Sally and Mike have always been incredibly encouraging of Mark and I, and we have deep respect for the way they so openly share their lives with others. Here is a beautiful poem that Sally wrote about how she and Mike got together:
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This should be read with the song MARRY ME by TRAIN in the background.
I met him when I was just 15. I had been dancing and skipping and singing my way through childhood while he had been travelling and thinking and talking his way to become a teenager.
He entered my world through a door, an old wooden rough church door, someone new, a stranger, a friend?
I walked towards him smiling, wearing blue jeans and cloggs, with my hair, black and curling as ever always slightly wild and unpredictable.
He bent slightly to go through the door, leaving his motorbike outside, but his smile he brought inside.
He became my best friend and still is.
That summer we wound our way through each others lives, the same church, the same friends, the same faith, the same parties to the same theme tune of Pink Floyd, tubular bells, 10cc and Eric Clapton
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Then he got called away. To college to train, to qualify and get pieces of paper for something that he was already doing.
I wrote to him wondering why my mind wandered down the lanes of friendship to something more.
He wrote back. Often. Describing his new life. Time passed the school year ended
He returned to be mine.
Then I went away. To college to find something I thought I was missing and then realized I never needed in the first place.
I ignored his voice, I ignored his letters.
Time passed, another school year ended.
I returned. While I was running he stayed still.
I went back to the place we first met, to the friends we shared, the roads we had walked on. I believed again in who I was. My identity was secure and safe, it had been challenged but it had remained the same. He is faithful.
We were going to see a film all crushed in a car or a van I don't remember the details, I don’t remember who else was there, or what we saw, I don't remember what I wore.
I remember we needed to pick him up on the corner on the way.
But more than anything I remember him walking towards the car and how the time stood still. A clear crisp kairos moment like the shutter in a camera closing in my heart. His head was down, his walk was long, his shirt was blue, his shoes were cool, and I knew in that kodak moment that if I didn’t have him in my life I would be less of a person. That I needed his challenge, that I needed his laugh and that I needed his life with mine. Whatever that was and wherever he went I would go.
I knew my mistake, I had been proud and foolish and failed!
I knew I needed to speak to him, to talk to him, to look at him, to persuade him.
We met, I talked he talked.
He gave me hope and a 3-point sermon.
We met at stations with flowers and plans.
He got on buses and slow trains.
I stood beside him.
We walked towards the future.
Sometimes a little afraid to dance- uncertain of what the dance was and what music was playing.
Sometimes our feet were heavy because we were carrying a history book full of our lives past.
Time passed.
I went back to school.
He went back to school.
He sent me a postcard (I have long since lost)
P.S. Will you marry me one day?
I sent one back (he lost his too)
P.S. One day I will!
We walked towards our future traveling into this present life holding each others hands.
Still needing his challenge and his laugh and still going where ever he goes.
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Sally Breen lives in Pawley's Island, South Carolina with her husband Mike. Together they head up 3DM, training churches and Christian leaders to do discipleship and mission. Sally is Mum to Beccy, Libby and Sam and "Jolly" to Finley. Check out her blog here.