How We Got Here: a Prologue

Marshall’s name is a tribute to a great friend of ours, Aaron Marsh, who I always called Marshall.  (In my twenties, I took great joy in assigning friends nicknames.  I nicknamed my friend Adam, “Scooter,” our freshman year of college, and to this day I refer to him by that name, despite his status as surgeon and father of two.)  Anyway, Marsh was the best.  He was a gritty outdoorsy kind of guy; kind, humble, and never too cool for anyone.  Marsh loved Jesus, music, and the great outdoors, and once lived in a tent for several months instead of paying rent for an apartment.  He was kind, personable, and never far from a smile.  The greatest thing about Marsh was how real and genuine he was, especially in his faith.  He knew what it was to be with Jesus and what it was to live without him, and he lived impassioned about being as close to Him as he could.

Marsh and his wife Ali met and dated the same year that Wes and I began dating.  Marsh and Wes lived in an old house on Derby Street near campus with two other guys, and the early stages of our relationships were parallel—we watched movies together, ate dinners together, froze in the Derby house under blankets together.  The first memories of my relationship with Wes are chiseled in the walls of that rental house—laughter pouring into the late hours with Marsh and Ali, looking through the same case of DVDs we flipped through every night, spending more time choosing a movie than actually watching it.  We played games and made jokes and waged bets.  We lived and breathed March Madness and wagered a dinner at the restaurant of the winner’s choosing, and low and behold Marsh and I were the final contenders.  He beat me, that son of a gun, and reveled in the glory of a free meal at one of his favorite places, Jed’s.   Some memories are vivid and clear and poignant because of their emotional intensity and life changing moments; memories like those from the Derby house era are sweet, comfortable, and warm, like your favorite blanket on a cold day.  I love the ability God has given us to crawl back into our memories when we need to and feel the feelings, visit the friends of seasons past, and marvel at the wonder of the gifts He blessed us with. 

Marsh and Ali got married a few months before we did and lived next door to us in our first apartment together.  It was like we were getting away with something, living so close to our friends; pretending to be grown ups during the day and staying up late at night. It was like a 22 year old slumber party that lasted for months; two couples in their first months of marriage, happy, light, invincible. In a movie, the footage of those months would be montaged together with a peppy song and a vibrant, upbeat feeling.

While those memories are fluid and warm and soft, the kind I love to wrap up and dwell in, there’s another memory that bites my senses. It’s hard and heavy and stuck, like a concrete pillar etched in my mind: the night we found out that Marsh had a brain tumor.  We were in our galley kitchen in our one bedroom apartment, arguing about something, when my flip phone went off and I opened a text message from Ali.  I froze, the argument melted, and I read the text to Wes.  Marsh had a tumor in his brain, likely a benign slow-growing mass that he had had since birth.

The months and years after that moment are blurry and fuzzy and swirled with emotions and tears.  After major surgery to remove the tumor, we found out the worst—the tumor was not benign, but cancerous- late stage aggressive cancer at that.  Our slumber party ended, we sobered up into real grown ups, and our dear friend Marsh fought for his life with his wife Ali by his side.  Throughout the months after that night, I was continually amazed by the strength of Marsh’s resolve, not just to fight the cancer and pray for a miracle, but to boldly follow the path the Lord laid out before him and march ahead with his face held high.  Marsh knew that whether the cancer was healed or his time on earth was called to an end, the battle was already won by the Lord. 

During those times of anguish over our friends’ suffering and our no-longer-parallel lives, I sought the Lord often on behalf of Marsh.  One day, during my quiet time, I read Mark 2, the account of when Jesus healed a man who was paralyzed.  The man’s friends went to great lengths to bring him to Jesus, even making a hole in the roof where Jesus was in order to lower the man into the house.  Mark 2:5 says, “when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” 

For the first time, in that moment, I was hit with the fact that the best thing the Lord could ever do for us is to forgive our sins.  We are promised pain and troubles in this world, a reality I’ve always hated, and in my young twenty two year old brain I wanted nothing more than for the Lord to use this opportunity to answer my prayers and the prayers of so many others and heal my friend Marsh.  But Marsh already knew what Jesus was talking about in Mark 2.  In fact, when Jesus did decide to heal the man in that passage, he did it “that you many know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…” (Mark 2:10)

Jesus made it very clear that he could heal any of our physical pain, remove any of our anguish at any point, but that it’s nothing compared to His ability to forgive our sins through His own sacrifice.  In that moment, in reading that passage, I made peace with the fact that the Lord might just take our friend from us.  The Lord might just take a young husband from his new wife.  The Lord might remove one of the kindest, happiest, most genuine creatures from the earth—a man He had already forgiven, named, and wrapped in His grace for protection from the greatest opponent we would ever face: sin.  Marsh didn’t need to be saved from his cancer: he needed to be saved from his sin.  And he already was.

In the years to come, I knew we would have kids.  Wes and I always joked that we would have two boys, but in an inexplicable way that can only be the Lord, I knew that to be true.  I knew I wanted my firstborn to be named Marshall, after our dear friend Marsh, not just as a tribute to a friend who we missed dearly, but as a reminder that our life here is temporary, and full of hardship.  I wanted my son to be named after a man who fought through his hardships with his head held high, his eyes towards the Lord, and a smile on his face.

There’s irony in this, if you know my sweet Marshall.  I can’t help but smile whenever I think of Marsh and my Marshall—the similarities are striking.  My Marshall has loved the outdoors from birth, is never far from a smile, and has already endured his share of hardships in his five years on this planet- all while lighting up the world around him with his contagious personality.

The Lord knew who Marsh was, who Marshall is now, and who he will grow up to be.  I’m so thankful for it all—for the years drenched in highs and lows of our friendship with Marsh and for the front row seat we now have, watching the story of our Marshall unfold.