Sometimes my husband and I like driving around our city on Saturday nights.  We drive because it's difficult to find parking. We don't usually talk much.  We hold hands.  This night it's dusk.  I feel as if we're driving into a lavender tunnel, the sky a delicate lilac.  Gas lights burn in lampposts on street corners.  Rows of palm trees border shop fronts, their fronds gently waving, brushing the violet evening. The car windows are down, and we can hear the banter of people speaking, tires grazing pavement, a distant siren.  A young woman skips down a side street.  She's wearing a black mini skirt and silver sandals. I'm thinking of all the memories my husband and I have collected in this town on nights just like this--dinners in expensive restaurants, eating a cup of gelato on a park bench, window shopping, strolling through parks--things that couples do.  Things that we take for granted--that we believe will never end.

Yet this night, my husband and I sit in our car, an accumulation of unknowns pelting our minds.  Over these last weeks we've learned that a highway extension will be built in our neighborhood.  At one point, the community voted the expansion down.  But the project has been voted back in, much to our dismay.  We both are experiencing some precarious news about our health.  My husband's job is on shaky ground.  

These realities are the stuff of life.  As I watch the night swallow the day, all the purple drained out of the sky, I ask myself, "Can't that be good--not knowing?"

I silently answer, "Yes, with God. With Him, there is certainty bundled inside the vicissitudes.  He never changes.  He remains steadfast.  He never fails.  His love doesn't waver.  He will never leave us." 

We cross the bridge over the expanse of ocean toward our home-- to our house where we've loved each other over these years, where my husband has planted trees and a garden that yields parsley and sweet peppers, where I've painted our door the color of chocolate.  The moon hovers in the night sky.  Its luminous presence reminds me of God's constancy--the ways He's made a way for us.  I am convinced His loyalty does not fade.  I am certain that the not knowing can be good.