Divorce and the end of the Story

 Pretty down today. Another couple getting divorced at 60. After a lifetime of marriage. Just counting the poeple I know, and their families, these stories are getting more frequent, at least in my hearing. It hurts too much. Christian families too. Who made it decades together, before deciding now was the moment to call it quits.

How did we get here?

Our narrative is wrong.

The idea that suffering (and sin in our spouse) is a reason to end it. Somehow, by divorcing (even at 60) is standing up for yourself. Standing up for your grandchildren. Standing up for women or something. Somehow the divorce is making sure that everything wrong that the spouse has done is not forgotten Refusing to be codependent, not putting up with it. Now, somehow sticking it to the man. Somehow standing up for truth. Setting the record right, in a walk out protest.

And its basically setting off a bomb in our families, grown children's marriages shaken or broken or never started. Even the “thriving, stable” kids are coping, having trouble sleeping at night. Joy robbed from beautiful days of young motherhood, brooding about the emotional angst in their birth family. Sides taken for and against. What should be a fortress, torn apart in civil war. Separation is just that---a separation. A vacuum felt even in a grey-haired child's soul.

So much is lost. So much is destroyed

Our meta-narrative we chart reality onto, is all twisted up and backwards.

This divorce and remarriage archetype is but one finger of the hand. The hand is wrong. A world based in what ought to be, and not what is.

 That by protest, that by breaking what is left, we will somehow make the world anew, into what ought to be. Insisting on living in a world where power is never abused, where love is always healthy, where relatives only ever speak kind nontoxic words, where everything is as it should be. But this world exists only inside our own heads. Because the family reunions are shattered and never happen, people being cut off for mental health reasons. We aren't creating a better world. We are destroying what scraps of this one that we have left.

What is the narrative, the pattern that was given to us by a strange middle-eastern God, demanding absolute purity, demanding exactly how the world should be?

We failed. We broke the rules, broke the contract, trashed the place, ran up debts, and cheated on Him.

And He didn't cut us off.

He came anyway.

And then we killed Him.

Through suffering, through pain, through torture, comes the triumphant ending of the story. Through the crucifixion, through the dark night of doubt on saturday with a dead God, then comes Sunday morning. He comes, scarred and alive, to tell His bride that her debt is paid.

That is the pattern given to us.

Where did we go wrong? Where did we lose it? Despite You showing it to us, again and again and again?

God, come and save Your Bride. We are bat-shit crazy.

I'm still waiting for the end of the story, God. Where you come, and save us, Your bat-shit crazy narcissistic Bride. And somehow, make us, bright and clean, pure, holy and without blemish.

God, you've got Your work cut out for you.

Come, and save us. We are Yours. All the hot mess of us. Save us.

Books about Reality: How to write Reality?

I perused a library, its young adult section brimming with books. Books set in the past and future, but mostly set in fictional universes in which our hero discovers she/he is the Chosen with great powers and given some important purpose.

(Here is ChatGPT's cover to a "YA novel in a medieval fantasy world with a teen who is the Chosen One)

In that they are not wrong. In fact, the cliche works because there is so much truth in it. It resonates with some part of the unjaded little souls because the resonant frequency programmed into them senses some truth.

Each of us is breathed in by the Breath of God, created for a mission and a calling, sent forth into a world at war between Evil and Good. Evil beyond our comprehension and Good beyond our wildest imagining.

But what struck me was how young a lot of the authors looked in their back-jacket pictures. It may be simply photoshop or judicious use of sunscreen, but a lot of those authors looked to be in their twenties. In your twenties, writing books that teens read that will shape their understanding of the structure of reality. 

As far as the book-jackets could show, these young authors didn't seem to be war veterans, or peace-keepers from soup kitchens, coming out of the trenches of war or humanitarian aid, with lots to tell of what they had seen. A lot of them seemed like just young people themselves who gathered their ideas about the world from other young adult novels they had spent the last decade reading.

The serpent is eating its tail. 

The AI is creating answers based on its own answers. 

The computer program is stuck in a loop, recursively spitting out its cyclic version of reality.

George R. Martin, comic book nerd and draft dodger, tells other comic book nerds what true gritty war is like, from a lifetime of consuming novels and comic books.  

In contrast, by the time J.R.R Tolkien wrote The Hobbit he had fought in a world war, grieved his best friends, convinced his teenage crush to marry him, held down a job interacting with other humans, raised 4 kids, and then was sending The Hobbit in chapters to encourage his son fighting another world war. 

He had seen a lot. He had experienced a lot. He had interacted with others who had experienced a lot.

He'd lived. 

(It's possible George R Martin maybe based his stories on actual stories of his fellow men who did go and fight in wars that he didn't believe in. I don't know, I haven't read his novels. I know he did consume a vast amount of fiction & comics, by his own account. But if I had a choice of hearing about war from the minstrel, or the soldier, I'd rather pick the soldier. Guns Up or something by a man of George's generation who actually fought)

When people write to escape their lives, their works by definition are all conjecture. The brain must draw on something.

The Bronte sisters, stuck on the moor in a small village, consuming a lot of gothic novels, wrote of what they didn't know. Thus we have fantastical stories woven mostly of threads from other gothic novels, forgettable works like Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" which felt like sticking my head into an AI simulator or a surreal nightmare. A simulator in which an introverted pastor's daughter wrote what she thought it might be like to be embroiled in a tormented paranormal gothic romance.

And then we have her sister Charlotte's more enduring "Jane Eyre" in which she blends a lot more of her own experience into the gothic nightmare. Now we have a very real childhood friendship as one of them dies of consumption (her sister),  the warm mission-minded family with the driven Greek-studying boy in love with the idea of India, the gossipy maid, the real people woven into the strange nightmare. And thus, Jane Eyre has just enough realism in it to maybe make the gothic nightmare worth it. 

Then there is Jane Austen, another nerdy pastor's daughter, who in her own words "writes on 2 inches of ivory." She knew she was limited to write what she knew, and she did it so well that those people she knew still come to life in her pages. You can even chart the same characters, as she looks back on them with older eyes, change and morph throughout her novels. I found her "Pride and Prejuidice" penned at 21, to have the flattest characters. Her later books, reincarnations of those same characters become every more deeper. She finally forgives Mrs. Bennet and gives her a whole book as the protoganist (Emma). 

L. M. Montgomery's genius was writing her own village church people....Anne of Green Gables, Rilla of  Ingleside...all the side characters, all the real people she wove into her stories....now, nearly 200 years later I can love her nosy neighbor, and laugh and cry over the struggles of this small town in the throes of being the homefront in WWI. The most forgettable of her stories are the ones I suspect she strayed most from her lived experience "Anne's House of Dreams", where as the romantic writer proposes to the girl with the floorlength hair of swirling gold, it feels like we really have wandered into one of Anne's dreams. Give me Ken and Rilla's awkward date on the porch while Old Susan crashes the party and starts sharing embarrassing stories of them as children. One of those scenes felt so much realer, because I would bet $100, it was.

Can young people write good books, my son asks? Is it required to actually live everything you write about? No. Tolkien didn't become king, or destroy a ring of power. 

But on some level the stories (and people) we write must come from somewhere. 

1. Your life of the life of someone you know [primary]
2. The life of someone else who wrote about it [secondary]
3. The novel of someone you hope got it from reality, or at least, another novel based in reality.

Obviously, even 1 & 2 have some level of distortion, in that we are interpreting reality all the time, trying to make sense of it. That's what writing is.

Books about reality

In no particular order

Autobiographies---Primary Sources

• The Word Came with Power
• Search for the Source by Neil T. Anderson
• ?Mission Possible by Marilyn Lazlo
• Guns Up, Johnnie M Clark
• ??Korean War book
• ?book by Amy Carmichal? Mimosa?
• The Cross and the Switchblade
• Through the Valley of the Kwai
• Guadalcanal Diary
• Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Farmer Boy
• Caddie Woodlawn
• First 2 Ralph Moody Books [Little Britches, Man of the Family]
• Water by the Inch
• Cheaper by the Dozen
• The Hiding Place
• ?Surviving the Angel of Death by Eva Moses Kor
• ?Leap into Darkness, by Leo Bretholz
• ?Diary of Anne Frank
• With God in Solitary Confinement/In God’s Underground/With Christ in the communist prisons
• Pastor’s Wife
• Between Hammer and Sickle by Mihai Wurmbrand
• If Prison Walls Could Speak
• ?Gulag Archipelago
• Son of Hamas
• Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus
• ??Unbroken, Louis Zamperini
• Joker One 
• Guns Up by Johnnie M. Clark
• The Search for the Source by Neil Andersen
• Yoneko, rice child, daughter of happiness by Yoneko Tahara
• ????Daylight must come.
• ????The insanity of God

Biographies

• Joan of Arc: Her Story by Regine Pernoud
• Kit Carson by Ralph Moody
• ?Christopher coulubus by Fernando Aresto
• ?Mary Lincoln by Ruth Painter Randall
• ?William Wilberforce, by Eric Metaxes
• William Wilberforce by Belmonte
• ???TO the golden shore, [adoniram Judson] by Courtney Anderson
• Never Say Die (Gladys Aylward) by Cyril Davies
• Sundar Singh by Cyril Davies
• Vanya: A True Story by Myrna Grant
• Rees Howells Intercessor
• ?[something about Francis Xavier]
• ?[Something about John Donne]
• ?Wounded Tiger by

Epics & Legends & Ballads

• Illiad & Odyssey
• Beowulf
• Song of Roland
• Silmarillion
• The Lord of the Rings
• George MacDonald The Golden Key
• Fairy tales (Lang, irish one, etc)
• ???Viking Sagas???
• Demon Lover, Wanderer, [Medieval Ballads]
• Ballad of the White Horse

Novels

• All the Trailblazer books (Dave and Neta Jackson) especially “Bandit of Asheley Downs” and “Listen for the Whippoorwill” and “Captured by the River Rats”
• God King by Joanne Williamson
• The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff
• Narnia Books CS Lewis
• CS Lewis’ space trilogy
• Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis
• The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
• Roll of Thunder, Hear my cry
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Tell me a riddle, by Tillie Olsen
• Chesterton’s Father Brown Mysteries, Four Faultess Felons, Man Who Was Thursday
• George MacDonald something
• Bronze Bow by Elisabeth George Speare
• Rolf and the Viking Bow by Allen French
• Cry the Beloved Country
• Crime and Punishment
• Number the Stars 
• Allegiance & Choices of One by Timothy Zahn [Star Wars]
• [The Giver]
• Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma etc by Jane Austen
• Enemy Brothers by Constance Savery
• Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Mark Twain's Joan of Arc
• ?Jane Eyre? mixed feelings on this. It's a Christian response to a gothic novel, but it's still a gothic novel....my favorite characters die
• ???Starship Troopers
• ????something by Isaac Asimov?
• The Eight Arrow
• Strangers and Sojourners & Plague Journal by Michael D. O'Brien
• Sophia House by Michael D. O'Brien
• 
  

MORE BOOK RECCOMENDATIONS from a friend. ( I haven't read all of these yet)

For kids and teens to read:

Peter Rabbit

Charlotte's Web

Trumpet of the Swan

Tom Sawyer

Little Women

Little Men (others if desired, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins, and Old Fashioned Girl are among the next best) 

Alice in Wonderland 

Through the Looking Glass

Mrs. Frisby and Rats of Nihm 

Treasures of the Snow, other St. John

Peter Pan

The Secret Garden

The Little Princess

Treasure Island, other Stevenson

Mother Goose

Aesop's Fables 

Heidi

Robin Hood, Arthur, myths, fairy tales

Sherlock Holmes

Father Brown

Caddie Woodlawn

(Black Beauty)

(Black Stallion) 

The Princess and the Goblin 

The Princess and Curdie 

Narnia

Hobbit/LotR

Wind in the Willows 

Old Yeller

Where the Red Fern Grows

Little House on the Prairie 

Phantom Tollbooth 

Just So Stories or other Kipling

Winnie the Pooh

Sarah, Plain and Tall 

Skylark (other sequels, too, if interested)

Little Britches 

The Great Brain

Penderwicks and sequels

Anything by Robert McCloskey 

Dr. Doolittle?

(Pinocchio)

The Railway Children, other Nesbit 

Pollyanna

Witch of Blackbird Pond

Cheaper by the Dozen

Boxcar Children, first 19 only

Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys? At least one each

Sadako and the 1000 Cranes

Frindle, other by Clements if desired

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Anne of Green Gables, sequels and others if interested

Christmas Carol

Scarlet Pimpernel

All of a Kind Family

Brighto of the Grand Canyon, other Henry if interested

Captain's Courageous

Johnny Tremain

The Bible

The Westing Game

Little Pilgrim's Progress by Taylor

Original American Girl books

Chronicles of Prydain

The Little Engine that Could 

Velveteen Rabbit

Wizard of Oz

101 Dalmatians 

Mary Poppins

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Carry on Mr Bowditch

My Side of the Mountain

Call of the Wild

White Fang 

Incredible Journey

Tale of Despereaux

Jules Verne

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

Understood Betsy

Older kids (~10+):

Huckleberry Finn 

Jane Eyre

Watership Down

Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Other C.S. Lewis

Cry, the Beloved Country

Any Jane Austen

Tale of Two Cities 

Anne Frank

Ender's Game

Pilgrim's Progress 

Agatha Christie

Dorothy Sayers

Robinson Crusoe

Swiss Family Robinson

To Kill a Mockingbird

Three Musketeers 

Count of Monte Cristo

Crime and Punishment

Frankenstein

Shakespeare

Gulliver's Travels

Importance of Being Earnest, other Wilde

The Giver and sequels

1984

(Animal Farm) 

Brave New World

Lord of the Flies

The Great Gatsby

(Grapes of Wrath) 

Uncle Tom's Cabin

The Scarlet Letter

(North and South) I've read another by her that was good.

Cranford

Pygmalion (My Fair Lady)

(Last of the Mohicans)

00000000000000

recommended by random ppl on the internet

Gay girl good God (Jackie Hill Perry)

Prison saved my life (Louis Dooley and Heidi Gruber O'Very

The Insanity of God (Nik Rripken)

Patrick of Ireland (Michael AG Haykin)

?????https://www.kevinhalloran.net/best-christian-biographies/  literally googled this, have no idea who this guy is

Changing our Family Culture

 I want to change our family culture closer to our original vision, of making Rivendell.

Family culture matters, routines and prayers matter. To put a rhythm to our lives, that can give something to fill up the kids hearts, to show them what is important. Habit shapes souls, because it is a continual time-offering of our lives, and our souls exist in time.

 Josh has already drastically changed our family culture the last year, by taking on the McCheyne Bible reading plan every evening as a family. And sticking to it, even when we come home 9:30 pm exhausted from a social event. He is stubborn, in the best way possible.

Josh has also changed our family culture the last few years, with the whole concept of "Family Fun Time" and the creation of the "Family Fun Time Wheel". He urges the kids to finish their after-dinner chores in time, that we take an hour to do something fun as a family. There's a wheel he had me make, with 6 different options to choose from, so that even when we are brain-dead at the end of the day, the options are clearly laid out for us.

[Image of the family fun time wheel]

We also got a little closer to our dream, last year, with our 4 weekend camping trips and 2 water wheel hikes. With the Family Fun Time the kids look forward too every evening, and the nightly Bible time with prayertime, as the girls dance to "He is Lord" at the end, there is a rhythm to our lives.

Five things I want my kids to have interwoven throughout their lives.

Prayer [The God who is here]

Joy [Singing, always singing]

Adventure [camping trips, attitude toward life, challenges unlocked etc]

Love [Kind, gentle to one another, forgiving one another]

The Holy [to see Him, to really see Him. The pillar of fire and cloud, come down to us]

Reshaping family culture through Lent

 Recently I've reflected on how little my daily expense of time reflects my actual ideals. 

I want to live like God is real.

I want to create Rivendell---a place of joy and peace.

I want to show my children, by how I live my daily life, what I truly think is important and life-giving.

Through daily tangible choices, I can change our family culture.

The point is to change our daily routine to where it actually shapes us. Because our daily time-slots do shape our souls, since our souls are being formed in real time. 

"Mental patterns" and all that, as psychologists talk about.

So I want to give the kids a life centered around the rhythm of joy and worship. Josh has already changed our family culture so much, with the evening Bible Readings added into family prayer. 

Now its my turn, to do my part when he's gone at work, to make our home more filled with God's presence. I want my kids to be like the Israelites, growing up with the Pillar of Cloud and Fire.

Another issue is how we treat eachother. There is too much fighting, too much negative talk and gossip and fussing. The change starts with me. I must get right with God in the mornings, and also, reset the family culture of how we treat eachother. Kindness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

For Lent 2026 I have changed my plans. 

Family disciplines

1. Family Prayer & Worship
1. Morning Prayer in the Babygarden every morning
2. the 5,7,7 QT in the mornings, five minutes listening to Bible, 7 minutes journaling/quiet praying, 7 minutes praying out loud, Korean-style.
3. Worship songs [Let the kids pick the songs with the lyric videos] at the end of school.
2. No whining, fussing, gossiping, fighting at all. [take it to Jesus] [-5 min gametime per infraction]
3. No sweet treats at all. [Fruit is ok]. UNLESS guests are over, or its a feast day [Birthday, or Sunday]
4. We will eat our way through our split peas, beans, and freezer. [goal empty the freezer]

Personal Disciplines

For me, I've changed my plans. I need a hard reset on how I cope with daily life, and my mid-life crisis.

1. Give up writing my Star Wars story. I think I am turning to it too much, as an escape or another world in dealing with my mid-life crisis.
• Instead fill those gaps of time with doing things with the kids. At the end of Lent I want to have done something significant with each child.
• Teach Isaiah how to draw
• Teach Isaiah how to recite poetry
• Teach kids (esp sarah) how to play the recorder
• Garden with the kids
• Teach the girls how to sew
• Paint iwth the kids, perhaps help them 
• ??Finally illustrate the woodcutter and the wolf-king
2. Give up personal Youtube browsing in the evenings
• [except 15 min max per day with a timer, for topics to research for home-improvement research for classes etc]
• Never change the 7 min internet timer on my phone.
• Instead fill gaps of time with reading books, praying. Read the Ignatius Examen, watch things on Formed, read various religious books I've bought over the years and haven't read. 

My general usage of time should be

1. Morning Prayer
2. Breakfast,
3. Devotions
4. School with big kids
5. When Big Kids do busywork, then go and cuddle little ones, Hide 'em in your heart playing. Go back to help big kids as needed.
6. Lunch
7. Worship God
8. Freetime---[This is where I will try to do those things with the kids]
9. House projects
10. Dinner
11. Cleanup
12. Family Fun Time
13. Evening Bible and Prayers
14. Time to talk with Isaiah, Josh, or read, or pray.

The Foundations of Female Attraction

 I wrote this for my teenage son, who is now very curious how to impress girls. Right now it mostly seems to involve fantasies of building massive muscles and strategically losing your shirt so she'll notice. 

So I felt the need to clue him in on what actually impresses the female half of the population. I put this up here in case it is useful for anyone else clueless how to impress a woman.

Foundations of Female Attraction

 LEVEL 1: Faith in Something greater than himself. Having Convictions, Principles and the Courage to act on those convictions----The girl is picking her LEADER. If he doesn’t know where he’s going or what he’s doing, or what he believes in---she’s not going to want to follow. It would be like you signing up for an army you have no idea for what country or what rules they follow or what religion.

2.       LEVEL 2: Mental Discipline. You must master yourself. A girl wants to know you have mastered your emotions and your anger. So that you are in charge, not your emotions. That she is obeying you, not your whims. Also that you work hard, can push yourself to do hard things. She wants to know you have mastered yourself, so she knows she she can trust you with herself and your future kids. 

3.       LEVEL 3: Kind to the weak. Having strength, but not being a bully, but a protector of the helpless. This is huge. How a man treats those who cannot reward him. Not in how he treats the boss, but the old penniless lady. Small children. Protects the weak and does not prey on them. Unselfish. Fearing God. Knowing that strength was given to him, as a trust. With great power comes great responsibility. In attractiveness: Spiderman > thug.

4.      LEVEL 4: Comportment & Posture. How you carry yourself in relation to the world. Slouching aristocrat or an alert soldier? This is self defence 101. Who do thugs choose to jump in parking lots?[link here] For most people, it is subconscious. People will decide what you are, who you are. It's how you know someone is ex-military. It's one of the factors when girls swoon for men after they go through bootcamp. Often their physique actually hasn't changed that much---but their comportment has. Soldiers hold themselves like they know what they are doing---like they are men. With a purpose. And know that they are a force to be reckoned with. Criminals aren't the only ones who notice your posture.

5.      LEVEL 5: Hygiene. Be considerate of not grossing people out. Girls are even  more grossed out than boys. They have been guardians of the home for millennia and lost children to disease. FIGHT NURGLE. Wash your hands, don’t pick your nose. Don’t make weird scraping sounds with phlegm in your throat like you’re dying of whooping cough. Blow your nose with proper form, and wash hands afterwards. Smell NOT-BAD. (really, Axe, stinks. It's a triumph of modern marketing that young men still think it works)

a.       Breath---xylitol after meals. Brush teeth, floss, ACT

b.       Underarm, vinegar, deodorant. Change clothes every day

c.      !!!! If you work out or labor or sweat---shower. Rancid sweat smell is like a dead animal. (usually only gets to that point several days in, I think based on my memories of my little brother)

d.       Scalp Care [Scalp wash routine, Vinegar rinse, keep dandruff away]

6.       LEVEL 6: Physique. Having muscles, looking strong enough to protect her and your future kids, is a definite plus. Having good posture (level 4) really helps maximize this. That is, a skinnier man who stands with good posture looks better than a slouching muscular guy. Girls in general aren't as impressed by strength just existing, as strength with purpose. Important note! While having a good physique is a plus, a man who is constantly taking selfies of his abs is a major turn-off for a lot of women. A girl wants you to want to look at her, not the mirror! Narcissus and Echo did not go well.

7.       LEVEL 7: Style. Hairstyle--- keep it relatively short (obviously male) and out of your eyes. Hair Gel can help. Clothing---Pick clothing that flatters you, AND sends the message you want. [e.g. medieval, loves certain movie, etc]

        Girls aren't irrational after all. These foundations of attraction really all boil down to---will he be man enough to protect me and our children, and man enough to love me and our children even when its hard.

She's signing up to follow you, after all. It's like signing up for the marines, but for your whole life, and to follow a specific sergeant till you die. You want to make sure that commander is up to snuff before you swear on.

And coming back to "Level 1" and why it is the foundation of everything else. She needs to know this sergeant is following the same General. 

And even when storms come, and when you fail, she needs to know that you will be man enough to repent, and turn to follow your God even through suffering.

More Thoughts on Marriage

Thinking about what marriage is.

God knew from the start what a marriage would be. And He still guided people to get married when he knew there would be deep betrayal. The marriage does not retroactively become a 'mistake'. None of it was wasted. He has not forgotten, not overlooked, not neglected, not been sloppy.

God promised “I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you”

It is, was, and will be, true.

Maybe God's purpose for us marrying someone, wasn't as happy as we thought. Maybe it was to carry a cross of horrible illness with someone, watching dementia claim their mind, or to spend the next 40 years caring for a blind bomb-shredded limbless brain-damaged hero-husband who marched off young, strong, and intelligent, to war. Or carry the cross of shame of imprisonment with someone, visiting them in their prison. Or to fight for someone's soul—even if prayer is all we can do as we wait—and they run off in self-destruction.

God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts, his ways than our ways.

In the end, none of it will have been wasted. God holds our hand, bottles every tear, hears every prayer. What He knew our marriage would be on our wedding day, may not have been as happy and wonderful as we had thought—but He will make it beautiful, far more beautiful than we can imagine this side of the Jordan. Because He will be with us every step, every second, every moment, holding our hand, giving us strength.

And He never wastes anything.

Marriage---What Is It?

Marriage---what are we signing up for?

Is marriage about rights----love me/be faithful to me/have a godly home/provide for me, or is it more like a binding oath to a kind of “war buddy”, that lasts as long as you are alive, to help the other person be sanctified, become more like Christ, enter the new Jerusalem---no matter what happens?

We get married expecting it means children, buying a home, retiring together, studying Bible together, reading stories together, going on family camping trips, kissing etc, and being old people going on daily walks together with an umbrella.

I know that is what I expected.

But there are lots of wonderful people I know/know of, whose lives didn't turn out that way.

Because there are lots of other things we don't expect. We don't expect our smart, emotionally supportive, fun-to-talk-to husband to go through a brain trauma that renders him a needy child. Or a freak accident to a 27 yr old man at work that renders the marriage a chaste one for the next 40 years. Or to be young, and suddenly, widowed and alone, raising kids without their father.

God knew on our wedding day what we were signing up for. We did not. We can't know. But He knew all along. He knew from the first date. And He holds us. “I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you” (Isaiah 42:16)

We don't get married expecting to have to turn our husband/wife into the law, and visit him in jail the rest of our lives. Or visit him on death row. Or every day raising the kids alone, and each day, faithfully praying for someone who has abandoned you for another(s).

But is that what is being asked of us? To not stand on our rights, but to carry the cross?

Parenting, what are we signing up for? If your kid did the unspeakable things, would you still love them? Would you cut ties and find another kid? Or would you visit them on death row, praying for them every day?

What is being asked of us?

I think that is at the crux of what so much of this argument about marriage comes down to. What do we see it as? What is it?

On Marriage, Love, and the Lord of the Rings: Thoughts after 4 years of Marriage

My husband always made me feel loved. Even when we had fights, even when I cried & ranted & knew he was putting up with me. Even when I felt like he didn’t like me. Even when I was so mad at him my vision was shaking. Even when he was sinking into depression and absolutely nothing I did seemed to make an atom’s worth of difference. Through all our hard times, through all our fights, I always never doubted, that he really truly loved me.

Even when first fell in love and were in la-la land, he never raved to me about my wonderful qualities that made him love me. Which, in the long run, was kind of comforting. Since my qualities can change. (I still remember trying to pry for compliments, when we were dating, asking him why he thought dating me was a good idea. "Well....you like camping and rice and beans. I’m never going to be rich…”)

In love, in la la land...

He never spoke of his love for me like this great fortress that would comfort me (like my favorite love song in High School “All I ask of You”). He didn’t really speak of his love for me at all.

He just loved me.

Just listened when I rambled about my fears and worries till 2 am, just listening. Told me when he thought I was wrong. When I asked him “Why do you love me?” He thought about it for a bit, and came back with “A combination of me wanting to, and feeling like God wanted me to.” God wanted him to love me (and he didn’t mind). That was reason enough. And as un-romantic as it was against “you are the most beautiful woman I ever met” “your soul is so beautiful” etc etc, it was rock solid.

Because no matter how many fights I pick and doors I slam and meltdowns I have, no matter how I nag him and worry about finances and act shabby in petty fights with other girls or get fat, that doesn’t change, that God wants him to love me. And that he would love me, with God’s help.

So why did he love me? Because God told him to. And it wasn’t a “my great love I have because I’m obeying God.” He loved me. It just was. In the thousand little things, his confident order of 2 beefy-5-layer burritos at Taco Bell, the 2 player games of 7 wonders, his grin when I solved the programming question, the berry-peanut butter sandwiches he fixed for our picnic, him talking to my tummy, explaining to our breech in utero baby the reasons why he should flip over….

It was a sort of un-self-conscious kind of love. It was just there---like the sun coming up. “Why does the sun come up?” the 3 yr old asks. “Because God wants it to” you say, thinking about something else. But it’s true. And it does come up.

 And when I came to him, distraught, wanting him to soak up all my fear/worry, be my rock, tell me that the world was going to be ok, etc---he told me, in a choked up voice, that he couldn’t do it. That he couldn’t really comfort me. And then he said “But the one who can perfectly comfort you is God, and He will take care of both of us.”

He was never my savior, my rescuer, my rock. He pointed me to the One who was. Early in marriage, at first I was a little deflated by this. 
I wanted him to be strong, to be there, to hold me and say “let me be your shelter…”--- not to get depressed by my emotional dump and tell me that he was weak as I was, and then point a finger at God and remind me “He’s gonna save us.” 
I was disappointed that my husband wasn’t going to be the knight on the white horse, wasn’t going to be my shelter, wasn’t going to be Jesus. I mean, in all the romantic stories, the guy kinda is. The shoulder to cry on. The strong one. The one that makes it all better. But early in our relationship, he told me flat out told me he couldn’t make it better. But he believed God would. “He will take care of both of us.”

And now, at the ripe age of 26, 4 yrs down this road, I see how right it was. I had been dissapointed that he would not fill that place in me, that craved for something, something I daydreamed would be filled in marriage. But he intentionally wouldn't, leaving me with an empty place for…Jesus. (Not for romance novels about Jesus-like guys, not for daydreaming and listening to ‘All I ask of You’.)  
He wouldn’t usurp Jesus’ place in my heart.

Because he was right. No human can comfort as we crave comfort. No human can really be your rock. No human can really be the Bridegroom of your Soul. It might work for a bit, for a few months, perhaps even a few years at most. But it will crumble, the idol will crash down, the asphalt will break under the load that was meant only for unbreakable Rock.

I had always found the “Let me be your shelter, let me be your light” motif from All I ask of You to be so romantic. The girl, full of fear, falling apart, the guy, strong and full of love, making it better. But then, viewing The Two Towers movie, I saw the same motif, but gender inverted. 

The war seems to be teetering on the edge of destruction, evil seems to be winning. Aragorn has been fighting this for 60 years, and now, he is struggling with giving into despair, doubt. In this dream sequence he sees his beloved Arwen, and tells her “My path is hidden from me.” To which she says “It is already laid before your feet. You cannot falter now.” He looks upset, is trying to say something, she silences him and says “If you trust nothing else, trust this (pointing to the necklace she gave him, the symbol of their love) Trust us” and then they kiss.

I was dumbstruck with the depression of it all. He’s struggling with doubt, struggling with despair, not even knowing if he’s doing the right thing. She tries to tell him that he is, and he still isn’t buying it. So her trump card is, if you believe in nothing else, believe in us.

And now I realize it reminded me of this poem.

…Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

                      ~ excerpt from Mathew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”

The funny thing was, when the girl’s love had to be the light, the shelter, it struck me as so insufficient, such a pathetic human attempt to hold our frail love against the darkness closing in. Admirable, but so incredibly sad, weak, and doomed to failure, like a toddler trying to move the piano on willpower.

Then, from the (extended) Return of the King movie, is this scene 

Eowyn is where Aragorn was. She’s despairing that the darkness will win. That the light will never come again “there is no warmth left in the sun, it grows so cold.” And Faramir’s response? “It’s the damp of the first spring rain. I do not believe this darkness will endure.” And he says it, so full of faith. And then, she puts her head on his shoulder, his arm around her, while he looks out toward the light.

In the Aragorn/Arwen scene, LOVE what was gonna get them through it. “Believe in us.” The scene ended with them, face to face, desperately trying to get their strength from each other. 

In the Faramir/Eowyn scene, “I do not believe this darkness will endure”. Believe that the sun will come again. The scene ended with him looking out toward the light. Faith. Faith in something bigger than yourselves.

Both scenes are about people comforting each other. In the first, Arwen’s love is the final answer. In the second, believing that the light will come, is.

If a human tries to be another's light, shelter, savior…its going to fail. He might really really mean it. He might really really try. But he’s going to fail. 

Because humans aren’t God. There’s a God-craving in us, an intense missing something we’ve never really known, desiring the Perfect Father, desiring the Bridegroom of our Souls. 

And we try to fill it, fill it with fellow humans, or daydreams. And it doesn’t work. Because that vacuum was designed for only one Man. For the Real Bridegroom of our souls. 

And He’s the rescuer for both of you, you and your husband, as you journey together, selected for each other because God wanted you 2 on a team, together traveling on that road to the New Jerusalem, where the Bridegroom of your souls waits, where the deepest desires of our hearts are filled. Because they weren’t meant to be filled here. 
They were meant to be filled in the New Jerusalem.

And they will be. As sure as the sun rising in the morning.