Posts Tagged ‘marriage’

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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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Men Need a Break, Too

Friday, March 11th, 2011

men-need-a-break-tooI hear women whining all the time that they need a break. (I’m sometimes one of these women.) But seriously, as a homeschooling mother, we have all the freedom in the world. We can drop everything and go to the park on a sunny day. Or we don’t even have to get out of bed if we don’t feel like it. It’s the truth. My kids get their math done whether I get up or not. Of course, at some point they get hungry, but if you have at least one kid who can reach the cereal, you’ve got it made. (If you have babies and toddlers, disregard this first paragraph.)

So my friend dies and my head feels thick and I can’t think straight. I take the day off. I rule. I’m the boss. I’m the only adult in the house on Monday morning, and what I say goes. If I want the house to be quiet, I throw on a DVD. I can lie down whenever I want. I live the ideal life. What pressure is on me, I put on myself. I’m accountable to God and to my husband; that’s it.

Men can’t do this. They have to go to work even when the world is against them and is bashing them against the wall. Even when there’s so much to do at home that they’d almost rather be at work. The work is relentless for them. Wake up early, go to work, come home, work, sleep. Rinse and repeat. Their lives are miserable compared to ours. And we have the audacity to tell them that WE need a break, and good-bye; don’t forget to put the kids to bed. We begrudge them when they want to play on the computer or watch TV, just to rest their weary minds and bodies for a second. No, we’re nagging at the back of our minds, wanting them to “do the next thing,” whatever that is, and the list never ends.

One time a drawer in the kitchen busted and fell apart completely. My first thought was to hide it so that my husband wouldn’t see one more thing he had to do. Eventually when he found out it was broken, he asked how long it had been that way. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

Even with no list in the back of my mind, the home is no oasis for my husband. I don’t know what it is about 5 o’clock, but kids start screaming for no reason. The kids are happy and productive (by and large with many exceptions) during the school day. But when their daddy comes home, within five minutes, it’s “AAAaaa!” Then he feels like he has to shepherd the children biblically, and he has nothing left. (But he does it anyway.) He just walked through the door, for crying out loud. It makes me want to run over and put my hand over the mouth of the screaming child. “Don’t you love your daddy?” I ask them, and get a perplexed look in return.

As a homeschool woman, I want to do everything in my power to grant refreshment to my husband. But some things are simply out of my control. Just the physical house itself breaks down faster than my husband is able to fix it, and I can only hide things for so long. I try to do a lot of things myself and mess them up worse.

Yes, men need a break. Let your husband rest. Erase everything in your mind and think, as your goal, “I want my husband to rest.” This way maybe he has a fighting chance at surviving.

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He Believes in Me

Friday, March 4th, 2011

he-believes-in-me He believes in me! My husband believes in me! This is the story of how my husband knew that I would be a good speaker before he ever heard me speak.

“Should I give up going to a refreshing homeschool conference workshop to be a part of a panel on math and science? They’ve asked me to be a part of the panel. I turned them down for so many years when they asked me to teach a workshop. They finally stopped asking me. It used to be fun speaking to homeschool women, but not when I’m missing workshops. Anyway, a panel might be easy. You just sit there and answer questions. Should I do it?” I was hoping that my husband would say no.

“Yes, I think you should.” Bummer. I didn’t want to miss the workshops. That was my favorite time of year, better than Christmas, and now I was going to spoil it by working. For free. And missing one of my favorite speakers.

I said, “Who would listen to me when a world-renowned speaker was speaking opposite me? The room is going to be empty. So what’s the use?”

“Susan, you could be a world-renowned speaker.”

His statement hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt like I had the wind knocked out of me, except I was happy. I realized that I had what it took to be a great speaker: tons of fun information delivered with heart and style. I suddenly realized that my husband believed in me.

I was part of the panel that year, and I only spoke for 5 or 10 minutes, since there were 6 people on the panel. I felt restless. I wanted to get up and speak, and I wanted people who wanted my information to come.

The next year I decided to do a workshop entitled “Early Childhood Education”. It ended up being a big hit. It was so much fun. The women were on the edge of their seats laughing and enjoying me. They took pages and pages of notes about what I was saying. People came up afterwards and thanked me for all the fresh ideas. I felt so happy, like I was on a high. Speaking gave me a high. I was hooked. I’ve been a speaker ever since! And all because my husband believed in me!

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My Husband is a Man of God

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

my-husband-is-a-man-of-GodI would like to modify one thing about my love story, just to set things right, so that people don’t have a bad opinion about my husband. Even though Alan might have spent a few weeks living out of his car, he was never a bum. He was always a man of integrity, and he led me closer to Christ, even while living out of his car. For example, I felt like I was a piece of dirt, and I wanted to die. He parked his car, opened the Word of God, and spoke to me for hours about my identity in Christ. He spoke from Romans 6, 7, and 8. What he said just that one night changed my life. Never mind all the other times we talked about God. I still have tiny notes all over my Bible. What he was saying was true. Having grown up as a missionary kid, I had spent thousands of hours in the Word of God (voluntarily as well as in classes). I knew and had studied the Word of God deeply on a daily basis for years.

What I’m saying is, he was the strong one. He led me spiritually, even then. He was physically pure when I married him, and that mattered to me. His love for me was real, not some stupid fantasy that other men had of me when I knew that they didn’t really know me. I dated many guys (just one time each) from the churches I attended over the years. No one compared to Alan, not even a little. He was head and shoulders above the rest and blew them all out of the water. I kept trying to move on when I knew he was interested in someone else and not me, but I never really was satisfied with anyone else.

I just want to say that he has been a great husband. I thought my life halted and came to a ruined standstill after being raped by a complete stranger who stalked me and wore a mask. Even though both my husband and I were pure on our wedding night (because the rape didn’t count), we were both punished for the sins of another man. All I wanted to do was make love to my new husband, but what with the excruciating pain and the flashbacks, we went though hell together. Some day I will write a book about how God healed me on every level of my being. (It will be my magnum opus, my greatest contribution to the world. My conversations with God alone were incredible. My testimony has led to the healing of many rape victims.) But honestly, if it weren’t for Alan, I don’t know where I’d be today. He is my life, my love, my everything. Besides God, I mean.

I just wanted to write a tribute to my husband, and proclaim to the world that he is not a bum and never was. I knew his heart was gold, and I was right.

Just a couple of years ago our church did a marriage class. We were supposed to write down three things that bugged us the most about our spouse. I thought long and hard, and I couldn’t think of anything. There was a lot of quiet time where everyone was writing stuff down. After giving Alan plenty of time, I leaned over and asked him what he wrote. He backed up and showed me a blank page. He said he couldn’t think of anything bad about me.

I’m just going to let that sink in for a minute…

I told him that I couldn’t think of anything bad about him either. Do you realize what this means? This is absolutely staggering, but get this: We have an ideal marriage. And I don’t take it for granted. It was forged through intense fire, many times. Everyone who knows me covets my marriage, or wishes that their marriage was even half as good. I fall on my face before God, and I truly, truly thank God for the incredible husband that He has given me.

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