Posts Tagged ‘fitness’

After the Phone Call… Now What?

Posted: June 8, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The day of “the phone call” was July 31st, so school was out, and it was a Saturday, but I did have to work at Macy’s later that day.  I didn’t expect to see my wife, but she showed up with our oldest daughter soon after my shift began.  Her face was flushed with excitement, and she had been sharing the good news with our daughter, who had stood strong for us throughout the entire ordeal.

There are two moments in my life that I will never forget.  They are forever etched in my memory like living photographs.  One is our wedding, when I first saw my wife at the back of the church.  At the risk of sounding cynical, I’ve never bought into people saying someone was the most beautiful bride ever, but that moment is permanently frozen in my mind, and I’ve never seen anyone or anything so beautiful. 

The second moment was that afternoon at Macy’s, when my wife got me away to where it was just the two of us, looked me in the eye, and told me that she loved me.  She repeated it, as if to make sure that I understood what she was trying to say, and she looked at me with eyes that melted me completely.  If you’ve ever seen the movie, Notting Hill, you know the scene near the end when Julia Roberts says she’s “just a girl, standing in front of just a boy, asking him to love her.”  In my wife’s eyes was both a statement and a question as she repeated an almost pleading, “I love you.”  The statement was clear. “I didn’t mean what I said before.  I do love you.”  The question was equally obvious.  “Will you love me back?  Will you please love me back?”

She told me that she had been wrong and had made some mistakes.  She said that she had done some things she wasn’t proud of.  I told her that it didn’t matter and that if I had been the man that she needed me to be, and the man that she believed she had married, she would never have been put in a position for any of this to happen.  I told her that I took full responsibility for the entire mess and that I would never again allow her to ever be in that type of situation.

She said she needed a little bit of time to clear her head and get things ready, and she asked if it would be all right if we waited until Monday evening, when I got off work, for me to move in.  I told her that was fine and to do whatever she needed to do.  We kissed right there in the store and I didn’t care if I got in trouble (I didn’t).  I don’t really remember much of anything about the rest of that day or the next two days.  Monday evening just couldn’t come fast enough. 

On Monday, August 2, 2010, my Facebook status was the famous quote from Al Michaels, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”  This was no hockey game, though.  This was a marriage pulled from the wreckage and rubble, being rebuilt, restored, and made new again.  This was the result of countless tears, unmeasured anguish, hours and days of prayer and faith, and work.  Work like there was no alternative but to do this, no matter how long, how hard, or how insurmountable it may have seemed at any given moment.

If you are reading this, and either you are struggling in your marriage, or you know someone who is, let me be very clear.  It is never too late.  It is never beyond hope.  If the two of you loved each other enough at one time to marry, that love can be rebuilt.  That’s what it takes.  Building love by your actions and not getting stuck in the past or the what-if’s.   Just like you’ll never get fit unless you start working out, the feelings of love won’t come back until you start building the love back up in your relationship.

The Phone Call

Posted: June 7, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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July 31, 2010 is a day that will be forever known to us as, “the phone call.”  It was also the day of the mock tri; a practice run with my training group for the upcoming triathlon in Republic.  Let me back up…

In March of 2010, my wife ran a half marathon (13.1 miles), her first ever.  There’s been a lot of debate about whether my derailment and/or hers was the result of the dreaded “mid-life crisis.”  She insisted that a year or two prior, I had been going through such a state and that explained some of my behavior.  She was now approaching 39 and her stated objective was to prove that she wasn’t getting old. 

Whatever the side stories may have been, I came to support her and was blown away and inspired by what I saw that day.  Remember, I was a former fitness instructor; that was how we had gotten to know each other while we were in college.  Call it laziness or life getting in the way, but I hadn’t done anything to keep fit for a long time.  There had been some half-hearted attempts from time to time, but I had just gone through the motions.

That day, at the half marathon, I saw people of every category.  Children, elderly, men, women, fat, thin, you name it, they were there.  And they were all doing it.  That was what struck me.  All these people were out there on a cold, miserable day to run/walk 13.1 miles and I was doing absolutely nothing.  When I saw my wife cross the finish line, I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of another person in my entire life. 

I vowed that day that I was going to change and get back in shape.  I never, in the farthest reaches of my imagination, could have fathomed that it would only be a little over 2 weeks before my marriage as I knew it would essentially be over (or at least suspended).  That was part of the irony of it all.  The very time that I was getting ready to get at least parts of my life back on track, she was turning me out of her heart.

I started a running program called “couch to 5K” or C25K for short.  It’s designed to get a person who has been doing nothing to be able to run a 5K race in about 2 months time. My wife had done it years before, and now it was available as an app on my phone.  I followed the program to the letter and got back to the gym in earnest.  When my wife unexpectedly went cold at the end of March, I desperately held on to the one part of relationship that was still intact; us running together and being workout partners.

Our fitness center was offering a class to train people who had never done a triathlon before.  It was to run from late spring until the “Tiger Tri,” the annual triathlon held in the town where we were living at the time.  My wife only went once, then dropped out as we separated.  Somehow, I fixed it in my mind that I was going to complete that triathlon, and that in so doing, I was going to get my wife back.  I had no reason to believe that one would lead to the other, but I did believe with all my heart that when I crossed that finish line, it would be the culminating event in bringing us back together. 

Two Saturdays before the actual triathlon, our coach had us do a mock tri.  We would swim, bike, and run the entire actual course so that we would know that we could do it, and be prepared for the rigor of the event.  Throughout the mock tri, and especially during the run, I prayed and spoke my wife’s name to keep me going.  I was determined that I was going to finish, and that I was going to run every step. 

When I got done, I felt a sense of accomplishment, but was still focused on the real event that was two weeks away.  I had literally only been home about 15 minutes when my phone rang and it was my wife.  She said, “I’m calling to ask you if you’re ready to give your landlord your notice and come live with me.”  I don’t know how or why the timing went that way, I only know that after I hung up I laid on my bed and cried for about 30 minutes straight.  Joe called about then and asked how I was doing.  I told him, “I’m crying this morning, but it’s tears of joy today.”

I caused the Problem. I am to Blame.

Posted: May 18, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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They say that the first step in changing is admitting that there is a problem.  Sometimes there’s a disconnect between recognizing that there is a problem and recognizing what to do about it.  It’s easy to look at a run-down house and say, “There’s a problem here.”  Understanding how to restore that house can be considerably more difficult. 

Through the giving over of my heart and will to God, I had gained a lot of insight into what the problems were.  Fortunately, I wasn’t on my own in figuring out what needed to be done.  Between God showing me the places I had failed and needed to restore, and Mort Fertel’s emails giving me practical advice on things to say and do, I had a pretty good set of blueprints. 

I also had an impulsive desire to fix everything NOW!  Of course, it doesn’t work that way, but once confronted with the truth of it all, I just wanted to make it right.  I didn’t want it to take time.  I wanted it fixed this minute.  Because of that, I sometimes said and did things that were counter-productive and probably set us back instead of moving us forward. 

The most unique aspect of Mort Fertel’s Marriage Fitness idea is that you don’t focus on the problems.  You step away from the problems and begin using words and actions that will begin to rebuild love.  In terms of fitness, it is perfectly logical.

If you find yourself overweight and out of shape, it doesn’t help to talk about how you got that way.  You need to get to the gym and get to work.  You won’t lose weight, build muscle, or get fit by focusing on why you haven’t been exercising or how poorly you’ve been eating.  You’ve just got to do the work.  The result will be that you’ll get fit and it won’t really matter how you got off track in the past.

By trying to get my wife to see what I was seeing and get her to focus on the past, I was missing the mark.  I was unintentionally still making the situation in our marriage her fault.  Although I didn’t mean to be, what I was really saying was, “Why can’t you see it like I see it?  Why don’t you just get over everything and it will all be ok?”  She needed a whole lot more than that to learn to love me again. 

I quickly realized my mistake (a scenario that would, unfortunately, repeat itself many times over the next few months) and began to simply work on saying and doing as many loving things as I could to her and for her.  I didn’t try to get her to talk about what had happened and why she couldn’t forgive me or any of that.  I just started loving her, really loving her, on God’s terms and her terms, not mine.

During this time, I began writing all these thoughts and realizations down so I wouldn’t forget and lose them.  I kept papers that had scripture verses, memories, and things I needed to go back and restore like the wedding ring.  I also wrote on one paper this statement:  “I am to blame.  I caused the failure of our marriage.”  That admission allowed the shift to occur from, “Why doesn’t my wife respond in the way I want her to,” to “I caused this, it’s my responsibility to fix it.”

Mort Fertel: Unexpected Help

Posted: May 16, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Shortly after the restoration vision, while I was trying to process my recent change of heart and mind, I received an email late one evening.  I found it curious that it said something about help for your marriage in the subject line, but I assumed that it was spam and ignored it.

By morning, my curiosity got the best of me and I opened and read it.  It addressed me by name and said that I had visited the web site and requested information.  It was from someone named Mort Fertel, whom I had never heard of, and whose website I had definitely never visited.

Nevertheless, it said I had signed up for the free help and that I would begin receiving a series of emails called, “7 secrets to fixing your marriage.”  Even though I couldn’t imagine how it was that this had come to me, I was all for any help I could get, so I read the information.

He has a program called “Marriage fitness” where he uses principles of physical fitness and training to help people whose marriages are in trouble.  It’s a completely different approach from traditional marriage counseling and it really caught my attention. 

Over the next few days and weeks, it was absolutely uncanny how much the emails spoke directly to our situation.  I began to conclude that they must really be coming from God, because this guy couldn’t possibly be that much in tune with exactly what we were going through.  (Much later, I would find out that our oldest daughter had gone through Mort Fertel’s pre-marital counseling and she had visited the website and signed me up without telling me.  As they say, God works in mysterious ways)

Mort Fertel’s approach works because it is practical and doable.  Much like Dave Ramsey helps people with their finances by walking them step-by-step through exactly what to DO, so Mort Fertel’s message is not a bunch of theoretical what-if’s, but rather very specific things to begin doing immediately.  He even tells you that when you first begin doing these things, your spouse probably won’t respond, but do them anyway because they need to be done.  They will take effect over time, but they need to be started if things are going to change. 

In a restoration project, a great deal of work goes on before it really looks like anything good is happening.  There’s a lot of tearing out and removing of damaged, worn out, and useless material.  Then there’s all the work on the infrastructure: putting in wires, pipes, replacement beams, insulation, etc.  None of that is seen from the outside, and none is attractive to the eye while it’s taking place.  In reality, the house is going to have to look a lot worse before it starts looking better.

So it can be with a marriage that is severely neglected and damaged.  There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, starting right now, but it may very well not seem like it’s getting any better for quite some time.  More likely, exposing all that damage will exacerbate the pain in the beginning.

There comes a point, though, with a house, where it seems like all of a sudden, it all comes together.  It’s almost like you drive by one day and it looks like a shambles, and you drive by the next day and you can see a beautiful house appearing right before your eyes.  The work you do at the end is the part everybody sees.  The painting, landscaping, and putting on the finishing touches is where the oohs and ahs come in, but the dirty work that went on without any recognition is what made the transformation possible.

Something Old, Something New

Posted: May 12, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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So what had I done, that got us where we were?  It was as much a question of what I hadn’t done, as what I had.  There are sins of omission and sins of commission.  We all do things we shouldn’t and later wish we hadn’t.  There are also those things we know we should do, but we don’t.  Both are part of being human and imperfect. 

When they happen as a momentary lapse in judgement, or in a moment of weakness, they are easier to understand and, perhaps, to forgive.  When they happen over a long period of time, or with intent, they are much more difficult to excuse, because the damage they cause is deeper and more significant.

In talking with my wife last Spring, I finally just asked her, “Does this go back to what happened with ________ ? (For the juicy details, visit the disclaimer page.  In other words, you’re not getting any, so focus on the point here).  She said yes, it did.   She was still hurt (even though I thought we had made up and moved on) for a variety of reasons.  She told me she could no longer trust me, and that fact that I had never admitted anything or owned up to my indiscretion was a wound that wouldn’t heal. 

While I’m sure that was true, and I would never make light of it, I began to see that long before that, I had already been on a path that would ultimately destroy our love.  When we got married, I was the person she not only loved romantically, but looked up to spiritually.  She believed me to be a man of God, who would lead and protect her always.  In those days, that is what I strived to be.  It was only years later, when I turned my back inwardly (while keeping up appearances outwardly), that the erosion of trust began.

I was also her fitness instructor prior to dating her, and fitness was a big part of both of our lives.  As the years went by, I became lazy and neglectful in that area, also.  That in no way caused her to stop loving me, but it altered the roles in that part of our relationship.  I didn’t care enough about myself to stay healthy, so I couldn’t care for her in the ways I had promised to.

Perhaps most significantly, she had told me over and over, for years, that she wanted to be cherished.  For her to have to come out and say that, even once, is an indication that my love for her was not the kind we spoke of in our wedding vows.  And how did I respond?  I failed to do anything differently.  I ignored her desperate pleas to be loved the way she was meant to be. 

I made it my quest to begin, from the moment of realization, to cherish her in all things.  In the way I looked at her.  In the way I talked to her.  In the way I honored her in front of others.  In the way I lived my life. 

I began to proudly display pictures of her.  I began to speak highly of her to others.  I bought her gifts that showed I really cared.  In short, I began to treat her like I was “in love” with her and that she was the most special person on the planet to me.  And I began to use the word “cherish” in talking to her.

Interestingly enough, while the actions paid huge dividends over time, the word almost seemed to have the opposite effect.  Telling my wife, “I cherish you,”  never got any positive response. 

Somehow, a new word emerged that seemed to please her heart.  That word is treasure.  She had asked me to cherish her and I hadn’t.  She didn’t ask me to treasure her, but I did.  And when I would tell her that she was my treasure, or how much I treasured her, it began to melt away the cold and bring us closer again.

Sometimes restoration means taking something old and making it like new again.  Sometimes it means replacing something old that can’t be repaired with something new.  In this case, it meant getting to know my wife’s heart on a deep enough level to understand what she needed and then provide it for her.

A Broken Ring and a Broken Heart

Posted: May 11, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The first step toward the restoration of our marriage after the vision brings me deep shame to admit here.  In the Christmas season of 2007, my wife took on a part time, seasonal job at Target.  Christmas help for some extra spending money.  While working there, she caught her ring on a shopping cart and severely damaged it.

The ring was, like her, very unique and special, just like the marriage it represented.  It was flashy, elegant, and it stood out.  Picking it out and buying it for her was one of the truly remarkable moments of my life.  There was a part that overlapped and extended beyond the rest of the ring.  This was the part that snagged and it was bent almost to breaking, losing some of the baguettes in the process.

Soon afterward, I took it to a local jeweler for repairs.  He didn’t seem real interested in fixing it, making a lot of excuses and asking for an exorbitant amount of money.  I returned home with the ring in a tiny zip lock bag.  I put it in a drawer and after a while, it was “out of sight, out of mind.”

You might ask yourself how a husband could possibly be as much a fool as I have been.  You would be right to ask that question.

Coming out of the vision, the first thing that was clear to me was that my wife’s wedding ring needed to be repaired, no matter what the cost, and returned to her finger.  To say that I loathed myself that day would not really capture the spirit of the moment.  I was overcome with guilt, shame, and an overwhelming sense of wondering how I could be so blind and stupid.  How could I not have known that this was unacceptable? There was no defense for my lack of caring and concern.  This was the Spring of 2010 and the ring had been damaged in December of 2007.

I didn’t say anything to my wife, but I put the bag into my pocket when I left for the gym.  I worked out, then planned to find a place to take the ring.  As I was leaving the fitness center, I was thinking to myself, “I don’t know any jewelers.  I don’t even know where to go.”

As I was thinking this, I was making a left turn out of the parking lot and found myself looking at a storefront window that said, “Jeweler” and “repairs” in large letters.  Right across the street from where I worked out nearly every day was a small shop and I turned in.  I spoke with the man and showed him the ring.

He had a great plan for how to not only fix the ring, but to make it stronger than before.  The price he quoted me was a fraction of the estimate I had gotten at the other store.  He explained that the finished product wouldn’t be as fancy as the original ring, but that it would still be very beautiful and, more importantly, it would be strong enough to withstand the type of accident that had gotten us here.

Stronger than before, and no less beautiful
That’s the picture of love.  It gets hurt.  It suffers damage and loss.  But it withstands the hardships and becomes stronger than ever.  Sometimes in trials and difficulties, it loses some of the outward luster, but it loses none of it’s beauty and even increases in quality.
I wrote a long love letter in which I expressed these thoughts and placed it with the ring on her pillow when I brought the ring home.  I hoped that she would read the words and they would reach her heart and we would reconcile that night.  Unfortunately, I badly underestimated the depth of her pain and the brokenness of her heart.  Returning the restored ring was a start and a step in the right direction, but the truth was, while she still shared the apartment with me, my wife was already gone.
Things would have to get much worse before they got better, but I now had hope and a plan.  Continue to fix what needed fixed.  Keep repairing, replacing, and restoring everything that I could find that needed my attention.  Let God show me what to do and then do it with all of my heart, regardless of whether I could see any results.

Latest Tour Stop: Republic, MO for the May Day 5K

Posted: May 7, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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In November of 2009, we down-sized from a large house in the country to a small apartment in Republic, Missouri, a suburb of Springfield.  We had been living on a farm and my wife was becoming increasingly unhappy.  For me, it was an attempt to stop the bleeding in our marriage.  For her, it was the beginning of the end. 

Shortly after moving, we endured a difficult Christmas, and, based on her experience with her parents’ divorce, she concluded that we weren’t going to make it.  These were our circumstances entering the Spring of 2010.

My wife is a runner.   She’s a gym rat in general, but especially, she is a runner. 

The first 5K in the local “season” is the May Day 5K, which is held in Republic on the first Saturday in May.  So today, we got up early and made the drive back to Republic for this year’s event. 

It was difficult to go back to a place where so many bad memories linger, but that’s part of the restoration tour.  More on that later, but this morning, it was about me supporting and cheering on my wife, my partner in love and life. 

Last year, I don’t want to imagine what she was thinking before, during, and after the race.  This year, it was us together; she the runner and I the cheerleader. 

She was disappointed in her time this morning, but I was as proud of her as I could be.  At last year’s race, I wanted her to know that I loved her and supported her.  Her mind and heart were elsewhere.  Today, on the ride back home, she told me how much it meant to have me there to cheer her in.

That’s the spirit of the restoration tour.  I’ll share much more details in the days to come, but in short, the restoration tour is the process of going back to all of the times and places where we hurt each other, let each other down, and failed to love each other the way we promised to.  It’s a healing of the hurts,  a repairing of the damage.  It’s a setting right of the wrongs.  Restoring what once was and was meant to be beautiful, so that it is, in fact, beautiful again.

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