“Do you know what a DTR is?” I asked my friend, Tim.
“No,” he answered.
“Well, when my daughters got to a certain point in their friendships, they would have a conversation called a DTR. It means “Define the Relationship”.
“Oh,” said Tim.
“We need one,” I said. “Meet me at Starbucks.”
“OK,” he answered.
This conversation took place in October of 1997. Tim and I had been casual friends for many years in the fishing industry in Alaska. Tim was a commercial fisherman; my husband and I were also fishers in Alaska. We got to know each other on the docks around the cannery in Petersburg. We shared faith in Jesus. That made the friendship special to me because I had very few Christian friends in the fishing industry. It was always pleasant to visit with Tim around the fish processing plant in Petersburg.
Tim and his wife lived in Petersburg. Bob and I brought our boat back to Washington State at the end of the fishing seasons. After some years of knowing Tim and his wife in the summers in Alaska, they moved to Washington, too. Then our families visited with each other a bit more. Tim even helped Bob with some building projects.
During one of those off season months, I heard a rumor that Tim was having an affair. By that time Tim was no longer fishing; he had a business in Bellingham selling pellet stoves. I went to see him. He was alone in his office.
As I approached his desk, I asked, “What’s this I hear?”
We talked for several minutes, the end of that conversation was when Tim leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms and said, “The way I see it. It doesn’t matter if we stay in the will of God or not. We are all going to end up at the same place.”
I left, heartbroken. I didn’t know how to reach him. He was destroying his family which now included two little boys.
I finished my shopping in Bellingham and started for home. When I stopped at the corner where I could turn right to go back to Tim’s office, or straight ahead to the freeway, I looked at the bunch of daffodils I had just purchased.
I knew what to say to Tim.
I turned right and went back to his office. He was not there. I left the flowers on his desk with a note that said, “These flowers are beautiful. But they are cut off and they are going to die.”
I did not see Tim for several years until he started playing racquetball with Bob. After one of those matches, Bob brought Tim home for lunch. When Bob was out of the room, Tim said to me, “Thank you for the message you gave me years ago. You are one of the few who confronted me about what I was doing. I am back on track now. I am involved in a recovery program at Christ the King Church. I tried to reconcile the marriage, but she would not have it.”
“I am sorry, Tim,” I told him, “I will continue to pray for you.”
Again, we did not see each other for several years, except Tim made generous donations to the crisis pregnancy center I was helping to get started in Bellingham.
Then in 1996 Bob and I split up. That’s another story.
In the spring of that year Tim and I saw each other at an Easter sunrise service. I told him that Bob and I were not going to make it.
Tim started coming around once in a while for coffee. We had good visits. He told me that he was praying for a wife.
Then one day in the fall he called on a Wednesday afternoon to ask if he could come by.
“Not today,” I answered. “I take Scottish dancing lessons on Wednesday. You can come to the lesson if you want to. It’s an open class.”
He said he would meet me there.
That evening as I drove from Blaine to Bellingham I realized that this was like a date! “Oh, no,” I thought. “I have to put a stop to this.”
The dancing class was fun. As we left the building, that’s when I asked him if he knew what a DTR is.
So, we met at Starbucks.
When we had sat down across from each other, I told him how things were going to be between us.
“I will never be your wife, your girlfriend or your lover” I said. “I like being your friend. I even kind of like flirting with you, but I don’t want you to get aroused! I am not attracted to you. Even if I were, it would never work. We have known each other too long. I have gone on hikes with ex-wife, you have played racquetball with my ex-husband! We know all of each other’s junk. It is just too messy.”
All during my declarations Tim was nodding in agreement. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I was glad to get the ground rules laid.
We were married 10 days later.
The rest of the story? Of course.
I drove home that night with the sense of brushing my hands against together with “There. I took care of that.”
The next day, Thursday, Tim called while I was making dinner.
“Are you in the area?” I asked, “Would you like to come for over dinner?”
“Sure,” he said.
I didn’t know it at the time; he was not in the area. But he came for dinner.
We had a great time. I was completely relaxed because the boundary had been laid, and agreed upon. We had dinner, drank some wine, and even sat in the hot tub.
When Tim got ready to leave he gave me a big hug, walked off the porch and drove away.
I staggered, and–it was not the wine.
I stumbled through the house, literally holding onto the walls. As I got ready for bed, I cried out to myself. “What was that?”
I went to bed, but I did not sleep. I wrestled with God and myself. I imagined what Jacob felt like wrestling with the angel of God.
I saw a big capital letter “I” on the ceiling. The Lord told me that I had to brush that personal pronoun aside. This was not about me.
I listened, tossing, turning, struggling. I began to realize that the long relationship Tim and I had was not a liability. The fact that we knew all of each other’s junk and still liked each other was actually an asset.
During the night, I left a couple of messages on his answering machine. By six in the morning when I had not heard from him, I left a message on his pager. I knew he would respond to that.
“Forget the DTR,” I said. “We have to do this over.”
