My husband thinks I’m perfect.

Seriously. Sometimes I say, “Hey, honey, is there something I could change, do differently, you know, anything I’m doing that annoys you or you wish I wouldn’t do?” He always says something along the lines of, “No, baby, you’re perfect and I wouldn’t change a thing about you.”

Now, I know and you know that I’m not perfect. My blinded-by-love husband, though… he doesn’t see the flaws. Or if he does, he thinks they’re cute. And we’re past the honeymoon stage; at least we’re supposed to be. We’re six years, three (and 1/3) children into this thing. We’ve done stupid stuff, said stupid stuff, made mistakes, and we’re still figuring this whole “life” thing out as we go. There’s been more than enough imperfection on my part. But he doesn’t see it.

Sometimes it’s tough having a husband who thinks I’m perfect.

Really. He does something minor like come home late from work and I am well on my way to working up a good, satisfying MAD… One of those seething, cupboard-door-slamming mads where you can grit your teeth and feel justified because of the wrongness of it all. Except then he walks in the door and says something like, “Hey, baby, I’m sooo glad to see you and the kids. So sorry I was late tonight, I had to finish a work project and then help a crippled man across the street and then stopped to fix an old lady’s car on the way home. Can I help with dinner?”

How the heck can I be mad after that?

Impossible. Though I’ve tried. Trust me. Because I enjoy a good mad just as much as the next girl.

But, alas, I am married to the Good Samaritan.

He is an infinitely capable Good Samaritan, too, because he knows how to fix stuff. Cars, lawnmowers, go-karts, bicycles, tire swings, dryers, dishwashers, highchairs, boats, chainsaws, lights, chairs, scraped knees, me…
Honestly, the only good reason for a mad in six years of marriage that I’ve found is this: sometimes he helps other people when I want him to ignore all those other people and pay attention to me. Only me.

And if I tell him that, he does. He pulls in, slows down, says no. Pays attention.

I’m not a naturally merciful or generous person. I lean more to the “prophetic” side of things (thanks, Dad!), as in, if I see a bum on the street with a cardboard sign, I think, “Hey bum, go get a job and then you won’t need other people’s money!” I don’t think,

• “Poor guy. He’s probably had a tough life.” I don’t think,
• “Hmm, we should be generous to the poor.”

I roll up my windows. I don’t carry cash. I drive on. I don’t even feel guilty.

Generosity is still not a natural instinct,

but in the six years of being married to the most generous and merciful person I have ever known, I’ve learned a little bit:

• It’s fun to be generous. Even when you can’t afford it. Especially when you can’t afford it. It’s a risk you take, offering out of the little you have.
• It doesn’t matter what the person does with your generosity. That’s not your part of the picture. Your part is just to be generous.
• Giving isn’t just about giving money; it’s about giving time, giving resources, giving energy, giving help, giving service. When you clutter up your life with obligations that don’t matter, you end up with nothing left to give other people.
• There is a priority in giving; you shouldn’t give what isn’t yours to give, for instance. You should meet your responsibilities. You should make sure your family has their needs met, but the thing to remember is need isn’t the same as want. We can all live with much less than we think we can.

Last week a lady knocked on my car window

in the parking lot of St. Louis Bread Company. She launched into a somewhat reasonable explanation of why she was asking for money. I stopped her. I didn’t really care what her reason was. I gave her the $20 I had in my wallet, prayed for her, and when she left I wished I’d had more to give.

Maybe she’s a drunk. Maybe she’s a drug addict. Maybe she’s somebody’s daughter and she’s had a tough life. I don’t know, and I don’t need to know.

You know why my husband thinks I’m perfect?

Because he has what I understand now as generosity of the spirit; he doesn’t just give the cash he could use for himself. He doesn’t just give his time or his abilities. He gives grace, freely, recklessly. He gives enough grace to me to cover all the times I’ve been mad, or rude, or ignored him, or messed something up, or forgotten something important, or hurt him, or demanded, or controlled, or manipulated, or accused, or proved in some other inexcusable way how imperfect I really, truly, deeply am.

His generosity is what causes him to love me as much as he does. It’s not me. I’m not perfect. I don’t deserve it. I didn’t earn it. But I receive it, with open arms. And that’s why, sometimes, when I think, “Darn it, I wish Joe would quit offering to help, I really just want a weekend at home!” I try to stop before I say it out loud. Because when I put words out there, he will listen. And he will downsize his own generosity in order to make me happy.

And then he might figure out I’m really not perfect.

Image by Kjunstorm.

What

It’s the best thing you can do for your marriage. It’s simple. You already know how.
It is the Art of Listening.

Why

• It’s a basic (though often lost) courtesy of human interaction.
• Your husband is the most important person in your life. When you invest in him by listening, you invest in your own life.
• You don’t know everything about him. He can surprise you. You just need to give him a chance.

What It’s Not

1. Nodding, smiling, and saying “Mmmmhmm,” and “Sure,” and “Yes, of course,” while your mind wanders over the 1000 things you haven’t accomplished today.
2. Letting your eyes glaze over while he describes some technical/mechanical/sports-related item that you don’t understand or care to understand.
3. Having a running internal commentary of snide remarks that you won’t let yourself say out loud.
4. Interrupting.
5. Giving him the cues that say, “I’m really too busy for this, could you please hurry it along?”
6. Finishing his sentences.
7. Thinking of what you’ll say next when he finally stops talking.

What It Is

• Saying “I want to hear this, but I’m very distracted right now. Could we talk later?” when you are distracted by valid concerns, interruptions, children, etc.
• Following up on that by actually making time to sit down and talk, even if that means staying up later than you like, or skipping the tv show, or not getting to next chapter in your book or blog in your reader.
• Making eye contact.
• Acting like you have all the time in the world, whether you do or not.
• Asking questions.
• Employing the 5-second rule: wait 5 seconds after he finishes talking before you respond. Try it. Really.
• Looking for the real story.
• Leaving your assumptions behind.
• Showing that you are interested in what he says, in what he is interested in, just because of who he is. Even if you hate sports. Even if you don’t get how the gears fit together.
• Responding.

Go forth and listen!

Trust him.

Trust him like you trusted your Daddy (if you had a good one) or like you wished you could (if you had a bad one).
Trust him to care, trust him to listen, trust him to love you, trust him to need you, trust him to romance you, and most of all trust him to make decisions.

Trust him, because when you do, you set up the best possible pattern for your marriage. You set up this pattern: This marriage has to have a leader. You are the leader. I trust you to be a good leader. I trust you to think things through. I trust you to do your best. I trust you to have good intentions. I trust you so I don’t have to worry about it.

Perfect Is Not Part of the Equation

Now, of course, he will mess up. He will make silly decisions, spend money on stupid things, rush into things or wait too long and miss opportunities. That doesn’t matter. There are very few messes he can make by a bad decision here or there that are as far-reaching and serious as the one you can make by refusing to trust him.

Let me say that again:
It’s more important that you trust him than that you have perfect finances in perfect order, the best car for the best value, the best house in the best school district, the ideal job, the better salary, the church that really fits you, the friends who really get you.

Why? Well, you plan on staying married, right? You signed up for life? Your marriage, God-willing and the creek don’t rise, will outlast financial problems, debt, broken cars, leaky houses, screaming babies, pooping pets, ugly furniture, a wardrobe of fat clothes, several years of bad hair days, in-grown churches, mooching friends.

That other stuff is circumstantial, situational, here today and a sweet or sour memory tomorrow. But while that stuff fades, you’ll still be waking up next to him. Him, the guy you married, the guy who probably didn’t know much when you married him, the guy who is learning about life with you. He knew enough to marry you. He’ll figure the rest out.

When Things Don’t Look Good

Trust him so he can. Trust that he has good intentions. Trust that God will protect you and provide for you. Trust that you are strong enough and wise enough to choose what matters and handle the storm that might arise because of your choices. And there will be a storm, probably many. There will be storms of condemnation and criticism (Why didn’t you stop him? Don’t you two know any better?); there will be storms of fear and worry (What will happen to us?); there will be storms of guilt (I should have told him not to do that…); there will be storms of hopelessness (Will he ever change? Will he ever get it? Will we ever get out of this situation? Will things ever get better?).

A storm is violent and furious and over in a few moments. Hold on, hunker down, and outlast it. You’re woman enough for that.

The more you trust him, the more he becomes worthy of your trust.

Do you want a wise husband?

One who thinks about the future, who has a vision for your family, who guards your heart, who provides for your needs, who acts on truth? Then trust the husband you have.
Trust him as if he is wise and watch as he becomes wise.

—

This post is linked up with Fimby’s (brand-new!) Friday’s Flowers.

Images

1. Bouquet of wildflowers that look like daisies – mine.

2. Have white doves follow you courtesy of H.KoppDelaney on Flickr.

3. Hold his glowing hand courtesy of D. Sharon Pruitt (Pink Sherbet Photography) on Flickr.

For as long as we have been married, I have been able to silence (into deep, utter, uncomfortable, frozen silence) my normally upbeat and energetic husband with just five little words.

Honey, we need to talk.

Why Do Men Hate Talking?

It doesn’t matter what we need to talk about. It could be a good thing, or just a circumstancial thing I need help sorting out, or just my own feelings about… whatever. Not necessarily marriage-related, you understand. But it has never failed that when I utter those words, or something like them, Joe’s handsome, happy face morphs into this deer-in-the-headlights terror. I can see an inner struggle. He’s enough of a man that he tries – really, really tries – to respond positively. But I can see that he has to make himself.

For a while, that fact itself hurt my feelings. Why doesn’t he want to talk? If he loves me, why wouldn’t he want to spend time with me? I’m not mad at him. I just want to spend some time together. I just want to share. I just want to connect.

Why Do Women Lo – o – o – ove Talking?

So I did what any rational woman would do. I said, Hey, we need to talk about talking.
Wow. What a perfect solution. I’m sure that idea lit my husband’s heart with cheer and anticipation.
Hey, since you don’t like this whole talking thing, let’s take an hour or two to just talk through that dislike and once we talk enough (about talking) I’m sure we’ll get past it and you’ll probably like talking! And then we can just talk some more! All night, even! Wow! Won’t that be great?!

Bless him. He didn’t run away, screaming.

Recently I picked up this book at the library because, well, because of what I’ve just described above. The title: How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It.

The funny thing is, we’ve come a long way in our talking (or not talking) and how we approach it and why we both react the way we do to each other. Joe was able to finally help me understand that my phrase and tone and even my facial expression all made him feel like he was thirteen again and just got called into the kitchen for a lecture from Mom. Wow, that’s not what I was trying to do… (Was it?) And I was able to help Joe understand that when he avoided talking to me, it made me feel instantly and unequivocably rejected.

Blame the Cortisol!

But this book – seriously – everyone who is married should read this book. Some of it I skimmed over, but a few sections I stopped and reread. Like this one:

“When it comes to relationships, women often mistake this guarded response, which many males retain throughout life, for lack of interest or even loss of love. Most of the time, he hasn’t lost interest; he’s merely trying to avoid the overwhelming discomfort of a cortisol dump… Cortisol is a hormone secreted during certain negative emotions. Its job is to get your attention by making you uncomfortable so that your discomfort drives you to do something to make the situation better. The pain a woman feels when her man shouts at her is caused by the sudden release of cortisol. A man feels this same discomfort when he is confronted with her unhappiness or criticism. He may look like he is avoiding her, but he is essentially trying to avoid a cortisol hangover for the next several hours” (1).

The whole situation of talking in our marriage is so stereotypical it’s kind of embarrassing. But this information is news to me. If it’s true (and their research seems valid), then Joe is actually made physically uncomfortable by my “we need to talk” statements because he interprets them as unhappiness and/or criticism (which, let’s be honest, a lot of times they are).

Not that this means he gets out of ever having one of those talks again… but maybe I will be a little more sympathetic. Or maybe I will tie him to a chair first…
-

Images

1. Couple kissing courtesy of Jolien Vallins on Flickr.

2. Couple almost not kissing and talking instead courtesy of Jolien Vallins on Flickr.

Sources

1. Patricia Love, Ed.D, and Steven Stosny, Ph.D. How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It. New York: Broadway Books, 2007. Pages 12-13.

Well, I can’t say that this little experiment is going the way I want it to. I haven’t gotten a nice long solitude-soaked walk every night this week, as I’ve quit trying to demand (me! self-care! me!) and started trying to let myself be taken care of. Some things, just circumstances and busyness, got in the way, some evenings when we were simply too busy with friends or obligations.

Ignoring Self-Preservation Instincts

My instinct (the self-preservation one, I guess) is to find a new plan, one that doesn’t involve me depending on Joe to make it happen the way I want it to. He doesn’t need any more pressure, I tell myself. He’s got enough going on.

And he does. He’s doing care-taking work for the church, taking care of this house we live in, fixing our car, dealing with our finances, taking care of our rental home, plus meeting my insatiable need for quality time, working a physically demanding job, and getting up at 4:30 in the morning to go on a bike ride.

Wow. This started as a musing upon my needs and how I want them to be met but I’m going to hold on that. Because – wow – did anyone else read that list? I’ve suspected it for a long time but now it’s confirmed.
I really am married to SuperMan.

Try Not To Be Jealous

I guess, shame on me, I’ve never really thought about all the things my husband does, all the big areas he is responsible for. Probably because he does such a good job at them that there’s no need for me to notice.

Just in the short time of last weekend, for example, he met with our Pastor, bought, unloaded, and moved fence materials, worked in the garden, located, purchased, and installed a replacement rear window in our Suburban (saving us boatloads of money by getting it from a scrapyard and putting it in himself), cleaned out trash at our rental house, played with the kids, took me shopping, ran errands, played drums and set up sound for the youth both Saturday night and Sunday morning, took me shopping again (hee hee), hung out at a big family lunch, helped his Dad put in a new hitching post, took care of the kids while I went out to get a good wi-fi signal and work, cleared out a big area in the walking trail in the woods, made dinner, bathed the kids, and spent time with me. Oh, and sold his air compressor…

No Wonder I Married This Guy

I’m really impressed with my husband. I’ve mentioned before how I’m a little obsessive about efficiency… Well, I married the right guy for that. He gets more done in a day than most people do in six months. And the best part? He still makes time for me.
I get hugs and kisses and conversation. I get included in whatever he is doing. I get a positive response when I say I need to run to the store, want to come? or I need some time to work, will you watch the kids?
This is his normal way of life.

Guess what I don’t see?
Any time, thought, or effort given to “self-care.”

Feminist Blah Blah Blah

Oh ho, you personal-growth guru women say: He’s a man. It’s different. He isn’t under the same pressure, he doesn’t have the tension, the demands that we women face. He isn’t juggling a career and a home…

Heck yes he is!

That list was his weekend at home. Guess what he does during the week? Works. (Duh.) If that’s not juggling (gracefully and capably, I might add) the demands of home, family, and work (not to mention church), I don’t know what is.

And as far as pressure, tension, demands… well, I can tell you all about that. Truth be told, I’m the one who puts on the pressure, creates the tension, issues the demands. If he’s my SuperMan, I’m his Lois Lane… but sometimes I’m also his kryptonite.

Exclusivism?

When did we women start thinking we had exclusive experience with time crunches, obligations, endless to-be-done lists, conflicting needs? (Oh wait…yes… let’s see… I think it was way back in the ’60′s, right around the time we started trying to be men. Yes, that was it… Coincidence? Correlation?)

Self-care is not part of SuperMan’s vocabulary.
Know what is?
Selflessness. Self-sacrifice. Self-denial. Self-discipline.
You can’t be a superhero if the only person you’re interested in saving is yourself.

I’m really grateful to be married to a guy who’s not into practicing “extreme self-care.” He’s more interested in taking care of me than he is of himself. He even makes it through the kryptonite days, when all I do is send out debilitating waves of negative energy. He takes care of me even then.

And you know what?
All that giving, that selflessness, that caring for me just makes me want to take care of him.

I love you, SuperMan.

–

Image courtesy of James Jordan on Flickr.

When we were engaged, my husband bought a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Now, if you know my husband, you know he’s not so much a poetry reader. This was a pure act of love for me, his bride-to-be, who was (and still is) an avid poetry reader.

I tell him about sonnets.
He tells me about mechanical workings, string theory, economics, and how to get from Point A to Point B.

We learn things from each other like that. It’s a nice argument for bringing back the bartering system.

So, SuperMan, here’s my trade for the day: a little poem Ms. Dickinson wrote. You are the atom I prefer.

Of all the souls that stand create

Of all the souls that stand create
I have elected one.
When sense from spirit files away,
And subterfuge is done;

When that which is and that which was
Apart, intrinsic, stand,
And this brief tragedy of flesh
Is shifted like a sand;

When figures show their royal front
And mists are carved away,—
Behold the atom I preferred
To all the lists of clay!

–

Sources

1. Emily Dickinson’s poem “Of All the Souls That Stand Create” taken from this website.

Images

1. “fresh love” from viZZZual.com on Flickr.

While we were engaged, innocent young lovers who hadn’t yet kissed, we got lots of marriage advice. Sport a ring and a goofy look and you’re just too obvious a target, apparently. The advice usually ran along these lines:

• Enjoy your freedom while it lasts.
• Oh, look at you now, but just wait till the honeymoon’s over.
• Soon it will just be fight, fight, fight.
• You’re so young to get married! (I was 24, he was 23 when we got married.)

We happily disregarded the doomsayers, bought flowers, (oh no wait, that was Dad), bought a cake (oh wait, that was Dad too), invited our 200 closest friends and relatives, and got married. It was lovely.

Then the honeymoon ended and, well, we were still happy. We made a few minor discoveries. Ah, well, we thought. It’s all part of the adventure. And while now, instead of counting the days until we got married, we started counting the number of times we looked at each other and said, “Huh?” in complete bewilderment, we were still pretty starry-eyed. Young love.

Then we didn’t get pregnant, and that was stressful because I started thinking of all sorts of things that might be wrong and what would it be like if we couldn’t have kids and oh-no and what will we do and we’d better get health insurance, fast and then,

We did get pregnant, and Joe was the perfect husband and rubbed my back and rubbed my feet and told me I was beautiful when my belly button disappeared, and when my ankles disappeared, and then,

Mara was born. And we realized how very, very foolish we had been all that time before she was born, taking sleep for granted the way we had. But we loved being parents and so,

We got pregnant again.

I could go on. The point is, the bad marriage advice never came true. Life happened. The honeymoon ended. We had kids. We lived together. We experienced joy, grief, loss, regret, and that was just in the first three months of home ownership. We won’t even go into real grief, loss of family, tight budgets, job changes, stress, pregnancy, post-partum, life with a baby, life with a baby and a toddler, life with a baby and a toddler and a preschooler.

The other point is, the bad marriage advice did come true, kind of. The underlying statement behind all those negative predictions was this: “You kids think you know each other and you think you’re in love and you think you’ll be happy; but you don’t really know each other, and once you do, you’ll realize you’re not in love and you’ll be terribly unhappy. The end.”

And truthfully? We really didn’t know each other. The simple truth is that no matter how in love you are, how thoroughly prepared, how close… you are two different people and marriage will make that obvious in ways nothing else can.

Our advice-givers made a correct assumption (we didn’t really know each other the way we thought we did) but they drew an incorrect conclusion. We did find out a lot of things about each other, and not all of them were, well, love-inducing. For example, did you know that

• Joe’s belly button will collect lint every single day without fail, even if he walks around stark naked?
• men have a genetic mutation that prevents them from accurately estimating the distance across the room to the laundry hamper, which will invariably result in a pile of dirty clothes placed six to eighteen inches around the hamper?
• women can blame PMS and hormones for everything?
• I have a really good whiny-annoying “baby” voice that sometimes manifests itself without my prior knowledge or consent?
• Joe likes Hamburger Helper? Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Gross. Ew.
• I can easily spend $50/week on coffee and coffee-related, uh, accoutrements?

I kid you not, my friends. These things are true and yet our marriage has survived. In fact, not only has it survived, it has been awesome. Strange and shocking, sometimes, yes. But strange and shocking aren’t so strange and shocking once you get used to ‘em. Really.

In marriage, you can’t dwell on the differences. If you do, your common ground gets smaller and smaller, and that’s when you start asking yourself those questions. Why did I marry him? What do we even have in common? Do I even know him? Is he anything like me? Silent but deadly, those questions, like the smell in the room after a meal at White Castle. Just don’t even go there – to the questions or to White Castle.

Instead, get over it. (And cook something better at home, like beans.) Emphasize the common ground. Accommodate the differences. Seek out the strengths. Overlook the weaknesses. Balance each other out; that’s why God brought you together in the first place.

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Image courtesy of Made Underground.