Their Eyes Were Watching God

Forty-six years ago, my husband and I were married on Columbus Day, now called Indigenous Peoples’ Day. A few nights prior to our anniversary, I finished Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and was struck by the phrase,

“Ah jus’ know dat God snatched me out de fire through you. And ah loves yuh and feel glad.”

I could say the same thing to my dear husband who I met when I was a barmaid in a college bar. There was instant chemistry between us, and I knew from the first he was the one. That said, there was so much we didn’t know about each other, the world, or even ourselves.

My husband didn’t know he was an engineer. While I was finishing my senior year, he quit college as a liberal arts major, worked as a short order cook, and played pool into the wee hours of the morning. I always wanted to be a writer but didn’t know how to make that happen. Without a clue, we held hands and jumped into the world together after I graduated.

During those early years, my direction as a writer diffused, while my husband’s career as an engineer crystallized. We bought our first fixer-upper. We had babies, and my dream of being a writer drowned in being a doting stay-at-home mom. That’s when a marriage crisis almost sunk our union, but you know the outcome, so I won’t bother with the details here. Enough to say, as a result of that storm, for the first time, my eyes were watching God.

Photo by Marina Vitale on Unsplash

Although that was the beginning of seeing the world from a brand-new perspective, life was not without challenges. My husband’s engineering career struggled as industry fled to the Sun Belt, bringing us out West where a master’s degree and a career teaching ELL students finally crystallized for me. But this is not about our combined resumes because there comes a time when you realize life is about more than professional success.

In Hurston’s novel, Janie’s second husband dies, a husband who’d built a good business and reputation as mayor of an all black town in 1920’s Florida. Yet Janie walks away from his empire, marrying a younger man nicknamed Tea Cake because he brings unknown sweetness to her life. They take off to The Muck, an area south of Lake Okeechobee where Tea Cake works as a migrant picking beans. Off times, he takes Janie fishing, gator hunting, and she becomes his equal able to shoot the head off a chicken hawk soaring towards the sun.

But life on earth rarely ends up tied with a bow. Janie and Tea Cake watch as Seminoles march across The Muck towards higher ground when the weather portends a hurricane. Although even rabbits and snakes follow suit, Janie and Tea Cake stay until they’re caught in the ensuing flood. I’ll leave the ending for you to find out. It’s a fantastic read!

Photo by Lukas Hron on Unsplash

I met my own flood while teaching in an abusive school, abusive to its under-performing students and to its over-worked teachers. One day coming home emotionally broken, I found my Tea Cake husband had drawn me a hot bath with daffodil heads floating atop the water. Standing by the tub, he said, “You don’t have to work there anymore if you don’t want to,” giving me permission, I couldn’t give myself, to resign.

That was a long time ago, but that was the hurricane that buried my career as a teacher and began my life as a writer. You can find the details of that episode in my first book, Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School.  

I started by saying when we were young, there were so many things my husband and I didn’t know about ourselves, the world, or God. I didn’t know:

• Before my eyes were watching God, his eyes were watching over us.
• It was God who drew our immature souls together.
• God would choose to reveal Himself when we were at our worst.
• God would carry us when we were too weak to carry our own load.
• God was the one whose faithfulness and sweetness were embodied in my husband.

But 46 years later I can say, art mirrors life. Although my circumstances were vastly different from those in Hurston’s novel, one woman’s story told from the heart always resonates with another’s.  

So together with Janie I can say, ”Ah jus’ know dat God snatched me out de fire through you. And ah loves yuh and feel glad.”

Happy anniversary babe!

Photo by Nikki Son on Unsplash

 “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”

Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NASB)

BTW, my own memoir from the heart about my marriage, my adoption, and finding my true identity in Christ is coming soon. Pray, I tell it well to the glory of God.

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2023

Cover photo by Quinten de Graaf on Unsplash