The Monkey Barrel

Archive for February, 2010

I’m being featured on a dear friends professional blog tomorrow and Friday. I’m so full of excitement I can’t stand myself and neither can just about anyone else. So take a look see and sample my handiwork over yonder on the morrow http://www.littlepageturners.com/

Just as a quick by line to the previous blog posting, I am suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhhh a procrastinator. But the ideas are still coming for a revamp. I’m just fleshing them out and weighing the options. I know I should jump in both feet but that usually produces trouble for me.

So to the subject at hand. As a woman, I am prone, as most of my married female colleagues, to take the temperature of my marriage periodically to see how it’s doing, how I’m doing, how the kids are affected by how it’s going and so on and so on. This is usually preceded by some irritable phase I have been in that has caused me to behave poorly and winds up with poor results on the husband end that I focus on more than my own foibles. Still with me?? So in an effort to better myself as I am the only one I can truly change, I picked up a book that has been REPEATEDLY recommended to me and read it on our trip down to Fl.
Now lemme preface this with the fact I have read many books upon the subject of marital matters and as of yet have been really unimpressed. Two samples I’ll give you are Love Languages and Love & Respect. My issues with the first are that we in some form give and receive love in all those languages so I found all points to be moot and half way through the book “donated” it to “good will” I hope whoever bought it saw something better in it than I did. My issues with the second were specific to the marriage I enjoy. We don’t get into the crazy cycle that that book is pretty much centered around. From the first days of our marriage I have enjoyed for 12 and 1/2 years of mutual respect and servanthood from my husband. He’s pretty laid back and awesome, I’m pretty high strung, we kind of balance each other out in a weird way. I think that’s allowing God the reigns of this endeavor. It’s not perfect all the time and we screw up with each other. But there is a willingness to yield, apologize, ask forgiveness and seek the other’s own good above our own. An unspoken agreement to be happy rather than to be right. So for us, not such a good book. However, I think many couples caught in the wheel of craziness could benefit from the advice written inside the binding of that particular book and know that many have and it has changed lives as well as marriages.
So I cracked open the pages of “Sacred Marriage” by Gary Thomas with a load of skepticism. He blew me out of the water. What I found beyond the psychobabble of a therapist, and the preachyness of a pastor, was the layman’s terms of a husband and father in the trenches of real life experience relating his walk. He poses the question very astutely of whether or not our marriage was meant to make us more holy than happy. I firmly agree with him that in pursuit of holiness, by default our marriage becomes a happy, comfortable, trustworthy partnership. Much of which Fred and I have pondered over the years about what makes our relationship solid was covered in the pages of this remarkable read, but much more was presented and my brain has been reeling with the thoughts.
In addition to having read this, our pastor has begun a new series and today’s installment was about building your house upon a rock. How many times growing up in church did you hear about the wise man and the foolish man, sand and rock, songs of the parable and so on and so on?? For me it was TONS of times, and yet today it took on a new ring, a new perspective. My life over the last 12 and 1/2 years certainly has not looked at all the way I’d imagined it would. No rose colored glasses here and certainly enough storms to threaten my very existence let alone the strength of the bond between my husband and I. So it got me to thinking, yet again, about this marriage of mine and how after all these years it is standing solidly.
Here’s my perception of it’s stability. When Fred and I met, lo those 13 and some years ago I’ve made no secret that I was a less than desirable human being on all fronts. Loathsome in fact I think is a more accurate description. You don’t need the gory details, just trust me that it’s true and there are all too many witnesses to attest to it. But what you may not know, aside from the very first time I laid eyes on him, is the countless hours we spoke on the phone in the middle of the night while he worked third shift and I should’ve been sleeping. For some unknown reason all of the darkness in me spilled into Fred’s ear. Every dastardly, slovenly, wicked, unimaginable misdeed I ever had the misfortune to make came tumbling out of my mouth and into our conversations. On several occasions I can very clearly recall the silences that followed such dissertations and a few times in person, I can very vividly recall the look of disgust on his face. Beyond all of that, was an overwhelming compassion in his eyes and often tears as I laid my soul bare before him. God for some reason had made Fred my confessor and Fred in my darkness was a light pointing straight to the One who would bear my burdens and cleanse my heart and make me a new creature. He was God’s earthly evidence of unconditional love. Fred knew literally every detail of evil in my heart and yet somehow found a child of God in the midst of it and he loved me in spite of and I think because of who I was and who I became.
So 9 months after we began dating and Fred proposed it was with awe in my heart that I accepted him. He had already proven trust and unfailing love to me and I knew that with him I was safe. Early into our pre-marital counseling we agreed that marriage was worth nothing if it was not based on and entirely given over to the Lords leading. We have striven every day of every year to be honest and true and faithful to that promise to each other. And as a testament to the covenant that we made, we are still standing and standing together. Life has hit us with some pretty awesome storm and Satan has taken every advantage to shake us, but here we are.
I cannot imagine what the days and years ahead of us hold. I can believe harder and tougher trials as a certainty lie before us. But if we continue as we have begun, if we are dilligent to allow God the reigns, if we are transparent and willing to serve each more than ourselves, then our years ahead are looking pretty good even in spite of the forecast. Oh, and it is a total bonus that he’s just as good looking now as the day I first saw him round the back of that volleyball court mere moments before he drove a volleyball into my throat.