Archive for the ‘Marriage’ Category

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The Importance of Friendship

Friday, May 20th, 2011

the-importance-of-friendshipI bet your husband would love to go shooting with a buddy, or play lazer tag, or just go do whatever guys do. But, no. Men are married, and they’re not allowed to leave home, or they’re bad husbands. It means that they are neglecting us as wives, and that they love their buddies more than they love us. That’s what we make them feel like.

So my husband has no one to hang out with. The men would feel guilty if they did.

Whenever I go to my “Mom’s Night Out,” my husband says, where’s the “Guy’s Night Out?” There isn’t one. Women deserve breaks, but men don’t. Women need rest, but men don’t. Men never burn out.

My other question is, why is it that men have more trouble making friends than women do? At church (not recently, but usually) someone asks me how I’m doing, and I give them a run-down on my soul, what God is teaching me, and whatever else is on my mind. I have deep spiritual conversations. I hate chit chat and dump it at the first opportunity. And yet when I overhear men talking, it’s all chit chat. No wonder they don’t know each other. No wonder they don’t hang out. It’s because they’re strangers. It’s almost like guys have to have known the other guy during their childhood to even be considered a friend. Bummer, because we don’t live where my husband grew up.

I get phone calls all the time from people who love me. I’m popular. People need me. If the phone rings, my husband says it’s for me without getting up. He’s right. This is just stupid. My husband is a great person: funny, intellectual, and spiritual. But men have their own clicks of people they grew up with. How on earth is he supposed to use his spiritual gift with other people in the body of Christ if no one ever hangs out with him? And he’s not the only one. I bet your husband feels the same way.

I just know how much my own girl friendships mean to me. My best friend has been a pillar in my life. She rebukes me when I’m sinning, she becomes outraged when I’m wronged, and she prays for me when I feel despair. Several times in my life back when I was single, I packed up all my belongings and moved to Texas, just because that’s where she was. That’s how much her friendship means to me. When she calls me to get my opinion, she knows I’ll give it. And if she disagrees with me, I don’t feel threatened in any way. I feel mentally stimulated to think about the situation from a new angle. That’s because I’m listening to her.

How many men have this? This is valuable. I think that in the body of Christ especially, it is vital. And yet we never let our husbands have the time to go escape, to breathe, to be understood as a guy. Because you know how wonderful it feels to be understood as a girl. But guys don’t need that, of course.

I’m just saying that we should encourage our men to go fishing or hiking with whatever men they feel like hanging out with. Just for the sake of friendship. Without making them feel bad. It’s worth it. Your man will come back refreshed, just like you do when you’ve had time with friends.

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Sushi and a Walk by the River

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

sushi-and-a-walk-by-the-river

I’ve never liked sushi. It’s probably because I was raised in a third-world country, and my mother told me to never eat raw fish. But lately my husband has found sushi the most delectable food around. Most of our rare date nights end up in a sushi place. I frantically try to find something cooked on the menu, and I can usually find something…

Well, last Friday night I had a taste of sushi that was magnificent. I was stunned. Not only did I not feel like barfing; I actually wanted another bite. This was so funny to me because I classified sushi in the same category as snails and grasshoppers (not edible).

cooked-sushi

We were at a new sushi restaurant down by the Spokane River. It had a conveyor belt that wound itself around the room like a meandering train track. And on that conveyor belt were all kinds of sushi and other Japanese foods. You just grabbed the small plates as they passed by your table. There was no need to wait or to order. At the end of the meal, the waiter counted up the different-colored plates for the final price. A cooked oyster (two sides with delicious stuff inside) was $1.50. Other plates were $4. Anyway, each of the foods we ate was delicious. My husband said, “We definitely need to come back here.”

Another great thing about the meal was that you could stop whenever you were full. You didn’t have to feel overstuffed after forcing yourself to finish a huge, heaping plate of food. If I wanted a vegetable, I waited for a vegetable plate to parade by, and I’d snatch it up. I didn’t have to get sick of just one taste during the whole meal.

sushi-conveyor-belt

After dinner, my husband and I took a stroll along the river, crossing bridges and looking at the torrential waterfall. The dam had been opened, and the water looked dangerously high. The power of the raging water as it crashed over rocks was incredible. We just stood there and took it in for a while. Then I noticed a solid rock in the middle of the torrent. The rock remained secure despite the crashing waves around it. That rock represented my husband and I.

Many years ago my husband held my hands and looked into my eyes and said, “Susan, I want you and I to be a solid rock, that no matter what life throws at us, we will not waver or fall, but that we would be a bulwark against the storms of life.” He gave as an example an older couple that we know. He said he wanted us to be like them.

date-night-in-Spokane

As I looked at the power of the crashing waves against the rock, I realized that despite the way I felt, I was acting like that rock. I was one with my husband, and I was repeatedly surprising myself with how I would lean on God to help me endure our trial for yet one more week.

The river isn’t always this strong and damaging, though. Most of the time we’ve crossed that bridge, the water has been quite peaceful. I’m longing for the day when the waters recede and the sun comes out again to shine on the rock. The sun seems long overdue…

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The Story Behind the Love Story

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

the-story-behind-the-love-storySo here is the story behind the love story:

It was the day before Valentines Day, and I had nothing about love to put up on my blog. My husband said, “I thought you told everyone to abolish Valentines Day. And now you’re going to give them a love story?”

“My readers want a sappy love story on Valentines Day, and I’m going to give it to them.”

My husband took a nap (since it was Sunday afternoon), and I started typing away. I lost track of time as I re-entered the emotion of it. When my husband groggily asked me for some tea, it was difficult to tear myself away from the keyboard.

I brought the tea to my husband, who sat in that brown chair where I film my YouTube unit study videos. I sat on the bed. I smiled at him.

“You want to get back to the keyboard; I can tell.”

“Yes. I’m writing our love story, and I’m so excited my fingers are tingling!”

“Oh, I see how things are,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “You would rather write about how much you love me instead of actually spending time with me.”

“That is not true! But I have the other half of our love story in my head, and I can’t wait to finish it.”

“Go,” he said.

The next day when he came home from work, I had already posted two parts of our love story, since I posted one on Sunday night. I asked my husband how he liked my blog. He said, “You made me look like a smelly homeless guy.”

“Oh, no no no! No one who ever reads my blog will ever think badly of you! Trust me. I’m not done writing our love story. Besides, you were the guy who was hard to get. I was the lovesick girl who was pining away. Which figure looks pathetic? That would be me,” I said. “Do you want me to delete the first part of our love story? You can read my blog posts before I post them, you know.”

“No, I want you to feel free to write whatever you want.”

Two days later, he read the “My Husband is a Man of God” entry. I asked him what he thought. He said, “It was a bit over the top.”

“Every word of it is true,” I said.

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Is Love a Feeling?

Friday, March 18th, 2011

is-love-a-feeling

Is love a feeling? I had a lively debate about this with my husband about a year ago, in front of the people at our Bible study. We were both vehement in our positions and used Scripture to support our statements. I have to admit my husband made some good points, and at the end of our impromptu debate, a gray-haired man beamed from ear to ear and said he enjoyed it very much and learned a lot. So I thought I’d share our main points with you.

My husband was of the position that love was not a feeling. He said it was a commitment, that feelings were too fickle. Feelings would come and go, but love as I Corinthians 13 described it was all action. None of that love chapter contained emotion. He expounded on this at great length, and his arguments were sound. They seemed irrefutable.

He even described love for God not being based on emotion, because obedience to God is not something you always feel like doing. He mentioned that some Christians rely on their emotions as the authenticity of their commitment to God when in reality they are just working themselves up to a psychotic state, and for what purpose? To feel close to God when in reality, God might not be close to them at all. Emotional psychotic states mean nothing. You can take drugs to do that. Emotion in no way indicates closeness to God.

I countered by saying that love has to include feeling. Take the Good Samaritan story. We are commanded to love our neighbor, and how? We are supposed to FEEL compassion on a person that is beat-up, and that emotion is supposed to move us to action. The people who walked by and felt NOTHING were not loving their neighbor. If you don’t give a flip, you don’t love. Period.

I often feel the presence of God in my spirit. It is the most incredible calm. It’s joyful in a quiet way. I just can’t explain it, but it is definitely an emotion. And it’s real. Connecting with other people or with God is impossible without emotion.

My husband countered by saying that he’s also had personal experiences with God. But the point he was making was that you can’t base your relationship to God on your feelings.

But even Jesus had deep emotions. Seriously. Just read the gospels. And God the Father… Just read the prophets of the Old Testament and you will see how He yearns for us to come back to Him like a lover would, with deep emotional hurt. This is God we are talking about. I feel like my whole life I’ve been told that emotion is sin. But we’re commanded to love, and love includes emotion, because love is compassion.

Then I mentioned marriage. Of course, everyone knows that marriages that have no emotion are not good. Intimacy without emotion would be intolerable to me. I asked my husband if he would actually enjoy that. He had no answer. So there. Commitment without emotion is not what God wants for marriages, or for friendships, or even in our interactions with strangers. When we are commanded to love God and others, He means full blast (heart, soul, mind, and strength), not just halfway.

My husband would retort that commitment lasts longer than emotion, and that commitment doesn’t mean you have apathy. Commitment is much more full-blast than emotion, because it’s still there, even years later. If your love for people depends on your emotions, you will not do the right thing if your fickle emotions don’t come through. And since I gave a disproportionate amount of space to my side of the argument, I will go ahead and let him have the last word. You know, as a concession.

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