All Marriage is Hard Marriage

Whenever I officiate a wedding, I ask the couple if, during the ceremony, I can say something akin to the following:

There is something that you’ll run into – something about your spouse that you can’t stand – something dark and unattractive about them.  When this happens, you’ll be on the fence for awhile, thinking that you’ve made a mistake, that you’d be happier alone or happier with someone else.  If you get past that stage you’ll be tempted to change the other person.  “If I can just get them to be different everything will be ok.”  But if you can learn to love your spouse, darkness and all, you’ve entered into a deeper love.  It’s easy to love when everything’s perfect.  But to love without condition is to step into a deeper world, a place where most people won’t go.

Some let me get away with it, some don’t.

I don’t do it for the benefit of the couple (newlyweds don’t listen to anything), but for the people in the audience.  Most marriages aren’t going well, especially for people in their late 30’s and early 40’s.  We’ve somehow gotten it in our heads that when we get married it’s some kind of picnic.  If not it’s because we married the wrong person.  People who stay in bad marriages either spend a good chunk of their energy trying to change the other person, or live, day-to-day, for the rest of their married lives, bitter about their situation, pining away for their soul-mate.

In my culture, it’s verboten to divorce.  But let me tell you that I’ve entertained the idea.  So has my wife.  So has every one I know.  Years ago I sat with a friend, someone who I respect very much.  He was pushing me about some areas of laziness in my life.  “I have a high maintenance marriage” I said, shifting blame like a 3 year old.  “So do I” he immediately fired back.  “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t.”

My wife and I have navigated some difficult things. For some reason, when two people experience hardship, even if it’s at their own hand, they grow closer.  Elaine is my best friend.  I know that she’ll grind whatever grist the mill requires to stay with me.  There’s not enough room on the internet to list the crap she’s had to put up with.

The older we grow, the more thankful I am for her. We’ve learned how to fight, to express our issues with humility, to listen, to apologize – when to stand firm and when to let things go.  We’ve learned how to love each other.

I’d be a fool to do anything but learn to love her more.

The difficulties of our marriage have forced our hand, pushed us into a deeper ocean, a better life together.

I know it sounds weird, but the other person’s difficulties/darkness/imperfections, well loved and accepted, are one of the fundamental elements of a great marriage.

When You “Hate” Your Kids

badKid

If you have kids you’ll understand what follows.  If you don’t, you’ll probably be horrified.  Rated rRated for less-than-good-parent language.

I have 3 kids.  A 4 year old. A five year old.  An eight year old.  Dark days indeed.  The fighting, whining, disrespect, property damage – all come part and parcel to parenting young children – regardless of what mad skills you might have in your quiver.

Of course I don’t hate my kids, nobody really does.  We just feel, let’s say, a very strong dislike towards them from time to time.  What’s funny/interesting is the difference between how we feel about them when they’re “good,” and how we feel about them when they’re not.  We get warm feelings when they’re playing nice, eating all their food, cleaning up, loving their siblings, sleeping – and very different feelings when they’re doing things that anger us.  They’re not so cute anymore.  The mere sight of them brings up feelings of disgust.  You’d think we’d just get a little frustrated but it goes way deeper than that for most parents.

When you have kids it’s not long before they’ll push a “button,” some unhealed wound or two that you carry inside – something that happened long ago at the hands of another human that you haven’t quite put to bed yet.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have multiple places in their soul where they’re still hurt.  I do know tons of people who’ll tell you they’ve dealt with it all –  “moved on” –  but most of us haven’t.

I have a friend who experienced something horrible years ago.  She told me she gave herself two years to grieve, then she got over it.  Sounds great, but it doesn’t work that way.  It’s likely that we’ll take so many of our buttons to the grave, mainly because we have no respect whatsoever for how deep they are.  The cutesy moniker “buttons” betrays how clueless we are to their severity.

Either way, when our kids push our buttons it hurts, and it’s easy to see these little button-pushing fuckers as enemies – people who don’t care about us, against whom we have to defend ourselves – that’s how we respond when we feel hurt.  That’s why kids appear different when they’ve done something that’s not only wrong, but rubs its finger in our unhealed areas.  That’s why we lose our shit at some of the shit they pull.  We’re on the defensive.  We’re retaliating, many times in ways that will create the same buttons in them that we’ve been wandering through adulthood with.

In the past, when other people have pushed our buttons, we’ve been able to distance ourselves, or break the relationship altogether.  But you can’t do that with kids, we have to stay engaged.

My eight year old did something small yesterday that made me very angry.  When I drop her off at school she gets out of our minivan through the sliding door on the passenger side.  She usually can’t close the door herself so I always ask her to close it enough so I can reach it from the driver’s seat and slide it the rest of the way.

Yesterday am She got out of the car, stood and looked at me as I said “goodbye, have a nice day at school.”  It had been a tough morning – we were all a bit edgy.  “Please slide the door a little bit my way so I can reach it, honey.”  She slid the door a couple centimeters and walked off.  “Hey, please get back here and close the door.”  A couple more centimeters.  I shot her a dirty look, got out of my seat, closed the door.  She walked off.  Button.  Pushed.

I sat in the car and watched her walk away.  Usually when I do this I think about how much I love her, but this am all I could think about was retaliation.  But my hard-core negative feelings for her had nothing to do with what just went down, and everything to do with my buttons, which unfortunately, had just called the shots in a difficult situation.

This was one of those rare mornings however when I stopped to think about what really happened – what was underneath it all.  Sure, she was intentionally disrespectful, and we dealt with that later, but she’s a good kid.  She’s not my enemy, and there’s no misbehavior that we can’t work through.

Thinking about my buttons above her infraction brought me peace and forgiveness, for both of us, and a greater vision for how to make sure my kids are always beautiful to me.

 

 

 

 

An Evangelical Revisionist’s Take on the Bible

It’s dizzying to think about how many people have read the Bible cover to cover, and how many different perspectives there are on it’s overall message.  Some read it as a legal document, laying out in great detail how one should live in a way that makes God happy – pleased to lay His lightning bolts aside, momentarily at least.  Some read it as a way to get into heaven, with little regard for life in the here and now – and only those with the proper theology are accepted.

Others read it as a document of war, releasing them into the world to point fingers, judge others, and be an agent of God’s wrath, only to find themselves batting for the wrong team.

I was once asked to lead a study on the historical happenings of the Bible – the places, people, events, etc., of the Old and New Testaments.  I rebelled and instead made an attempt to teach both Testaments as one story – which it is by the way, but I didn’t do a very good job.  I started with a room full of people and quickly whittled it down to a small gathering – a little too counter-cultural for this conservative crowd.

In preparing for the class, my perspective on the Bible, and ultimately what God really wants from us, was forever changed.

At the time, my wife and I were about to experience a huge life change, an adoption that would bring challenge, hardship, and joy in one big heaping helping of a little girl named Hannah.  Before her arrival, we decided to go to Brazil, relax and spend some time together.  I read the Bible, uninterrupted, cover to cover, very quickly, on one very long flight, paired with boxed wine and airplane food.

I was taught in Seminary to pick each passage apart, to read the “original” languages, consult multiple resources, etc., before making a decision about what that passage might mean.  Reading it cover to cover in one sitting was something I hadn’t done before.

There’s one theme that pops up over and over again, with alarming repetition, something I would call one of the most prevalent, if not the most prevalent themes of the Bible.  It’s one that, interestingly enough, doesn’t get a lot of air-time from Sunday morning pulpiteers.

Over and over again, in the Old Testament, and in the teachings of the New, God says to everyone He runs into, “Trust Me.”  “I’m on your side.”  “I want things to work out in your favor.”  “Please, whatever you do, wherever you go – TRUST ME.”    It’s hard to catch if you read the Bible slowly, but I dare you – read it fast, really fast, cover to cover, not stopping to ruminate over the parts that bother you, or the ones that don’t immediately make sense.  And drink some crappy boxed red wine.

Sure, there are passages in the Bible that talk about God’s unconditional love, His unlimited power, and how He worked it out so that anyone that wants to go to heaven can go.  There are statements about right and wrong, instructions about how to live, etc., but these are all subtexts in submission to the overarching principle that God wants us to trust Him.

Since my “conversion” on the flight to Brazil, I now hear God saying to me “I know more about what you want than you do.  I won’t give you life on your terms, it’ll be on mine, because my way will get you where you want to go quicker and more completely than yours.  If you’ll trust me I’ll write a story for you that will be amazing.  We can do things your way if you want – you can write your own story, but I write better stories than you do.  Trust me.  It won’t be easy, but it’ll be great.”

If you don’t believe in God, that’s cool, I respect you.  I have great friends who don’t believe as I do, not to mention the fact that they’re the ones who know how to really party.  But imagine for a minute what would happen to the world if everyone believed that there was this “thing up there” that could do anything it wants, loves unconditionally, and is interested in everyone’s life the way a really good parent is interested in her children.

There would be peace.

Peace is the biggest issue in our world.  Always has been.  When people are set at ease about their lives, their finances, their relationships, politics, how things will ultimately shake out, etc., they’re less likely to do bad, and more likely to do good.

I know people of peace, people who look at God this way.  They see what they have instead of stressing about what they don’t.  They’re comfortable in their skins – it doesn’t matter what other people think when you believe that everything will turn out OK.  They’re hard workers. They know work is good, but they don’t stress about it because they have trust, which, ironically, makes them more effective at what they do. Their peace derives from their belief that everything will work out in their favor, which is dependent on their view of God and ultimately their trust in Him.

God doesn’t want you to be a flaming, irrelevant, religious person by the way.  The other guy wants that.  It’s a truly crappy way to live.  Remember that Jesus’ first miracle was to make 180 gallons of wine at a party full of already drunk people.  He doesn’t want you to blindly adhere to a life-numbing list of rules and principles.  He doesn’t want you to be unhappy.  He does however want to change you – to remove the things that are keeping you from being free, from being the person you’re supposed to be.  This process isn’t “easy,” or “safe.”  Trusting Him will mean facing fears that you’ve been chained to most of your life.

But when you believe that He’s on your side, and that He’s a badass who’ll fight for you, with you, and against you when you head in a direction away from freedom and peace, you can face anything.

Jesus said something akin to, “I have peace inside of me – My peace.  God’s peace.  This peace I’m giving to you.  Therefore, don’t be scared.  Of anything.”

There’s one hitch though.  When God sets people free, He wants those people to go and free other people.  God’s freed ones are to be like a vaccine in the jugular vein of a world that’s ever-hurdling towards more fear, anger, suspicion – ever decreasing peace.  What we receive from God we’re to give to others, like Jesus did.

That might sound like a lot, but when you’re at peace, you’re also at strength – your resources aren’t tapped by fear, anger, etc.  I think that’s why religious people look so tired all the time – always trying to bring good into the lives of others, but doing it from a place of obligation, fear, and spiritual stress – not peace.

I had a very troubling conversation with a Gay woman several months ago.  She was afraid that God hated her because she was Gay.  It made her feel gross.  Unlovable.  I very quickly relieved her of that lie and laid on her the truth that God’s love for her has no boundaries or conditions – no barbed wire.  You wouldn’t believe how it changed her – the idea that God loves her, that she can now trust Him to walk alongside her.  Boom.  Peace.

May that kind of peace be with you, and extend far beyond you.