Archive for the ‘Love and Marriage’ Category

Turning Stressors Into Strengths

Posted: July 13, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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One of the houses that we restored had a dining room that had been added on after the original construction.  Because of the way it was built, there were some problems that proved extremely difficult, if not impossible to overcome.  The roof leaked, and even after building an entirely new slanted roof over that part of the house, we still had issues with heavy rains.  There were also electrical issues in that room that may or may not have had to do with water getting in.

In spite of all this, it was probably our favorite room in the house.  It was built-in to part of a wrap-around porch that featured limestone columns which became part of the room’s decor.  There were large windows in between, and this gave it something of a sun room effect, not to mention views in three directions.   We spent many hours eating, playing, and entertaining in that room.  Despite its difficulties, we learned to love it.  We discovered a similar dynamic in our marriage.

Where we work, they do an activity called the “compass points.”  Its purpose is to categorize people by certain characteristics of their personality so that they can better understand how to work together.  My wife is a North and I am a West.  Norths are people who just go and just do.  They are action people who don’t wait to know the plan or read the directions.  Wests are detail oriented, “spell it out for me” types who are reluctant to act without having all the information.  One of the things we were told as part of the activity is that a North and a West make a particularly bad combination.

In earlier years of our marriage, we stumbled quite a bit over the challenges of these two personality types.  I would want to figure out a plan for something and my wife would get irritated because we weren’t getting anything done.  She would tear into a job and I would get irritated because she hadn’t thought through what all we were going to need, or how it was going to work.  We butted heads a lot over these types of things.  I blamed her for setbacks and mistakes when she rushed ahead without a plan.  She blamed me for lack of action and procrastinating when I was trying to figure everything out first.

The problem with this is that God chose us for each other.  That means we must be good for each other, not bad.  If a North and a West are a bad combination, either God made a mistake, or we were missing something.  What we were missing was balance and perspective.

What we failed to see for so long was how our differences could be strengths instead of difficulties.  Instead of the characteristics of a North and a West causing stress and strife, we could allow them to bring balance to each of us, and help us to be better together than we were individually.  My careful planning could help us avoid costly mistakes.  My wife’s fearless enthusiasm could get me up and moving instead of letting life pass me by.

I’m not sure exactly when we began to figure this out, but when we did, it not only began to set us free, but also allowed us to see how our differences could be celebrated, not just tolerated.  Much like that dining room that caused us so many headaches that we could never fix, so there were differences in us that were never going to change.  In the same way, we had so many fond memories of that room and we are now making so many new memories creating a beautiful life out of the way we complete each other.

Sour Grapes In The Midst Of The Sweetness

Posted: July 12, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The day my wife and I got married was the happiest day of my life.  I will never forget what I felt when I saw her standing at the back of the church.  I’ll also never forget the friends, the reception, and the fun we had that day.  It was the perfect blend of fun and seriousness.  There were pranks and light moments, and there were solemn vows and songs of devotion.

The two biggest surprises for me both involved our car.  The first was that the guys had poured Rice Krispies into the air vents and turned the setting to high, so as soon as I started the car, we were showered with them in our seats.  Not only was it a fun shock at the time, but over the few months following, stray pieces of rice would work their way loose and come flying out at random moments, bringing smiles to our faces.

The other unexpected surprise was the reaction of other people to the “just married” writing and other evidence of our wedding that was all over the car.  We couldn’t afford much of a honeymoon at the time, so we just drove from Dodge City to Wichita, KS and stayed at an old fashioned bed and breakfast.  Everywhere we drove, people smiled, honked, waved, and gave us thumbs up signs.  Maybe it was the grins plastered all over our faces, or maybe people were just glad for newlywed couples, but it was as if an entire city of strangers shared in the joy of our special day.

After our separation, and when we got back together, those grins were all over our faces again, but we were in for another surprise.  Not everyone was happy for us or supportive.  We didn’t have decorations on our car to signal strangers that we had just been joined back together in marriage, but people that we knew, who were aware that we had been split up and had worked it out should have had even more reason to be happy for us, we thought.

Don’t misunderstand, there were many who were. I would say the majority of our friends and co-workers were happy for us and said so.  With that being said, there were those who blew us off, showed no happiness or support, and even withdrew from us.  We didn’t expect everyone to be all giddy with joy, but we did think that people would fairly universally rally around a story with a happy ending.  After all, the fairy tales all say, “and they lived happily ever after,” don’t they?

Maybe that’s where some of the problem comes in.  True love and a happy marriage is what people really want deep down.  But in today’s society, so many people have been hurt, abused, used, and discarded, that they’ve quit believing in that dream.  They’ve put up walls that they think are protecting themselves, and they are choosing to accept less than what they really want because they are afraid that they won’t ever be able to get it.

By being negative toward marriage, and congregating with other equally negative people, they try to insulate themselves from their own dissatisfaction with life and love.  When they hear of people getting married, their reaction is, “How long do you suppose it will last?”  When they hear of people splitting up and getting divorced, it reaffirms in their mind that there is no happily ever after, so therefore, they aren’t missing out on anything.

Those are the people who have a hard time with our story.  It flies in the face of their false smugness, and forces them to look at what they don’t want to see.  They won’t rejoice with us, because it would expose their own sorrow that they are trying so hard to deny.  They are jealous of our love, and they resist it instead of letting it inspire them.  Instead of letting our victory be a beacon of hope that shows the way to real and lasting love, they turn away and cling to their belief that love can’t be true.

I ache for those people, and I keep them in my prayers.  I so long to be able to share with others what God has done in our marriage, and what He will do for them.  The princess being rescued and the guy getting the girl, these are at the very heart of all romantic notions.  The reason they persist is that we were made to believe in and experience real love.  It is a part of our very make-up as human beings.  If you’ve found that kind of love, you’ll undoubtedly rejoice with us.  If you haven’t, don’t ever give up.  It’s real, and it’s for everyone who will fight for it with all their strength and never give up.

Seeing Isn’t Believing, But The Difference Was Undeniable

Posted: July 11, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The day before my wife ran the Bass Pro Marathon, we went down to Branson and spent part of the day at Silver Dollar City.  For those of you who don’t know, Silver Dollar City is a theme park based on the late 1800’s.  It features a variety of roller coasters and water rides, but is mostly known for its old time shows, craftsman shops, food and atmosphere.

Shortly after my parents retired to Springfield, Missouri, we visited the area for a family vacation.  We never thought at the time that we’d ever live here, but we had a great vacation, and Silver Dollar City was our favorite part of it.  When we did, in fact, move to the Ozarks, we bought season passes and visited the park about once a month.  As time went by, we visited less, but at the beginning of 2010, we bought season passes one more time.

While we were having our marriage difficulties, we made two or three visits to the theme park.  I suppose it was an escape from reality and a way to pretend that things were still good.  We didn’t have very many good days last Spring and Summer, but the ones we spent at Silver Dollar City were always fun.  I could spoil my sweetheart and she would let me, and we could laugh and play together like the best of friends, not a couple who were nearing the end of their marriage.

During that same time period, I began the practice of taking a lot of pictures of my wife while we were out going places and doing things together.  I took them on my phone, so they were always at my fingertips to look at.  Naturally, I took quite a few pictures during the several visits we made to Silver Dollar City.  Since we had so few good times together during that part of last year, I wanted to hold on to whatever positives I could.

I also proudly displayed the pictures as backgrounds on my phone, on Facebook, and anywhere else that I could show my wife that I was truly devoted to her, and that she was the one I was in love with and thinking of.  She always seemed a bit uncomfortable with it, but I believed that deep down, she liked knowing that I was that proud of her and wanted to be her man that much.

After we got back together, and after the initial joy of reuniting, I went through a period where I struggled with regret about the past and the things that we had gone through.  I would obsess over the pictures at times, looking at the dates they were taken, and thinking about the way things were then and how I wished they had been instead.  It was rather unhealthy and was dragging me down quite a bit for a period of time.

One day, I was looking for a different picture to set as my background on my phone.  The one I had used for several months was taken at Silver Dollar City while we were separated.  My wife would always ask me, “Why do you like that picture?”  I just told her that I liked the way she looked in it, which was true.  I also liked the memories of the day we had spent, and I liked that she was wearing my favorite shirt in the picture.

As I scanned my phone for a new picture, I noticed something.  In the new pictures from Silver Dollar City, taken after we had gotten back together, my wife had a different look about her.  There was a happiness in her eyes and a purity in her smile that wasn’t there in the earlier ones.  I began to look further.  I found the same thing in the other, older photos taken in other places.

As I began to put it all together, it suddenly became clear.  In all of the pictures taken before we got back together, there was a sadness and a distance in her eyes.  In all of the pictures taken after we reunited, that look was gone, and had been replaced by one of happiness and   freedom.  That realization set me free from being stuck obsessing over the pictures of the past, and gave me a visible sign of how much everything was now changed.

Seeing isn’t necessarily believing, and I was experiencing the changes happening in our marriage for myself, but those pictures existed as proof that the way things had been were no longer the way they were.  Not only that, they showed that it was putting our marriage back together that had brought about the healing.  We were one again in heart and mind, and the difference was undeniable.

Running the Bass Pro Marathon

Posted: July 10, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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My wife asked me just within the last few days if I believed that a mid-life crisis was what started all of our marriage problems.  I told her I didn’t think so, but that we both had certainly had some strange behavior and done some crazy and uncharacteristic things around the time we each turned forty.

She had announced, back when she was about to turn 39, that she was going to run a marathon to prove that she wasn’t old.  Even though she certainly didn’t need to prove anything to anyone except herself, she spent the better part of a year training and, last November, she did in fact run a full marathon.  By that time, we had already been through our separation and were well into the restoration tour, but she had set her mind on doing this, and I had supported her the whole way.

The marathon was her thing, not mine.  I encouraged her and trained with her to some extent, but I never had any plans to run it, nor could I have because of my knee injury.  It was, ironically, while I was attempting to do a long training run with her that the injury occurred, so even if I had any thoughts of trying to run it up to that point, they ended that day.  I was happy to be her cheerleader for this event and nothing more.

The fitness center that we are members of announced a training program last Spring for people who wanted to run the Bass Pro marathon in the fall.  It was called the Galloway program, named after running guru Jeff Galloway.  The cost was $100 and we paid it and signed my wife up.  It started right during the time that our marriage was falling apart and it mostly involved training runs with a large group on Saturday mornings.

Soon after the training started, we separated.  There were many Saturday mornings that were pure anguish for me, as I would often pick her up from her loft, have her drop me off at the gym, and then she would take the car and go on to the place where her running group was meeting.  I was working out alone, while she ran with her group.  When she was done, she would come up to the gym and pick me up, and then there was never any certainty of whether we would spend any time together or have to say good-bye again.

After we got back together, and especially after my triathlon, she faltered somewhat in her training.  I was no longer training for anything, and we were enjoying our marriage too much to be as disciplined as we should have been for her first marathon.  There were a number of Saturday mornings that we just didn’t get out of bed. We would say that we would go together and make up the running the next day.  Sometimes we did, and sometimes we didn’t.

To say that my wife is amazing would be the understatement of the century.  She reached a point, about a month before the race, that she decided she was still committed and was going to do it.  One morning, when she was supposed to be running 23 miles, she felt good enough and decided to go ahead and do the whole 26, just so that she would know that she could.  That happened to be a day that she was scheduled to work a full shift at Dillard’s, so she ran the equivalent of a full marathon in the morning and then went to work.

Sign right before the finish line

The day of the Marathon, she was nervous and I was excited.  It was a beautiful day for early November, so the weather wasn’t going to be a factor.  Since I couldn’t participate, and I didn’t want to sit around for five hours waiting for her, I decided to volunteer at one of the intersections along the route.  That way I got to see her about half way through and give her some words of encouragement.

I brought my bike, and I figured that after I was done at my station, I would go try to find her on the course and see how she was doing.  I tracked her down at around mile 21 and she was in a lot of pain.  I stayed with her for those last few miles and talked her through it when her body wanted her to quit.  When she crossed the finish, it was an extremely proud moment for each of us.  For her, it was a huge accomplishment that not many people will ever achieve.  For me, it made the pain of all those awful mornings go away, and I was thrilled to step aside and let her get all the praise and recognition for what she had done.

New Loft, New Stuff

Posted: July 9, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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We got a phone call from one of my wife’s former co-workers at Dillard’s while we were on the train coming back from Chicago.  We had to be at the station early Saturday morning to catch the train back to St. Louis, so we only had time to get up and have a quick breakfast before heading out.  The call was from the furniture manager.

While she had worked there, my wife had picked out a sofa that she wanted for the loft.  It was too expensive, but she got an employee discount and the furniture often went on sale.  When she resigned and we still hadn’t been able to buy it, we told him that if it ever went on clearance to call us.

We didn’t expect to be on a train in another state when he did, but that was the day it got marked down, and we knew that it would probably go fast.  Earlier, we had tried to do the same with a leather recliner and it had been sold before we could get there.  I explained where we were and offered to give my credit card number over the phone if necessary, but he said he would mark it sold and make sure that we got it.

The train crossed the river into St. Louis right around lunchtime, and our beautiful city had never seemed more inviting.  We decided to drive to The Hill for lunch at Guido’s, the same place we had gone with my daughter the day the tide began to turn for our marriage.  It seemed only fitting after a spectacular weekend of restoration in Chicago.

We made the drive home in the afternoon and went straight to the mall to pay for the sofa.  In the meantime, I had listed what we called “the mushroom,” an odd shaped sofa/loveseat sort of piece of furniture on Craigslist, as it would have to go to make room for the new couch.  We wouldn’t be able to pick up our new one until I could borrow a truck, so we had a little time to work with.

As a final stop before going home, we pulled into the Steak and Shake near our loft for peppermint shakes.  My wife loves all things peppermint, but will almost never eat or drink any outside of the Christmas season.  The shakes signaled the unofficial beginning of the season for us, and allowed the glow of the trip to linger for just a little longer.

It was important from a memories and association standpoint (and especially for my mental health) to replace a lot of the furniture and change the appearance of the loft.  We needed to make it our place, not the place my wife had lived while we were separated.  Someone came that very night and bought the mushroom, clearing the way for us to pick our new couch up the following afternoon.  We had already gotten a new dining room table, and just those two things changed the loft a lot.

We got some other surprise blessings that helped us finish the process just about the time we were getting ready to move.  I hadn’t wanted to breach the subject, since the loft we were living in was the one she had picked out, but even with the changes, it was difficult for me to live there.  Fortunately, between her understanding, and a growing frustration with the property manager’s lack of response to any of our maintenance requests, she was all too willing to begin looking for an upgrade with me.  By moving into a brand new loft together, we would be able to leave behind all of the reminders of what had happened, and free ourselves from some troublesome issues related to our past.

Right before our move, I got an extraordinary deal at Macy’s on a new bedding set.  There was also a black leather recliner there that I wanted, and I had been waiting for it to go on clearance, much like we had waited for the couch at Dillard’s.  One of the people I worked with told me that she had bought one recently and now didn’t need it, and would be willing to sell it to me at a fraction of the cost of a new one.  I was able to buy it, and buy the floor model (it did go on clearance at about the same time), so we had matching chairs to complete our new living room set.

Those kinds of blessings have been common throughout this entire year.  We just take them as that much more evidence that God is with us in the process of restoring our marriage.  The New Testament teaches that marriage is symbolic of God’s love for His church, called “The Bride of Christ” in the scriptures.  He is very interested in not only saving our marriage and making it strong, but also in doing the same for anyone else who will give Him the opportunity.

Holidays in Chicago – Part 2

Posted: July 8, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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There was no doubt that Chicago in 2010 was going to be an epic stop on the restoration tour.  This time, we were going to make sure that it was the most special of all the visits.

Under ordinary circumstances, that can be hard to do, and can even backfire.  Sometimes, the harder you try to set something up just right and make sure that everything is perfect, the more the pressure causes it to fall apart, or the fact that it doesn’t live up to the hype leaves a lingering disappointment.  In our case, we had found our love again, and that was the secret key that unlocked the magic of our restoration trip.

My wife loves traveling by train, and we found out that we could catch Amtrak in St. Louis and take the train on to Chicago.  Since we don’t drive in Chicago anyway, not having a car there not only isn’t a problem, it saves having to pay for parking.  The only drawback was that we had to catch the train in St. Louis at about 4AM.  I figured we could catch up on our sleep later, which we did, and we even caught a few winks on the train.

This time, we went up the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and we got a hotel right on the loop for three nights.  My wife knows how to find amazing deals online and we paid only slightly more for the three nights than we usually pay for one when we stay out in the outskirts.  We were right off Michigan Avenue and literally one block from where the parade starts.

Almost everything was within walking distance, so we hardly even needed the bus or the El Train.  That’s one of the benefits of being active and in shape.  We walked up Michigan Avenue, to Navy Pier and all over downtown.  It doesn’t cost anything to walk, you don’t have to wait on buses and trains, and you get to see things you would ordinarily miss.  For example, when we walked past the Tribune Tower, we discovered that there are bricks and stones inserted into the exterior wall that come from famous locations all over the world.  Passing by in a vehicle, we would never see any of that.

The first day we took a nap at the hotel and then walked to Navy Pier.  For supper, we stopped in Fox and Obel and bought ingredients to make our own deli sandwiches and a bottle of wine to take back to the room.  It was mostly a relax and rest first day, so that we would be ready to get up early and go to the parade the next morning.  This time, we wouldn’t have to get up insanely early and take a train downtown to get a good spot.  We could just get up and pretty much already be there.

The parade was amazing and the weather was absolutely perfect.  Afterward, we walked to the opening of the Christkindlmarket, where we ate German food for lunch and bought souvenirs.  My wife got a picture with the Christmas fairy from Nuremberg, and we had a wonderful time at the market.  After another nap at the hotel, we realized it was Thanksgiving Day, so not much was open.  We decided to revive an old Thanksgiving tradition of ours and go to a movie.  We walked to a downtown theater and watched “Tangled,” which had just come out.  After the movie, we grabbed a bite at a sports bar and called it a night.

We didn’t have any big plans for the rest of the trip except going to Pizzeria Uno, so friday was pretty much wide open.  It was black friday, and we had no desire to fight the crowds to shop for things we didn’t really want, so we slept in and had a leisurely breakfast.  Eventually we ventured out and walked around Millenium Park and visited a few of the stores on Michigan Ave.  We did do a little shopping, but at our own pace and just for the fun of it.

We went back to the market for more German food and just because we enjoy it so much.  We always buy a Stollen to bring home, and we also collect the souvenir mugs that they serve the gluhwein, a hot spiced wine in.  This year, we also wanted to bring back some ornaments from the Christmas shop to remember this trip by.  Then we got our Chicago pizza at Uno and the trip was complete.

There have been lots of little restorations and a few big ones during this past year.  Chicago was definitely one of the biggest.  It was, and remains, a place where we feel as though we can step outside the stress and busyness of real life and go to our romantic dream world once a year.  We are just as much in love now when we are at home as we are anywhere else, but Chicago holds a special place in our hearts, and of all our treasured memories from nearly 15 years of marriage, there may be more from Chicago than anywhere else.

Holidays in Chicago – Part 1

Posted: July 7, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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My wife was an army brat, so she tells people she isn’t really from anywhere, but she considers Germany home.  She lived there for much of her childhood and teens and, almost from the time we started dating, she told me how much she wanted to take me there.  Of all the things she talked about, the thing she loved the very most was the Christkindlmarket, an open air market that was set up during the Christmas season.

About 10 years ago, she was surfing the internet and discovered that they actually bring a Christkindlmarket, with vendors from Nuremberg and other German towns, to downtown Chicago every year.  We still haven’t been to Germany, but our love affair with the city of Chicago began with our very first visit.  The Christkindlmarket runs from Thanksgiving Day to Christmas Eve. and they set it up in Daley Plaza, right in the heart of Chicago.  We drove up on Thanksgiving Day that first year.

I’ll never forget the look on my wife’s face or her reaction when we arrived.  She said the sights and smells were exactly as she remembered, and she was absolutely glowing with excitement.  It was a magical trip, with more memories than I can possibly list here.  I took a picture of her in her new coat standing in front of the 80 foot Christmas tree and we had it made into an 8×10. It’s a photo that I treasure to this day.  When she moved out, she didn’t take it with her.  There are not many possessions that mean a whole lot to me, but that’s one of the few that it would break my heart to lose.

Not only did we experience the Christkindlmarket for the first time, but we also discovered Navy Pier.  Jutting out into Lake Michigan, Navy Pier holds a shopping mall, ferris wheel, children’s museum, and more.  There is a stage where plays and family oriented performances are held, and there is so much there that you could literally spend an entire day.

Of course, we spent time on Michigan Avenue, also known as the magnificent mile.  It’s especially spectacular at night with all the Christmas lights up.  Even though we are not big shoppers, the beauty and fame of the street make it a “must see” part of any trip to the windy city.  Just to the east, Grant Park runs for miles between Michigan Avenue and Lakeshore Drive, which literally follows the western shore of Lake Michigan.

Since that first visit, we have been to Chicago many times, but always during the Christkindlmarket.  Much like The Hill in St. Louis, it has always been an extremely special place for us.  Through the years, we have discovered additional pleasures like Pizzeria Uno, where you usually have to wait over an hour for your table, and we always do.  The pizza is so thick that it is impossible to eat much more than two slices, and it is now an every time stop when we’re in town.  We also love Fox and Obel, a gourmet food store and much more.

When the kids were in high school, we told them we would take them on a senior trip and they could pick anywhere they wanted to go.  They all picked Chicago.  Only two of them have actually taken the trip (others are still pending), but I guess they’ve seen how much we’ve loved it and they wanted to experience it for themselves.

We got to experience another dream come true when we took our son on his trip and that was seeing the Thanksgiving Day parade in person.  It was so cold that we couldn’t feel our feet before it was over, and we headed straight for the nearest Starbucks to revive ourselves, but we were there, almost at the front of the crowd at the corner of State and Washington.

That was also the trip that marred our nearly perfect memories of holiday trips to Chicago.  It was a couple of years ago, while I was having doubts about our marriage and our future.  I wasn’t the same person then that I had been before, and while the trip still had its good moments, it had some tension and problems too.  At one point, we were in a downtown Old Navy store and I was in a really foul mood.  I’m not even sure why, but I turned on my wife in the store and said some really hurtful things to her.

They were the same types of things that I sometimes said at home when I would get selfish and irritable.  They always caused her pain and confusion, because she never knew what she had done wrong.  Truthfully, there was usually nothing that she had done; she just caught the blame for my own issues.  The fact that it happened in Chicago during the holidays made it nearly unbearable.  We had a whole year to live with it, but we knew last year’s trip during the restoration tour was going to be spectacular…

Words Can Never Hurt Me?

Posted: July 6, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The low light of our Fourth of July trip to St. Louis was seeing and hearing a couple argue and fight at the zoo.  They were there with a little boy, presumably their son, and I first heard them using cross words while inside one of the exhibits.  It’s not unusual to have some frustrating moments when you take kids to a place like that, and it was an unusually hot day, so I didn’t think much of it.  Later, however, there they were again, walking down a main pathway really being ugly toward each other.

We see that kind of dynamic far too often, and I’m not sure why people don’t seem to realize how destructive it can be.  A study called the Enrich Couple Inventory looked at more than 21, 000 couples and found that the number one indicator of a lasting and happy marriage was the way they talked to each other.  Whoever said, “words can never hurt me,” must have lived in a bubble, because our words have the power both to build up and tear down.  The book of Proverbs takes it even further by saying, “The tongue has the power of life and death.”

My wife often makes the observation that couples will see their children grow up and leave to live their own lives. If the parents haven’t spoken well to each other and of each other, not only will their children not know how to love their future spouses, but the couples themselves may find that, once the kids leave, they don’t have anything left to their marriage.  The kids will eventually be out on their own and the marriage is what will still be there for couples who have kept that relationship strong.  I can’t tell you how many times I hear her say under her breath, “Keep talking to him (or her) like that and when those kids are gone, he will be too.”

Words of affirmation is one of the five love languages in Gary Chapman’s book.  We all make choices every day to use words that are kind, or words that are cruel.  We choose to be polite, or to be rude.  We choose to compliment or criticize.  And for some reason, it seems easier to say something negative than something positive.

In the past, I was guilty of pointing out things that my wife did wrong, or that I didn’t like, far more often than I told her things that would build her up.  I would also lose my temper and say things that cut her deeply at times.  Likewise, she would fail to tell me the positive things she felt about me, assuming that I knew, but she would say hurtful things when she was angry.  Obviously, we weren’t meeting each other’s needs for emotional love.

Society tries to let us off the hook by making it a joke to insult people. Television and movies are full of creative ways to cut people down, and when we get called out for doing it, the automatic excuse is, “I was just joking,” or, “I didn’t mean it.”  The problem is that it damages people, and when the person you’re damaging is your spouse, you’re ultimately hurting yourself.

I think people in stores and other public places are often shocked when they hear my wife and I talking to each other now.  We tease and play around, but are very careful to stay within the boundaries of having fun with each other.  Author Francine Rivers calls it, “the needle without the sting.”  You can only have that type of fun when you know each other well enough and have a high enough level of emotional intimacy.  Otherwise, there are bound to be hurt feelings and misunderstandings.

We have also learned the value of controlling our tongues.  Just today, when we were doing a stressful job at my sister’s house, I was tired, hungry, and frustrated.  I chose not to say anything rather than say something hurtful at one point.  In the past, I probably would have snapped at my wife and made her feel bad.  Once we got in the car, I told her I was sorry for being silent and explained why.  I thanked her for her help and support and she said kind things back to make me feel better.

Most importantly, we have learned that choosing to use words that heal, words that build, and words that affirm, costs us nothing, but gains us much.  Words of kindness and love are gifts that anyone can afford, and they come back to us.  If you don’t believe me, just try it out for a while.  Stop with the negative words to your spouse, and start consciously talking to him or her in a way that recognizes his or her worth.  I bet that before long, you’ll start getting the same in return.

Giving Good Gifts

Posted: July 5, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Years ago, before our marriage problems, my wife and I read a book called The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman.  While we liked the ideas, I’m afraid we failed to apply them to our relationship.  We weren’t having problems with our love at the time, and it seemed like good information to know, but we didn’t really get anything out of it because we didn’t act on what we read.  Currently, we are reading the book again, and this time, we are working on making sure that we don’t just skim over it and fail to take the actions that will help strengthen our bond.

The author identifies five major ways that people give and receive love.  He believes that people have a primary “language” by which they communicate love to their spouses and want to receive love in return.  If the two people speak different love languages, their needs will go unmet to the degree that they don’t understand what the other person is trying to express.

When we read the book so many years ago, my wife’s primary love language was gifts.  Mine was words of affirmation.  That was something of a problem in that we spoke different languages, so we either didn’t recognize actions that were meant to express love, or we wanted to be shown love in a way that we weren’t getting.  For example, I would say loving things to my wife, but those words didn’t mean a lot to her.  I wanted her to use those kinds of words with me, but she didn’t speak that language.

For a period of time, fairly early in our marriage, I had to go to meetings every Monday night in another town for church, and she always wanted me to bring her something back.  I thought it was fairly pointless, as I was only gone for a few hours, but for her, it communicated love.  She didn’t want anything expensive or fancy – in truth, she didn’t care what the gift was – she just wanted me to be thinking of her, and bringing something back showed that I was.

One time, shortly before Christmas, instead of going to my church meeting, I actually drove to a different town where we had seen something that she really wanted, but thought she would never get. I made it there in time to buy it and get back home in the same amount of time that I would usually have been gone.  I even brought a little gift and had a bogus “what we talked about” answer for her, so she wouldn’t suspect anything.  I’ll never forget the shock on her face when she opened it on Christmas morning, and she still says it’s the best gift I ever gave her.

As I began to go down the road that led to our separation, my gift giving all but stopped.  Once we got to where I wanted to save the marriage, I began giving again.  Whereas before, I had given gifts just because I knew that my wife wanted them, I began learning to give more thoughtful, meaningful gifts.  I wasn’t only using her love language, I was really learning to speak it.

The gifts don’t have to be big.  While we were separated, I showed up one day at her apartment with a care package that contained a first aid kit, vitamins, and other health items that I knew she didn’t have since she’d moved out.  One day, after we were back together, she had an especially bad day at work, so I bought her some bubbles, sidewalk chalk, and a coloring book and we went to the park and played.

When she took the love language test again after we got back together, gifts showed up as her secondary love language.  Her new primary language was physical touch.  For Valentine’s Day, I bought an ebook that teaches how to give a one hour relaxation massage.  That combines giving of myself, physical touch, and quality time, my secondary love language.  She has also chosen to learn my love language, and now she gives me the gift of hearing the words I need to hear from her to feel loved and appreciated.

Independence Day

Posted: July 4, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The restoration tour is all about setting things right and making them new.  It’s about healing and moving forward.  It’s really, in many ways, about freedom.  Freedom from the past.  Freedom from being held back by mistakes that were made.  And, mostly, freedom from the captivity of pain and sorrow.

That’s why it’s kind of neat that the Fourth of July, or Independence Day, is where things in St. Louis began for us, and where we ended up again this year.  Regret can be a cruel master, and sorrow holds so many people captive in a state of “what could have been.”  Once my wife and I were together again, we determined that we would break free from any hold the past had over us, especially when it came to those things that were truly important to us.

At first, I didn’t realize that there was anything about St. Louis that needed restoration.  Even during our separation, we still went, and it was still magical for us.  Things weren’t necessarily fixed when we got back home, but while we were there, it was still our special place.  In an earlier post, I wrote about the day in July with my daughter that was a major turning point during our separation.

In May of last year, while we were still living together, my wife had talked to me about wanting to take a weekend in St. Louis by herself.  I didn’t like the idea, but I wasn’t going to refuse her.  She said she wanted it to be a break for her from all the stress, and a reward for making it through another school year.  What I didn’t realize until later was that it was really a trial run at leaving me.  She ended up going with my sister, and I tried not to worrry about it.

After we’d been back together for a while and had talked through everything, we realized that we needed to take an intentional trip to St. Louis for restoration of those bad feelings and memories.  We didn’t do anything particularly different than what we usually do there, with one exception.  One of our regular stops is the Zoo, and within the zoo, the penguin exhibit.  My wife has come to love penguins because of it, and even if we only stay for a very short time, we always go see the penguins.

When we were raising the kids, we frequented Build a Bear stores, where you make your own stuffed bear or other animal, and it wasn’t only the kids who made bears.  The St. Louis Zoo has a Build a Bear inside, and you can make a lot of the zoo animals.  Naturally, they have penguins, and we decided that while we were there, we would make penguins to keep as a tangible reminder.  We named them, using nicknames that have developed out of our relationship, and carried them around the zoo to some funny looks from people who must have wondered where our kids were.

The last time we were at The Hill, I felt a twinge of regret when we passed by Mama Campisi’s, the restaurant where I knew my wife had gone the night she went without me.  As we were driving up this weekend, we had plans to eat somewhere else, but I kept thinking about it, and, even though it’s such a small thing, it bothered me that there was a place on The Hill that I didn’t feel good about.  The Hill is the most special place on the planet to us, and while I didn’t want to say anything, I finally did.  My wife immediately agreed that we should go there, so we went for lunch on Saturday.

Not only was the meal and the service excellent, but the things my wonderful partner and wife said to me, and the way she made sure to treat me the way I needed to be treated overwhelmed me with love and emotion.  She told me, “This place is ours.  I’ve only ever been here with you or your family.”  She reassured me that my feelings and our love was more important than any plans or agenda that we may have had when we left the house that morning.  I shed a few tears, both at the table and outside, and a lot of healing took place.

I know some of you reading this may think that’s all rather silly or even childish, but we are living the “happily ever after” dream that most people have given up on.  To have it, you have to be a romantic who believes in fairy tales.  You have to choose love and joy.  You have to choose to feel deeply and love lavishly, which probably is why children get it and most adults don’t.  Finally, you have to step away from the hold and the hindrances of a past that’s less than what you want your future to be.  That’s the kind of freedom we’re celebrating in our marriage this Independence Day.

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