Marriage: Like Oil and Water



By Tetine view original here.

“Like oil and water, that’s what we are,” laughs Jon, my hubby of twelve years, whenever I do something that drives him nuts, like let soap suds dry in washed cups, giving that next cup of coffee a ring of sour foam, or leave keys dangling in the front door (“Are you trying to leave an announcement for all the burglars in the area?!”) or sit in his Herman Miller in damp gym clothes, leaving a sweat spot on the seat, just for him.

Oil and water—that’s what we are, me the oldest born, him the youngest. Me the realist, him the idealist. Me thinking eating is about living and him thinking living is eating. Me out the front door ten minutes early, him putting on socks in the car. Me drinking coffee straight up, him drinking a little coffee with his Cold Stone creamer. Me focused on the task at hand, him pausing to ponder life.

But it’s our similarities, like our love for competition and all things athletic, that keep us loving life together. When we were college sophomores playing Speed in the Student Center, he beat me ten times in a row, and I threw the deck of cards in his face, and he laughed saying, “well, how bout another round of ten, make it twenty losses for you?” When he schooled me in basketball, I gave him a little roundhouse kick to the backside, and he just laughed until I started laughing. He stopped laughing when I beat him in a 5k by half a mile (secretly he’s proudJ), so this year we’re signing up for a mud run so we finish together.

We’re minimalists wearing thrift store steals, carrying flip phones, and driving rusty vehicles with missing door handles. We’re readers with ten books on hold at the library and a fetish for Amazon and Half Price Books. We’re talkers planning date nights with witty repartee over a glass of Moscato. We’re dreamers and cynics railing against the mundane, fighting for the beautiful.

We’re sinners needing oceans of grace.

Jon’s favorite verse—Galatians 2:20—has become our marriage verse, keeping us learning and loving through oil-and-water moments, the joys and pains of life. Our first year of marriage, teaching AP Lit. to seniors, buried under Hamlet essays and grading grammar tests, I wanted to make Jon something special for Christmas, so I decided to cross-stitch Galatians 2:20  in Greek—the whole verse—even though needles, thread and crafty things don’t come naturally to this wife.

But on Christmas Eve, with half the verse stitched on cloth cut too short to stretch, I drove to the custom framing shop down the street and begged the guy behind the white counter to help me figure out what to do with my half-verse stitched on too-small cloth. He helped me pick out a frame, directed me to some sticky-board for the cloth, and offered to cut a mat out of discounted remnants. I watched as he cut the rose-colored mat on the white counter with an exacto knife, watched as his fingers slipped and blood oozed.

As co-workers scrambled for the first aid kit, I stared at red blood oozing on white counter and thought of my half-verse: “I have been crucified with Christ, therefore I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”

It’s only after dying that you really live, that Christ lives in you.

Dying to Self, living to Christ, blends husband and wife together.

Christ living in me, living in Jon, breathes joy into our marriage, giving Grace for every-day oil-and-water moments and Hope for years to come.

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How to Face the Uncertainty of a New Year

When I woke up this morning at 5am, I lay in the semi-dark listening to the cackle of the baby monitor beside me and the hum of the industrial fan in the next room. Esther’s sore gums woke her every hour in the night, so this sleep-deprived mama wished I could fall asleep for another hour rather than brave the sub-zero morning for my usual date with the gym treadmill. But after fifteen minutes of snuggling under new flannel sheets, force of habit won the hour and I slipped out of bed and into the seventh day of 2014.

As I drove to the gym in our 1996 Geo, vents breathing cold air on mittened fingers, I thought about Caleb, a nineteen year old boy from our church, lying in a hospital in a month-old coma, his new year dawning in a way he never imagined.

I pondered the words Caleb’s Dad, Bruce, typed on an ipad in a hospital room as he sat beside his bed-ridden son in the first week of the new year--“‘Delight yourself also in The Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way also to Him and He will bring it to pass.’ The starting place, my friend, is 'delighting in the Lord.’”

The starting place for 2014—delight in the Lord—no matter the circumstances.

As I pulled into the gym parking lot and grabbed my backpack and water bottle, my thoughts wandered to the night Jon and I sat at our kitchen table listening to our friend Kris tell the story of his childhood, how he grew up in a church full of Bible but absent of Jesus, how he wanted to meet Jesus, so he opened his Bible and read the gospels, “looking for Jesus.” Stopping at the words “Jesus wept,” Kris said, “Now that, that, is Jesus, and I want to know this Jesus.”

The starting place for 2014—seeing the real Jesus—the one who weeps with the hurting.

Front-desk-Pat asked for my gym pass, bringing me back to the present. Pass scanned in, I trudged upstairs hoping to find an open treadmill. As I pulled off my green jacket and clipped the blue ipod on my tank top, the words of Ann Voskamp’s new year’s post echoed loud:

“The most important skill 2014 needs is this: Just be with Jesus. Listen to Jesus. Rest in Jesus. Wait for Jesus. Be Loved by Jesus. Wonder over Jesus. Live through Jesus. When who Jesus is overwhelms you — nothing that happens can overcome you. Steep your soul in Jesus and nothing is too steep to overcome.” (http://www.aholyexperience.com/)

The starting place for 2014—steep the soul in Jesus—for with Jesus, nothing is too difficult to overcome.

As I scanned the sea of new-year’s resolutioner’s sweating on treadmills, ellipticals, and bikes, I saw 85-year-old Dick wave me over to his treadmill. As I climbed onto the treadmill Dick saved for me, I remembered the New Year’s of my childhood:

Each new year began with Dad handing out yet another Read-Through-The-Bible schedule. The only thing that changed from year to year was the method—chronologically from Genesis to Revelation? According to date written, which meant starting in Job? Or a mixture of Psalms/Proverbs as you plowed into the gospels at the same time? . . .  

Over the years I read, memorized, and studied A LOT of Bible. I read and studied a lot of systematic theology (Grudem anyone?), dissected worldviews against the backdrop of the Bible, and listened to political debates dripping with Bible. But in the midst of all that Bible, I missed the most important thing:

I missed Jesus.

After I grew up and left home, God sent me I-can’t-handle-this-on-my-own kinds of trials, and in the midst of trial I learned I could read the Bible all day long and still not have Jesus.

I learned Jesus is not found in spiritual disciplines or church service or righteous living.

 

I learned when the MEANS become the END, we live moralistic lives filled with BIBLE but empty of JESUS.

Which is why on the cusp of this new year my hubby pulled out his Bible and read these words: “So then it (salvation) depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.” (Romans 9:16).

No amount of human exertion gives you Jesus.

Jesus is God’s merciful gift to us, and the Bible, as our friend Kris said, is a MEANS to seeing Jesus.

So for our family, the starting place for 2014 is this—praying for God’s mercy—because only through His mercy can we truly know Jesus, live Jesus.  

And our  2014 New Year’s Resolution is this: delight in Jesus, see Jesus, live Jesus.

For if the desire of our heart is Jesus, we can look at the uncertainty of a new year and say with Bruce, who sits in a hospital room with his beloved son:

The starting place, my friend, is 'delighting in the Lord.’

In “pastures green”? Not always; sometimes He

Who knowest best, in kindness leadeth me

In weary ways where heavy shadows be.

So whether on hilltops high and fair

I dwell, or in the sunless valleys, where

The shadows lie, what matter?

He is there.

(Streams in the Desert, 17)

When Mother-Love Falls Short: A Christmas Prayer

I scoop up my wailing daughter, Esther Sophia, from the living room rug, her eyes blotchy-red from fitting, cheeks slippery with saliva, pink dress smelling milky-sour as she sucks air between sobs.

Cupping her ruffled bottom in my blue-veined palm—

I tuck Esther under my chin, neck-to-neck, heartbeat to heartbeat, her chick-soft hair tickling my cheek, our pink flesh and blood throbbing, mingling with the crimson pulse of living.

My heart fills with loving this daughter, my Only daughter.

I wish this love—fallible Mother love—could fill Esther’s soul well to the brim, fill it so deep she’d never hurt.

But in this broken and bruised world, Mother love can’t fill the soul well, can’t give lasting comfort, perfect peace.

My Father’s Only Son is the Only One who fills the soul well: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you. . . . [I] will quiet you with [my] love.”*

Esther stirs, lifts head, little fists digging sharp with fingernails not yet cut. Holding squirming Esther on my knees, I glide on the rocking chair. Her back arches as balled fists flail. I smile saying, “Hello, my sweet girl,” and dimpled cheeks smile back as she babbles: “Aaah, waaa. Aaah waaa.”  I kiss her downy hair, gently brushing my palm across her scalp, fingers dipping over the soft spot—the tender spot—where bone has yet to cover brain.

And I wish Mother Love could cover the tender spots in Esther’s heart—the rejection and pain that life inevitably brings. But I’ve learned through dark days of my own:

My Father’s Only Son is the Only One who covers our tender places.

Esther, still perched on my knee, lets out a quiver-cry, and I pull her close, snuggle her against my heart. She lays her downy head between the curve of my cheek, the slope of my neck.

As Esther rests in the earthly comfort of Mother-Love, I deep-heart pray she comes to know the heavenly Comforter—Jesus.

Only Jesus—God-man born in a stinking manger stall, to a frail human Mother like me, because he Loved the World!—can fill the soul with perfect comfort, perfect peace.

As my mentor-Mother once said to me: “The prayer I pray for my sons and daughter is this: that they have more and more of Jesus, because if they have Jesus, they have everything.”

So this Christmas, and every Christmas, my Mother-prayer is this: Grace, eternal comfort—Jesus—overflowing in the souls of my children.

Isaiah 9:6

⁶ For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given,
    and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
    Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace

1. Isaiah 9:6 : S Ge 3:15; Isa 53:2; Lk 2:11
2. Isaiah 9:6 : Jn 3:16
3. Isaiah 9:6 : S Mt 28:18
4. Isaiah 9:6 : Isa 22:22
5. Isaiah 9:6 : S Job 15:8; Isa 28:29
6. Isaiah 9:6 : S Dt 7:21; Ps 24:8; Isa 10:21; 11:2; 42:13
7. Isaiah 9:6 : S Ps 90:2
8. Isaiah 9:6 : S Ex 4:22; Isa 64:8; Jn 14:9-10
9. Isaiah 9:6 : Isa 26:3, 12; 53:5; 66:12; Jer 33:6; Mic 5:5; S Lk 2:14
*Isaiah 66:13, Zephaniah 3:1

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