The Unlovely Valentines

I actually didn't expect hearts and candy to define my marriage.
I am a realist.
At least, that's what I think of myself as.
(You sunshine and unicorns people would call me a pessimist.)
Best case scenarios don't often occur to me.

Anyway -- it's Valentines Day.
I see all the posts from friends celebrating a renewal of their love,
a remembrance of the beginning of their romance.
I love that.

One friend mentioned in her love story
that they have lost as many babies as they have living children.
That's four.
I love these people dearly.
She said something about not having chosen the things they've walked through.
And it rings so true.

I found myself thinking through the unlovely valentines.
The markers of love that you've walked through together.
The hurts.
The waiting.
The pressure.
The labors.
Each one another bond, a shared grief.
The lost jobs, lost relationships, lost children.
The death of parents, of friends, of dreams.
The infertility.
The miscarriages.
The months without income.
The depressions.
The failures.
The frustrations.
The sleepless nights with sick children.
The frozen pipes.
The wound packing.
The wheelchair pushing.
The broken down cars.
The financial hardships.
The baffling parenting dilemmas.
The hormonal swings of pregnancy.
The things you don't take pictures of to share on Instagram.
The choking on tears together.
The desperate prayers.

Those parts of the vows we made --
the for poorer, for worse, and in sickness parts --
they have value.

The forgivenesses, and bandaging,
and helping each other dress because we are too injured to dress ourselves.
I would not trade them for other people's cruises.
Flowers are romantic,
but this morning my husband said that of course he had time
to rub juniper oil into my stiff neck and shoulder before he left:
a smelly, messy valentine.

Make Her Beautiful

We listen to a song often that was done by Hillary and Kate.

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new

It's such a lovely song, with such a simple truth.
And I think of the scripture that tells husbands
to love their wives as Christ loved the church:
how He gave Himself for her,
sanctifies her, 
and washes her with the water of the Word.
The church does not come perfect to the Savior's arms.

Sometimes I read Christian marriage advice and it's so cardboard.
I get especially annoyed by the advice to wives
that tells them how to be perfect.
To get perfect hair and exercise more and wear lipstick.

I'm a tomboy at heart, and not a trophy.
And I have never wanted to be a glossy beauty.
I wanted to be loved.
I wanted to be wanted.
But not wanted because I looked like someone else's idol.

When I met my husband, I was going out of my way to not be glossy.
Imagine this beauty, (which was a regular ensemble):
overall shorts and a t-shirt,
a braid pulled through a baseball cap pulled down low,
and thick socks with work boots.
I had some assets I could play up,
but I wasn't exactly in the frame of mind to catch anyone.
In fact, I was tired of being noticed physically.
It felt more like an insult than a compliment to be thought pretty. 

The first time I met him, I wasn't quite so off-putting in my dress
as described above.
I was wearing a hippy skirt with the work boots.
I guess in a small way, the skirt said 'feminine'.
We were praying in a group for a mutual friend
who was suffering from LSD flashbacks.
He openly stared at me through the prayer.
He didn't look away when I looked at him.

One day, a couple of weeks later,
I got off duty in the kitchen
when everyone else had eaten their dinner already,
and he sat down with me while I ate my dinner.
He asked me what I was going to do that evening.
"I thought I'd go up to the cafe and read poetry," I said. "What are you doing?"
"I thought I'd go up to the cafe and read poetry," he answered.
It was just plain -- I'm going to hang around you and be with you.
No pretending to run into me.
No begging to join me.

My husband makes me feel beautiful.
I am 32 and a half weeks pregnant.
I'm big.
And I'm older and tired.
My skin is drying out, and my lips have faded.
My hands are getting kind of papery.
My hair is frizzier than it used to be.
But he treats me like I'm beautiful.
It's my sixth child I am pregnant with.
He doesn't say things like,
"Have you thought about maybe getting a gym membership 
and getting back what you once had?"
Or, "Maybe you could get laser treatment 
for some of those scars that are marking you up now."
I cannot imagine that he does not see these flaws.
They are glaring realities to me.
But he doesn't seem to see these flaws --
even though he packed the wounds that left them for me.

I think I'd even rather have the scars that mar me
just to see how he looks at me like I am beautiful anyway.
The reality is that I am not more beautiful than I was
in my young, strong, healthy, unmarred body.
But weirdly, I feel more beautiful to him now than I did then.
I'm more confident in his love than I was.
I don't feel like I have to hide from his eyes,
in order to maintain the illusion of perfection.
If, in his eyes I am perfect, I will accept his verdict.
And where perfection was lacking,
he helped bring it about with his own hands.
Not the perfection of an airbrushed photo,
but the perfection of healed flesh and whole skin.
Of function where there was brokenness.
When I first saw the damage, I cried.
I couldn't look until it was nearly done healing, and I still cried.
But he saw it in every stage, and he never recoiled.
He didn't cry, and he didn't criticize, and he didn't complain.
He changed bandages twice a day.
And he did the dishes while I laid there.

Husbands:
if you want to be married to a beautiful woman,
let your love make her beautiful.
Don't compare her to the unflawed women you see.
The ones who haven't borne your children in their bodies.
Don't shame her for the thing that she is.

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new

Flipping the Pancakes

I made potato pancakes for lunch.
They are basically two ingredients: mashed potatoes and eggs.
Garlic, salt and pepper to taste.
I've struggled with making them right.
My dad always made them for me, and I loved them.
The first time I tried to do it on my own, as a married woman,
I added milk.
Wondered why they were wrong.

I did okay today.
They're funny things, though.
When you first mix them up, they're so sloppy.
I slap a spoonful onto the frying pan in butter, and then wait and watch.
I always try to flip it before it's ready.
It falls apart.
Half flips, half doesn't.
I use the pancake turner to pat the entire thing back into a circle
and wait longer.

More heat, more pressure, and it becomes one.
I slide the turner underneath, and it holds together.
Moves as one.
Less breaks off to do its own thing.

As I cooked them today, I thought about marriage.
These two ingredients forming one thing.
The heat and the pressure and the time
changing us from an incoherent mass that falls apart
when we try to work together
into something that moves as one,
each part a complement to the other.

Perhaps it occurred to me because of a line from our wedding vows:
we promised to adhere to one another.
Our pastor thought that a funny phrase,
and made a joke about our first kiss.
But I think it's a beautiful turn of words.

And I hope my soul is melding just as surely to the Lord's.
Growing more and more able to move when He moves.
To hold fast and remain.
To be mixed together with Him in such a way
that I am His, and He is mine, and we are one.

Come Together Again

Every successful marriage
has had thousands of choices to come together again.
To be joined.
To come home to her every night,
and to say yes to his advances.
To try again, even if she gave you the cold shoulder.

It isn't the vows that bring the intimacy --
those only begin the marriage.
We speak words of love to one another,
but they must be said again.
And we must choose to yield ourselves to one another.

We long to commune, to lessen our loneliness, to be joined in community.
Paul advised that each man should have his own wife,
and each woman her own husband,
because of sexual immorality.
"Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, 
and likewise also the wife to her husband."
This is apostolic marriage counseling.
That we would have a spouse, and give ourselves to them.

"Do not deprive one another 
except with consent for a time, 
that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; 
and come together again 
so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." 
So much about this passage is so practical.
Have sexual intercourse with your spouse.
This is one very specific way we can serve their spiritual needs.

The intercourse of marriage--
sexual, emotional, financial, spiritual--
is a mysterious display of Christ and the church.
That abiding in the vine that Jesus spoke of is a plant life display.
They are both about connection, unity, exchange--
intercourse resulting in fruit.
In human intercourse, it is a choice that presents itself again and again.
We Christians are presented again and again
with the option to interact with Him intimately, or to shut Him out.
If we want to bear His fruit,
if we want our union with Him to be successful,
we must yield.

Perhaps you have said 'no', and it has become a habit to say 'no'.
I'm too tired.
I have a headache.
We've grown too far apart.
I've washed my feet; how can I defile them again?
Seek Him again, because His heart is still for you.

Or perhaps it is worse than just not opening up when He came to you.
Maybe you called Him 'master', and lived in His house,
but never saw Him as your husband.
Maybe you have never been close,
and all your children have been someone else's.
And He is broken-hearted over your infidelity,
but you are hard-hearted.
Make a choice to be His for real.
He'll buy you back from the auction block of your whoring shame,
and call you His own,
and let you bear His children.

I will heal their backsliding, and love them freely,
 for My anger has turned away... 
I will be like the dew to Israel; 
He shall grow like the lily, and lengthen his roots like Lebanon...
Those who dwell under His shadow shall return; 
they shall be revived like grain, and grow like a vine. 
Their scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

And you will find yourself saying,
"What have I to do anymore with idols? 
I have heard and observed him. 
I am like a green cypress. 
Your fruit is found in me."

In Union With Us

My mind is preoccupied lately with thoughts of reproduction.
Of intimate connection that results in living beings.
Jesus said, "Abide in Me, and you will bear much fruit."
He said, "I am the Vine, and you are the branches..."
We bear no fruit apart from Him,
but He also has His fruit in union with us.

Human fruitfulness, too, depends on physical union.
Union without barriers.
My children are equally his and mine.
They bear both our DNA.

In a fruitful marriage, this is not a one-time occurrence.
It is conceived,
and gestated,
and birthed,
and washed,
and nurtured,
and matured,
and fed,
and clothed,
and taught.
And there may be multiple fruits
in various stages of maturity
being looked after simultaneously.

Bearing fruit is the work of the physically mature.
But its preparation begins at conception.
At birth, that immature child's equipment is already there,
waiting for growth and transformation and union.
It is mind-boggling to think that my body
has had stored in it for more than thirty-five years
half the child whose heart beats now inside me.

I read about a couple who consulted a fertility specialist
a number of years ago.
They had been married for some time, and wanted children very much.
But there were no children.
There were some tests done, and extensive, invasive questions asked.
And finally, the doctor got to the bottom of the problem.
These people had never had intercourse.
All the working equipment in the world
doesn't produce fruit without union.

Because I am a Woman

I am not supposed to love the smell
of orange cleaner on my floors
if I mopped them myself.
It is beneath me,
because I am a woman,
and domesticity enslaves me.
If my husband mops the floors,
or a legal alien in an apron mops my floors,
and I pay her/it/him for it,
I am allowed to enjoy it.

If I plan a meal and buy the food,
and prepare it,
and set it on the table
the ideal thing to do,
if I am a real woman,
is to resent the effort spent.
Because I am a woman,
and feeding people is beneath me.

I am not supposed to like sitting down to nurse a baby,
because the breasts that baby needs
and the womb it came out of
are the symbols of my servitude,
of my lesser pay.
Because I am a woman,
and nursing a baby is beneath me.
Paying someone to give it a bottle empowers me.
If the baby needs me,
it makes me smaller
than if no one needs me,
because I do a job that any man could do.

I was not supposed to like it
when a man wanted to make a home for me,
and asked me if he could keep me forever,
and buy me dresses,
and would I raise his children for him?
He wouldn't have asked if I was a man,
and that should anger me.
I should only like it if he offers to use me and throw me away,
because I am a woman,
and marriage fetters me.

I am not supposed to walk around barefoot,
because bare feet show my poverty.
I am supposed to wear high-heeled shoes,
so he can't sit down and take my feet in his hands
and rub the soreness out of them,
because I am a woman,
and my happiness is dependent on shoes and a power suit
and money.

I ought to feel guilty
when a butterfly in my stomach takes flight
as I pin clothes on a line
and a breeze blows on them.
Bad woman.

I should be embarrassed that I planned to cook for them,
instead of getting a job
and using my paycheck to buy them some frozen chemicals.
Or telling them to get a job and buy their own chemicals.
It's medieval for me to do it.

Of Intercourse and Offspring

We are two.
Different from each other.
Different families.
Different ages.
Different dreams.
Different bodies.

We come together.
Union.
Communion.
Corresponding to.
Bound together.
Intercourse.

God breathed life into the man.
The sharing of breath.
Worship: to kiss; to prostrate oneself in homage.
The combining of lives.
The union of bodies dedicated to one another.
Heaven and earth.
Male and female.

The birth of a child --
like me, like him.
They are me.
They are him.
They are us.
I am in them.
Their dad is in them.
They are in us.
We are one.

Blasphemy?
Mystery.

Incompatible

Several weeks ago I read this:

"Research has shown that every happy, successful couple 
has approximately ten areas of 'incompatibility' 
or disagreement that they will never resolve. 
Instead the successful couples learn 
how to manage the disagreements and live life around them -- 
to love in spite of their areas of difference..."

Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, 
a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, 
meekness, longsuffering; 
 forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, 
if any man have a complaint against any; 
even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye: 
and above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness. 
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, 
to the which also ye were called in one body; 
and be ye thankful.  
Colossians 3:12-15 

He Never Deprives Me

"But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him." (1 Corinthians 6:17)

This falls in the middle of a passage about the Christian and his sex life.
It goes on to say, "Flee sexual immorality."
I've known that for a long time.

But the other day, I started thinking about this,
which is just a few more verses in:
"Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her,
and likewise also the wife to her husband.
The wife does not have authority over her own body,
but the husband does.
And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body,
but the wife does.
Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time,
that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer;
and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you
because of your lack of self-control...
Now to the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord:
A wife is not to depart from her husband...
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife,
and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband,
otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy."

The material part of this passage
has always seemed simple enough to understand to me.
But as I thought it over the other day, something else began to be clear.

In Ephesians 5 it says,
"Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies.
He that loveth his own wife loveth himself:
for no man ever hated his own flesh;
but nourisheth and cherisheth it,
even as Christ also the church;
because we are members of his body.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother,
and shall cleave to his wife;
and the two shall become one flesh.
This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church. 
Nevertheless do ye also severally love each one his own wife even as himself;
and let the wife see that she fear her husband."

When the mystery is brought into it,
the rendering of affection takes on a whole new meaning.
How He ought to be adored is far more than I have ever given Him.
But Christ has given Himself body and soul to me.
To be joined in one spirit with me.
And He never fails to render affection to me, though it is certainly not my due.
But it is His due, with all certainty.
And how often I am cold and unresponsive to Him.
And oh, how to even think of the authority He allows me with Him --
and my failure to reciprocate.

He gives Himself to me to withstand temptation,
knowing my lack of self-control --
and He never deprives me of Himself.
He makes Himself provision for my failure.
How stupid for me to depart from Him,
seeing He is my sanctification.
I am the 'unbelieving wife' in this little life-picture.
He is the one who makes my fruit holy, my 'children', in a sense.
In departing from Him, they're all unclean.

In loving me, Christ loves Himself,
because He has permanently joined me to Himself.
And He ministers to my needs as though they were His.
He cleaves to me.
And shall I not worship Him?