Glass Gloves

Oh God, please make my wife come back to me! I had said it probably a thousand times. Then something happened inside me and to me that I can’t explain. The best way I can describe it is for you to read the book Contact or go watch the movie. That scene right at the end where Dr. Arroway (Jodie Foster) is prompted to retract her testimony by the National Security Director and replies: “I can’t”.
I’ve seen it happen to other people. They are going along in their life. Something bad happens to them and they pray to God - he doesn’t answer. Then they give up. But, sometimes they place all hope in Him alone. God, please let me with the lottery and I’ll spend the rest of my life working for you. God please let the Mavericks win the play offs next year. God, give me a signs (13 hits) that you are real and if not - to hell with you. God, my wife want a divorce and I’m no longer strong enough or smart enough to make this work. It is up to you. Do what you will with my family, it is in your hands, man (446 hits). I give up.
That is in the marriage world. What about the ol’ medical miracles. We’ve all heard of them. Yeah, I know, what about the guys who didn’t pray and recovered and what about that study that prayed for several patients with no conclusive results on whether prayer is effective. What about all those people who never had their prayers answered. I don’t know, but He has answered mine time and time again, then he goes silent. Sometimes it is for a whole month. Then some flaw in myself is revealed and he comes back. No voices in my head mind you, but just little things that only I know about. Little coincidences that line up all in a row. Kind of like playing golf and making that one perfect shot. You can hack up the green all day, but that one perfect shot keeps you going. Kind of like that scene in the movie Ghost. The scene where Whoopi Goldberg says “ditto” to Demi Moore. Demi Moore instantly recognizes this spiritual BS as no BS, but I doubt any scientist would have been able to prove that personal experience was real beyond Demi’s mind.
Every time it has happened to me, it is as though I’ve gotten in touch with a spiritual side of me that I can only occasionally reach. Other people have described a similar experience. It some kind of “knowing” that everything is going to be okay. A new found confidence - a moment of clarity. I get away from everyone and pray in silence - in my room, alone. He is quiet for weeks at a time. Then He answers - out of the blue. Unmistakable proof of a PERSONAL GOD in my mind, but there is no way for me to explain it. The Prophets would often fast to get that spiritual connection. I just read the scriptures and search the Internet for clues.

Darth Vader once said that the power of the Death Star is nothing compared to the power of the force. I think of spiritual moments like what I have described in a similar way.

Another way to look at is life changing moments. One minute you have a somewhat smooth economy and the next minute the twin towers are falling down. What’s next? World wide bird flu epidemic? Don’t worry - science will save us, after all, a cure for cancer is just around the corner. I wonder though - did cancer exist before we discovered the joys of soft drinks and petrochemicals?
Don’t get me wrong. I like the outputs of science and math. I like a good diet coke too, and though I probably err too much on the side of an arm chair scientist, after everything I’ve learned recently those subjects have started to bore me. If we keep up our good science where will we be in a few thousand years? Instead of blowing up the planet with nukes, I guess it will be death stars with freakin star destroying torpedoes and everyone will be married according to a strict compatibility matrix. Life will be so swell and I bet we still won’t have a clue what happened before moment 0.
Oh brother, I guess I became an instant bible thumper. You know the term. You know people this has happened to and they have always annoyed you. Yet they have something you do not understand. They are like these way too happy goof balls that run around smiling all the time. Instant holy roller. Instant self-righteous bigots. Well I hope not, as I’m not fit to be your judge, but I can at least inform you of what I’ve experienced. I guess I suffer from the same mass delusion that many of the rest of us suffer from. The more I read the word the more treasures I find. What a complex piece of literature and life manual at the same time.

Ray’s prayer has been answered folks and I think we can see when the turn around happened (169 hits). Why did he answer Ray? I don’t know, maybe you can tell me why He answered me.

Our Father. Hallowed be thy NAME.

What was that name again?

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Awhile back I had a fiery red head for a girl friend which certainly made for some interesting experiences. I thought I would retell one of them as an intro into another concept I just learned the other day about women - well at least my wife to the degree that she represents all of womankind.

This ex-girlfriend and I were returning back to our place of dwelling from a lengthy stay at her parents’ house. Part way through the trip she told me that this was the part where we needed to talk about our relationship. She explained to me that this is something that women do and not to worry about it and it was just part of being involved with her. While I was glad that she was kind enough to share this emotional logic with me, I wasn’t over joyed at the thought of talking about feelings. Fairly normal guy behaviour as I understand it. So she prodded and indicated in a very kind manner how important this was, but I just couldn’t do it. I can best describe it as being similar to stage fright. Talking about feelings…. what? Why don’t you ask me to become a ballerina and dance around in front of you wearing a pink tutu while you are at it.

I was driving along and spied an upcoming obstruction in the road. My eyes are a bit “far-sighted” so identified what the obstruction was before she did. As I got closer I realized it was a paper sack and I quickly swerved to avoid it much to her surprise. As she looked back she realized what it was and became quite entertained at the idea of me swerving to avoid a paper sack.

Not to go into a lengthy discourse on my thought processes, but I tended to look at things from a worst case perspective. What she saw as an ordinary paper sack - I saw as potentially being a container for a pipe bomb. Yeah I know I’m crazy - thanks for reminding me Any hoo, I’ve never been one to really hide my thoughts so I told her exactly what I was thinking. I told her I had heard stories on the news etc. about people placing pipe bombs along side cars, outside office buildings, etc. and just on the 1 in a kajillion chance - I wanted to avoid this paper sack, which wasn’t moving with the wind, in case it also had a pipe bomb. Ted Kazinsky or however you spell his name seems to have left a lasting impression.

She immediately broke out into laughter. You see, at the time, she seemed to enjoy my quirks, which this was just another example of how goofy I can be. Being a bit of the adventurous type she realized this was an opportunity to get me to talk about feelings. Instead of talking about feelings she asked me to sing her a song about feelings and pipe bombs. She thought this was so funny that she asked me this for about 30 minutes on the way home. She even promised various heightened sexual experiences, etc. I wasn’t biting.
Talking about feelings though… well I learned this from an old girl friend who was kind enough to educate me. So my wife and I talked about feelings this weekend. She informed me that women have more complex emotions than guys. Okay… I think I’ve figured that much out or another way to say it is that women sometimes aren’t as analytical if we want to generalize some more. She continued though… you see.. guys have love, anger, hate, sad, happy, but with women it is more than that. She continued… we have love, hate, sad, happy, frustration, anger, confusion. I said “What?”. Confusion is an emotion? Yes. Whoaoaha. What a mind job. But wait, why are you breaking out frustration separately from anger? I started thinking. I remember reading somewhere once that women are able to discern more colors than men. Okay. This was a break through. I’ve found the key to understanding women - perhaps. Then I pressed on, what about frustration. Is that actually separate from anger? I know with me that anger almost always stems from frustration that has gone on too long and sometimes it is difficult to separate the two. She responded… I can be frustrated for a long time and not be angry until you decide to press buttons. Then it turns into anger. Wow. That explains so many things… for example why do some women put up with belligerent cheating husbands for a quarter of a century at least? I guess they just have that ability according to my wife.

This also explains something else a bit more. You see I’ve written time and time again that your wife may say things like “Yes - we’re still getting the divorce” while it still being okay to hold hands, etc. This is utterly confusing to us guys. How can you have one foot in the pool and one out? I guess because confusion is an emotion. Why can’t you tell me that you love me - yet you will sleep in the same bed or even have sex…etc. My wife did these same things to me when we were going through the rough period. She couldn’t say she loved me. She was waiting to see what her feelings would do, but a part of her still cared for me. I love you but I’m not in love with you. Guys…. don’t press too hard once they are in this stage. If you talk about the problems of the marriage or think of yourself as a couple at this stage it is kind of like trying to “make it to 3rd base” on the first date. Remember, her heart is cold still, but a part of her that is buried deep down in there still cares for you a little bit. The rest of her pretty much hates you and if you try to make it to 3rd base, well…. it is just as insulting as trying to get a nice seemingly pure church going girl into your bed before you are married. It is like becoming overzealous for that first kiss. It is “presumptuous”. Go see that movie hitch to see what I mean.

I did all of this story telling just to get you back to the conversation between my wife and I. My wife has a habit of saying she wants to do something a certain way that will affect both of us, but often lacks the words to describe what that reason is. I like to get to the right answer, make sure we are doing the right thing, etc. so I’ll typically take us through a nice round of devil’s advocate to make sure we are making the right decision. The problem here is that this won’t work. She won’t be able to explain her reasons in terms of logic, because the real reason is something more difficult to explain. It is emotion. I’ve now coined the term, Emotional Logic, to describe our solution to this apparent road block in the decision making process at times. I now short circuit my devil’s advocate approach as much as I can and ask her to just explain to me the emotional side of why she does or doesn’t want to do what we are discussing. Saves us at least 30 minutes and I don’t have time to get frustrated with her apparently poor reasoning skills (my perspective). It is a different kind of reasoning you see.

Do you feel me? I think therefore I am. Right is right and wrong is wrong. So many aspects of the human condition and your marital relationship can not be reasoned with so if I were you, I’d avoid the “Pleading my case” strategy for saving your marriage. Work on appealing to her emotions instead. She already knows she’s going to be worse off without you, but she’d rather be worse off given how you have made her FEEL. Do you understand now?

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My wife and I were discussing some ways to better raise our children this evening. Through everything I have learned about the man-wife relationship dynamic it seems that I still have some work to do on me eldest daughter otherwise I’m sure I’ll be bailing her out of jail in a few years or a grandpa. As part of this conversation some interesting points were brought up that I thought may help a few of you with understanding (not solving) your spouse’s issues presented in your marriage that may actually be the result of unseen forces from his or her “family of origin”. Ask your counsellor about this phenomenon for more details.

Any hoo it started something like this I was discussing some of the supposed contradictions in scripture pointed out by by various anti-Yahuweh folks that are out there in the mix. In some of Paul’s letters it talks about love being forgiving, never keeping score, that kind of stuff and specifically “IS NOT JEALOUS”. Then time and time again in what we call the old testament, it is stated that our God is a jealous god. Naturally, those not in the know point to this as a contradiction so I needed to investigate this further - as I’ve stated previously, atheists and the like pointing out supposed contradictions have actually helped my studies. I’ve found that wherever there is something in scripture that seems to contradict - either I don’t understand it yet - or there is a translation problem somewhere or the guy who spotted the contradiction lack’s a depth in his understanding. I focused on the first side of this equation - that is - I didn’t understand.
As I thought about this, I considered it in the context of a man’s love for his wife. Think of a man knowing that his wife is cheating on him not unlike Yahuweh’s family was with ol’ Lord Ba’al aka Satan. The spouse asks their spouse to stop just like Yahuweh asked Israel to come back to him and just like ol’ Hosea. Eventually He must have burned with jealousy. Pure raw emotion…. a burning sensation - anger - your whole body tingling on the verge of an explosion. Do you guys know this feeling? I’m certainly not foreign to it as it is what got me into so much trouble in the first place, but it is kind of the same feeling if someone cheats on you and they won’t stop. Burning with rage at times - deeply wounded at others. It may be another way of describing hell which is no doubt what you have been going through by trying to rescue your marriage. Can you see the emotions that our God would have been feeling though? Well that hopefully leads us into another way to think about where your spouse has come from.

You see, in this same conversation with my wife, I was discussing an incident that happened years ago during my childhood. My cousins and I were playing on an old tractor trailer rig meant for hauling cars when about 7 or 8 hornets decided to sting me. I ran crying like a baby all the way to the house My father sees this and waits awhile for mom to console me and stuff and then gives me a severe beating because I went near that tractor trailer rig which he had told me to avoid for the very same reason I was crying. Just kidding about the beating part - I wanted to see if you were paying attention, he did give me a couple of swats on the rear end though.

In any case, this was one of those memories that I never lost. As I told my wife about this she told me another story that my dad had told her from his childhood. My dad and my wife had built up a bit of an ongoing dialogue over the years. This was a story I had actually never heard before.

Picture sometime in the 1960s or so with my dad doing the same thing I did. An farmhouse with 12 brothers lined up talking to their dad. One of those brothers was my grandpa. My dad comes running along after being stung by wasps to seek consolement from my grandpa! Got it - reread that sentence if you still don’t follow. My great-grandfather sees this comotion and gives my grandpa a stern look. At which point, grandpa smacks my dad. My dad is stunned - stops crying and runs off.

My wife tells me that although it was a different time then and my dad seemed to understand the purpose of grandpa’s actions under that culture and era, but you could still see even to this day he was still hurt deep down inside in places he doesn’t talk about at cocktail parties. If someone did this now a days I suppose it would be on the 6 O’clock news, but you have to remember not every culture is based on this Leave it to Beaver culture that many of us hold as the ideal model for parents. I think of the ideal model as farmers working side by side, but either way the point is to try and understand what your spouse may have gone through to better understand their deepest darkest motivations, their emotional upbringing, etc.

This emotional fun was carried forth for three generations before it finally dies off with my seed. Reminds me of something I read in the scripture once, about punishing to the 3rd generation I think for the sins of the first. I never understood that passage, but I think what I have just described may be the key.
Now let’s turn off Leave it to Beaver for a bit and get to your spouse. Sometimes they may do things a certain way and never even realize the torrment that it causes people because they have become desensitized as a result of their upbringing or still bear some deep seated resentments that are being targeted towards you - the unwitting recipient of the results of these feelings.

Questions to ask yourself, and if you don’t know the answers, well no wonder you are having problems you doofus!
Does your spouse get along with their Mother/Father?

Do they get along with their siblings if they have any?

Have they ever told you any stories from their child hood that were especially revealing of their path through life?

You can think of more questions, but hopefully this will get you started on how to better understand the emotions from which your spouse came. Your spouse’s family of origin.
Now there is another one… it is the “waiting around to see” emotion. It is something a lot of women do, but I have yet to hear about a guy doing this. Basically the way it works is that a woman sometimes will not really know what her emotions are going to do. She will wait around and see if they turn into that feeling of love or if that feeling can no longer return. Your job is tune into HER wavelength and figure out what types of things she is actually receptive to, not the things you THINK she would be receptive to because some of those things, if you are guessing, will backfire - too little - too late. The whole time your spouse is in this state of mind - they may tell you things like “not to worry” or “don’t talk about it” etc. “we’re getting along fine so just be quiet”. Those seem to be womanly keywords or cues. They are telling us to keep up the good work and time will tell if their emotions return. So don’t mess it up once you get her back to this stage.

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