This Love....

This is the love of my life...second to Jesus, but still, the love of my life.  She was a gift from God at a particular time in  my life when I couldn't love myself and she loved me deeper and deeper into God's grace. She is the one I want to present to Christ as a "pure and spotless bride", even as He will, His church, to his Father.

But there are times when we seem to muddle through life more than we master it.  There are tussles here and travails there that have made this incredible adventure of life worth living. She adds the pizazz, she sometimes corrects the wrongs, she seems to know when to back off and when to push down on that accelerator. I think, if more men had as godly a wife as this, marriages would be a whole lot healthier.

Now, most of the folks we know and hang around have had some fairly significant time together. We're over 40 years now. But not very many have, what I consider to be, as healthy a marriage... longer sometimes, but not as healthy. We share everything. We don't have separate bank accounts, or charge accounts.  Each of us has each other's email passwords, and we even share fingerprint identities on each other's phones.  We not only consider it healthy, we consider it an honor that we love and trust each other as much as we do.

BUT, there are also times when we don't agree, and building on the previous blog post, I want to say that we don't seem to agree on our calling at this stage in our lives. Hence the conundrum, in the previous post.

I, being the more adventurous type, see any long term engagement as a field of compromise that arises from trying to keep everything in balance. She, on the other hand, see longevity as a rootedness, a strength.

And so we talk and we dream of what next, how to provide for both her perceived desire/need for rootedness and my desire/need for change. I've had some well-meaning folks try to steer me into the view that longevity is always a blessing (even as I have noted some significant compromise in their witness in order to maintain their position), or their view that the perennial "novice" status is almost always less than helpful.

My response is usually a "perhaps, but without the stranger, novice, explorer, you'd have no way of doing what you do.  It takes folks willing to break the ice, folks who would prefer to find a new job, or a new location, or a new setting, than to compromise their principles, to set the standard or to break the ground on which you have settled."

And yet, search as I may, there seems to be little psycho-babble on this issue that doesn't, in my opinion, lean toward compromise. 

One of the issues that seem to frame this matter for many is the perceived need for friendships, support, social capital, and that has never been something I felt a need to invest in. All of that is invested in my wife and, after Jesus Christ, she is my all-sufficient source of encouragement and strength.

I used to joke that my dream lifestyle was a one room cabin in the woods, 500 miles from anywhere, with a chair, a bed, a pot, and cup, plate and spoon...she said, "I'll come visit you on weekends." I love my wife.

There is something exciting about strangeness, novelty, the learning curve, the uphill battle that is exiting. Not knowing the lay of the land...leaning entirely on the Lord for understanding and support. And there is something about having to develop a deep and abiding relationship with anyone but Jesus Christ and my wife, that I just don't generally see as having value.

I'm sure the psychological community has a perfect understanding of my bad potty training, or my mother's nakedness, or some such basis for these feelings, but I just wink and praise God for the gift of being able to be by myself and enjoy it, as long as I am walking with the Lord and can get my regular wifey-fix.

Until the day when we are at home with Jesus, I'll continue my journey. This world, this house, this country...are not my home. I'm just passing through.

But even as I say that, I am indebted to and want make known my deep gratitude to the MANY along the way who wave, smile, and blow kisses as I go past.  You are loved! And you KNOW who you are!!!

Soli Deo Gloria,