Castles

If I don't write now,  nothing will be written.  I know myself too well. Sigh. So  I'm grasping at some of the less banal thoughts that have been teasing my mind of late.  I've been reading in the Psalms about the heritage we have in the Lord.  I realize the Psalmist was writing about the People of Isreal.  That Jerusalem meant the physical city, that the thought of Gentiles being a part of the inheritance of Abraham was probably not on the psalmist's radar screen.  However, as Christians we know that we ARE a part and parcel of the true People of God, the sheep of his pasture.
   A couple of years ago I read the book Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict the XVI. (I highly recommend it, by the way.)  He had a paragraph or two on the the meek inheriting the earth. In this brief aside, he talks about the importance of people having their own "place" to worship.  It all falls under the "freedom of religion", probably, but in a simple, homespun way, I think it applies to each individual as well.  Where is my place to worship?  I obviously go to church and worship with fellow Christians as often as possible.  But my calling as a homemaker challenges me to maintain my home-life in such a way that my children, my spouse and myself will find these four walls a cathedral when we need it, (Sing as loud and long as you want, without worry)...a chapel when we need to get on our knees and do the business of intercession...a sanctuary for those whose home is a threatening place to be...a university in the Kingdom of God when it comes to our conversation.   
  Ummm...I have a ways to go here.  However, as a Spiritual child of the promise to Abraham I need never worry about running out of things to do!  The blessings I live under, are not simply for my benefit...they are to be shared, and possibly more importantly, passed down to the next generation of Father Abraham.  
    Meanwhile...doesn't this background make you think of blueberry yoghurt?  
    Update on the whole Prayer and Dishes from my perspective.  I'm now more in the dishes camp.  Especially with a new "diet".  Hard to keep a balance.  May our healthier bodies be home to healthier souls! 

The dreaded Telegram

    Not too long ago, one of the most difficult "surprises" to endure was the doorbell ringing, a telegram awaiting on the other side.  We see it in movies and read about it in books.  Someone died or is missing in action.  Someone we love, or at the very least need.  The telegram was a communication that had to be encountered and demanded a response of some kind. In many ways, it seemed cruel and  dispassionate.  But it got the job done, and the life that was changed was forced to move on in whatever way was chosen.
    For those of us who struggle enough in our marriages that we seek outside council, the first piece of advice we are given is ALWAYS..."Well, you need to talk about it."  There are all kinds of "rules" to "talking about it"...and we listen respectfully, because we know that this kind of advice is helpful to many.  We also know that we have not been sitting on our duffs for so many years attempting nothing in the way of communication.  For many of us, our spouses view communication as a dreaded telegram.  Something to be gotten through as quickly as possible.  If the news is bad, there's going to be yelling, blaming, deflecting, etc.  And "We need to talk..." almost ALWAYS involves bad news.
  So here's my take on the necessary aspect of communication in marriage.  Again, this is for those who are valiantly striving towards the goal of a good marriage, but doing so with a different tool box than many wives seem to have.  I advise a love triangle.  Our communication needs to be daily, even hourly made with our Lord.  He handles bad news as graciously and lovingly as good news (and he likes them both!).  He is able to listen to ALL our words without being burdened or threatened. 
Hmm...this brings up a side note.  I love the writings of C.S. Lewis.  In his novel That Hideous Strength, two younger wives are fussing about how their husbands don't listen to them when they talk.  Mrs. Dimble, older and wiser replies:  " ...did it ever come into your mind to ask whether anyone could listen to all we say?"  We, as women, often think in words.  I know that sounds silly...but we're chattering to ourselves in our heads, and often out of our mouths.  Perhaps we should be content with that, and not expect others to keep up!  End of the side note! 
    As I was saying before I chattered an interruption, I've come to believe that the bulk of communication that needs to happen in a marriage, needs to happen with Christ first.  If HE wants me to speak of something with my husband, I will know it.  Too often my EGO needs to be championed, and I speak out of that need, rather than humbly submitting my hurt to the Lord.   The most important communication I can have with my spouse is to communicate the unconditional love of God for him that is hopefully growing within me.  He is a Prince in the heart of God.  Even an unbeliever is an intentional creation of the heavenly Father.  Am I able to effectively telegram this message to him, even on "the bad" days? It is the most important communique I can offer.    

Another's Wounds

I'm determined to write a minimum of once a week on this blog...but this day is difficult.  There are so many things running through my mind and heart.  Sometimes we find ourselves the witness to wounds that cannot be bound up.  There is no oil that can be applied, no bandage that would be adequate.  There is simply the expanse of time to offer.  Time that is not only disinterested, but seems to mock us with it's snail-paced method of healing.  Life simply hurts sometimes.  

   There IS something to do.  It is quiet.  No one needs to know, and it is a method available to us at all times.  We pray.  We pray.  We pray.  To verbally try to come up with answers and a plan of action would not only be annoying, it may also be counter to the will of God.  So little is imposed and yet so much can be done within the quiet that prayer allows...both for those we lift up in prayer as well as in dealing with our own sense of inadequacy in the face of a loved one's woundedness. 

   This day let us pray.  And be still and wait.  God hears.  He will answer us in ways we can neither dream of or imagine. 

Dieting

    With the New Year comes a rehashed resolution...probably something I've "put on THE LIST" every year since I was 12.  Lose some weight!  Lose LOTS of weight!  Become healthy and strong.  That's more important than wanting something cheesy, or "needing" some chocolate, right?  So...here we go again.  

     This time there is a difference.  I have guide...a book recommended to one of my sons by his doctor.  I have the support and company of my family.  They are all eating what I make available, and exercising to boot.  Everything I own that is a dairy product, all bread, all alcohol, all junk food, all refined sugar is now residing in the cold room we have in the basement.  I've included processed food as well (except for frozen fruits and vegetables.)  Could this be the year my resolution comes through?  I don't know, I surely hope so.  But all this change has brought about some thoughts about marriage.

     For over 20 years I've been cooking the same way.  Because of some physical problems, attempts at exercising have usually fallen flat after a few weeks, so my muscles hardly know what exertion means.  Now, overnight, (we started this on the 3rd of January), the cells in my body are completely bewildered...and letting me know about it.  My muscles hurt.  My appetite tells me the meal isn't complete without a piece of bread or cheese.  My brain seems consumed with the subject of food...no matter how I try to refocus on something else.  The sacrifices seem gargantuan.  By the end of the week I should be thin!

     Well...of course I'm not.  I should be overjoyed that I've lost 4 pounds in a week.  But I feel weary looking into the cheeseless abyss of my future, and my need to loose 20 times that amount.  (OK, cheese is allowed after the first 12 days, but I'm nervous about overdoing it since it's such a big part of my happiness.  ...and that's a confession if ever I heard one...)

   So it goes with marriage.  For over twenty years I've functioned more or less the same way.  It took me a long time to see that my "victim status" was helpful to neither my husband nor myself.  Only within the last few years have I realized that my role in the marriage is to do more than simply "react", but More must always be motivated by Godly love.  As I realize truths such as these, I want to see immediate results.  I want to be blissfully happy today, and not have to go through years of focused spiritual muscle building, eliptical praying, stair-master openness to the Will of God and calorie counting sacrifice.  I want to arrive without the journey. 

   But this journey is different.  I have a guide...a Book my parents taught me to read when I was a little girl, but is only now becoming a rich source of daily spiritual nutrition to me.  I have the support and company of a friend who wants to effect change in her own marriage...loosing the old junk food patterns of blame and gossip, and picking up the challenge to love with all the strength God gives us, even when there seems to be little or no reward.  If my "marriage joints and tendons" are sore, it's because I'm using them.  And the only way for them to stop hurting is for me to continue on, to never give up.  

   I should add that the diet, after the first 12 days, admonishes a complete rest every 7th day.  If I want a slice of chocolate cake, I can have one, with this exception:  I need to make each bite, a FIRST bite.  Truly appreciate what I'm enjoying!  So to with our marriages.  God grants us Sabbaths...and we need to recognize them and appreciate them when they come by simply enjoying our husbands and children and all the flavor they bring into our lives. 

     Challenge for today:  Make each event this day be a "first bite" of enjoyment, with every member of my family.  They are so very wonderful! (better than cake!)

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.