A friend of ours wrote this to us in a card she gave us on our wedding day, way back when. . .
(From the biblical Book of Proverbs; chapter 5, verses 18-19):
May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
A loving hind, a graceful doe - may her breasts satisfy you always, may you be ever captivated by her love.
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Oh, I am; I truly am. . .
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marriage. Show all posts
Monday, November 16, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name?
These are some psychotically busy days in the Jones family household. We've got two graduations this year - 6F from 8th grade, and 4M from high school (have I told you that before now? I can't remember). With all of the attendant awards ceremonies, class trips, graduation open-houses, etc. If we only went to half of the open-houses for kids in our community, and gave each of them $10, that would run well over $100. But 4M is an honor student (so he's been invited to something like five different awards ceremonies, all of which have entailed me getting out of work early and driving at least an hour to be there), and some kind of 'Mr. Popularity' (how did this kid come from me?), with kids from his own school, and also the Catholic high school, which he didn't even attend. So we've got at least double the normal number of open-house invitations. If we wanted to, we could be getting free food for a month's worth of weekends (Friday evening thru Sunday evening), starting last week. Well, not exactly free; I still have enough of a conscience that I feel like I ought to give a gift, if I go to a kid's open-house.
And, the graduation festivities mean that relatives are visiting from out-of-town. My birth-mother arrived last night, and since she's on California-body-time, we stayed up WAY too late for me needing to be up for work this morning. She's here for commencement this weekend; we'll have other relatives coming for 4M's open-house next weekend.
And the other three kids who still live at home have got their own end-of-school stuff - parties, special outfits, etc, etc. 7M signed up for two baseball teams this year - a spring league and a summer league - and of course, this week is the last week for the spring league, but also the first week for the summer league (you might think that the two leagues might talk to each other about their schedules, especially since a lot of the same people are running both leagues; but you would be wrong). Yesterday was 1F's birthday; 2F's is in a week-and-a-half. Molly is in charge of a day-camp for K-2 kids, which runs the last week of June. No problem, though, because we're also signed on for a four-day retreat the weekend just before the day-camp. And 4M leaves for a 2-week mission trip that same week (with all the prepatory churning that goes along with that).
Molly and I also signed up to be discussion-leaders for a Theology of the Body class at church, for Friday evenings in May. Looking back, we probably should've passed on that one, but it was just too appealing to let it drop.
Our family is having a family vacation this year, for the first time in a few years - a friend of ours offered us his cabin Up North. But that could only fit in the week immediately after Molly's day-camp, so we'll be packing and getting stuff together for vacation the same time as Molly is running her day-camp.
Crazy, no? But, I don't know if I've mentioned before or not, that, with the iffiness of my ongoing employment status, and all the kids finally being in school all day, Molly has taken on a couple part-time jobs this year. So, even before all the craziness hit, she was struggling with the adjustment phase of how to get her regular stuff - laundry, cooking, shopping - done, with 12-15 less available hours in the week. I've tried to help with some of the shopping, but my long commute doesn't afford me a lot of time. So, my poor wife has been pretty overwhelmed, even before the June looniness hit.
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One of the nice things about having been married for almost 29 years, is that we can sort-of 'see coming' the stresses of our schedule, and make a few allowances for it. We try to have a weekly husband-wife meeting, where we touch base on the calendar stuff, but also just spend some time in each other's presence. When life gets crazy like this, the weekly meetings can easily fall by the wayside, and we know from experience that shortfalls in communication lead to stress, as the 'left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing', so to speak. So, we know that times are gonna be stressful, and we just try to account for that, and be extra patient with each other. And make use of the little 10-15-minute snatches of time we do get with each other. It ain't great, but in times like this, sometimes it's the best you can do. . .
And, the graduation festivities mean that relatives are visiting from out-of-town. My birth-mother arrived last night, and since she's on California-body-time, we stayed up WAY too late for me needing to be up for work this morning. She's here for commencement this weekend; we'll have other relatives coming for 4M's open-house next weekend.
And the other three kids who still live at home have got their own end-of-school stuff - parties, special outfits, etc, etc. 7M signed up for two baseball teams this year - a spring league and a summer league - and of course, this week is the last week for the spring league, but also the first week for the summer league (you might think that the two leagues might talk to each other about their schedules, especially since a lot of the same people are running both leagues; but you would be wrong). Yesterday was 1F's birthday; 2F's is in a week-and-a-half. Molly is in charge of a day-camp for K-2 kids, which runs the last week of June. No problem, though, because we're also signed on for a four-day retreat the weekend just before the day-camp. And 4M leaves for a 2-week mission trip that same week (with all the prepatory churning that goes along with that).
Molly and I also signed up to be discussion-leaders for a Theology of the Body class at church, for Friday evenings in May. Looking back, we probably should've passed on that one, but it was just too appealing to let it drop.
Our family is having a family vacation this year, for the first time in a few years - a friend of ours offered us his cabin Up North. But that could only fit in the week immediately after Molly's day-camp, so we'll be packing and getting stuff together for vacation the same time as Molly is running her day-camp.
Crazy, no? But, I don't know if I've mentioned before or not, that, with the iffiness of my ongoing employment status, and all the kids finally being in school all day, Molly has taken on a couple part-time jobs this year. So, even before all the craziness hit, she was struggling with the adjustment phase of how to get her regular stuff - laundry, cooking, shopping - done, with 12-15 less available hours in the week. I've tried to help with some of the shopping, but my long commute doesn't afford me a lot of time. So, my poor wife has been pretty overwhelmed, even before the June looniness hit.
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One of the nice things about having been married for almost 29 years, is that we can sort-of 'see coming' the stresses of our schedule, and make a few allowances for it. We try to have a weekly husband-wife meeting, where we touch base on the calendar stuff, but also just spend some time in each other's presence. When life gets crazy like this, the weekly meetings can easily fall by the wayside, and we know from experience that shortfalls in communication lead to stress, as the 'left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing', so to speak. So, we know that times are gonna be stressful, and we just try to account for that, and be extra patient with each other. And make use of the little 10-15-minute snatches of time we do get with each other. It ain't great, but in times like this, sometimes it's the best you can do. . .
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Chrysostom, Yet again
“Say to [your wife], ‘Our time here is brief and fleeting, but if we are pleasing to God, we can exchange this life for the Kingdom to come. Then we will be perfectly one, both with Christ and each other, and our pleasure will know no bounds. I value your love above all things, and nothing would be so bitter or painful to me as our being at odds with each other. Even if I lose everything, any affliction is tolerable if you will be true to me.’”
- from Homily XX on Ephesians
Once again, St. John captures the spiritual core of the marriage relationship, way better than you might ever expect from a celibate bishop who lived 16 centuries ago.
And he even manages to address a ‘concern’ of mine, that I blogged about, once upon a time. . .
And besides all that, the concept of ‘even if I lose everything’ is much more, uh, current than I might wish it were. . .
- from Homily XX on Ephesians
Once again, St. John captures the spiritual core of the marriage relationship, way better than you might ever expect from a celibate bishop who lived 16 centuries ago.
And he even manages to address a ‘concern’ of mine, that I blogged about, once upon a time. . .
And besides all that, the concept of ‘even if I lose everything’ is much more, uh, current than I might wish it were. . .
Friday, March 27, 2009
16 Centuries Ahead of His Time?
Molly and I have this quote from St. John Chrysostom framed, and sitting on our dresser:
“As if she were gold receiving purest gold, the woman receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure, and within her it is nourished, cherished, and refined. It is mingled with her own substance and she then returns it as a child! The child is a bridge connecting father to mother, so the three become one flesh. . . And here the bridge is formed from the substance of each!”
- from Homily XII on Colossians
The early Church fathers have a reputation, not entirely undeserved, for being a little uptight when it comes to sexual matters (Origen and St. Augustine, for two large examples). But God bless St. John. Here he describes sex in terms any married couple could appreciate – ‘the woman receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure. . .’ Yeah, that fits with our experience. And his description of the child as the ‘one flesh’ of husband and wife has always resonated with me. He carries strong echoes (or, more truly, foreshadowings) of the Theology of the Body, 16 centuries before the fact.
So, thank God for St. John Chrysostom. And I would heartily recommend to any of my blog-friends the rich little book of his homilies On Marriage and Family Life.
“As if she were gold receiving purest gold, the woman receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure, and within her it is nourished, cherished, and refined. It is mingled with her own substance and she then returns it as a child! The child is a bridge connecting father to mother, so the three become one flesh. . . And here the bridge is formed from the substance of each!”
- from Homily XII on Colossians
The early Church fathers have a reputation, not entirely undeserved, for being a little uptight when it comes to sexual matters (Origen and St. Augustine, for two large examples). But God bless St. John. Here he describes sex in terms any married couple could appreciate – ‘the woman receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure. . .’ Yeah, that fits with our experience. And his description of the child as the ‘one flesh’ of husband and wife has always resonated with me. He carries strong echoes (or, more truly, foreshadowings) of the Theology of the Body, 16 centuries before the fact.
So, thank God for St. John Chrysostom. And I would heartily recommend to any of my blog-friends the rich little book of his homilies On Marriage and Family Life.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
The Love of My Life
A blogger recently wrote me an e-mail, in which she said, among other things, “You entered into marriage with the love of your life.” And I know what she is talking about. Molly is indeed The Love of My Life, and blessed am I because of it.
A few years ago, Molly began a little daily tradition - when I would come home at the end of the day and she heard the back door open just before dinner-time, she'd call out, “Is that The Love of My Life?” Which was (is) wonderfully heart-warming for me. I usually respond by saying, “I sure hope so!” And in recent years, the younger kids have joined in the fun. So that, these days, when I open the back door, 8M will usually come running; when he sees that it’s me, he’ll run to Molly, calling out as he goes, “Mom! It’s The Love of Your Life! The Love of Your Life is home!” It doesn’t get any better than that, let me tell you.
But, truth to tell, I didn’t marry the Love of My Life; I’m married to the Love of My Life, but she wasn’t that when we got married. Some of you actually did marry the Love of Your Life – your high-school sweetheart, maybe, or someone whom you just knew, within minutes of your first meeting, would end up sharing your life with you. That wasn’t the case for Molly and me. When we got married, I was marrying a very good friend, someone with whom I shared several important life goals and aims, with whom I got along very well, and whose company I enjoyed enough to think that we could actually have a life together. She agreed with me enough to accept my proposal; we got married, and la, la, how the life went on.
It’s almost funny to look back on it now, but Molly still tells people that our first year of marriage was the worst year of her life. Her adjustment to the new ‘life-together’ was a bit harder than mine, I guess. . .
But, somewhere along the line, over the ensuing 25 years, she became the Love of My Life. We put in the necessary work, we shared our lives, we suffered together, and in the process of all that, our two lives became one, to the point that I can’t imagine my life without her. This woman, whom I liked and admired way back when, has proven to be even more solid, more admirable, and more amazingly wonderful than I thought she was.
God is good. . .
(9 comments)
A few years ago, Molly began a little daily tradition - when I would come home at the end of the day and she heard the back door open just before dinner-time, she'd call out, “Is that The Love of My Life?” Which was (is) wonderfully heart-warming for me. I usually respond by saying, “I sure hope so!” And in recent years, the younger kids have joined in the fun. So that, these days, when I open the back door, 8M will usually come running; when he sees that it’s me, he’ll run to Molly, calling out as he goes, “Mom! It’s The Love of Your Life! The Love of Your Life is home!” It doesn’t get any better than that, let me tell you.
But, truth to tell, I didn’t marry the Love of My Life; I’m married to the Love of My Life, but she wasn’t that when we got married. Some of you actually did marry the Love of Your Life – your high-school sweetheart, maybe, or someone whom you just knew, within minutes of your first meeting, would end up sharing your life with you. That wasn’t the case for Molly and me. When we got married, I was marrying a very good friend, someone with whom I shared several important life goals and aims, with whom I got along very well, and whose company I enjoyed enough to think that we could actually have a life together. She agreed with me enough to accept my proposal; we got married, and la, la, how the life went on.
It’s almost funny to look back on it now, but Molly still tells people that our first year of marriage was the worst year of her life. Her adjustment to the new ‘life-together’ was a bit harder than mine, I guess. . .
But, somewhere along the line, over the ensuing 25 years, she became the Love of My Life. We put in the necessary work, we shared our lives, we suffered together, and in the process of all that, our two lives became one, to the point that I can’t imagine my life without her. This woman, whom I liked and admired way back when, has proven to be even more solid, more admirable, and more amazingly wonderful than I thought she was.
God is good. . .
(9 comments)
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Only My Love Does It Good To Me
There are times when I’m simply overwhelmed by the wonderful-ness of my wife. Times when I just look at her and ask myself, “How is it that the most amazing woman in the universe threw her life in with me?” And I’m just in awe of my good fortune.
There might be a few women in the world (stress on ‘might’ and ‘few’) who are physically more beautiful than Molly, but when I consider the strength of her character, the beauty of her soul and spirit, she blows them all away. I’ll say it again – she is the most amazing woman in the universe. I almost feel bad for the rest of you guys that she’s my wife. Almost.
And the thing is, I’m well aware that I did nothing in particular to deserve her. I’m still not real sure why, all those years ago, she brought that rubber ball to me, when it seems like there must have been lots of more desirable guys than me available to her. But I’m glad she did. I’ve described previously how we knew each other pretty well before we ever got to the point of courtship. And that’s what’s most amazing of all to me – she’s told me many times how God told her, before I even proposed to her, “What you see is what you get with him.” She had a pretty good, sober assessment of my character. AND SHE STILL MARRIED ME! That blows me away, and I’m grateful for it every single day I’m married to her.
And even now, after 26 years, I’m still blown away. She knows me way better now than she did back then, and she still throws her life in with mine. For all the clear-eyed, sober appraisal of my character she had when we were courting, there are lots of things, not all of them good, that she’s only learned from living with me for 26 years. And she still stays married to me. Amazing!
“Somewhere in my wicked, miserable past, I must have done something good.”
Simply flat-out amazing.
(5 comments)
There might be a few women in the world (stress on ‘might’ and ‘few’) who are physically more beautiful than Molly, but when I consider the strength of her character, the beauty of her soul and spirit, she blows them all away. I’ll say it again – she is the most amazing woman in the universe. I almost feel bad for the rest of you guys that she’s my wife. Almost.
And the thing is, I’m well aware that I did nothing in particular to deserve her. I’m still not real sure why, all those years ago, she brought that rubber ball to me, when it seems like there must have been lots of more desirable guys than me available to her. But I’m glad she did. I’ve described previously how we knew each other pretty well before we ever got to the point of courtship. And that’s what’s most amazing of all to me – she’s told me many times how God told her, before I even proposed to her, “What you see is what you get with him.” She had a pretty good, sober assessment of my character. AND SHE STILL MARRIED ME! That blows me away, and I’m grateful for it every single day I’m married to her.
And even now, after 26 years, I’m still blown away. She knows me way better now than she did back then, and she still throws her life in with mine. For all the clear-eyed, sober appraisal of my character she had when we were courting, there are lots of things, not all of them good, that she’s only learned from living with me for 26 years. And she still stays married to me. Amazing!
“Somewhere in my wicked, miserable past, I must have done something good.”
Simply flat-out amazing.
(5 comments)
Monday, October 23, 2006
Dueling Selfishness
I've been blogging here for about five months now, all told, and I've told you several great stories from Molly's and my lives. In the course of 26+ years of marriage together, we've really come a long way, and I've enjoyed sharing with you all some of what we've learned over the years.
But we're not this wonderfully saintly couple living in a faint glow of unearthly light. We can be as petty and selfish as anybody else; probably the biggest thing we've learned over the years is how to repent and apologize sooner than we used to.
From the beginning years of our marriage, our most persistent, uh, 'challenge' has been what I call 'Dueling Selfishness', or, as Molly puts it, 'My Needs; No, My Needs'. For various reasons, I think we both grew up being fairly accustomed to getting our own way. Which meant that we were ripe for some real choice ego-clashes when we were married. "Of course, you can easily see that I need thus-and-such, so you should just step aside and let me have my way." "But, it's even more obvious that you should defer to my needs, isn't it?" And so it went.
Over time, we got tired of the endless circle of 'My needs; no, my needs', and started learning to deal constructively with the situation. Sometimes, it meant one or the other of us had to defer to the other; sometimes it meant finding an agreeable compromise. But the most fundamental change was to our attitudes.
The biblical epistle to the Romans says, "Outdo one another in showing honor," and that was a real straightforward challenge to us. We had been outdoing one another in asserting our will, and here the apostle was urging us to outdo one another in looking after each other's good, rather than our own. And what a fundamental transformation that brought. Rather than trying to manipulate Molly so that I got what I wanted, I needed to simply look after her good; and likewise, she needed to look after mine before her own. And the result was that both our needs got met, without all the bickering and anxiety.
Of course, this entails a pretty significant 'leap of faith' - that, if I give up worrying about my own needs being met so as to look after Molly's, my needs will indeed be covered. And likewise for her. I honestly don't remember if one of us 'went first', hoping the other would 'catch on', or if it was something we worked out together, but in the fullness of time, the magic worked.
Someone has said that marriage is not a 50/50 proposition, it's a 100/100 proposition. That is, it's not about me giving half and Molly giving half; it's about both of us giving all we have - my life for hers, her life for mine. And it's not about 'keeping score' of who's putting in more or less than the other. We both just 'go all-in'.
And of course, we've learned this perfectly, and our marriage is a smoothly-running machine. . .
Uh, no - not really.
Just this past weekend, we had one of our classic 'Dueling Selfishness' quarrels. Molly got to feeling exhausted by the day-to-day work of running the Jones family household - shopping and cooking alone are a huge amount of work, especially the type of cooking she's doing to keep me in good health and (we hope) long life. So she got kind of cranky and snappy. . .
And I responded very sensitively and graciously, you can be sure - I told her that if having me alive and healthy was just too much for her, why I'd be happy to go back to 300 pounds and leave her a widow with kids at home. (See how helpful I was?).
And it went round and round like that for an hour or more, and both of us were feeling like the other had suddenly, inexplicably stopped caring about what happened to us. Until finally Molly stopped and said, "My needs; no, my needs".
The spell was broken, and we knew what we had to do. I had to shift my focus, and instead of making sure that I got what I wanted, I needed to think about what Molly needed, and how I could help that happen. And she needed to step back from ultimatums and assure me that I was worth it to her. And we both needed to apologize for the hurtful things we'd said.
And the thing is, those hurtful words don't just dissolve when the apology is made and accepted; they leave psychic wounds behind that take some time to heal. The 100/100 marriage takes a LOT of trust between spouses, and when trust is damaged, it isn't instantly built back up. But we're building some 'good history' with each other, and establishing a firm base of trust which we can stand on, even when some peripheral chunk of trust is damaged. Because we've got many years' worth of experience now that the other is looking out for our good, it's easier to treat specific instances of selfishness as aberrations.
So I want you to know that we aren't this perfect couple with a perfect marriage - I'm as selfish as anyone else, and I can be as petty and pissy as anyone else. But, by God's grace, we've learned how to be married in a good and life-giving way. . .
(15 comments)
But we're not this wonderfully saintly couple living in a faint glow of unearthly light. We can be as petty and selfish as anybody else; probably the biggest thing we've learned over the years is how to repent and apologize sooner than we used to.
From the beginning years of our marriage, our most persistent, uh, 'challenge' has been what I call 'Dueling Selfishness', or, as Molly puts it, 'My Needs; No, My Needs'. For various reasons, I think we both grew up being fairly accustomed to getting our own way. Which meant that we were ripe for some real choice ego-clashes when we were married. "Of course, you can easily see that I need thus-and-such, so you should just step aside and let me have my way." "But, it's even more obvious that you should defer to my needs, isn't it?" And so it went.
Over time, we got tired of the endless circle of 'My needs; no, my needs', and started learning to deal constructively with the situation. Sometimes, it meant one or the other of us had to defer to the other; sometimes it meant finding an agreeable compromise. But the most fundamental change was to our attitudes.
The biblical epistle to the Romans says, "Outdo one another in showing honor," and that was a real straightforward challenge to us. We had been outdoing one another in asserting our will, and here the apostle was urging us to outdo one another in looking after each other's good, rather than our own. And what a fundamental transformation that brought. Rather than trying to manipulate Molly so that I got what I wanted, I needed to simply look after her good; and likewise, she needed to look after mine before her own. And the result was that both our needs got met, without all the bickering and anxiety.
Of course, this entails a pretty significant 'leap of faith' - that, if I give up worrying about my own needs being met so as to look after Molly's, my needs will indeed be covered. And likewise for her. I honestly don't remember if one of us 'went first', hoping the other would 'catch on', or if it was something we worked out together, but in the fullness of time, the magic worked.
Someone has said that marriage is not a 50/50 proposition, it's a 100/100 proposition. That is, it's not about me giving half and Molly giving half; it's about both of us giving all we have - my life for hers, her life for mine. And it's not about 'keeping score' of who's putting in more or less than the other. We both just 'go all-in'.
And of course, we've learned this perfectly, and our marriage is a smoothly-running machine. . .
Uh, no - not really.
Just this past weekend, we had one of our classic 'Dueling Selfishness' quarrels. Molly got to feeling exhausted by the day-to-day work of running the Jones family household - shopping and cooking alone are a huge amount of work, especially the type of cooking she's doing to keep me in good health and (we hope) long life. So she got kind of cranky and snappy. . .
And I responded very sensitively and graciously, you can be sure - I told her that if having me alive and healthy was just too much for her, why I'd be happy to go back to 300 pounds and leave her a widow with kids at home. (See how helpful I was?).
And it went round and round like that for an hour or more, and both of us were feeling like the other had suddenly, inexplicably stopped caring about what happened to us. Until finally Molly stopped and said, "My needs; no, my needs".
The spell was broken, and we knew what we had to do. I had to shift my focus, and instead of making sure that I got what I wanted, I needed to think about what Molly needed, and how I could help that happen. And she needed to step back from ultimatums and assure me that I was worth it to her. And we both needed to apologize for the hurtful things we'd said.
And the thing is, those hurtful words don't just dissolve when the apology is made and accepted; they leave psychic wounds behind that take some time to heal. The 100/100 marriage takes a LOT of trust between spouses, and when trust is damaged, it isn't instantly built back up. But we're building some 'good history' with each other, and establishing a firm base of trust which we can stand on, even when some peripheral chunk of trust is damaged. Because we've got many years' worth of experience now that the other is looking out for our good, it's easier to treat specific instances of selfishness as aberrations.
So I want you to know that we aren't this perfect couple with a perfect marriage - I'm as selfish as anyone else, and I can be as petty and pissy as anyone else. But, by God's grace, we've learned how to be married in a good and life-giving way. . .
(15 comments)
Monday, September 25, 2006
Gratitude
Sometime around the year 1420, a monk named Thomas a Kempis wrote a book, The Imitation of Christ, which in the fulness of time would become the most widely-read Christian book besides the Bible. And, in its turn, it also became one of the all-time favorite books of one Mr. Desmond Jones.
The Imitation reads sort of like a medieval Christian Book of Proverbs - wisdom for living the Christian life from a wise old monk. It is simply dense with rich and challenging quotes, several of which have made their way into 'Desmond's Book of Quotes' (not available in stores). One of my favorites, which I commend to the attention of all my blog-friends is this, from chapter 6 of Book 3:
"A wise lover does not so much consider the gift of his lover as he does the love of the giver."
I first came across this many years ago, but it has become one of the favorite 'bywords' that Molly and I will quote to each other. It bespeaks a kind of humble gratitude, which has served us really well in building our marriage over the years.
On the face of it, it's pretty simple, really - sort of like etiquette advice for opening presents on Christmas morning - be grateful for the gifts you get, even if they're not exactly the ones you were hoping for. But you know, Thomas doesn't present it as etiquette advice; he just says, "A wise lover. . ." More like, "this is wisdom beyond what meets the eye. . ." And it works on multiple levels. . .
I'm adopted. At some point when I was in college, I connected the dots, and the realization dawned on me that I had been somebody's 'unwanted pregnancy'. It occurred to me that my very existence was due to somebody I'd never met taking the trouble to see me through nine months of pregnancy. Molly and I got married and began having our own children - 1F was actually the first person I ever knew who was genetically related to me. And all the while, the realization of what it had cost my birth-mother for me to be alive was growing stronger. Until finally, the sense of gratitude for my own existence became my strongest motivation to find and meet my birth-mother.
My birth-mother and I have always had a great relationship. Not so much because either of us are such wonderful people, but because at the bottom of it all, our relationship is one of mutual gratitude - I'm grateful to her for giving me life (and putting up with everything that went into that, including relinquishing me to be adopted by a family that could raise me), and she's grateful, even after all the years, to have a relationship with the son of her womb (and a fine son he is, if I may say so myself). We're both fairly quirky individuals, and there would be a lot to be annoyed with in each other, if we were so inclined, but from the beginning, our relationship has been founded on gratitude, so the quirks just seem really minor.
And all the moreso in marriage. I'm so grateful to Molly for throwing her life in with mine, for the love she gives me every day, and for the richness of the life we share together, that her quirks just aren't a very big deal by comparison. And I know that it works the same way from her end.
It's not just a matter of 'seeing the glass half-full' or 'looking on the bright side', although both of those are good advice. Temperamentally, I'm not a 'glass-half-full' person. But being able to receive with joy 'the gift my lover brings', just because I know how it's expressive of her love for me (quite a separate question from how good a gift it is), brings deep joy to my whole life. Does that make sense?
So I'm not really meaning to hold myself up as a shining example of superior virtue, or anything like that. But I do believe that we've learned something really good and valuable, and I'd commend it to any of my friends who can receive it.
(9 comments)
The Imitation reads sort of like a medieval Christian Book of Proverbs - wisdom for living the Christian life from a wise old monk. It is simply dense with rich and challenging quotes, several of which have made their way into 'Desmond's Book of Quotes' (not available in stores). One of my favorites, which I commend to the attention of all my blog-friends is this, from chapter 6 of Book 3:
"A wise lover does not so much consider the gift of his lover as he does the love of the giver."
I first came across this many years ago, but it has become one of the favorite 'bywords' that Molly and I will quote to each other. It bespeaks a kind of humble gratitude, which has served us really well in building our marriage over the years.
On the face of it, it's pretty simple, really - sort of like etiquette advice for opening presents on Christmas morning - be grateful for the gifts you get, even if they're not exactly the ones you were hoping for. But you know, Thomas doesn't present it as etiquette advice; he just says, "A wise lover. . ." More like, "this is wisdom beyond what meets the eye. . ." And it works on multiple levels. . .
I'm adopted. At some point when I was in college, I connected the dots, and the realization dawned on me that I had been somebody's 'unwanted pregnancy'. It occurred to me that my very existence was due to somebody I'd never met taking the trouble to see me through nine months of pregnancy. Molly and I got married and began having our own children - 1F was actually the first person I ever knew who was genetically related to me. And all the while, the realization of what it had cost my birth-mother for me to be alive was growing stronger. Until finally, the sense of gratitude for my own existence became my strongest motivation to find and meet my birth-mother.
My birth-mother and I have always had a great relationship. Not so much because either of us are such wonderful people, but because at the bottom of it all, our relationship is one of mutual gratitude - I'm grateful to her for giving me life (and putting up with everything that went into that, including relinquishing me to be adopted by a family that could raise me), and she's grateful, even after all the years, to have a relationship with the son of her womb (and a fine son he is, if I may say so myself). We're both fairly quirky individuals, and there would be a lot to be annoyed with in each other, if we were so inclined, but from the beginning, our relationship has been founded on gratitude, so the quirks just seem really minor.
And all the moreso in marriage. I'm so grateful to Molly for throwing her life in with mine, for the love she gives me every day, and for the richness of the life we share together, that her quirks just aren't a very big deal by comparison. And I know that it works the same way from her end.
It's not just a matter of 'seeing the glass half-full' or 'looking on the bright side', although both of those are good advice. Temperamentally, I'm not a 'glass-half-full' person. But being able to receive with joy 'the gift my lover brings', just because I know how it's expressive of her love for me (quite a separate question from how good a gift it is), brings deep joy to my whole life. Does that make sense?
So I'm not really meaning to hold myself up as a shining example of superior virtue, or anything like that. But I do believe that we've learned something really good and valuable, and I'd commend it to any of my friends who can receive it.
(9 comments)
Friday, September 15, 2006
Duty and Love
I am a big fan of the notion of duty. As much as many bloggers place duty and love in opposition, I think that duty is of the essence of love, and vice versa. We take on duties because of love. I will get up in the middle of the night with a sick child because I love my child. I don’t particularly ‘want’ to (especially if it involves cleaning up any fluids emitted from the child’s body); I’m certainly not ‘passionate’ about tending to sick children (someone else might be, but I’m not), but because I love my child, I do my ‘duty’. A soldier will die for his country because it's his duty, but it's his love for his family, friends, neighbors, homeland, whatever, that makes him feel it as a duty. My own father has lived practically his whole life out of a sense of duty, and as I've grown older myself, I am increasingly in awe of how much he loved his family, even though passionate he is decidedly not. . .
We both love the song, 'Do You Love Me?' from Fiddler on the Roof. After 25 years of shared life, mutual service and pulling together in a common endeavor, what do you know - Golde and Tevye find that they love each other, even though they had never particularly thought about it before. I know that that idea absolutely runs against the grain of modern culture, but it contains more than a grain of truth - that marriage is built on a foundation of mutual commitment and, dare I say, duty, much more securely than it is on passion and emotion. And what about 'love'? "It doesn't change a thing, but even so - after 25 years, it's nice to know."
Now, duty can be done in lots of ways – happily, straightforwardly, grudgingly, etc, etc. If my kids are going to whine and bitch about doing the dishes, I'd rather do them myself (except that they aren't about to be let off that easy).
So I guess, at the most fundamental level, my point would be that ‘duty’ has a lot more to do with 'love' (if not exactly ‘passion’) than meets the eye. . .
(5 comments)
We both love the song, 'Do You Love Me?' from Fiddler on the Roof. After 25 years of shared life, mutual service and pulling together in a common endeavor, what do you know - Golde and Tevye find that they love each other, even though they had never particularly thought about it before. I know that that idea absolutely runs against the grain of modern culture, but it contains more than a grain of truth - that marriage is built on a foundation of mutual commitment and, dare I say, duty, much more securely than it is on passion and emotion. And what about 'love'? "It doesn't change a thing, but even so - after 25 years, it's nice to know."
Now, duty can be done in lots of ways – happily, straightforwardly, grudgingly, etc, etc. If my kids are going to whine and bitch about doing the dishes, I'd rather do them myself (except that they aren't about to be let off that easy).
So I guess, at the most fundamental level, my point would be that ‘duty’ has a lot more to do with 'love' (if not exactly ‘passion’) than meets the eye. . .
(5 comments)
Thursday, May 25, 2006
A Good Wife, Who Can Find?
The biblical Book of Proverbs, chapter 31, verses 10-11, says of the 'Ideal Wife':
A good wife, who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.
I am convinced that the writer was thinking about Molly when he wrote that.
GK Chesterton once said that being constrained to only one woman was a small price to pay for the privilege of having so much as one woman.
I think he was thinking of Molly, too.
I have struggled with how I can tell you about my wife without being sappier than a maple tree in March. I'm still not sure I can, but I do want you to meet my amazing wife.
To start from bare facts -
- Molly was the second of ten kids (oldest daughter; seven boys, three girls)
- She grew up in a small farming town in Michigan's 'thumb'
- She's five months younger than me, although she was a year behind me in school
- She has a degree in Child Development. When being introduced to people for the first time, she likes to say that she got the ultimate job in her field (ie, developing children)
We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary last summer, and our kids threw a party for us, and 150 or so of our closest friends. We were reflecting afterward that 25 years was a milestone worth celebrating, and that if we had stopped to celebrate even 20 years, it wouldn't have been as significant, because the last five years have really tested us.
A friend of mine used to say that he had been married for 27 wonderful years, "and 27 out of 33 isn't too bad." I can remember a time when we had been married a couple years, and Molly was in tears, lamenting that, "I wanted us to have a really GOOD marriage."
Now, after almost 26 years, I think we've got a good marriage. A REALLY good marriage. It's just taken us a while. The first 2-3 years of our marriage were mostly about the two of us (me probably more than her) figuring out what it really meant to be MARRIED, as distinct from 'really good friends who live together and have sex'. Accountability took some time to get figured out.
Then we started having kids, and while that was going on, life happened in a dozen other arenas. And we grew together. Just the way it was supposed to happen.
Sometime around four or five years ago, we embarked on a couple major adventures in the form of a couple of our kids (how shall I say it?) losing their minds. Our comfortable life was kicked sideways, and there were times when we wondered if our family was going to hold together.
Somewhere in the midst of the turmoil, we sort of looked at each other, and made a fundamental decision that, even if we lost all our kids, we weren't going to lose our marriage. We had friends who'd had similar tragedies in their lives, whose marriages hadn't survived the strain (the temptation to start pointing fingers can get pretty overwhelming) and that hadn't worked out to anybody's benefit. So we worked hard to make sure that, whatever else was true, our marriage would be strong - we made sure that communication was good (setting aside an hour every week just to do something as mundane as review the schedule, pays for itself many times over), and we stirred up small acts of affection (our kids tease us because we hold hands in public). And our marriage is stronger now than it was before the trouble started.
As we go along, I'm sure you'll get a better picture of who Molly is. For now, I just want you all to know how wonderful my wife is, and how incredibly much richer my life is for having her in it.
(0/1 comments)
A good wife, who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.
I am convinced that the writer was thinking about Molly when he wrote that.
GK Chesterton once said that being constrained to only one woman was a small price to pay for the privilege of having so much as one woman.
I think he was thinking of Molly, too.
I have struggled with how I can tell you about my wife without being sappier than a maple tree in March. I'm still not sure I can, but I do want you to meet my amazing wife.
To start from bare facts -
- Molly was the second of ten kids (oldest daughter; seven boys, three girls)
- She grew up in a small farming town in Michigan's 'thumb'
- She's five months younger than me, although she was a year behind me in school
- She has a degree in Child Development. When being introduced to people for the first time, she likes to say that she got the ultimate job in her field (ie, developing children)
We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary last summer, and our kids threw a party for us, and 150 or so of our closest friends. We were reflecting afterward that 25 years was a milestone worth celebrating, and that if we had stopped to celebrate even 20 years, it wouldn't have been as significant, because the last five years have really tested us.
A friend of mine used to say that he had been married for 27 wonderful years, "and 27 out of 33 isn't too bad." I can remember a time when we had been married a couple years, and Molly was in tears, lamenting that, "I wanted us to have a really GOOD marriage."
Now, after almost 26 years, I think we've got a good marriage. A REALLY good marriage. It's just taken us a while. The first 2-3 years of our marriage were mostly about the two of us (me probably more than her) figuring out what it really meant to be MARRIED, as distinct from 'really good friends who live together and have sex'. Accountability took some time to get figured out.
Then we started having kids, and while that was going on, life happened in a dozen other arenas. And we grew together. Just the way it was supposed to happen.
Sometime around four or five years ago, we embarked on a couple major adventures in the form of a couple of our kids (how shall I say it?) losing their minds. Our comfortable life was kicked sideways, and there were times when we wondered if our family was going to hold together.
Somewhere in the midst of the turmoil, we sort of looked at each other, and made a fundamental decision that, even if we lost all our kids, we weren't going to lose our marriage. We had friends who'd had similar tragedies in their lives, whose marriages hadn't survived the strain (the temptation to start pointing fingers can get pretty overwhelming) and that hadn't worked out to anybody's benefit. So we worked hard to make sure that, whatever else was true, our marriage would be strong - we made sure that communication was good (setting aside an hour every week just to do something as mundane as review the schedule, pays for itself many times over), and we stirred up small acts of affection (our kids tease us because we hold hands in public). And our marriage is stronger now than it was before the trouble started.
As we go along, I'm sure you'll get a better picture of who Molly is. For now, I just want you all to know how wonderful my wife is, and how incredibly much richer my life is for having her in it.
(0/1 comments)
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