You Can Be the Wife of a Happy Husband

I found the book, a donation to the church library, in the church copy room. I held in my hand a yellowed, 5 x 9 paperback, published in 1981 - its 24th printing. Maybe, then, in the face of over 600,000 sold between 1974 and 1981, I shouldn’t have laughed.

But I did. I laughed at the title and chuckled over the cover art - a blonde, gazing up in adoration at her husband– before I turned the book over and smirked at the author’s feathered bob.

I took the book home and read the whole thing from the Forward to Recommended Reading. Quickly I had a lengthy bullet point list of what I consider to be dated and sexist marriage advice. It took me about three hours to turn these points into a scathingly witty blog entry, drafted and ready to post.

Satisfied that I’d finished December’s blog prior to Thanksgiving, I sat down to watch a recorded episode of Preachers of LA. If you haven’t watched the show, it profiles mega-church pastors and their “first ladies” from the Los Angeles area.

The scene I watched was one of the pastors speaking with Brian “Head” Welch, the former guitarist for Korn and born-again Christian. They talked about how Christians are sometimes the worst about tearing each other down. Exactly what I had just done with the blog I drafted on this book. Ouch!

So I’m not going to post that blog. But I do want to talk about marriage books, and I bit why I reacted so strongly to that one in particular. Many books, like this one, encourage wives to be pleasant and respectful so their husbands will be happy. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s Biblical and just plain common sense.

Where things start to get dicey is the premise of many of these books: that when husbands are happy, the wives will automatically be happy too. In other words, a wife’s goal is her husband’s happiness. Her life is to revolve around his.

Which makes me wonder if previous generations of women, especially Christian women, felt like they had two options with marriage: the so-called Christian option, a lifetime of devoting yourself to generating your husband’s happiness, or the culturally popular option, divorce. Underlying both choices is the message that marriage is not a vehicle for a woman’s happiness. Marriage is about wives making their husbands happy, because after all, that’s all a woman needs to be fulfilled – a happy man?

Wives, we do ourselves a disservice when our number one concern is making our husbands happy, rather than honoring God and being the Christians, women and yes, wives that He calls us to be.

I think the idea that wives are responsible for the success or failure of their marriages lingers. Wives are still trying to discover the keys of marital success, as if we could 100% control and dictate the direction of our blessed unions. But marriage as God intended is not for one side or the other to dominate or control. Rather, husbands and wives mutually submit to meet one another’s needs, and both submit to God (see 1 Cor 7:3-4, 11:12, Eph 5:21-33).

After 14 years and 11 months of marriage, I can honestly write that even with two imperfect people, marriage can be a continual source of happiness. It’s a way that we as fallible human beings approximate the infallible love God has for us.

It’s a fantastic privilege to be married, and to be married to my (happy) husband. Just don’t call me “the wife of a happy husband.” That’ll be our secret.

Sizing Up the Fall Line Up

Remember the good ‘ol days of Garbage Pail Kids and Bart Simpson? Andrew Dice Clay and Roseanne Barr? Chris Rock? Back when potty talk and smart mouths were entertainment?

My kids and I turned on the TV the other day and watched about 15 minutes of TLC’s Extreme Cheapskate. One man ate home-roasted goat heads –including eyeballs and brain - for dinner. (If the cabrito enthusiasts from the butcher shop weren’t enthusiastic enough to eat the heads, I don’t think he should have been eating them either.) Another re-used floss, and took discarded food out of a movie theater trash can to serve to his wife. I guess I missed the memo that came out with Hoarders and My Strange Obsession: mental illness is now entertainment.

Is that because we’re all so mentally balanced that mental im-balance is an extraordinary phenomenon, like the aurora borealis or me making only one trip to the grocery store in a week? I don’t think so. Not according to Glaxo-Smith-Klein, Pfizer and Eli Lily. Not according to the Sandy Hook families. Not according to any of us, myself included, who face or have friends/loved ones with mental health issues.

I’m strange enough not to consider mental illness entertainment, so we turned the channel to watch Finding Bigfoot on Animal Planet. Safe territory here, right? Two lunatics and a scientist crashing around the Colorado Rockies, chasing B-roll of a ‘squatch from the 1960s. That’s entertainment I can appreciate: grown adults enticing a shy forest-dweller with bacon, doughnuts and an ear-piercing Oooouuuahh. (Because reclusive, wild animals are attracted by loud noises, baked goods and pork? Though to be honest, if I lived out in the Colorado wilderness, I’m pretty sure you could attract me with a Boston crème and a slab of honey-cured fat-back).

I watched until they interviewed an eye witness. And not just any eye witness. A visually-impaired eye witness with a guide dog. Describing what she saw. Yeah. All I’m saying is that I know what I can see without my contacts, and it ain’t much.

I understand now why Camus wrote Le Malentendu and Beckett En Entendant Godot, creating the theater of the absurd. They didn’t have TLC and Animal Planet. Everyone was so grounded and sane around them, absinthe drinkers aside, they had to try to convince their fellow man life wasn’t as wonderful as it really was.

Which brings me to the meat of this particular rant about contemporary TV: the fall season. I’m disappointed with Sleepy Hollow (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, anyone?), Agents of SHIELD (I want to like it in the way I want to like cucumber, but don’t) and especially The Blacklist. Blacklist Spoiler Alert: anyone else watch the pilot and immediately think the FBI woman is the bad dude’s daughter? Don’t get me wrong, I’m still watching these shows, but I’m smirking the whole time.

A show I still really like? Will you let me explain why I like it before you pass judgment? Keeping Up With the Kardashians. And yes, I know it’s not reality. I know the story lines are scripted and the scenes staged. That didn’t bother me when I watched Beverly Hills, 90210 and it doesn’t bother me now.

I like Keeping Up With the Kardashians for the same reason I like the Brady Bunch. After high school, a lot of you, dear readers, studied the hard sciences or went out there in the real world. I, on the other hand, watched The Real World and studied liberal arts - sociology and French to be exact - at UT Austin. One thing I learned in one of those sociology classes is why the Brady Bunch was and is so popular.

See the Brady Bunch helped America emotionally escape from the Vietnam War. It was an idealized representation of a blended family, a new trend at the time. It gave that first-generation of divorce hope that family life could still be good. And even for those of us who didn’t grow up in a blended household, there is something fascinating and heartwarming about a family spending time together, working out their problems, and involved in one another’s lives.

Which is exactly what the Kardashians is all about. A family that, at least while the cameras roll, makes time for one another. Vacations together and shares the hardships (okay, luxuries) of life.

I am grateful that I have a brother and a sister, two brothers-in-law and two-sisters-in-law. But our lives don’t intersect in the way that a part of me desires. I wish I had pillow fights and secrets with the girls and more time with my extended family. I’m not pointing fingers. We would all have to quit our jobs to make that happen on a regular basis.

A close-knit family is part of the American dream. That’s a dream I hold in my heart and on my TV, at least as long as Kim, Kourtney and Kholé are on. (Marcia, Jan and Cindy, too.) And I’ll take a family caring for one another, for better or worse, as entertainment any day of the week.

Don’t Hate Him ‘Cause He’s Thin

There was a time I could have hated someone like John. Mid thirties, over six feet tall, nowhere close to 200 lbs. Lean, healthy, ordering the fried lasagna at the OG (that’s the Olive Garden to you uninitiated) and explaining to the rest of us eyeing the vegetable soup and salad (the "us" is my sister’s wedding party), how he’s been trying to gain weight for the past ten years.

Fortunately, he was talking to the right person. I consider myself a professional at gaining weight and an amateur at losing it. Right away, I could tell he knew how to order at restaurants – fried lasagna was a good choice – so I encouraged him to up his chip intake at home. Ruffles, Fritos, you know, hit the refined carbohydrates hard.

He confessed to the occasional dark beer adding a pound or two, but watching John eat confirmed my suspicions. He was going to be a tough case. He nibbled at his breaded and deep-fried bundles, actually tasting the food and commenting on the flavor of the ricotta stuffing. He offered a portion to the groom, and then – gasp – stopped eating when he was full, leaving two – TWO!!!- bundles completely untouched.

When I encouraged him to join the clean plate club, he declined. Then he confessed that he, as a matter of routine, waited until he was hungry to eat, sometimes even skipping breakfast if he wasn’t.

Inwardly, I shook my head. Saturated fats and refined carbohydrates would only get him so far. He can’t expect to gain weight if he listens to his body’s signals for hunger and fullness. That’s ludicrous.

But that’s not the most insane thing I saw him do at the rehearsal lunch. At the end of the meal, we passed those incredibly addictive and FREE chocolate Andes mints around the table. He didn’t eat any. Not a single one. I guess he doesn’t like them??? Sure, we’d all just scarfed slabs of tiramisu, but I can tell you, on my side of the table, my second “dessert stomach” had just woken up and was demanding more sugar.

Being choosy about his dessert is really just another symptom of his problem. He’s going to have to stop discriminating against perfectly tasty, calorie-heavy, nutrient-free foods if he wants to gain weight. Some people will never learn, I guess.

Which brings me to why I can’t hate John and his super metabolism and fantastic digestive enzymes. I know what it’s like to make the same mistakes over and over, especially when it comes to food. Eating healthy is a lifetime journey for me, meaning I’ve spent a fair amount of time at the station refusing to board or getting on the wrong train.

Nevertheless, here’s one thing I have learned. I don’t have to have a metabolism like John’s to be healthy. I cook kale and onions so well Whole Foods should call me for rhe recipe. (In the interest of full disclosure, my kids consider this dish radioactive waste.) What I do need to have is some sort of understanding of what works for my body. And then the hard part, I need to come to terms with what I often think of as the dieter’s creed, I Cor 6:12:

"All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything."

I don’t have to have been dealt a perfect hand to be healthy if I learn to choose what is profitable for my health. Which is what my super slender and fit, don’t-hate-her-because- she’s-beautiful sister said the night before the wedding, while I was chomping down on Reese’s and Snickers. Self-control comes down to a single choice. Just choose right now that you don’t want to do something, and don’t do it.

Or something like that. To be honest with you, my brain was on a serotonin high from the sugar and I can’t really remember. Which is why, as I hang on to the healthy eating train for dear life, I’m grateful that after the apostle Paul wrote verse 12 (see above), he wrote this, in verse 14:

Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power.

The power that raised Jesus works in us as well. Healthy eating, or attaining any good habit, for that matter, isn’t a journey Christ-followers make alone.

Thank goodness, ‘cause I’m exhausted and hungry! Kale, anyone?

My Neighbors Are Moving...

I know in Texas we’re supposed to be neighborly and I should be sad there’s a for sale sign in their yard, but I’m not. I tried with them, I really did, at least for a little while –I brought them cookies when they moved in– but we weren’t a good fit. Our kids went to different schools, there was a cultural divide, and more importantly, we had a trash barrier.

In seven years, I don’t think they ever used a proper black trash bag for their trash. Walmart plastic baggies, yes. Open boxes, yes. Garbage piled into a heap sans container of any kind, yes.

I’m not sure they know what day is trash day. Trash appears behind their house randomly, like a vacancy sign for rats or an all-you-can-eat buffet for raccoons. (Okay, I’ve never seen a raccoon, but I can attest to the rats).

I hardly know them and their five (six?) kids, but I do know some things about them: they like take-out pizza, Styrofoam and saving money on garbage bags. Sure, they might remember me as the crazy neighbor who had a panic attack in her driveway, but I will always remember them as the neighbors who let their trash blow into our yard.

Trash came between us. At this point, I could probably analogize to how we all let “emotional trash” come between us and the people in our lives. But that would be so boring, and really, I bet you’ve read something like that in a forward or Facebook post. Maybe even snickered before you hit “delete.”

So let’s go somewhere different with this story. A few days after the for sale sign appeared, I drove in from the gym, feelin’ good ‘cause I’d just been at the gym, when I saw two different heaps of dirty, nasty trash in the alley behind our home. One, behind my fence and the second, next to my green cylinder thingy (aka property of Time Warner Cable). Only today the green cylinder wasn’t tipped at its regular forty-five degree angle, the unfortunate consequence of my driving skills. Today the cylinder was completely obliterated, the three-quarter inch plastic cracked and dispersed among the second trash pile. And it wasn’t even my fault.

I wanted to blame the neighbors for the mess, I really did. But the empty bag of chocolate chips, banana peels and baked potato skins testified that the trash was mine. I’m no detective, but maybe destroyed green cylinder + trash in the alley, on trash day no less, means that it’s the garbage men’s, err… garbage persons’, umm… sanitation saints’ fault? As long as it’s not my fault, I’m good with that. Some days I just have so much fault piled up on me I can’t feel God’s grace, and if I can imagine for a minute that there’s a mess I’m not responsible for, well, I’m happy.

Except that I was the one out there cleaning up the trash. Picking up used paper towels, discolored q-tips and sticky granola wrappers. The moral to this story is that there’s always going to be trash in life we have to pick up. Sometimes it will be someone else’s. Sometimes it will be ours. But it will always be there. No move will ever change that.

The trouble comes not from the trash, but from not feeling God’s grace. Under that grace, it doesn’t matter if trash is there or not.

So far our neighbors haven’t had a single showing. They might not move after all. But maybe, if they stick around, when I see their trash blowing onto my lawn, I’ll remember that moving isn’t the answer. Grace is (and a thick pair of gloves).

The LORD'S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
For His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;

Lam 3:22-23a

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

To tell you the truth, I’ve never really gotten “Disney.” Their movies are a mixed bag and their stores are full of items that, with the exception of my daughter’s Roo, become very expensive dust collectors at our home. And then I went to Disney World.

Let me preface my story by saying that our Sea World, San Antonio family vacation could have been an instructional video on how not to do a family vacation.

That vacation included a hotel suite that was a suite in name only, conveniently adjacent to train tracks with a 2 am route. I navigated us from the hotel to the park fifteen miles away in two hours. We were ten minutes late to every animal show, caught the last Shamu act and drove back to Dallas on brake pads so low they bounced with every flutter of the petal. Because being passed at 75 miles per hour on I-35 isn’t exciting enough.

But Disney was prepared for the four of us. Our Lion King suite was adorable, a comfortable 72 degrees with an absolutely spotless bathroom. The food was delicious and there were many healthy options if you so opted (I didn’t). A smiling, knowledgeable employee stood around every ten feet, happy to answer the same question he’d answered all day. And as if all that wasn’t enough, I got a FREE first timer pin so everyone within twenty feel would know I was clueless. (My family refused to wear their pins.)

I get it now. Disney doesn’t nickel and dime you (that’s right, they get it all up front). They want you to come back to celebrate every major life event so that you can’t remember any special moment without thinking of them. But what Disney is really all about, what I couldn’t see until I went there is that Disney is selling innocence. A ticket or trip to a magical place where right and wrong is clear cut, things are simpler, and the pace is, well, hotter (at least in Disney – Orlando).

Innocence is in short supply. There was a time in my life I longed to rewrite my history, start over and be someone I could never be with the decisions I’d made. But I found innocence through salvation in Jesus Christ. In Him, I have a clean white robe, beautiful glowing skin and a new start. No past. No mistakes. No kidding.

He is what we can not be. With Him, we can be what we are not. Without Him, the world needs any type of innocence it can get.

Disney will be in business a long time.