Gloria!

Can it be?  I am alone with the computer for the first time in weeks...AND it's working!  It's still dark outside, but I'm assuming the passing snow plow has something to do other than simply tootle around the countryside.  The Christmas lights on our tree are providing a sense of additional warmth, and the wood stove is doing it's part to herald this day as a perfect continuation of the Christmas season.  Cold, dark and white on the outside...warm, colorful and peaceful on the inside.
    At some point in this blog, I'd like to try and write during the "throes" of an episode with depression.  Not to depress would-be readers...but to create a sense of solidarity with those who struggle in this way, and a sense of progress despite this illness.  The first weeks of December were a black time for me...almost to Christmas.  So I have been silent.  Watching myself, frustrated by my seeming inability to rise above the hurt, to control my tongue, to live out the life I know Christ wants me to be living.  Depression is a real disease.  When I am battling, from within the arena I am only aware of how little control I have over ANYTHING, but especially my words and reactions.  There is no place within me that I can "pull over and rest".  Every slight, every injustice takes me to the bitter end of the road, and it's all I can do to acknowledge that this is not the intention of the person hurting me.  They have the ability to "walk away", shrug their shoulders, not take it so hard.  It seems an unfairness not only to me, but also to my family, that I lack this ability when I am in the middle of "an episode".  But that is the plain case of it.  I understand women who simply choose to stay in bed for several weeks.  ...but that brings me to my second point about Depression.  While it is organically real for us, it is also an emotional crutch that can so easily become an excuse to live in bitterness and resentment and laziness.  When the least physical movement costs us so much...how can we find the strength to move forward emotionally and spiritually? 
  The strength comes from Jesus.  I love that the Psalmist says "the joy of the Lord is my strength".  We don't have to muster it up.  It is there for us to crawl into, and rest.  It is real...more real than our pain, more real than our feelings of rejection and hopelessness.  It is a fact that stands from before time and is woven throughout eternity.  Joy.  Not thumping adrenalin, not pasted smiles, not hallmark sentiments.  Real Joy.  I do not have to feel it, but as a Christian, I have to acknowledge the truth of it, and if I'm doing that, I might as well allow it to inform my way of life.  I am not encouraging anyone to be disingenuous.  When we are sad, we are sad.  But is it disingenuous to live out the fullness of truth, whether we feel it or not?
     Mother Teresa of Calcutta encouraged her nuns to smile.  In the midst of death, poverty, vile smells and sights, starvation, ingratitude...in the midst of all of it, she encouraged them to smile.  That smile brought relief to others.  It was the face of Jesus in the darkest of the night.  During this season when we celebrate the historical fact of God taking on flesh, it is not fanciful or wishful thinking to imagine his face lighting up with a smile as he looks upon his children.  There is a Gloria to be sung because of his presence in this dark world.  My niece recently posted the familiar line "A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices!"  In the pain of depression we MUST remember that no darkness is impenatrable.  If we simply cannot see him, let us smile so that others can. 
   Yesterday I read in Isaiah, "...all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are a people whom the LORD has blessed."  By virtue of my salvation brought about because of the Incarnation, my choice to smile is a testimony of the Lord's blessing.  Not a fake smile because of me, but a true smile because of Christ whose love extends to every person ever created. 
   Words are powerful.  My challenge today...to speak aloud the word "Gloria!" when I am tempted by self-pity or laziness.  To smile.

An Important Note to those who may read this blog

   I am NOT computer savvy.  There are a million and one ways people could easily figure out who I am.  I have asked people to review this blog who, of course are aware of my identity.  I have also asked my husband for permission to write this, with the understanding that our difficulties are not going to always reflect so positively on him.  He has given his permission...and will probably never read an entry.  This makes it possible for me to be completely honest.  It is my hope that by keeping somewhat anonymous, I will not dishonor my husband by what I write.  It certainly is not my intent.  However, because I am specifically writing about the challenges in marriage, there is no way for him to continually appear as a knight on a white horse whose every breath is taken out of love for me. 
   My goal, as already stated, (but I cannot state it enough), is to pursue with a whole heart what we as wives can do to strengthen our marriages.  It goes without saying that our husbands need to be working on our marriages as well and that they need to attend to their own relationship with God and with God's people.  However, while we pray continually for them, the only people we have the power to change is ourselves.   If I write something that clearly sheds light on a negative encounter with my husband...please forgive him, and forgive me for any hint of discontent I may try to justify. 
The goal is Jesus.  Always.

Clinging to the Rock

As I sit staring at this screen, I'm keenly aware that it has already been a week since I last posted...and that I have little desire to write!  How's that for an opening line!  There's a very stiff breeze blowing outside, this first day of December, and I feel like Snoopy wondering if the leaves will ever make it back to the ground, or if they'll be swirling in the air all day.  

  My hesitancy in writing has to do with the very reason for starting this blog.  It has been a difficult couple of weeks.  Where I feel the need for love and understanding, I've been misunderstood and "watched" as though anything I say or do could be used against me.  I know I'm not alone in this sensation...be it a correct or incorrect interpretation of the world I live in.  And so I will write through the feeling, perhaps arriving at an answer...perhaps not.  

   Given:  I am committed to my marriage, to doing all I can to bring both myself and my husband before God's throne on Judgment day, with confidence in the Grace and Mercy of God, and the knowledge that I have lived in the shelter of those gifts as He has given me the ability to do so.  

   Given:  Both my husband and myself are very human, at different places in our respective Spiritual Journeys, and equally gifted at usurping God's place as Judge and Jury in the many trials that come our way as a couple.

   Given:  ...and this is the hard part.  Regardless of how things SHOULD be, I am, and may always be, the partner that emotionally, (and probably spiritually), cares the most about our married relationship.  That puts me in a position of responsibility that I cannot shrug off or angrily shake off as not belonging to me.  I am first and foremost a child of the Living God.  While man may not afford me this dignity...it is still mine.  What God has granted is so.  I am the only person that has the ability to remove myself from the place He has for me.  No one else can do that.  

  So...If I feel shaken, I am the person to cling to the Rock.  If I feel wounded, I am the one that must seek healing.  If I have sinned, I am the one to seek repentance.  HOWEVER...regardless of how those words look on the screen...these movements I make are always with the end goal that WE will be stronger for it...WE will be healed...WE will be forgiven.  It is not personal survival that is the goal...it is Salvation for two who have become one.

   "Likewise you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives..." 1 Peter 3:1  For some of us, submission means simply keeping our mouths shut in the face of difficulty.  ...and therein lies my challenge for today!

       Love is the defining force of my marriage.  I had hoped that it would be our love for each other...romance and happiness.  What I have received and continually seek is something far more...Divine Love and Eternal Joy.  These are guaranteed in the shadow of His wing. What matters is that Love is happening, healing and drawing us.  The pain inflicted in marriage is a gift that sends us running to the Father...and hopefully running back to our spouses with our hearts full of His love and our arms ready to share it. Peace.

Puzzles

I can't believe it has been a week since I last posted!  So much has happened!  My 48th Birthday, a son diagnosed with Scoliosis, and my oldest son diagnosed with Lyme's Disease.   To whom do I forward the request to SLOW THIS TRAIN DOWN!!!!?  

   On the other hand, God created us with a great capacity to handle things and still be "mulling" at the same time.  I should take a moment to state that I use my "mulling" time far less efficiently than I should.  Usually I'm having imaginary conversations in which my logic is irrefutable, and my aggravations are expressed in such a way as the imaginary listener knows EXACTLY how wrong they've been, how deeply they've hurt me, how sorry they are and then all is well.  (Before the "all is well" part, I usually start to feel guilty and try to segue into prayer...but it's a hard shift to make because I've been center stage for whole minutes at a time by this point!)

   Anyway, back to the "mulling".    I've been thinking about what we, as wives, want more than anything.  Most of us would say that to be the center of our husband's lives would solve a whole heck of a lot of problems.  To know where we stand, and to know that the place we have in their hearts and minds is at the top of the list.  This is not something we feel very often.  From wedding plans to setting up house to babies, teens and married children...I think we feel (accurately) that our husbands are content to let us plan, meddle, discipline, teach, cook and enjoy family life.  Their role is to provide the infrastructure and solve problems that may arise with that infrastructure.  They need a place for themselves to come home to ...but a place that is kept at a bit of a distance.  They watch while we live.  I think what they see is often bewildering to them, but deep down they know that the home is essential to the earth spinning in orbit, and equally essential to them getting supper at a decent hour! Something I admire about men is that they are, for the most part, willing to be bewildered by us.  They see us as enigmas that do not need to be solved by them.

    As women, we tend to see our husbands as puzzles that need solving, and WE are the ones to do it!  ( I laugh as I write this, knowing how perfect my husband could be if he'd just let me get to work!)  I always start with the edges, but if my eye catches an easy section, I may switch over to that for a little while, and if I see someone else working on a different section, I may just look for a piece or two for them...We see it all, the whole picture, complete with no pieces missing.  We know how it needs to fit together.  However, and here is the hard part...Most men don't even LIKE puzzles!

    So what do I do with this heart that aches to fit close to the heart of another?  This need to know that my emotional home is as dear to my husband as it is to me?  How do I get past the suspicion that the love I need and want is not within the heart of my husband to give?   What I need and want is a very good thing.  We were created out of Love to live for all eternity in Love.  The holes we feel inside are to be filled, absolutely by Love.   It is also true that this Love can only be given by one Man...but that Man is Jesus.

   There may come a day when my husband looks at me with his heart in his eyes and his lips filled with joy that we have been granted this life together.  But I'm not counting on it!  My Challenge:  Remain so open to the love of Christ that I can "laugh at the days to come", love my husband through grumpiness, even rudeness.  Be grateful to him for the sacrifices he makes in order for our home to be Our Home... and treasure the moments in which he chooses to "drop in" for a little while.  I suspect that as we grow older and the children move away, this dynamic changes and the "dropping in" turns to far more "extended visits"....but for now he's busy hunting and gathering, protecting and fighting for us as best he knows how.  May he always find the fire warm when he comes home.

    I'm not sure this is the most satisfying mulling I've done in my life...but it'll do for now!

Crying in my pillow

I was hurt the other day.  Public humiliation (there were other non-family members present) that was truly undeserved.  "Unfair", "foul", and "if only you could get a taste of your own medicine" were phrases that immediately came to mind.  Then, of course, the loftier thoughts of..."I'm not going to reduce myself to that level and respond in kind".  What DIDN'T happen was an immediate turning of my cheek, or forgiveness so genuine I was able to re-enter the conversation with poise, letting the wrong roll off my back like so much water off a duck.  No, that didn't happen.  Two nights later, I was still smarting, and knowing that I had some work to do. 

   I know I've already spoken of how much I love to work.  Give me a nice ottoman, good book, box of Whitman's samplers, pot of tea...I could think about work all day!  

   However, since starting this blog, I feel a sort of accountability to try and practice what I'm writing about.  So I lay there, staring at the darkness and pictured Christ's face in front of me.  I didn't hear the words...but I immediately thought them..."What REALLY matters?  What is MOST important?"  and the answer was just as immediate..."Salvation.  Redemption.  Sanctification."   They were achieved for me and my husband through the public spectacle of Christ's Passion.  My little Passion could carry a lot of weight if joined to the great Sacrifice of Christ.  My gift of unasked for forgiveness is seen by my Savior.  My will to continue in love when I'm smarting from pain is not wasted in God's economy.  Again...there is the hope of resurrection, and I want my husband there by my side, face shining in God's glory when our Father welcomes us home.  Pray for me, unknown sisters on this path...as I pray for you.

Spirals instead of circles

  I recently took a class on Christian Spirituality. I kept being referred to circles...and I kept being annoyed. Circles are complete, flat and enclosed. Until I enter my heavenly reward I am incomplete, many layered and constantly opening new doors...or having them opened for me and being shoved through! However, the frustrations I face in this life often feel VERY circular. The last dish is dried and put in the cupboard as I pull out the pots for making the next meal. My hands are hardly dry when I'm grabbing the bottle of Dawn and starting in on the next sink-full. The last piece of laundry is placed in the drawer and there's already items piling up in the basket for the next load. The argument starts and VERY familiar phrases start popping out...in fact, sometimes, it's like reading a script...a well worn one, at that.
   I think it's probably good that I don't want circles in my life. At the very least I'd like to see my life unfold in a tightly sprung corkscrew pattern...At the most a widely stretched spiral, like a DNA helix stretching up, begging to be climbed and conquered! Either way, when I'm given the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the will to act, I can move up a notch, instead of simply finding myself "back at the beginning". Even if I slide backwards, there's still the hope of upward movement.
   There are words I think of as "circle" words. And I use them all the time, because I'm tremendously inconsistent and host a great pity party! They are not bad words, and serve their purpose very well if looking at life in a spiral sense. But in the circle sense they are suffocating..."the struggle", "the uphill climb", "heavy labor", "taking up our cross"...I find myself thinking..."just another 50 years...that's all there is, and then some relief." Oh, to jump off the circle onto the spiral and KNOW that the struggle produces a victory, the uphill climb brings me to a mountaintop from which to fly, the heavy labor brings forth a child in which the hope of the world may reside, and the cross leads to a day of resurrection and bright shining light and joy.

  Challenge for today: When I wash the dishes for the 3rd or 4rth time, or take down laundry in order to make room for more to hang, I am going to talk to myself OUT LOUD. I am going to speak the names of my family members, including me...and verbally bless them. I am going to speak aloud a happy memory of each, and a hope for their future. We are a project that is moving ahead, after all. We're not simply going round in circles.

Pumpkin seeds

   While most would consider the care and running of a farm as "Managing"...I have started to use the word (within the safe confines of my brain) "mangling" to describe our attempts at farming!  We've all decided over that past three years that Gentlemen Farmers had the right idea!  Ride about "the back 40," and tell the REAL manager what needs to be done...then go home for coffee.  Despite this painful realization of our shortcomings as farmers, every now and then we see the fruit of our labors.  Usually in an abundance that we simply can't keep up with!  This last spring we planted a pumpkin patch.  I heard the words, I saw the planting...but it wasn't until all was said and done that I heard my husband say gleefully that THESE pumpkins would weigh in at 40 lbs.!  Each!  (At this point the gentleman farmer's wife goes to the kitchen and orders the maid to get ready because the wife will be going on an extended tour of the Continent which will end when the last of the pumpkin has been canned (by the maid).)
   So...what has this to do with marriage?  Well...there's a lot of waste going on at my house these days.  An unconscionable number of pumpkins have frosted and wilted on our front porch.  I have made, count them, two pumpkin pies, 1 pumpkin curry (which was excellent by the way), and roasted three trays of pumpkin seeds.  My problem with pumpkins is how much work they are!  There, I've confessed it!  As I scraped out 3 of the smaller sized ones this weekend, I kept marveling at the bounty represented by these squash.  The verse about God giving us more than we need or ask for kept coming to mind.  These little pumpkins (thank goodness that only a few reached the 40 lb. goal) were FILLED with seeds.  An entire patch could be planted from two small pumpkins.
     But there is nothing easy (unless you are a gentleman farmer's wife) about processing the pumpkin to the point of enjoyment.  There is slime and mess and boiling and baking or roasting.  In the end, after all that work, there is a pie or two that is heavenly...and a tray or two of seeds that disappear in minutes.   That is my modern Milly's way of looking at it.  A whole lot of work...for what?
    However, with my new resolve (see post one...I think)...I knew there was something more amidst the slime of gutting a pumpkin.   It will surprise no one that I did not have any volunteers to help process the pumpkins.  If I had asked (and we do need to do that as well), I would have received help.  But what I want is someone to swoop in, acknowledge the load...and then take over!   I've wanted that in my role as parent...and especially as wife.  Someone tell me what to do...and help me do it!
        Pumpkin seeds are silly compared to the messes we can find ourselves in.  Broken trust, financial terrors, rebellious children, automaton marriages, and the never ending fatigue...These are all messy, slimy facts of most married lives.  They represent hard work, "scraping, boiling and roasting" with sometimes seemingly little to show for it.  EACH pumpkin in my cellar will need to be processed.  EACH day of my marriage needs my attention.  I think of all the opportunities I've wasted because I wasn't willing to do the work!  It is easy for me to see the work my husband needs to do!  It is easy to feel resentment when he doesn't do it!  It's HARD to pick up my own sword, beat it into a plowshare and start the work of tending the garden of my marriage without saying to the Father..."But he's supposed to be here too..."    The labor of figuring out what to do and how to do it...and then DOING it must be worth every minute.  We are not alone.  Christ is present. His Spirit is gentle... but when we keep our inner selves still, He can be heard.  Countless women who surround us or have gone before us are "our great cloud of witnesses" to the value of investing our own selves in our families. 
   Here's a challenge for me...and anyone who may happen upon this blog.  The next time my husband "hovers" over me while I'm trying to get something done, despite ANYTHING that has occurred (over the past 30 years or so...) I'm going to spin around, throw my arms around him and give him a big, sloppy kiss!  I want to fall in love with him, help him, encourage him and even "mother" him now and then.  If, just for today, I can grow in holiness by surprising my husband with my love (which comes from the Father through His Son, whether I'm feeling it or not) perhaps we'll BOTH draw closer to the Sapphire Throne.   Perhaps, now and then, we'll find ourselves working on the garden together!...

The Virtue of Faith: God's Plan

      Without apology, and with a whole lot of historical precedent, I stand with the Church in my belief that men and women did not simply crawl out of the slime and evolve to the point of setting up house together.  God created man...then woman...and he did so with the intent that they be a family, working together, having children, and raising them to be Godly husbands and wives, etc.  In getting married to my husband, I opted into God's plan.  I fully expect that the way for this to work BEST is for me to follow HIS rules (God's, that is!)  This constitutes the application of faith to my marriage.
   Doesn't that sound nice?  What I say I believe and how I behave are so often at odds with each other!  My areas of control are my own life, and the lives of my children up to a certain age.  If I follow God's rules, those areas are continually being submitted to Him.  Instead I often find myself wallowing in "what if" scenarios that  have me scrambling for more control in order to keep the inevitable collapse of the family from happening.  When my husband is late from work, I have him dead in a ditch, no Will signed, the children shipped off to foster care and me in an insane assylum ...all within ten minutes and half a package of cookies.  When he doesn't apologize for being late...well...after what he has put me through, it only seems fair to tell him a thing or two.  If he dares to make light of this crisis, I know once and for all that I really don't mean a thing to him.  OK...I exaggerate...but only a bit. 
   The Christian Faith provides a lovely alternative to all the drama.  Submission to God's plan for us provides us with "a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light."  His yoke is truth...Absolute, blindingly beautiful Truth.  It is to be relied upon.  His burden is Love.  What we do out of genuine love is not heavy.  Truth tells us that we are fashioned and loved by God.  So are our children.  So is our husband.  The dignity with which each of us should be accorded is majestic and God-given.  When I fail to accord this to my husband, I diminish him in my own eyes.  This can have a profound effect on his own self perception, as well as the way my children view him. 
   I'm not advocating a fantasy.  As wives and mothers we are privy to the worst of what our husbands and children can come up with (as they are with us).  However, despite their willful actions, they remain God's own.  My participation in His Plan will always see them through His eyes. 
  Actually, most important of all is to see myself through His eyes.  If I could grant to every woman I know one thing...it would be this.  To know in her heart of hearts how loved she is by God.  From Creation, we've known that being loved is that which will most surely satisfy us.  Being regarded as a treasure of great beauty is what will most energize us.  Here is what Jesus says to you: "You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes." (Song of Solomon 4:9)  In loving us so personally, he makes us worthy of that love. 
   It is a mystery of the Faith that each of us can be the center of God's heart.  But it is also a Truth...beautiful and to be relied upon.  When I am living in the awareness of being completely loved by God, I look so very differently at my husband.  I stop thinking about what my husband owes me and start looking for a way to share with him the bounty that's been given me.  Transforming Love...God's Plan for me, for my marriage.   (now to live it more than 5 minutes a week...or month...)
   Many thanks to my dear friend who has encouraged me to write.  I feel very small when I think of how many times I've had to pick myself up from the field of battle through my own fault.  But I believe this call to marriage is not only doable.  It is a field we can eventually stand on in triumph, swords flashing and banners waving to the glory of God and the Happiness of our families.  Faith, hope and love, baby! 



  

Day One

   Having thought, prayed and procrastinated for over a year...I'm finally getting started on a dream.  This blog may be read by no one but me.  At this point I find that prospect far less daunting than having millions of followers who check my grammar and spelling and political correctness along the way.  I should say on this first day of all that my concern will not be with political correctness, (although I hope my grammar and spelling don't stand in the way of my words!).  I am far more interested in theological correctness. 
   I write as a Christian first, a wife and mother second.  This is what matters to me, and I believe matters to many.  It is my hope that some of my thoughts, struggles, goals and prayers will encourage other Christian wives to "stay the course".  Isolation is usually not as absolute as it feels. Women of faith are not all pretty, excited, upper middle class comedians.  We are also poor, overweight, depressed and struggling.    I use such negative terms because we live with those tapes in our heads.  We play these tapes when we glance in the mirror, look at our unmade beds and unwashed dishes and listen to our children fight over nothing, and ourselves battle with our husbands over ego boundaries and checkbooks.  
   I have been married for over 22 years.  For at least the first 15 I saw clearly how the problems I had to deal with were primarily my husband's fault.  It seems easy to say that I've finally grown past that.  It would be a lie, however.  My focus is easily shifted from Christ and His work in my life to my husband's inability to grow up.  The current culture of women supports this.  Our conversations often affirm all our irritations and criticisms of the men we are married to.  Our husbands deserve better.  We deserve better.  God wants to give us so much more than that fleeting satisfaction of feeling superior, which is usually followed by a good bout of resentment, anger and/or depression. 
   If anyone cares to join me on this written journey, it would be my pleasure to have you.  Self pity is not an option.  I will try at all costs to avoid classic co-dependence.  My goal is to present my husband to the the Lord on Judgement day as my most beloved companion, cherished friend, and fellow Christian.  I will no longer wait for this to be his own goal with regards to me.  That is between himself and God.  I have me to work with.  My spiritual resources are limitless and all the love that is required is there for the asking. 
     P.S.  I chose the title for this blog because I have a problem with DOING.  BEING works great for me(...although it has encouraged the self pity problem!)  My new watchword is "pray first..then get up and do the dishes!"