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Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas

16 Jan

Sacred Marriage: What if God Designed Marriage to Make us Holy more that to Make us Happy? By Gary Thomas

Dear God, I am speaking to a home church this weekend and as I prayed to you and talked to you about what you would have me discuss, this book that I read nearly 20 years ago kept coming to mind. It is the best marriage book I’ve ever read, and its lessons have stuck with me through the years. However, as I’ve sat down a few times over the last few days to try to collect my thoughts and synthesize the message of this book into a lesson, I’ve struggled. There’s so much here. I could almost do a lesson on each chapter. Ultimately, I decided that the best thing to do was to sit down and just talk with you about what it was about this book that meant so much to me 20 years ago.

I think it starts with me being a very needy husband for the first 10-ish years of our marriage. I have two dogs right now, and one of them is very needy. She’s always looking for attention from anyone who will love her. She annoys the heck out of me. I think this is how I was when I got married. I came into marriage very insecure. I grew up witnessing a fairly tumultuous marriage, and I didn’t want to give my wife (and ultimately, my children after they were born) any excuse to not love me or like me. To add to that, I needed that love affirmed all of the time.

My best example is my wife’s first Mother’s Day after our son was born. I did everything for her that day. He was about 10 months old, and I took care of him all day. I made her breakfast in bed. I did everything around the house. I did it all! Later, she told me that all she could think about was how she could never live up to what I had done when Father’s Day came a month later. I wasn’t giving freely out of love for her, and she could tell. I was being needy and giving so that I could receive. That kind of love was very oppressive to her.

One of the first lessons I had to learn was to give her the freedom to feel about me any way that she wished. It was her right to like me or not. I order to do that, I had to find my peace in something else. Yeah, I guess peace is the best word. What is it that we are looking for when we are being needy? When our hearts are unsettled and in search of something? The answer: Peace. When I look for my peace in anything but you (money, sex, wife, fun, job, etc.) that object or activity becomes my idol. Thank you that I ultimately didn’t have to do with my marriage what you almost made Abraham do with his idol, Isaac.

So now that my wife had the freedom from me to like/love me at her own discretion, I needed a new paradigm for my marriage. Providentially, Thomas’s thoughts on marriage came to me just at the right time. If the book came out in 2000, then we probably went to the marriage conference he did in Waco in maybe 2000 or 2001. Just after I started doing the regular prayer journals to you in April 2000.

So what are some of the concepts in this book? Well, the subtitle alone is practically all you need: What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy? It starts by exposing the lie that undergirds the prosperity gospel message that I deserve to be happy. He’s careful to say that holiness and happiness are not mutually exclusive concepts, but if you pursue happiness through your marriage then you have the wrong frame of mind. “You wont find happiness at the end of a road named selfishness.” (Page 12) Here’s another quote: “Just as celibates use abstinence and religious hermits use isolation, so we can use marriage for the same purpose–to grow in our service, obedience, character, pursuit, and love of God.” (Page 12)

These two quotes, taken to their logical conclusions, give you these chapter titles:

  1. The Greatest Challenge in the World: A Call to Holiness more than Happiness

  2. Romanticism’s Ruse: How Marriage Points us to True Fulfillment

  3. Finding God in Marriage: Marital Analogies Teach Us Truths about God

  4. Learning to Love: How Marriage Teaches Us to Love

  5. Holy Honor: Marriage Teaches Us to Respect Others

  6. The Soul’s Embrace: Good Marriage Can Foster Good Prayer

  7. The Cleansing of Marriage: How Marriage Exposes our Sin

  8. Sacred History: Building the Spiritual Discipline of Perseverance

  9. Sacred Struggle: Embracing Difficulty in Order to Build Character

  10. Falling Forward: Marriage Teaches Us to Forgive

  11. Make Me a Servant: Marriage Can Build in Us a Servant’s Heart

  12. Sexual Saints: Marital Sexuality Can Provide Spiritual Insights and Character Development

  13. Sacred Presence: How Marriage Can Make us more Aware of God’s Presence

  14. Sacred Mission: Marriage Can Develop our Spiritual Calling, Mission, and Purpose

  15. Epilogue: The Holy Couple

It’s ween a while since I read some of these chapters. Nearly 20 years. But each chapter title alone is enough to spark my thoughts. When I was in high school, I asked my dad one time what benefit any parent gets from parenting. Why would someone want to do it. His answer was interesting. Paraphrasing, “The adults I know with no children tend to be some of the most selfish, self-centered people I know because they never had to learn to put someone else’s needs above their own.” Thinking about that concept, I think marriage is supposed to be a building block towards selfLESSness too.

I’ve known my wife for over 30 years, and we are coming up on 28 years of marriage. It’s unbelievable when I look back on how you have used her and our relationship to shape me. You did the same with our children. And you’ve done the same with jobs, friends, church experiences, extended family, etc. But my ability to grow beyond serving my wife out of need and into serving her in love transformed me into being less needy in the other areas of my life too. I am a less needy employee. I am a less needy father. Now I’m not perfect, and there are still times when self-pity comes crashing in on me and I feel the pain of rejection. But I don’t think I would even be able to recognize those failures in myself if I didn’t start by turning loose of my neediness in marriage.

Thankfully, Thomas’ theory worked in my case. His theory is that if both spouses are committed to this selfLESS pursuit of God through marriage then each will find that you are meeting a lot of their needs through the other. Since my wife has embraced this same attitude in our marriage then a terrific balance is created. I honestly don’t know what it would be like to live in a marriage where only one spouse lived this way and the other didn’t. I suppose I could ask my wife because I think she was closer to it those first few years of marriage than I was. But, ultimately, the spouse that pursues you and holiness through their marriage will even be able to be at peace in an unbalanced marriage. To be clear, there are unhealthy situations such as physical or emotional abuse that should not be tolerated, but a simple shift of focus off of myself and onto serving my wife through my pursuit of you in an incredibly liberating thing.

One last thing–the idea of the pursuit of happiness (and I’m still learning to truly live what I’m about to say). I reject the idea that my life and your purpose for my life must be about my happiness. There are some happinesses in life that are denied to me. That’s okay. There were generations of Israelites that were born into slavery, lived in slavery and died in slavery. One result of that is that you built a nation through those years in Egypt. The widow Jesus saw put two coins in the offering went home and likely died as poor as she was when she woke up that morning, but she likely never knew that I would know about her and use her as an example 2,000 years later. Some people do everything right with their children and it still goes wrong. Some people are excellent employees/workers and still go broke. And some are in one-way marriages. The idea that any of these people are not living their best lives because they are experiencing pain is foolish. I don’t know why some of this stuff happens, but mine is not to know why. Mine is to love and worship you, and to do my best with those people and responsibilities you have given to me. The results of all of that are not mine, they are yours. Of course, now that I’ve said those thoughtful, deep things, Father, I pray that you help men to truly live it.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen

 
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Posted by on January 16, 2020 in Miscellaneous, Musings and Stories

 

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Solomon — 1 Kings 11:1-13

18 Aug

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides Pharaoh’s daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites. The Lord had clearly instructed the people of Israel, “You must not marry them, because they will turn your hearts to their gods.” Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway. He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines. And in fact, they did turn his heart away from the Lord. In Solomon’s old age, they turned his heart to worship other gods instead of being completely faithful to the Lord his God, as his father, David, had been. Solomon worshiped Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech, the detestable god of the Ammonites. In this way, Solomon did what was evil in the Lord’s sight; he refused to follow the Lord completely, as his father, David, had done. On the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, he even built a pagan shrine for Chemosh, the detestable god of Moab, and another for Molech, the detestable god of the Ammonites. Solomon built such shrines for all his foreign wives to use for burning incense and sacrificing to their gods. The Lord was very angry with Solomon, for his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. He had warned Solomon specifically about worshiping other gods, but Solomon did not listen to the Lord’s command. So now the Lord said to him, “Since you have not kept my covenant and have disobeyed my decrees, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your servants. But for the sake of your father, David, I will not do this while you are still alive. I will take the kingdom away from your son. And even so, I will not take away the entire kingdom; I will let him be king of one tribe, for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, my chosen city.”
1 Kings 11:1-13

Dear God, where do I compromise for the love and approval of others?

As the director of a nonprofit in a small town, I try to keep myself politically neutral. I work in a sector where people from all different types of political ideology can appreciate our work to serve the community. The trick becomes that I sometimes allow my desire for neutrality to keep me from supporting or not supporting some cause or political position.

I was actually talking to you about this topic this morning when I was walking the dogs, but more in the way of evangelism and being a witness for you. I was wondering how much more I should be doing to represent you and the 1.) mercy and love you have for us, 2.) the mercy and love you want us to show others, and 3.) the work we need to do to worship and commune with you that will help us to better understand numbers 1 and 2.

Then I got home and opened Facebook. I saw a post from a recently divorced acquaintance from high school who posted a meme about what women want in a man:

Every woman deserves a man who calls her baby, kisses her like he means it, holds her like he never wants to let her go, doesn’t cheat or lie. Wipes her tears when she cries, doesn’t make her jealous of other women, instead makes other women jealous of her. He’s not scared to let his friends know how much he really cares about her, and he tells her he loves her every day.

This harkened back to the sermon by Andy Stanley I was listening to on that walk that happened to talk about relationships. My favorite line in the sermon was (paraphrasing), “We all lie in bed thinking about what we are looking for in Mr. Right or Mrs. Right, but none of us lie in bed and think about how we ourselves can become Mr. Right or Mrs. Right for someone else to find.”

Anyway, I saw this post on Facebook and decided that this might just be a divine appointment, so I commented, “Awkward to post a sermon here, but I listen to this guy out of Atlanta every week, and literally 5 minutes ago I finished listening to this. It’s on the very subject.” And then I posted a link to the podcast. This might not have been the bravest thing I’ve ever done, and maybe no one will listen to it, but it was at least an attempt at sharing your love with a group of people who likely don’t understand it very intimately.

Father, make me the man you need me to be in every way. Both for my wife and children, and for your world. Make it the same man. Let there be no duplicity in me, but just a life that worships you for the grace/mercy you give me and then turns around and gives that same grace/mercy to others. Do it all of your kingdom and your glory.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen

 
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Posted by on August 18, 2019 in 1 Kings, Solomon

 

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What makes something precious?

08 Mar

“It was a different kind of impoverishment for men who had found fellowship in commiseration. Their ‘living thing’ with all its quirks, foibles and peculiarities had become a predictable commodity.”
Fred Smith — “A Living Thing“

 

Dear God, I read Fred Smith’s weekly blog this week, and, as is not unusual, I found something in it that I want to chew on with you for a while. It revolves around this quote I pulled from it and pasted above.

It’s interesting to try and ascribe a rationale for what makes something precious to me. Why do I like what I like, love what I love, and do what I do?

I’ve often wondered what it is about the knowledge that there are two individuals out there who are my children, and that knowledge makes them mean something different to me than anyone else in the world. When they were little and performing on stage, my eye almost never left them. Not because they were that different than the other children (although, of course I thought they were the most talented) but because they were mine. I loved them and I wanted them to see what they had to show the world. I think when it comes down to it, there is something in my brain that triggers and says this person is special to me. They are my child. They are my responsibility. I’m sure you buried that down somewhere deep in me–in all of us. And like the Jaguar owners in Fred’s piece, we get to sit around the Sunday school classes, or workplaces, or dinners with friends and commiserate on how hard parenting is.

There are other things that are precious to me. My wife tops the list. In fact, she is in a special place that even my children don’t quite sit in. I chose her (as she chose me). While my children will always be my children, even if we are out of relationship, my wife and I continue to be married by choice. I’ve had the opportunity to watch her perform on stage as well, and I can say that my eye followed her the whole time too, even though she was pretty much used as a prop on the stage. But what makes her precious? I met her when she was 18 and I was 19. We fell in love (only you know why we had a special chemistry that caused that to happen), but we’ve both changed a lot since then. Staying in love and staying together means rooting for the other, even at our own expense. It means giving the other space to struggle and grow. It means dedication.

I don’t know. I don’t know that I’m really coming up with an answer to my question, “What makes something precious?” When I list the things that are precious to me, my first thoughts go to my wife and children, but then they go to my job and the work you’ve given me to do. They go really to my own life and trying to make sure that, as small and insignificant as it might be in the grand scheme of things, it is used to maximize your will being done and your kingdom coming to earth as it is in heaven. And in the spirit of Fred’s piece about his dad and the Jaguar, I have to admit that the little car I bought a year and a half ago is my most precious material possession. I love that little thing. Not because I get to enjoy it with others. In fact, I enjoy it the most when I am by myself, top down, music loud, and the RPMs between 4,000 and 6,000. But I love that car.

Father, I have a lot of work to do today. Help me to identify what is important to do next. Sometimes it will be the thing that is precious. Sometimes it will be the thing that it hard and not enjoyable. And help me to not put any of those precious things before my love and devotion to you.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen

 

 
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Posted by on March 8, 2019 in Miscellaneous, Musings and Stories

 

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The Wife of Your Youth — Proverbs 5:15-23

16 Feb

IMG_1662
Image: “The White Shirt (Man and Wife)” by Edward Knippers from Revealed: A Biblestory Book for Grown-Ups by Ned Bustard

Proverbs 5:15-23 [NLT]
15 Drink water from your own well—
share your love only with your wife.
16 Why spill the water of your springs in the streets,
having sex with just anyone?
17 You should reserve it for yourselves.
Never share it with strangers.
18 Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you.
Rejoice in the wife of your youth.
19 She is a loving deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts satisfy you always.
May you always be captivated by her love.
20 Why be captivated, my son, by an immoral woman,
or fondle the breasts of a promiscuous woman?
21 For the Lord sees clearly what a man does,
examining every path he takes.
22 An evil man is held captive by his own sins;
they are ropes that catch and hold him.
23 He will die for lack of self-control;
he will be lost because of his great foolishness.

 

Dear God, can it be ironic to me that Solomon wrote this (I assume Solomon wrote it)? With his hundreds of wives and concubines, did he know what he was missing and wished it wasn’t too late for him? Did he wish for something simpler and more pure?

It feels like I could go in a lot of different directions with this passage and image this morning. There’s promiscuity before marriage. Of course, the obvious is adultery. But then there is prostitution and sex trafficking (including minors) and also pornography (the gateway drug for it all–not that all of this didn’t happen before pornography existed).

Verses 22 and 23 are a great crux of this whole passage for me: “An evil man is held captive by his own sins; they are ropes that catch and hold him. He will die for lack of self-control; he will be lost because of his great foolishness.”

Before I get too judgmental towards others, let me first, once again, apologize to you for the ways in which I have failed you sexually. You know that, since I was a teen, there have been times when I’ve failed in this area when it comes to pornography. Nearly 30 years ago, in one of my first deep conversations with my wife (then girlfriend), I told her that I had struggled with that. Satan’s power is in the secret and I didn’t want it to be a secret. I didn’t want to pretend to be some puritan that I’m not. Even now, the image that accompanies this passage that I put above could be considered pornographic in a way. But when reading the context it becomes not dirty and what sex is supposed to be.

I heard one time that almost no one hears about sex for the first time in a healthy way. Maybe not everyone, but almost everyone’s first exposure to sex is unbiblical. It might be bad information from another kid on the playground or from an older sibling. It might be porn. It might be a TV show that depicts a negative sex act or reference to sex.

When our children were small, I would screen movies for them not based on language or even violence, but I found myself being very sensitive to how it depicted sex. As a friend of mine once said, “We only get our innocence once.” I wanted them to keep their innocence as long as possible. My wife and I even went to the Christian bookstore when our oldest was about five years old and looked for a book that would be age-appropriate for us to talk about with our son. I don’t know if we did the right thing or not, but we were doing our best to make his FIRST exposure to sex to be what you intend sex to be.

So now, on to what I think the artist is trying to communicate to me in this picture.

  • First, he has “man and wife” in the title, so we are given a frame of reference. This is what you intended.
  • It looks like there is an air conditioning unit at the top of the wall. If that’s what it is, then it’s a fairly modern portrayal.
  • There are two people, with the woman on the bed and the man standing. What I notice about the woman is that she appears to be on her elbows. She isn’t just lying there waiting for it to happen. She seems to be anticipating it.
  • The husband is standing and taking off his shirt (apparently last). They aren’t in the throws of passion, lying in bed and ripping each other’s clothes off. This is a marriage. This is something they’ve done before. This is an experience for both of them.

In the little blurb on the bottom left side of the picture, Bustard quotes from Tim Keller’s piece, The Gospel and Sex.

The Bible is full of covenant renewal ceremonies….The ultimate covenant renewal ceremony is the Lord’s Supper. The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper renews the covenant made at baptism; through the breaking of bread and the pouring out of wine it reenacts the selfless sacrifice of Jesus to us….In the same way, marriage is a covenant, one that creates a place of security for vulnerability. But though covenant is necessary for sex, sex is also necessary for covenant. The covenant will grow stale unless we continually revisit and reenact it. Sex is a covenant renewal ceremony for marriage, the physical reenactment of the inseparable oneness in all other areas–economic, legal, personal, psychological–created by the marriage covenant. Sex renews and revitalizes the marriage covenant.

Father, help me to be pure today. Help me to be pure in my thoughts and in my words. Help me to be pure in what I do, and help me to fail to do nothing that you have called me to. Help me to hear your voice and clearly see your path ahead for me. Help me to love my wife the way to which you called me, and help us to live our lives as a couple in the way you need us to. Do it all for your glory and so that your kingdom will come and your will will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen

 
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Posted by on February 16, 2019 in Proverbs, Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-Ups

 

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The Lord Feeds His People — Exodus 16:13-17, 31-35

10 Feb


This picture is from the book Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-ups by Ned Bustard. The piece of art is done by Steve Prince.

Exodus 16:13-17,31-35 NIV
[13] That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. [14] When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. [15] When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat. [16] This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’ ” [17] The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. [31] The people of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey. [32] Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come, so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the wilderness when I brought you out of Egypt.’ ” [33] So Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar and put an omer of manna in it. Then place it before the Lord to be kept for the generations to come.” [34] As the Lord commanded Moses, Aaron put the manna with the tablets of the covenant law, so that it might be preserved. [35] The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land that was settled; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan.

Dear God, I’ve heard and read this story since I was a kid, but I’ve always just heard it through my own ears. The great thing about an artist’s interpretation is that I get to see that same story through someone else’s eyes. So as I look at this picture, it is interesting to see what the artist has chosen to show me.

Before I get into the image, here is what is written in the caption to the bottom left of the image.

Manna was a mysterious thing provided completely by God for the good of his people. The Israelites were not to hoard it, for it would come to them new each day. This print is from a series that looks at the Old Testament through the lens of a love story. Or as the artist writes, “true love is like an Old Testament made New each day.” Here a couple shares some Myrr tea, while locked together in their marriage vows. The premise of this piece is: If God supplied for the Israelites as they wandered about for forty years, then what will God do for a couple that commits to one another, bound through the convenient of marriage?” God proved faithful to the Israelites in their wilderness, providing for their needs and therefore He will supply this couple’s needs as they wander through relational deserts as well as through lands flowing with milk and honey.

See what I mean? I had never thought about tying the Israelites wandering in the wilderness to the journey of marriage.

Given that as our cypher to decrypt the artist’s message, let’s see what I can see he did for us:

  • The people look African or maybe even Aboriginal from Australia. If African, I suppose this makes sense since the Israelites had just come from Egypt, which was in Africa.
  • The woman’s leg and feet seem to dominate the picture. Both of their legs are drawn to kind of reveal the bone underneath, suggesting to me that they are thin and malnourished.
  • Of the four feet in the picture, only one has a sandal. The other three are bare.
  • They look tired.
  • There are three signs of tenderness being expressed from the man to the woman. 1.) His right foot is resting gently on her left foot. 2.) He is looking at her while she looks off. And 3.) his left hand is touching her face. I wonder how hard it was for the men at the time to feel like they weren’t capable of providing for their families. Was it humiliating to have to collect manna every day? Was it frustrating to see their wife’s fear and be limited in their ability to assuage it? I suppose there are certainly times in my marriage when I feel unable to give my wife what she needs.
  • She has on a dress and he is wearing a shirt with a collar and pants. These are not Israelites.
  • What I’m really curious about this that keyhole on the wall over her left shoulder. What is that about?

Interestingly, today is World Marriage Day for the Catholic Church. As part of that celebration and emphasis this morning, my wife and I were invited to get up and talk about a couples group we joined through our church over five years ago. Part of my sharing was that that group came along at a time when my wife and I were walking through the darkest, most confusing valley of our 26 years of marriage (back then it was 21 years). We couldn’t tell up from down at that point, and it was good for us to get into intentional community with six other couples, all of whom were at different stages in their lives. Some were younger than us and just starting to have children, some were our age or close to our age, and some were older and experiencing multiple grandchildren.

Father, as I look at this image and I think about my marriage and the manna you have provided to my wife and me over the years, my prayer is that I will know how to show her the tenderness that you need her to have from me, but also that you will meet those needs of hers that I simply cannot meet. It was almost 20 years ago that I finally started to come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t (and shouldn’t) be everything she needs. If I was, and if she was that for me, why would we need you? No, you have put me here to nurture and love her with your love and affection. But I am also here to support the path she is walking in pursuing you. That’s one of the reasons I attend Catholic Church with her even though I am not Catholic. So guide me today. Give us this day our daily bread.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen

 
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Posted by on February 10, 2019 in Exodus, Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-Ups

 

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“Beautiful Trauma” – Pink

03 Mar

“Beautiful Trauma” by Pink (Alecia Beth Moore)

I have no idea if people read this daily blog of my prayers to God, but if you’re out there then what I’m about to say will probably make you lose a lot of respect for me. I’m a fan of the singer Pink. Since I’m a middle class white guy in his late-40s, I figure she would probably be disappointed to hear that I’m the kind of person who really likes her music. If she saw me sitting out in the audience at one of her concerts, she’d probably curse to herself and walk of the stage thinking her career is over. But on the other hand, she might also be surprised to know that I am a devout Christian who spends time in scripture every day, prays regularly, very happy in my marriage, and works in a Christian faith-based nonprofit. I guess I’m an enigma.

So I woke up this morning with the song “Beautiful Trauma” going in my head. I really like this song although the lyrics make me sad. The song is an interesting combination of happy music with troubling lyrics. The lyrics are about a dysfunctional, unhealthy relationship. I’m not going to post the whole song here because they include profanity, and I don’t want to offend anyone in this environment. I’ll let you Google them for yourself. But here’s a phrase that’s interesting:

You punched a hole in the wall and I framed it, I wish I could feel things like you. Everyone’s chasing that holy feeling, And if we don’t stay lit, we’ll blow out, blow out…

When I think about Pink’s music, a lot of it leaves me with the same impression. Alecia Beth Moore (her real name) is writing and selecting songs that express her internal feelings and Pink gets to perform them. I’m concerned for Alecia and a fan of Pink’s. But even in my concern, she’s someone I like because she’s willing to be honest and open about her struggles. I admire vulnerability.

As a Christian who has tried to discipline himself into discipleship for the last 31 years, I have learned a lot of lessons through my mistakes and God’s redemption. And while I don’t have life or faith figured out by a long shot, I am in a position to be able to tell when someone is grasping for the wrong things that they think will bring happiness. In the case of too many of our marriages, we look to the spouse to bring us that joy we are looking for instead of trying to tap into the overall macro-level life that God has for us.

Have you ever looked at that couple that hardly speaks to each other anymore and wondered when things changed? You know that there was a time when they couldn’t get enough of each other. They kissed uncontrollably. They talked on the phone a lot before they lived in the same home. They held hands. They had room for the other’s faults. But now the initial emotion is gone and they are disillusioned. I’m not going to play marriage counselor here because I have no expertise in this area. And I’m not going to say that if they were Christians then their marriage would be better because that’s not necessarily true either. There are plenty of discipling Christians with marital problems. I’m just saying that there is an empitness in Pink’s music that I can see in a lot of lives around me. From family members, to friends, to coworkers, to our clients at work, there is a lot of pain out there, and I think music like this helps me to tap into it and understand it a little instead of isolating myself in a protected bubble–and did I mention that I think the music itself is great?

Father, help me to be in the world but not of the world. Help me to find the balance between exposing myself to the lives and perspectives that others have and feeding my soul with things that are of you. Help me to carry your salt into a world that is looking for taste.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen

 
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Posted by on March 3, 2018 in Hymns and Songs, Uncategorized

 

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Emails to God – Supporting My Wife Going Catholic, Part 6

05 Dec

This is the final installment in my pieces accompanying my wife’s writings about her joining the Catholic church. Here is a link to her blog so you can see what she wrote and to what I am responding.

As we wrapped up the Right of Catholic Initiation for Adults (RCIA) classes, I was kind of surprised that Megan decided to be confirmed. As she said at the end of her post about this, there were some aspects of the theology with which she still struggled. I explained in the last post why I didn’t go through confirmation, but she decided to move forward.

Frankly, it was awkward for me to know how to respond to this. When we met twenty-three years ago and married three years later, I just never imagined that we wouldn’t be members of the same church, or worship at the same church. To my surprise, the idea of worshipping separately didn’t bother her, but it really bothered me. At the same time, I could tell (as you can see in how she writes about this in her blog) that this really was important to her and God was meeting a need in her that needed to be filled. So I purposed in my heart that I would follow her as closely as I could.

The kids and I went to her confirmation, and I invited her father too. He is a wonderful man who loves her, and was glad to come. It was a lovely service that seemed to go faster than the 2+ hours that it lasted. As she said today, the kids were supportive, and the service and her experience seemed to touch our son in particular.

Now, we are in mass together nearly every Sunday. I find that I miss communion every once in a while, but other than that I enjoy worshipping there. As we both said in earlier posts, the priest is a wonderful man, and I have found the people I know there to be genuine lovers of God. For what else can I ask? I will confess, however, that if she is out of town on a Sunday morning, I have been known to visit a nice Baptist church down the street by myself. It’s comforting for me to feel that familiarity.

I hope that reading about this process has blessed at least one person out there. Of course, our journey continues and I really don’t know how it will unfold. I guess that is part of the joy in the journey.

 
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Posted by on December 5, 2012 in Supporting My Wife Going Catholic

 

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Emails to God – Supporting My Wife Going Catholic, Part 5

28 Nov

For those of you keeping up with this series that I’m doing to correspond with my wife’s blog, there is no Part 4 on my part because I didn’t really have anything to add to that part of her story. For those of you who don’t know what this is about, my wife joined the Catholic church this last Easter, and she is doing a 6-part series on how this came to be. I am doing companion pieces to her posts to give a view of what was happening with me and the family from my perspective as we all went through this process.

When last we left off, Megan had started visiting our local Catholic church, we were doing family worship times with our teenage children, but that was starting to fizzle out, and after I told a friend that I was feeling a little disconnected from Megan spiritually, he told me that I needed to “suck it up and go to church with my wife” as opposed to going to a nondenominational church that met in the bowling alley.

I started visiting St. Mary’s in late March. Frankly, I have never enjoyed Sunday morning worship so it didn’t matter that much to me. Also, as I’ve said before, I don’t have the problems that some Protestants have with Catholicism. I grew up in an ecumenical home, and after visiting a couple of times I found that I actually enjoyed the services more than I expected. My biggest hesitation was the more liturgical format, but, to my surprise, I didn’t mind it at all. In fact, after a few weeks, I got into the rhythm and kind of enjoyed it.

There is a local CPA in town who does the annual audit for the nonprofit where I work. He also happens to be a deacon at St. Mary’s. He had seen me at mass a few times and we talked about it in his office one day. He encouraged Megan and me to go through the RCIA (Right of Catholic Initiation for Adults) process to see if joining the church might be appropriate for us. I talked to Megan about it, and she had already thought about it, so we agreed to check it out.

On this point, I’ll disagree with Megan’s post a little. She said I had no intention of joining the Catholic church as I entered the RCIA process with her. That’s not true. I went into the process as open-minded as I could and willing to go through Catholic confirmation if I felt like that was what God wanted for me.

The classes were interesting. I knew that there would be parts with which I disagreed (as I do with any denomination), but I also didn’t think that was a big deal. I told Megan at the beginning that I was going to do my best to keep my mouth shut and not show any public disagreement because I didn’t want to be the person in the room that thought he was smarter than everyone else. For the most part I was able to do this. There was one night where the leader forced my hand a little, but for the rest of the time I was able to be a silent support in the class and not take away from anyone else’s experience as they sought out God and His call for them. I can say that I perceived that everyone involved in the leadership was very Godly and earnest in their love for Him. That’s all that mattered to me.

In the end, as I explained to one of the leaders about why I didn’t go through the final confirmation, I found that I agreed with 85% of the theology; 10% I didn’t agree with, but it didn’t matter; and then there was 5% that I didn’t agree with that was the deal-breaker. The interesting thing, however, was that it was NOT a deal-breaker for me, but a deal-breaker for them. If I couldn’t believe in this one particular part of the theology then they would not want me to join. I was okay with that, but my response seemed to vex the RCIA leader a little. I still don’t think he quite understands why I continue to attend mass every Sunday with Megan. The plain answer is that I think it is important that we worship together, and this is where she feels called to be.

There is one other reason I didn’t join the Catholic church. This became clear to me one night when the leader told me that one difference between Protestant churches and the Catholic church is that when you join a Protestant church you are joining that local congregation that may or may not be part of a particular denomination. When you join the Catholic church, however, you are joining the world-wide Catholic church and not just St. Mary’s Parish. Taken a step further, when you join the Catholic church, it is a life-long commitment to be Catholic. Frankly, I’m not willing to say that I am going to be a part of any particular denomination for the rest of my life, be it Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, or Catholic. I have found that my journey in corporate worship has taken me to different churches and different styles throughout my life, and that is simply a commitment that I cannot make.

One last thing. I don’t know if she’ll tell this part of the story, but I want to mention it briefly because it plays into the part of her post about rejection for this decision from different corners of her world. About a month before her Easter confirmation she received a letter from a “friend” of her mother’s. I came home from work and noticed she was upset. We were about to leave the house together, and when I asked her what was wrong she told me that she would tell me in the car. When we got in the car she read me the letter. It was someone who claimed that she knew Megan’s mother’s heart about this matter and that her mother, who had died two years before, would not be happy about this. The person wrote awful things about Catholicism and then didn’t have the courage to sign the letter completely, only giving her first name. I had to pull the car over while she read, I was so offended by what I heard. I knew Megan needed to understand that this letter was from hell, so I took the letter from her, crumpled it up, and drove to the nearest gas station where I threw it away to get it out of our lives as quickly as I could. I then told her that her father would scoff at the idea that this woman know’s Megan’s mother’s heart on this issue, and that it was full of lies. I think my response helped. Frankly, I consider it to be the most supportive thing I did for Megan through this entire process.

So to sum up, it is now spring of 2012, Megan and I are wrapping up going through the RCIA process. I am a little surprised that Megan is going to be confirmed, but supportive. Easter is coming, and she is wondering how her family and friends will respond.

 
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Posted by on November 28, 2012 in Supporting My Wife Going Catholic

 

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Emails to God – Supporting My Wife Going Catholic, Part 3

14 Nov

This is the third part in a series I am doing as a companion piece to my wife’s blog. She is explaining in a six-part series how she came to join the Catholic church this last Easter, so I thought I would flesh out some of the details as I experienced what she experienced. You can read her blog at www.meganwillome.com.

In today’s post, my wife introduces our local priest, Msgr. Enda McKenna. Let me give you a description of Enda. If every priest were like Enda then everyone would want to be Catholic. If every Christian pastor were like Enda then everyone would want to be a Christian. You get the idea. He is a sweet, gentle soul. I often describe him as a doll of a man. Just precious. He’s in his early seventies. He has soft white hair and an Irish twinkle in his eye. He grew up in Northern Ireland, and has that slightly whimsical Irish stereotype about him. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, and I adore him. Here is a picture:

Msgr. Enda McKenna
St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Fredericksburg, Texas

Through my work, I am privileged to be a member of our local ministerial association, even though I joke that I am the amateur Christian among the professionals. That is where I first met Enda. He is the first Catholic priest since I have lived here to actively participate in our ecumenical Christian ministerial association (okay, there has only been one other priest since I lived here, but I was really impressed when he started to show up and participate). Without exception, all of the pastors in the association love Enda. One retired Baptist pastor has particular affection for him. Enda was one of the first pastors to reach out to him when he lost a son to a car accident.

So that’s a description of Enda. Now, back to our story. When last we left off, my wife had started visiting St. Mary’s during the Christmas season, and I was visiting a church that meets in a bowling alley. Our two children, daughter who was 11 and son who was 14 weren’t visiting with us because we felt like were were in such flux, so we were doing family worship services together on Sundays. I also started having a Friday morning breakfast with one of the men from the bowling alley church so that we could share our lives and develop our relationships with God.

Around March of 2011, about three months after my wife and I were attending different churches, I mentioned to my friend, Tom, that I was feeling really disconnected spiritually from her. He looked at me and his advice was profound. I think I have this quote right: “You need to suck it up and go to church with your wife.” Hmm. That wasn’t the advice I was looking for. I had hoped he would encourage me to work through this with her in a way that we would both find a church together. But God obviously had her on a bit of a spiritual quest, trying to make some sense of her own relationship with Him given the loss of her mother and how her own view of her Christianity might have been wrapped up with her mother’s. As I said in my last post, it wasn’t that I resisted going to St. Mary’s because it was Catholic. I resisted because it was liturgical. Having grown up Baptist, visiting Lutheran churches was about as liturgical as I had gone. Worshipping Sunday after Sunday in the Catholic style…scared isn’t the right word. Let’s just say, it didn’t enthuse me.

I started attending St. Mary’s with her in early March 2011, and I talked to Enda at one of the ministerial association meetings about us visiting St. Mary’s. He had seen me there with her and wondered. I told him that Megan would probably enjoy a chance to visit with him about what she was experiencing, so I think he made it a point to visit with her that Sunday morning that she describes in today’s post. That is not to say that Enda wouldn’t have sought her out anyway. He is a generous soul and as accessible a Catholic priest as I have ever known, willing to change his schedule at the drop of a hat for anyone. But I think he was particularly aware of my wife’s quest as a result of our conversation at the ministerial association.

That’s where Megan ends her narrative, so that’s where I’ll sign off too. We’ll see you next Wednesday with Part 4.

 
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Posted by on November 14, 2012 in Miscellaneous, Musings and Stories, Supporting My Wife Going Catholic

 

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Emails to God – Supporting my Wife Going Catholic, Part 2

07 Nov

I am continuing my process of writing companion pieces to my wife’s blog posts about how she ended up joining the Catholic church (click here for her blog). I’m doing my best to line up my posts with her timeline, trying to give my perspective on a fairly monumental shift in our lives.

My previous post about this last Wednesday ended with me saying that our family was in a bit of a church crisis at the end of 2009. My wife, daughter, and I were attending one church while our then 13-year-old son was attending another that he liked better. What I didn’t say was that my wife’s mother was gravely ill. My wife hasn’t written much about this in her “Going Catholic” series, so I want to be careful to not violate her privacy in this area. What I will do is give you a description of my mother-in-law.

In short, the people who knew here saw her as a spiritual giant, a prayer warrior, and thoroughly Godly woman, and she was all of these things. When she passed in March 2010 I would conservatively estimate that there were over 700 people at her funeral. I think I’m safe to say that, without exception, the people there admired her greatly.

She had gone through her own spiritual journey. I’m a little fuzzy on some of the details, but growing up Episcopalian, I believe she would describe herself as having discovered God in a new way in college. It was when she joined Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) in the late 70’s that her discipling relationship with Jesus took off. She eventually became the teaching leader for her group, and started to have tremendous influence on countless women that would continue until her death, and probably beyond. She eventually left the Episcopal church, and by the time I met her she and my wife’s family attended a Bible church. My wife grew up Episcopalian as well, and the change to the Bible church came in late middle school. By the end of her life, however, my mother-in-law and father-in-law had returned to the Episcopal church.

Again, I don’t want to tell too much of my wife’s story and violate her privacy, but instead explain what I experienced during this process. After my mother-in-law’s death in march 2010 my wife found herself being uncomfortable in the church we attended. It wasn’t the church specifically. She felt like it was something within her. We tried different churches, but she never felt comfortable. For my part, being very frank, I have never enjoyed going to church so I was probably not the best-equipped person to lead us through this transition. There were some Sundays that, with no specific place to go, I would just choose to sleep in. This was difficult for the kids because, being middle schoolers and high schoolers by now, they were just like me at that age and didn’t want to go to church–especially a different one every week or two. It wasn’t exactly fair to them make them try a new place each Sunday, so we stopped making them go with us when we would visit a place.

By the end of 2010, we were trying a “family worship service” on Sundays with our son leading music on his guitar and having a short devotion/lesson. That part was going surprisingly well at the time. I had found a church that I liked that met in a bowling alley (obviously, it was an informal group), but Megan was still looking for something different. Then one Sunday (I think it was one where I had slept in), she came home and told me that she visited St. Mary’s Catholic Church that morning and really loved it. It was the first time I had heard her describe a church that way–really ever. I had never heard that kind of enthusiasm from her about any church in the 20 years I had known her. It kind of scared me because I was thinking that there wasn’t a way I could follow that path–not because it was Catholic in theology but because it was liturgical and formal in its structure. My response would have been the same if she had said Episcopalian. It made me nervous and resistant.

That is where our story ends today because that is where her blog ended. In summary, at the end of 2010, my wife’s family was dealing with the loss of her mother, I was visiting a nondenominational church that met in a bowling alley, my wife had visited St. Mary’s for the first time, and we were doing family worship with our children on Sundays. It was also during this time that I started to have a once-a-week Friday morning meeting with a man I met at the bowling alley church. This new friendship proved to be pivotal in how I would support my wife on her journey.

 
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Posted by on November 7, 2012 in Miscellaneous, Musings and Stories, Supporting My Wife Going Catholic

 

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