Why I wanted to make my wife cry

Part 1 of some thoughts on love…Wednesday is part 2

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I’ve always counted myself to be something of a romantic. In fact, when my wife and I began our collision course toward marriage, I developed a plan where I’d pull off so many legendary moments of courtship bliss that her tears of appreciation would be as plentiful as coins on Super Mario Brothers.

That…did not work out. Mostly because I expected her to melt each time I gave her a Hallmark card, and she turned out to not be much of a crier.

One night at the end of a date, I took her by the church where I led worship. The entire stage had been decorated with a hundred various candles, and a soft blue spotlight lit the grand piano in the center.

This is it, I thought, After I finish singing her this love ballad I wrote, she’ll be a puddle on the floor.

So I sang to her.

When I finished, I looked at her with an incredible imitation of “the smolder” from Tangled, fully expecting tears to be pouring down her cheeks.

Instead…she looked back at me (completely dry-eyed), smiled and said, “That was beautiful, thank you.”

Are. You. Freaking. Kidding. Me?!

That was so romantic that I almost cried!

Why was she resisting my powerful gestures of love?

She wasn’t. I simply had a huge misunderstanding of the purpose of love.

The whole time I had been trying to use love as a weapon to garner a particular response. I was treating love like a stock; if I bought enough shares, at some point surely it would begin paying dividends. In a strange way, it was as if I was seeing her as an option in a vending machine…all I had to do was drop in the right amount of love coins, press a few buttons, and voilà! She’d be mine.

But that’s not how love works at all.

Actually, learning how to love will end up changing us far more than it ever changes anyone else.

Whenever you see a command for us to love mentioned in the Bible, it’s always associated with sacrifice.

When we love…we are changed.

Love chips away at our fear…

Love lays waste to our selfishness…

Love erases expectations and grudges…

Love requires us to give our lives away…

As C.S. Lewis so poignantly explains, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

The aptly named “Love Chapter” (1 Corinthians 13) is bluntly honest about what love should and shouldn’t be like.

The summary is this: love is generous. In authority, in service, in discipline, in difficulty, in hurt, in relationships.

Of course, the most incredible picture of this is shared in what must be the most famous verse in all of Scripture…John 3:16…

”For God loved the world so much that he gave…”

Before you even existed, He gave. Before you ever knew you needed Him, He gave.

In the same way, the story of our lives should be…

Because we love…we give.

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Who needs you to personify that today?

Saying “my smokin’ hot wife” is SO typical

Don’t be typical.

Well that sounds simple enough. Problem solved, right? Fantastic. See you guys tomorrow.

No.

Fighting off the demons of typical is one of the most challenging life-hurdles any of us will ever face.

Why?

Because our societies/churches/businesses/schools work very hard to teach us how to live normally. To not rock the boat. To be a good citizen.

What actually ends up happening is some twisted version of the film, Pleasantville, where everything looked great on the outside, but was complete turmoil underneath.

If I had a dime for every time I heard guys in ministry publicly announce they have a “smokin’ hot wife”, I’d be independently wealthy. (By the way…personal preference…can we PLEASE let that meme die? Anyone?)

If I had a penny for every couple that pretended everything was ok when it really wasn’t, I’d be even wealthier.

Pretending is part of being typical.

I spoke to a group of people yesterday about my work and organization, and when I was finished a man came up and told me: “I’ve never seen a 30 year old with as much drive as you have.”

At first I was tempted to give myself a Ron Burgundy-style leaping high-five, but then it hit me: I thought I was running behind…do people really wait until later to become driven?

Is it really a rule that we must wait until it feels like we’re running out of time to finally be who we were called to be? To finally fight for that job? Take that trip? Be a great spouse? Have kids? (I’ll be doing a whole post on kids sometime…)

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, there are a group of religious folk who look down on the character, Miss Maudie, for working so hard on her garden…to which she responds: “There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”

The cross of Christ isn’t freedom to be average. If we really believe in the bigness of our God, then we should all be practitioners of the impossible, not enablers of the typical.

By the way, I’m preaching to the choir…these words are as much for me as anyone else.

Have you wronged someone and need to make it right? Call them! Don’t leave it hanging over you or them any longer.

Bring your spouse and kids into the living room for a mandatory family meeting and have a dance party instead. Don’t have a family yet? Call up a bunch of friends!

When was the last time you organized a day of romance for your husband…wife…boyfriend…girlfriend?

When was the last time you did something out of your routine?

When was the last time you actually gave air-time to your dreams?

When was the last time you went downtown and hung out with some street-walkers and asked them about their lives?

Jesus came to give us LIFE! Real life…abundant life…not typical life or pretend life.

When you start to feel the weight of all that must be done, remember your strength is limited but your Creator’s is not.

Don’t be afraid…because that’s typical.

Did your spouse get the better end of the deal? (this is for single people too)

Married people: how would your spouse describe you?

Single people: how do you hope your spouse will describe you one day?

Honestly, that question will sober me up in a jiffy.

Mostly because the first thing that comes to mind are all demerit marks I’ve garnered on the chalkboard of our marriage over the last nine plus years.

And then I begin loading up the other side of the scales with all the ways I think I’m incredible. Internally I breathe a sigh of relief as I watch all of my flawless attributes tip the scales deeply in my favor.

(Of course, my own opinion of myself is completely unbiased and not defensive at all.)

What’s interesting to me is how quickly my mind floods with the bad decisions I’ve made and stupid things I’ve said (and oh man, I’ve got a gift for saying unfortunate things at the most inopportune times.)

Even more interesting is the high-tech internal defense system I’ve created to counter all the realities of my humanity and immaturity with all the ways I’m completely lovely before the former thoughts sink the opinion ship.

However, marriage isn’t sustained by moments of romantic bliss, dripping with the dew of Heaven. Nor is it eroded by moments where you really wish God designed the sacrament with unlimited mulligans.

Sustaining this holy bond is marinated in the decision day after day (before your head leaves the pillow) to give yourself wholly to the mysterious, beautiful journey God designed. Erosion begins with comparing who gives more than who.

I can’t ever imagine my wife complaining that I’m too giving, or selfless or committed.

Reality is, every night I share the covers with someone I know I don’t deserve, but she chooses to be with me anyway.

There will always be relational junk drawers to clean out and reorganize, and water under the bridge to mop up. But trust me, God has created plenty of room for both of you to grow, fall, and try again.

The trick is to make sure you afford your other half the grace you expect them to afford you.

Author Anne Lamott has this to say: “A good marriage is where both people feel like they’re getting the better end of the deal.”

So….

Did they?