Jesus. She did. But she worried that Jesus didn’t have anything to do with Marcus flicking snowflakes off her eyelashes, and she felt bad that she was more concerned about that than she was about Jesus dying for her sins.

I’m back! I just discovered that my batteries are dead in my Walkman. CRAP. Also I learned yesterday morning that if I want to EAT AT ALL, I have to ski to get it. Our cabin is on the end of a slope that goes to the main part of this place. This is where the cafeteria is!!! UGH. But I did it! Nothing like food to get me motivated. I have decided that this is the best way to get a meal. “HE” saw me skiing and hi-fived me when I made it down the slope without falling. “You did it, Lewis!” I like when he calls me that.

She and Marcus skied a lot that trip, and once, while they were on a lift together, he pointed out a hawk perched in a tree nearby. She asked him how he knew it was a hawk, and he told her that he and his dad used to look for them in the woods beyond his backyard, and once he saw one. Marcus reached his arm to either side of the lift to demonstrate how wide the hawk’s wings were, and accidentally or, hopefully on purpose wrapped an arm around her. “I couldn’t believe how long his wings were,” Marcus said, and he left his arm where it was.

“Yeah,” she breathed.

The two of them sat in silence until Marcus said that his dad made him draw a picture of the hawk because he wouldn’t stop talking about it. He said he always thinks of the verse in the Bible about the eagles’ wings whenever he thinks about that day with his dad. 

They skied down a slope that was wide and long with lots of room to weave back and forth. At one point, Marcus skied as close as he could to her and veered them towards the trees. She thought for sure they would crash, and even though she could have easily gotten away from him, she let him move her towards the woods.

There was a ski path, less paved, just inside the woods next to the trees. They had to ski single file and they were coasting along fast enough that she didn’t need to use her poles, which freed her up to look around. She loved bobbing and weaving and looking around in the woods. She saw animal tracks and the snow sounded crisp as they moved through it. She thought this is a place she wanted to return to again.

I am having THEE BEST TIME!!!!! I am making so many new friends, and I’ve even started communicating with (canNOT write his name because if anyone EVER reads this I will die)!!!! I know I don’t have a chance with him, but I just can’t help liking him SO much!!!! He’s funny, KIND OF sensitive, he as the potential to be a really devoted Christian (maybe he is, I shouldn’t judge).

 We are supposed to share our favorite Bible verses tonight. I don’t have one. The only two I know are John 3:16, and Psalm 23, and Psalm 23 scares the you know what out of me. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want? Why would ANYONE say they don’t want God??!?!?! 

That night, while everyone shared a verse, she remembered a time when she was younger and would go to church with her dad on Saturdays to set up for Communion the next day. She loved cutting the bread into cubes and filling the little glasses with grape juice. Once, she wandered into the sanctuary to see what it looked like on a non-Sunday. It was cold, and everything echoed, even her footsteps as she walked to the choir loft. She stood facing the congregation and pretended she was singing a solo during the offertory. She sang, “Amazing Grace,” and was surprised she knew all the words. When had she learned them? It was a common hymn, but not something she sang in Sunday School classes. When had the song seeped its way into her brain? Why had she struggled through memorizing Psalm 23: writing, illustrating, saying the verse out loud as she bounced a ball on the sidewalk, and yet something she had not put an ounce of effort into she knew by heart?

***

She is on the floor of her writing room now, almost three decades later reading her old journals when her daughter walks in and says she is going sledding with friends on the golf course beyond their home, and then, since one of the friends can drive, to Starbucks for hot chocolate.

“No drinking, no drugs,” she tells her daughter.

“Mom, no. I’m not into that.”

“There are edibles EVERYWHERE in this town,” she says. “I’m sure they look like gummy bears. Or footballs.” She wants to say something about kissing and sex too, but hopes there are too many layers for that kind of thing. Today, anyway.

“Are those your old journals?” her daughter asks, and she tells her yes. 

“They’re from when I was about your age,” she tells her. 

Her daughter, who is not sentimental, who is a true minimalist, laughs, and walks out the door to meet her friends.

She returns to her journal.

***

Later, she was in her bunk thinking about skiing, and Marcus, and hawks, and Psalm 23 when she heard a knock on her door. She climbed down the bunk and creaked the door open. Marcus was holding two cafeteria trays. 

“Wanna go sledding?” he whispered.

“On those?”

“Uh huh!”

“How?”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her closer. “C’mon!” was his answer.

They held mittened hands, and snuck out of the cabin to a quiet night and a hill that loomed large and sparkled with ice.

“You ready to go really fast?” Marcus said, setting the tray down, then sitting on it and trying to fit all his limbs on—a sight that made her laugh.

“You look ridiculous,” she told him. 

“You ready, Lewis?” he asked, tugging her arm so that she’d sit on the tray next to him. She sat, and immediately he shoved her down the hill. She was screaming and laughing and spinning, and there was no way to control the tray, and she loved every second of it.

“Again?” he asked, when their run was done.

“Again,” she said, and they held hands and trudged up the hill. 

At the top, he threw down his tray, and put a foot on it so it wouldn’t slide away. Then, he took hers and used it to hug her closer, and then kissed her quickly on her forehead. He held her gaze for just a second, then threw himself on the tray, stomach first, and sled down.

She followed him, and she could feel her heart beating fast. It beat for the speed, for the kiss Marcus gave her, for the secret path in the woods they’d found, and for a God who, at that moment she believed, had created it all for her to enjoy.