Jake

Wanted to tell you a story about a chicken.

His name was Jake.

We raised 60 roosters this Summer.

20   Black-australorp’s

20 Silver- laced Wynadotte

and 20 Rhode Island Red’s.

Every morning I would open the door to the brooder house. The young roosters  would rush  the door like shoppers  on Black Friday….

all except the Rhode Island Red’s.  Only two of them were ever determined enough to go outside to put up with the constant harassment.

The Australorps and Wynadottes’s would simply   not allow the Rhode Island Red’s to leave the brooder house  to forage…

even in the 100 degree heat this past July.

Chickens really do have a “pecking order.”

Normally, once that has been established, the  pecking will taper off.

Unfortunately, it didn’t.

One of the two Rhode Island red’s I would see outside on occasion was missing all of his long tail feathers and many of the feathers on the back of his wings. (the other chickens had pulled them out)

In spite of the constant pecking, this red rooster would come outside and make the best of it.

He became very aggressive, even with me.

4 weeks ago, when I opened the door of the brooder house. I noticed a Rhode Island Red rooster giving me the evil eye.

7  feet away, on a perch .

He caught my eye, because of the way in which he was moving his head back and forth…

It felt like he was trying to judge the distance between us.

I imagined him thinking…

“Can I reach him  if  I really go for it?”

The next thing I knew he was in my face.

Sure enough, the red rooster without any tail feathers.

I decided right then and there to take him out of the mix and put him in a building by himself.  As much as I wanted him to have the freedom to run around outside, it was either that, or continue to allow the other chickens to pick on him and he become even more violent.

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He reminded me of a young man I met a few years ago.

His name was Jake (not his real name)

I taught a construction class @ the local community college/ started out with a dozen young roosters, I mean men..

Two weeks into school, two of the roosters, I mean  students, decided to challenge my authority.

It wasn’t pretty, but  when the dust settled, they knew  who was in charge.

I found out later, one of them, had lost his mother two years before  to cancer and had been having run-in’s with  authority figures ever since.

Just knowing that, changed my attitude.  Instead of wanting to kick him out of the program  so I wouldn’t have to deal with him, I was challenged by a friend to pray for him.

When someone knows you respect them as a person, but will not tolerate their crap, it is amazing to watch their heart  change.  I saw it in Jake the student, and I was beginning to see it in Jake the rooster.

Yesterday was “butchering day” on the farm.

It’s pretty quiet outside this morning.

I debated what to do with Jake.

I’m sure he would  have attacked another person if he had the chance

Since he’s a rooster, there are no eggs.

Plus I already have a pet Rooster…

his name is Little Moe with the gimpy leg

Economic sense told me the best thing to do was butcher him with the rest of them….

I could have went either way.

 Jake

If you’re ever in the area, (we live in Iowa)   I’d love to introduce you to Jake and Little Moe

Sometimes stories really do have a happy ending.

That’s not a knife…

Young  widow lives just up the road from us.

She called yesterday.

Wanted to know if  a red van  had stopped by our place  recently?

Why yes I said, but we hadn’t answer the door only because our son had called and given us the heads up.

Red van had stopped @ his place.  A young hispanic, in her late teens/ early 20′s had asked if she  could clean his carpet for free.  They had a couple of crews in the area and  were checking with  all the neighbors…  see who else might want a free cleaning…..  all they asked was  to have a chance to give a short sales pitch.

She was very smooth,  asked too many questions,  was way too observant.. Son said it took 15 minutes to get rid of her….

Young widow who called me  was not so lucky. The 3 cleaning guys weaseled their way into her house, even after she’s point blank said she was busy and didn’t have time.  She told me it took over 4 hours to get rid of them, and that was only after she  threatened to get out her shotgun…and yes she really does have one      This same van then stopped by her brothers place.  The sheriff  was called.  Turned out all three men had criminal records, and one had an outstanding warrant.  Warrant said he was to be considered possibly armed and dangerous.

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We live in a broken world.

That is the cold hard truth.

Even if you mind your own business and play by the rules.

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Have to tell you a story my grandpa told me…

Grandpa was   one of 13 children, 6 boys and  7 girls.

That’s him in the back, far left

He grew up farming with horses.

The boys used to wrestle in the  haymow  for entertainment.

In his prime, grandpa stood  6 foot 2, weighed  240 pounds.

One of the gentlest, most soft hearted men you would ever meet.

I heard it said more than once, there was not a person Grandpa didn’t get along with….that’s probably where I get some of my disposition.

One Saturday afternoon   grandpa stopped by  Hayen’s  general store, collecting for their country church.   Five young men were hanging around  outside waiting for the dance to begin.

Grandpa said  “hi”  , but the guys just grunted. Back  in the 1920′s some people looked down their noses @ the Germans in the area.

Twenty minutes later as he  walked  out the store, someone hit him on the back of the head.

  ”As I came out the door of the store someone hit me from behind. 

The next thing I knew I had 4 or 5 guys piling on top of me. 

I got  up and started swinging.

By the time it was over,  the last one  was in  the car  hiding in the back seat.”

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Heard on NPR yesterday, that the crime rates in New York City and elsewhere continue to trend downwards…while @ the same time, gun sales and gun ownership is @ an all time high…..Makes sense to me.

The trick is to love people,  be engaged with life yet  without loosing sight of the fact there is such a thing as evil.

I’ll close with this short clip from one of my favorite movies…..

the meaning of (my) life

He was standing on the tracks, listening to death’s locomotive whistle, and he was very clear about the important things in life……….

______________________________________________________

I (DM)  want to introduce you to one of my mentors.. Morrie Swartz.

What follows  is an excerpt from a book of Morrie’s distilled wisdom.

“the first time I saw Morrie on Nightline, I wondered what regrets he had once he knew his death was imminent.  Did he lament lost friends?  Would have have done much differently?  Selfishly, I wondered if I were in his shoes, would I be consumed with sad thoughts of all that I had missed?  Would I regret the secrets I had kept hidden?

When I mentioned this to Morrie, he nodded, “It’s what everyone worries about isn’t it?  What if today were my last day, on earth?”  He studied my face, and perhaps he saw an ambivalence about my own choices, I had this vision of me keeling over at my desk one day, halfway through a story, my editors snatching the copy even as the medics carried my body away.

“Mitch?”  Morrie said.

I shook my head and said nothing.  But Morrie picked up on my hesitation.

“Mitch.” he said, “the culture doesn’t encourage you to think about such things until you’re about to die.  We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money ,  meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks- we’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going.  So we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, “Is this all?  Is this all I want?  Is something missing?”

He paused.

“You need someone to probe you in that direction.  It won’t just happen automatically.”

I knew what he was saying.  We all need teachers in our lives.

And mine was sitting in front of me.

Fine, I figured.  If I was to be the student, then I would be as good a student as I could be.

On the plane ride home that day, I made a small list on a yellow legal pad, issues and questions that we all grapple with, from happiness to agin to having children to death.  Of course, there were a million self-help books on these subjects, and plenty of cable TV shows, and $90 operhour consultation sessions.  America had become a Persian bazaar of self-help.

But there still seemed to be no clear answers.  Do you take care of others or take care of your “inner child”?  Return to traditional values or reject tradition as useless?  Seek success or seek simplicity?  Just Say No or Just Do It?

All I knew was this:  Morrie, my old professor, wasn’t in the self-help business.  He was standing on the tracks, listening to death’s locomotive whistle, and he was very clear about the important things in life.

I wanted that clarity.  Every confused and tortured soul I knew wanted that clarity.

“Ask me anything,”  Morrie always said.

So I wrote this list:

Death

Fear

Aging

Greed

Marriage

Family

Society

Forgiveness

A meaningful life

This list was in my bag when I returned to West Newton for the fourth time, a Tuesday in late August when the air-conditioning at the Logan Airport terminal was not working, and people fanning themselves and wiped sweat angrily from their foreheads, and every face I saw looked ready to kill someone.”

From the book Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

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I (DM) love love love this book.  I remember as my grandma was getting older, she refused to have her will made out because somehow in her mind it might hasten her death or bring her bad luck.   My wife and I on the other hand love strolling through a local cemetery, looking at the old tombstones and learning  the stories of people buried there .   It comes down to perspective.

I think that’s one of the reasons I have enjoyed this book so much. It gives me added perspective on life.

I told someone yesterday I love being the age I am now….. 53 .

Inside I still feel like a 23 year old,  just now I have  30 years life experience under my belt…

what

a

rush!

Rereading this post I realized this is just a teaser to the subject at hand (the meaning of life).  Since I am not one to jam my “stuff” down anyone’s throat, I will stop  here.  If this is a topic you’re really hankering to find answers to, I’ll make two suggestions.

First,   get a copy of the book.  It will slake your thirst like nothing else.

Secondly, if you’d like my thoughts on a specific issue, ask your question and I will do my best to reply  in the comment threads.

DM

My Fork In The Road

     

     ” Integrity demands congruence between what I believe and how I act.” 

   Those words jumped off my computer screen last week.    Karen, a fellow blogger   was talking about  the tension in her heart between what she believes and  her  sometimes conflicting feelings. 

      Little did she know I was in the middle of my own test.

        Religious people are notorious for their  hypocrisy , that’s why her words were such a breath of fresh air.   There are    plenty of examples of hypocrisy in every  world religion.  It’s not just a problem in the Christian community by the way. 

  see this for example     But that’s not really where I wanted to go with this one.  

        A couple of weeks ago, my wife was going to be out-of-town for  a couple of days.  I asked her if she would be willing to be my accountability partner in my use of the Internet.    I’ve written in the past about looking @ inappropriate material on the  Internet here,  and here  so while I’ve been keeping a leash on this one, anyone who struggles with certain life issues will tell you, about the time you say, “I’ll never do that again,”  doesn’t  understand the depths of their own human depravity, hence my desire for accountability.

      Well, @ some point  while I was home alone,

Ever hear of the acronym  (H A L T)?  Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired)

       I rationalized to myself, while I had said, I wouldn’t look @ anything inappropriate, I never said I wouldn’t read something suggestive…so, you guessed it,  I stumbled. 

      If you see nothing wrong with filling your mind with sensual words and pictures then none of this will make any sense to you, and that’s fine.   (that’s  a bunny trail which will have to wait for another day )

     So now what?     I found myself dreading having to look into my wife’s eyes and telling her what I’d done while she was gone.  Sure I could have lied, but I’m a rotten liar and that would have only compounded  the situation.

    Then I thought about how to answer her inquiry in such a way that technically I didn’t lie.  ie. “I didn’t look @ any suggestive images..”  

       I know that sounds lame but I’m not the first person whose tried to pull that one…” but I didn’t inhale”   and “I didn’t have sex with that woman”

    This inner conflict went on for four days.  

       In the end, she did ask me and I told her the truth.   There were so many things  hanging in the balance in a situation like this.

  Trust,

 Integrity,

 A clear conscience,

 A healthy fear of the Lord,

The reluctance to humble myself

Self loathing,

Self respect,

The need for forgiveness

I was miserable those four days. 

 I can’t put a price tag on my  personal  peace of mind.

As always, thanks for checking up on me.   DM

Good Grief, That was 13 years ago

     

 

          I came across  the  picture Sunday night.  Facebook mentioned one of my friends had been tagged in a photo.

          Some of you talk about “triggers,” well, this photo  triggered something.  It  triggered  a heaviness  that was  almost palatable.

      Today at work,  that photo  and the accompanying  heaviness  came back to my mind several times.

     I didn’t understand.     I didn’t even know 1/2 of the people in the photo,  the ones I did  were  smiling.

       and then it hit me….

     I was  grieving

       Grief.  

      The picture triggered a wave of  grief that is 13 years old.   

     I didn’t think grief was supposed to last   that long.

           A good friend of mine is  still grieving the loss of a child, 4 years later.   He recently compared his   grief to  waves on the ocean.  
     Initially the waves  were strong, one after another… Four years later, they’re  further apart.

   

      Have you experienced grief in your life?  As I’ve alluded to, grief can come into our lives for lots of different reasons.

     If  you have experienced grief  and feel comfortable, would you tell me about it?  I suspect this post will generate a lot of hits long term.   What sort of comfort, insight, hope, wisdom would you give the person who stumbles across this later.  Please don’t give any pat  answers on this one.  I’m not interested in  theory.  Speak only of what you’ve experienced first hand.  Thank you in advance. DM

Once We Were Boys….

    I installed  another window this past Saturday.  a 9 ft by 4 ft  vinyl new construction window, a favor for an old employee.    The family had two little boys  and a newborn   baby girl.    The boys  (about 2 and 3) were captivated as I  removed the wood  casing from  around  the old window.  When the oldest introduced his little brother to me,  he ended with   ”And he’s tougher  than me.” 

      I thought to myself, ” Boy, these  guys remind me of   my brother and I. ” 

       I remarked, “I know that feeling”  (about having your younger brother being tougher than you).    

         I told him,  ”It will all work out….., but you may  have a hard  road ahead .”

      I am the oldest of four, my brother is 14 months younger, followed by two  sisters.   As far back as I can remember until I  was  15  Steve and I   fought.   And unfortunately, he was just a little stronger than me.    We fought when we milked the cows,  we fought when we went to bed, we  punched, wrestled, threw things, and  on one occasion  took the pitchfork after each other.    I could never understand why  mom got all worked up about our  fights.  

     Here is an early picture of my brother and I.    I can still remember standing there looking like a dork in those green leather lederhosen.

   

        I am thankful for my brother.     The last time we had a knock down drag out fight  was the Summer I was 15.   Today  there is not   a hint of the former anamosity we had for each other .  We’re both self employed- he specializes in pouring decorative concrete, whereas, I prefer remodeling and framing.   Because both of us have small crews, we  help each other out if one of us needs an extra set of hands .

Here is a photo of us working together pouring a  house wall a few years ago:

          

    ” When I was a child,  I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like  a child;  When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”  

       My purpose for this post is simple:

        Celebrate the relationship I have  with my brother.

           If you have any specific question about sibling rivalry- drop me a note, there are things you can do. 

      Note to you regular readers;    Tell me about your sibling relationships.  Where do you fall in line?  How would describe your relationship with your siblings today?    What would you say to the young mom who is tired of  refereeing?

You asked “How Do You keep Your Relationship Fresh?” and other random questions

       I asked a couple of you that know me pretty well if you would be willing to come up with a few questions I could answer for a blog post.  Here’s what you  came up with:

What is your greatest accomplishment? 

   That is a good question.   My greatest accomplishment  is being able to look into the eyes of the woman I  married  almost 30 yrs ago  and still see a woman who is in love with me.

How do you keep your marriage fresh and still remain authentic to who you are?  

    

      A few things  come to mind.  Both of us are very intentional about personal growth…. whether that means   going to a counselor for  help or being willing to be pushed out of our comfort zones. Those type of things add  freshness to your relationships. 

     Forgiveness…definitely.  Both of us are very intentional about trying not to go to bed with unresolved conflict in our relationships.  Unresolved conflict will ferment  and sour your  relationship, every time.

     Time together, for us probably the most important time together is in the morning.  I bring  coffee to the bedroom before we get up for the day.

      Just speaking for ourselves, I’ve observed there is an “ebb and flow”  in our relationship in terms of emotional closeness .  Dr Dobson talks about how our emotions tend to be responders.  (ie.  do the deed and our feelings will follow)….if your relationship is starting to feel “flat”, maybe it’s because you haven’t been investing time dating, doing little acts of kindness, thoughtfulness….I know that’s true in our lives.

   

What is the most romantic thing you’ve ever done for your wife?

      That’s a hard one.  I tend to be a romantic in a dozen little ways…I will often call home when I’m driving to work (I would have just walked out the door), or @ break time, lunch time…just to say “Hi” and tell her some silly thing I might be thinking about).  I have put together more than one “surprise” party.   I’m  verbal.  I think most wives long to hear what their husbands are thinking, how his day was, be asked how her day was,  and yea, I have been known to wash the dishes on occasion.

  What is your biggest regret? 

Great question…funny you should ask it because I just had this conversation  the other night. 

     I do not have any regrets @ this point in my life period…none…nada…sure I would do things differently if I had a chance to go back  when our kids were little (and as a younger husband)..but @ the time I was doing what I thought I should be doing..and did things the best I could.

 Looking back through your life, what one moment do you see as a “fork in the road – pivotal” moment? 

  The night I picked  up the phone, pushing past raw fear to  do this : read this post

What exactly do you do for a living?

       I own a construction business with 2 employee’s currently besides myself.  I love my job, every week is different.  Today for example I rented a cement saw and cut an egress window into a basement.  Last week we finished siding an older home.  We also pour concrete, frame houses, and things like that.

Describe….how  you proposed

     We’d been dating for 5 months.   One evening we were out taking a walk around my parents farm, hadn’t talked about marriage before that night, although I had been giving it some serious thought.   I’d been  having  a very strong “nesting urge” (ie.  desire to settle down and start a family vs. run around every weekend partying, so in the midst of our walk, I said I needed to talk to her about something…I looked at her and simply said, “Would you marry me?” ..there was the longest pause …and then she said, “You bet.”  At that point my knees got weak and I had to sit on the ground…the rest is history

   5 foods you hate:  corn,  peas, asparagus, white milk, carrots

 

 5 foods you love :

  KFC extra crispy, a good rare steak, fresh green beans with new potatoes and bacon, (sorry Winston), and  coffee (coffee is a food group right?)

    If you’d like me to come up with a set of questions you could use to create a blog post, let me know…I would love to.

Meet: Lindsey

Lindsey is my next guest.  I don’t know her quite as well as some of my other guests..but she is one of those people  I am drawn to (tattoos/ died hair/ chains/ motorcycles/piercings)…:-)  not saying Lindsey wears chains or has tattoos but I’m thinking  she might have @ one point :-)  The first time I read one of her posts I thought to myself…boy that woman is articulate…I like the way she wrestles with hard questions and isn’t afraid of not having everything fit into  nice tidy boxes….put your hands together and give a big blog welcome to Lindsey :

My favorite passage of the Bible is one of the least quoted ones.  In fact, it comes from a book whose existence I didn’t know of until I was thirteen and decided to read the Bible cover to cover for the first time.  This wouldn’t be that interesting of trivia if it weren’t for the fact that my father was a pastor- so familiarity with the Bible was a given.  Even so- I wasn’t aware of the fact that there was more than one book of John and the book of 1st John knocked my socks off.  1st John 4 quickly knocked my socks off. It talks about love, love, love, and love was part of faith in God that I just hadn’t really considered.  My father has a brash personality described in Evangelical circles as “prophetic”, which may be better described as harsh and sometimes coldly judgmental.  Not that my father is a bad man, and not that he wasn’t fully loving- he was a stay at home dad for part of my childhood.  No, it was simply my own misunderstanding of faith based of off fairly common perceptions of church.  Most sermons preach “against” something, rather than praising the good in people.  Most people fixate and pick at the things that our wrong in people’s lives.  We like to tell others to pick at their own logs rather than our specks when it’s us under the microscope, but even so faith seems to go hand in hand with pick, pick, pick.

Suddenly, at age thirteen, I had a revelation.  God was love.  Love was necessary to true Christianity.

I quickly swept it under the carpet and forgot about it.  It stayed in the back of my mind, and honestly it worked to embitter me.  Again and again I came up against judgment in my life.  Again and again I questioned why these people who claimed to love God so very much seemed to be missing the picture.

One of my Top 50 movies is SLC Punk, which is notable in the context of getting to know me just because it leads into another altar of remembrance.  When I was seventeen I watched it at my brother’s house. There were entire sections of dialog I listened to with bated breath.  I already knew that the punks and rejects of the world were “my people”, so I can’t say that watching the movie led to a revelation that way.  No, it was at the end, where Matthew Lillard’s character walked down the street in suit and tie to the monologue about ceasing to rage against the machine and changing it from the inside.  For the first time in my life I tried looking at myself not as a reject, not as a pink-haired teary-eyed freak, but as a part of the machine.  I asked myself if perhaps I couldn’t make a home for myself in the church, and try to change the way it related to my ilk by being there and being a good example.

I was still a teen, so I answered myself, “no.”

A few years later I was married and now officially a tattooed pink-haired heavily mascaraed freak.  I’d stopped attending church regularly after I’d been a regular face at my parent’s church for nine months, only to have one of my parent’s friends (who had been introduced to me several times) come up and ask me if I was a first time guest.  That compounded the feeling of being outside of the circle that I’d gotten my first time at the church, when a pastor received a “word” for a bright haired young girl who was sitting in the back and feeling depressed.  Despite the fact that the word was probably one I needed to hear (that I was a cherished princess of The Kingdom) the fact that I was called out in a crowd of several hundred made me feel a little ill.  Contrary to the impression people get from reading my writing, I’m actually an incredibly socially awkward introvert.  Having everyone in the room turn around to stare at you, some of them brushing back tears, isn’t a hearty welcome for me.  Especially when some of those crying women didn’t even remember me the next week.  The comes the next altar.  My husband and I move to a new state, and we have dinner with his old pastor- who happens to be the brand new pastor of the church my father started preaching at, the church that had always felt like my “home” church.  Something told me we should go on a Sunday morning, so I did.  And I cried during the worship.  I don’t know why, I just did.  And for whatever reason, an elderly woman I remembered from my childhood came up to me after the service and told me I looked like an angel to her- and she repeated the much hated word from years previous, that I was a cherished princess of the Kingdom.

Suddenly everything seemed to converge- 1st John 4, SLC Punk, and Princess Me.  I was home, and I vowed to stay there.  Which is how I became a youth pastor- but that’s a story for another day.

Hope this is what you were hoping for!

~

Lindsey 

Altars of Remembrance:  throughout the old Testament we see the people of Israel building altars to God in those places that marked important moments in their journey to the promised land.  Here I will mark out some of my own spiritual altars of remembrance- not all of them, just a few of the ones that deserve the most honor.

You can read more from LIndsey @ http://emphaticasterisk.com/

Dear Me In 1973

     Dear Me in 73,   I saw your picture in the paper, thought I’d jot you a note. 

      I know this is hard to understand, but this letter is being written by yourself 35 years into the future.    The year is 2008 and you’re still fascinated with  the computer.  I’m not sure how much time I have on this end before I loose the connection, so this is going to be quick.

      There are so many  things going through my mind….

      That kid sitting next to you (along with all the other jocks in your class, ignore them, you’re not going to see most of them ever again except at class reunions-  And Mr J, the gym teacher-  he should never have been given a teaching position, lining you guys up to pick teams.   I know  you’re one of the last ones picked because of your size.  

     

     I know you like to take your medicine straight so here’s the deal…you still have 3 more years before you fill out.  I know you don’t want to hear that  but  by the time you are 20, you’ll be  pushing 6 ft.   And because of your job,   you’re in  better shape than most  of those guys I run into now.   

    One of the good things that came out of all those years of being small, shy and insecure is it has given you a tender heart for  hurting people.    I know, that doesn’t sound like something exciting at your age, but trust me, your priorities change after those crazy years of high school.

      I want to tell you something that will really blow your mind…let’s talk about girls for a second.  You’ve only had one or two conversations with the fairer sex..and dude…get this… you’re only going to have one or two more until after you graduate…not to worry…the race is not always to the fastest…I’m going to tell you something that is going blow your mind….you are going to get a date with you know who ..and not only that, but you and her are going to end up having 4 kids together…yea, I know what you’re thinking…that’s OK,  I’m sitting here 35 years later still amazed myself.

     What else should I tell you…stop grinding your teeth…, not sure what to do with them.  You’ve ground  1/4 inch off them at this point, and there is no easy fix for this mess.

    I’m going to give you a quote I didn’t come across until my 20′s..it  has to do with your attitude..and it will radically change your life if you embrace it.:

     “The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.  Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.  It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failure, than success, than what other people think say or do.  It is the more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.  It will make or break a company…a church…a home.  The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.  We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.  We cannot change the inevitable.  The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.  I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is wit you…we are in charge of our Attitudes”

                                                                     Charles R. Swindoll

    Oh, oh, I need to go.  One last thing….you are way more gifted than you give yourself credit for.  I know you’re not a hugger, but I would love to wrap my arms around you, look you in the eyes and pour some of the older me into you now.

  I got this idea for the  letter here

My Lover, My Wife

     “Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, shelter, food, loves gentle balm?  Or what is it ye buy so dear with your pain and with your fear?”                                           Percy Bysshe Shelley

      Wednesday morning  wife and I  had an appointment with Marilyn, a friend and Christian counselor.  I went in to work for a couple of hours then  met them  at her office.  As I got out of my truck I felt like the Thanksgiving turkey  walking into the butcher shop.  gobble gobble

      These  things were going through my mind:

    #1  I am not going to play any mind games, I am going to own up to anything that comes out of this session where I am in the wrong.

    #2  Lately, God has shown me how completely he sees into my heart.  There’s a verse in scripture   “Before him no creature is hidden but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do..”

      He sees into every nook and cranny, and still he loves me. 99.9% of the time he is just a silent observer, but once in a while  something will happen to show me that yes  he does know about X Y or Z, and I’m just fooling myself if I think otherwise.

      #3 Marriage takes work.   Like  tending a garden in Iowa.  After that initial  excitement , the weeds start to show up.  If too many days go by, I can’t  even see  the  stuff I planted.   Wednesday was “weed pulling time.”

      My eldest asked me last week,” Are you going to write mom a letter ?”  (referring to the series I’ve written to my children) 

     We will mark 30 years of marriage April 21 2009.  Our children range in age from 28,26, 22, and 19.

      For the record, our relationship rocks.  It has not happened by accident.   Talk to 10 different couples and I’m guessing they will tell you 10 different things on what is the key to their relationship. 

      For me, I would say it’s an intentional choice to make our relationship a priority over any other area of either one of our lives..over being a parent (the best gift you can give your children is a healthy marriage), over our jobs which some of us love as much or more than any lover,  over ministry.   Throw in large doses of forgiveness, humility, honestly and kindness and there’s a  good chance you’ll do just fine….now to my letter

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      To my best friend and soul mate,

      Thank you for saying “Yes” so many years ago.  It is hard to believe almost 30 years have passed since the night I popped the question.  There are so many things about you that I am attracted to…like I said the other morning,  at the top of the list is your kind and gentle spirit..and I’m not just blowing smoke.  

      Just last week I was looking in your eyes.  Felt like I was noticing how grey they were  for the first time.  I love the way we continue to discover new things about each other.  Won’t get all mushy for you on the blog…will save the rest over coffee…  XXXX      Your farm boy

 

ps  the picture above was taken when we were on the West Coast visiting our daughter…we were looking out to the ocean…made me think later it was like the two of us were standing side by side, looking to the future,  the sea was a little rough, it was overcast..there we were, standing side by side, facing the future, come what may.