Posts Tagged ‘Healing’

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.

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.

Discovering A Home Away From Home

Posted: July 3, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that it was only two years ago that my wife and I first spent a weekend in St. Louis. Before moving to Missouri, my only impressions of that city were taken while passing through on the interstates during family trips across the country.  It always seemed like a place I would never want to go on purpose.

Once we started living in southwestern Missouri, people kept telling us how much they liked going there.  When they heard that my wife was Italian, they would always talk about something called “The Hill.”  It’s an Italian community in the middle of St. Louis, where most of the businesses are still family owned and operated.  Even though I didn’t believe that we would like St. Louis, we figured that at some point, we better go find out what the fuss was all about.

It was exactly two years ago, over a Fourth of July weekend that we booked a hotel for a couple of nights and set off.  We quickly discovered that the St. Louis of my negative perceptions from the back seat of my parents’ car, and the real city are two very different places.  We spent a great weekend discovering that there is so much to love about the city, that we couldn’t imagine why we’d never gone before.

First of all, there’s The Hill.  I can’t really describe it to you other than to say that when you’re there, it’s like you’ve left and gone somewhere else entirely.  It’s the place where people like Joe Garagiola and Yogi Berra grew up.  There’s a sense of community that you just don’t find anymore in the United States, and the people there hold to so many of the old traditions. In the bakeries and shops, you’ll sometimes see three or four generations of family running the place.  The pace is slower, and people take time to talk.

The food, of course, is wonderful.  You can choose everything from a casual deli, to a fancy, full-course formal restaurant.  There are bakeries, Italian groceries, and much of the pasta, sausage, and other foods are still made locally, by hand.

Nearby is Forest Park, which is about 500 acres larger than New York’s Central Park.  It is home to many attractions and is a beautiful place to spend time.  Downtown is the river, where there is no shortage of things to see and do.  There is culture, entertainment, atmosphere, and a world of diversity to see and experience.

That first time we went, I wasn’t sure if we would really grow to love it as much as we have, or if it was just infatuation with something new, but before we even left to come home, we were already making plans to go back.  We had visited the St. Louis Art Museum and the St. Louis Zoo, had a picnic in Forest Park, and done the tourist thing around the Arch.  We’d had one of the most memorable meals of our lives at Charlie Gitto’s on The Hill, and we were all but ready to pack up and move there.

Since that weekend two years ago, we have taken at least a day trip to St. Louis almost every month.  As educators, we only get paid once a month, so it’s usually the Saturday after payday that we go.  We always eat on The Hill, shop for authentic groceries and foods that we can’t get at home, and spend time in Forest Park.  We always look forward to our time there, and we’ve not only never gotten tired of it, we’ve grown to feel more and more that it is a type of second home to us.

Even while our marriage was deteriorating, we would still go, and for that short time, we were always “us” again, and there was hope.  That’s why it’s so difficult for me to grasp the thought that it was just two years ago that we first visited.  That would have been during the period of time following my failures as a husband, but nearly a year before we separated.  I suppose that in finding St. Louis, we found something new that was only ours.  We were writing a new chapter of our lives that could have changed our marriage for the better, without having to go through the sorrow that we ultimately did.

When it came time for the restoration tour, there were some things involving our beautiful city on the river that needed to be taken care of.  Of all the stops on the tour, there may not be any more significant than these.  I’ll share them in tomorrow’s post.

Anniversary Week Part 3

Posted: July 2, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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The Friday of anniversary week, we left school and headed toward Tennessee.  Most of my wife’s family lives there in the Clarksville and Nashville area.  It was our destination for the conclusion of our nine day celebration.

I had known what I was getting for our anniversary for a couple of months, and there wasn’t any attempt at surprise involved. I had to wait until Sunday, though.  My gift wasn’t a thing to possess; it was an experience.

I have been a passionate Philadelphia Eagle fan my entire life and the Eagles were playing the Tennessee Titans that Sunday.  My gift was two tickets to the game.  Of course, my wife and all her family there are Titans fans, so that would normally have made her the enemy for those three hours, but remember, everything had changed.

Well, not everything.  She still cheered for the Titans, but instead of a smack talking rivalry like it was in the past, we both almost wanted the other team to win so that the other person wouldn’t feel bad.  We each wore our team’s colors, but we couldn’t really be on opposite sides in any serious kind of way.

On Saturday, we had some down time and we were hungry, so we headed into Clarksville for something to eat.  We were only two beers away from the t-shirts, and we knew there was an Old Chicago near the mall, so in we went.  That made three times in one week, two in Springfield, and one there.

I did talk some smack to the waiter, who gave it right back.  Our last beer was the “manager’s brown bag” choice, where they bring you a beer of their choosing in a paper sack, so you don’t know what it’s going to be.  He brought me a beer that was awful, and we’re both pretty sure he knew that, but we laughed about it and took it as all part of the fun.

We stayed with my brother-in-law and his family that night.  He’s the one who taught us about beer, and I’ve spent the same number of years trying to teach him about wine.  He bought the ingredients and I cooked pasta puttanesca for everyone that night.  It’s been a favorite of ours ever since I got the recipe from a chef in Sonoma, California a few years ago.  Later that evening, we used his backyard fire pit to make smores.

The next morning, we headed to the stadium and watched the Eagles lose badly.  It wasn’t the outcome I hoped for, but I was there with the love of my life, and at that point, I knew what it was important.  It wasn’t the score in a football game.  It was the love we had rediscovered and now were living.

You won’t find a lot of significance in most people’s 14th anniversary.  It’s not one of the “big” years, but for us, there has never been one bigger, nor will there probably ever be.  A few months before, we had gone to the edge and looked down.  During that week, it was all about having made a complete 180, and never looking back.  The confusion and the mistakes of the past were behind us, and it really was an anniversary that was much too big for just one day.

Anniversary Week

Posted: June 30, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Our wedding anniversary is in October, and last year, we decided that one day wasn’t going to be nearly enough to celebrate not only reaching our 14th year, but all the love we had found in just the few months prior.  We began planning far in advance, and it just so happened that, while our actual date was on a Wednesday, there were events on both the weekends before and after that we wanted to do anyway.  The fact that they book-ended the week of our anniversary was just the excuse we needed to go all out.

Our anniversary week – which actually ended up lasting 9 days – began in St. Louis the Saturday before.  We were going to be in the Halloween 10K race that I wrote about yesterday, and it was on the Sunday morning before our anniversary.  Since it was to be early in the morning, and in St. Louis, we went up the day before and got a hotel room for the night.

We spend a lot of time in St. Louis, and try to go up there for at least a day trip once a month.  There is an Italian community there called “The Hill,” and it was what brought us to St. Louis the first time we ever visited.  We eat in the restaurants there and my wife, who is Italian, shops in the family owned grocery stores and bakeries.  It’s as close as you can get to being in the old country around here, and we both love it.

We also enjoy Forest Park, which is larger than New York’s Central Park.  It hosts the St. Louis Zoo, The Art Museum, The History Museum, miles of running and cycling trails, an outdoor skating rink in the winter, and much more.  Most of the attractions are free, and the scenery is very beautiful.

The day in St. Louis was purely for enjoying ourselves.  We picked up our race packets in the afternoon, but other than that, nothing was scheduled.  It was just a day for the two of us to spend in any way we wished. It was the kickoff day for the restoration tour’s week-long anniversary celebration, and we were spending it with the person we loved, in a place we loved.

The hotel we were staying in had a free hot food bar in the evening, so we took advantage of that even though it wasn’t the type of stuff we usually ate.  They also had an indoor/outdoor pool and the weather was actually nice enough to lay out in the sun for a while.  I had bought my wife a new bathing suit and was glad that she got to wear it.  She did get in a bit of trouble in the hot tub for calling other people’s kids “critters,” but no real harm was done.

In the morning, it was fun to put on our costumes and go down to breakfast at the hotel.  Naturally, it sparked a lot of conversation, seeing two people wearing huge quarters.  We got some pictures taken, shared a little bit of what was going on, and headed downtown for the race.  I knew that my knee might not hold up, but I hoped it would.

The race wound around downtown, went through the grounds of the Anheuser Busch plant, almost took us into Busch Stadium, and provided great views of the Arch and the Mississippi River.  Some of the costumes were fantastic.   There was a zombie, Two people dressed as peace and quiet (a hippie and a mime), when pigs fly (you’ll just have to imagine), Gumby, a praying mantis in a cage, and too many others to mention here.  We didn’t win any of the prizes, but we had a great time hanging around and seeing it all.

It was only the beginning of anniversary week, but it not only left us with a lot of great memories, it got us looking toward the future, as well.  For next year’s Halloween 10K, we’re thinking of either the tortoise and the hare (think a dorky looking turtle and a playboy bunny here) or Beauty and the Beast (my wife’s favorite Disney fairy tale).  Two days down, the rest of the week to go…

Opposite Sides Of The Same Coin

Posted: June 29, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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A few days after last July’s first friday art walk, I called my friend who had gone with us.  I suspected he had seen what I had seen that evening and that he would confirm what I was thinking.  I asked him over the phone, “Are you as confused as I am about why my wife and I are separated?”

“Definitely,” he told me.  “You guys are one.  You’re opposite sides of the same coin.”  I loved that phrase.  I actually told my wife that he said that soon afterward, but I didn’t think she had really paid any attention to it.   In fact, I forgot all about it until she brought it up during the restoration tour.

Right after we got back together, I completed my first triathlon, and my wife was training for her first full marathon.  Once the triathlon was over, I was looking for a new challenge, and we decided to train for some 10K races.  There were two in October – one in Springfield near our loft, and one in St. Louis close to our anniversary.

When we looked into the Halloween 10K in St, Louis, we found out that it’s not just a race.  It’s a fun event where many people run in costumes, there are props and Halloween themed scenes along the route, and a costume contest after the race.  We knew we wanted to be part of it, and we knew we wanted to run in costumes, but we didn’t know what to dress up as.

We kicked around different ideas, but nothing really stood out.  Then one day, my wife said, “Why don’t we go as opposite sides of the same coin?”  I was thrilled that she had remembered that and still thought about it, but I wasn’t sure how you could make a costume out of that.  I asked her, and as always, she had a great idea.

We cut out circles of cardboard and painted them silver.  Then she used a black marker and a projector at school to trace the features of a quarter on each, heads on one and tails on the other.  We used a Missouri quarter because it has the St. Louis Arch on the back of it.  We dressed in all black with the quarters attached to the front of our shirts.  We printed each half of the phrase on different sheets of paper, and attached them in sheet protectors to our backs.

We probably looked pretty silly and they were really unprofessional costumes, but we couldn’t have been happier with them.  We got people to take pictures of us in the hotel lobby and at the race.  It was a great experience and one that we look forward to making an annual tradition.  The only negative about it was that I injured my knee a few weeks beforehand, and ended up having to walk part of it and cross the finish line in a lot of pain.

Even that ended up being a blessing, because my wife refused to run on ahead and leave my side.  I kept telling her not to let me ruin the race for her, and she just kept saying, “We’re together.”  She stayed with me every step of the way, and we joined hands for the last few steps as we crossed the finish line.  Our times were not even close to competitive, but that didn’t matter.  Everything about the race was symbolic of what had changed between us since getting back together.

What had changed was everything.  It continues to amaze me that my wife is so different now.  When you’ve been with someone for more than a decade, you think you know everything about them.  You assume that you know how they will react, and what they will do at any given time, but everything was new and different.  It’s true that opposites do attract.  My wife and I are very different from each other, but it takes the two sides to make the one coin.

First Friday Art Walk

Posted: June 28, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Ever since we moved to southwest Missouri, one of our favorite things to do has been the first friday art walk in downtown Springfield.  The first friday evening of every month, the whole downtown square and surrounding areas are one big street party.  The art galleries stay open, many businesses offer samples of finger foods, while some have wine to taste, and there is live music (some hired and scheduled performers and some street musicians) everywhere.

It’s a lot of fun, and my wife and I have always loved the atmosphere.  Sometimes we only go for a little while and other times we stay out and visit lots of places.  We usually run into people we know, and sometimes we invite friends to meet up with us.  When we still had the kids living at home, we would sometimes take them, and they always looked forward to it.  The only drawback was figuring out how and when to make it time for just the two of us, and how much to share it with others.

Over the years, we missed very few art walks.  Occasionally we were out of town, or the weather was horrendous, but for most of the first five years, if it was first friday art walk, we were there.  Last July, we were separated during art walk, and it occurred at a time when things were really pretty iffy in terms of our relationship.  Where I stood was a huge question mark, and we were at a critical juncture in which way things were going to go.

It seemed too much like a date for either of us to be totally comfortable going together, but we both wanted to go, and not by ourselves.  My wife asked me to bring our Son, who was still staying with me at the time.  He wasn’t able to go, and I ended up asking a buddy of mine, who was a friend of both of us, to come hang out.  He knew what was going on, so he was also rather uncomfortable, but I assured him not to worry and that things would be very casual.

We all met downtown at a cheese steak shop, and set out on foot after we ate.  My wife seemed completely at ease and more and more open with me as the night went on.  We held hands and laughed quite a bit together.  We had a great time and I couldn’t help thinking, “Why in the world are we separated?  We are obviously still a great couple and this is how it could be all the time.”  I couldn’t understand why my wife didn’t see it, or what held her back from returning to me, but she still needed to go through some things before she came to that realization.

After we got back together, it seemed like every first friday, there was something that interfered with us being able to go.  The first one, my wife was sick.  Several in a row were rained out.  I often had to work at Macy’s on friday nights.  For a while, it seemed like we would never be able to spend a romantic art walk as a couple in love again.

We made a few brief appearances here and there, but it wasn’t until two months ago that we really got to enjoy a first friday.  The weather was perfect, our schedules were clear, and there was nothing to stand in our way.  This time, holding hands was as automatic as breathing.  Laughing together is just what we do.   And we didn’t need anyone else there to take the pressure off or keep us from feeling awkward.

At one of the photography studios, they were giving out free samples of cake pops, made locally.  Not only were they a tasty treat, but we decided they would be the perfect thing to serve at our renewal ceremony in August.  It was just an extra little blessing that came out of the evening.

Last month, we invited my friend Joe and his family over for dinner, and they went to art walk with us afterward.  We also invited our friend who had gone with us last year while we were separated, but he was out of town.  We ran into some other friends and people that we knew as the night went on, and it was really just a time to celebrate how good things are now.  In just a few days, it will be the “one year later” art walk and, while we look forward to it as much as any other,  our first fridays have already been restored.

Meeting The Challenges

Posted: June 27, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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When you start working on a project in an older home, it almost always produces unexpected challenges.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s a big job or a small one.  If you think it’s going to take 30 minutes, it will probably end up being at least two hours.  If you’re expecting to work a few hours, it may be a day or more.  The older the house, the more this tends to hold true.

The reasons are varied.  Usually, it’s because once you start tearing into something, or taking something apart, you find out that the problems are worse than you expected.  Very often, this is further complicated by the fact that the construction and the materials are so outdated, there is no easy fix.  It’s not as simple as taking off a leaky faucet and replacing it with a new one.  It turns out that the pipes are rusted out further down and the fittings don’t match what’s being made now, and it always seems to be Sunday evening when nothing is open to get parts anyway.

At those times, decisions have to be made.  Will you insist on the replacement parts being as genuine and authentic to the time period as possible?  If so, what if they no longer meet building codes?  If you can’t find suitable parts, will you attempt to weld and make your own?  Are you willing to allow for updating and modernizing, and, if so, to what degree?

In the case of our marriage, we had a good number of years under our belt when all the problems came to the surface.  Many of these were long-standing issues that should have been dealt with as part of routine maintenance, or when they were small.  They would have been much easier to fix.  As it was, we got through the worst of it by last August, when we began living together again.  Even so, the unexpected problems and issues kept popping up.

Whenever it seemed like things were ready to go smooth and easy, something would always seem to arise that would make us have to stop and deal with it.  There were times that we reached a high level of frustration and we both made statements like, “This is never going to go away,” or “This will never be over.”  As much as we were trying to focus on the present and the future, the past kept creeping up and interfering with the work we were doing on our relationship.  We shouldn’t have expected it to be easy, but we were still caught off guard by the idea that there was going to be more to this than we thought.

As we’ve moved throughout this year of the restoration tour, we’ve experienced incredibly high highs and devastatingly low lows.  The highs are better than anything we used to have in our marriage, and they allow us to see what is really possible when two people love each other the way God intended.  The lows cause us to have to make those same kinds of decisions that come up in a house restoration when things don’t go according to plan.

There are three things that I think need to be stated about the restoration tour.  The first is this:  No matter how difficult or frustrating it ever becomes, you don’t give up and walk away from the house.  Ever.  You have too much invested and you will never be able to be completely ok with letting go of that dream and that place you called home.  You may have to re-think some things, it may take more time and money than you were hoping, and you may have to do things differently than you were planning, but you stay in the house and you do what you have to do.

The second is this: There is little or no room for rigidity when it comes to restoring a marriage.  You have to be willing to be flexible.  You have to allow for the fact that time has passed, and things are constantly changing.  No matter how good some of your past memories are, and no matter how much you want things to be just the way they were, that’s probably not going to be the case.

You can’t get stuck in the past.  You have to make some changes and embrace some newness.  A relationship is a living, dynamic thing that doesn’t just stay still.  Some things you may not be able to fix or replace, and you may just have to come up with something new where that used to be.

The third is this:  Restoring your past mistakes and hurts is not a make-believe game.  It’s not playing dress up and acting like things are different from they are.  It’s confronting those areas where you failed in the past and succeeding in the present.  It’s finding those places where things weren’t built right or sustained damage and either re-doing the work so that it is right, or replacing what’s faulty with something newer and better.

What you end up with may not look exactly like it did in the beginning.  It also may not turn out to be what you thought it would when you started.  If it’s done correctly, though, it will be stronger, more useful, and more in keeping with the times.  It may very well also end up being more beautiful than it ever was before.

Latest Stop: Eureka Springs, Arkansas

Posted: June 26, 2011 in Love and Marriage
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Eureka Springs, Arkansas, is a discovery my wife and I made a few years ago.  If you’ve been there, you already know what I mean.  If you haven’t, you really need to go sometime.  It’s just not the type of thing you can really explain.

Stepping into Eureka Springs, especially the downtown shopping district, is like stepping into another world entirely.  It’s an extraordinarily beautiful place that has a little bit of everything.  It’s a bit reminiscent of the town that the characters in Harry Potter visit from time to time.  It’s full of art galleries and places to eat and shop, and live music can be heard playing just about everywhere.

Our first time there, we were just passing through town on the way home from somewhere.  We were so intrigued that we soon went back.  We instantly fell in love with the town, and it was the beginning of many great memories.  It’s close enough that we can go anytime, and it’s perfect as a romantic getaway, or just an escape during busy or stressful times.

Eureka Springs was where we went soon after I came clean about what had been going on in my life and the mistakes I had made.  We booked a bed and breakfast up the hill from the shopping district.  Our sole purpose was to have a make-up session for our marriage and I thought it had worked.  We had an amazing time of renewing our relationship and I figured we were good to go from there.  Of course, we weren’t in the long run, mainly because my heart just wasn’t ever in it like it had been.

During the early days of our marriage problems, and before we actually separated, I kept holding onto the hope that things would just turn around and be ok.  Everyday, I would convince myself that this day would be the breakthrough.  I was sure that it was only a matter of time before my wife would let down the walls and let me back in to her heart.  I knew that no matter what she said or believed, deep down inside she had to still love me.  A love like ours doesn’t just disappear, but it does get lost or buried sometimes.

One day, at the peak of all this tension, I asked her to go to Eureka Springs with me.  I thought that if I could get her to the place where we had such wonderful associations, she would feel the love in her heart again.  She agreed to go, and I put everything I had into trying to show her how much I wanted to be her man and win back her love.  I was very encouraged that she let me hold her hand all throughout the day, but she wouldn’t let me any closer than that.

She was wearing a dress (my favorite) that I had bought for her, and I took lots of pictures of her while we were there.  In all of them, she had a sadness in her eyes that completely tore me up. Even though she looked so beautiful, there was an unmistakable distance that I couldn’t cross.  We ate dinner at a restaurant on a hotel balcony, sat in the park listening to music, and I tried to be as romantic as possible, but to no avail.

Yesterday, we went there again as part of the restoration tour.  It was our first time back since that day, and it was one of the truly major tour destinations for us.  It wasn’t that we had hurt each other there, or created any bad memories in Eureka Springs that we needed to fix.  It was just the feelings of having been there during that time when we weren’t close, and a few regrettable statements that my wife had made during our separation that had gotten back to me that hurt.

It was important that we go back there as a renewed couple, full of love for one another, and with no doubt as to where we stood.   We needed to reclaim Eureka Springs as our special place, with no competing thoughts or memories to drag us down or cause regrets.  It’s was a beautiful time spent together, and it reaffirmed what we always knew.  That us being together in that place is one of our treasures, and one we intend to keep forever.

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