Saturday, June 19, 2004
Marriage links for the week
Finding herself facing an elegantly circular dilemma, Katy asks for advice
on giving advice to engaged couples.
Her commenters come through for her.
Donald Sensing of One Hand Clapping offers the opinion that the producers
of the new movie The Stepford Wives sort of misses the point when
it comes to modern relationships. He later posts a reader's e-mail about
how his earlier post missed
the point as well.
Check out Rick's story about his wife's close
encounter with a dragonfly. A sense of humor about yourself is one of the
most important skills for coping with life.
Statedog Blake reminisces about his honeymoon as he, his wife, and his child
revisit the same area on a vacation.
According to an article at ABCnews.com, a friendship with a member of the
opposite sex can cross a moral line and become an emotional
affair. Link via Marriages
Restored.
A newspaper columnist reflects on the
nature of romance as he looks back on
two years of marriage.
Another columnist advises Tiger Woods to call
off his impending wedding. I
link to this because it's sort of funny and sort of sad and completely ignorant
and moronic.
In my earlier post about the joy that dogs bring to the world, I was remiss
in not pointing out that Messy Christian has a
blog dedicated entirely to her dog.
Friday, June 18, 2004
His and Hers XIV
His and Hers is a question or discussion topic relating to marriage that I
post every Tuesday or Wednesday (though I didn't do that this week). On Friday,
my wife and I each write our thoughts on the topic. I invite other bloggers
to do the same with their spouses as an exercise in celebrating marriage. This
week's question is:
What song reminds you of your spouse every time you
hear it?
Mrs. Happy's response
When Curt and I were just friends, we were best friends. He treated me with
so much kindness and affection that I grew to love him more deeply than I had
ever loved any other friend. I listened to a lot of Jewel back then, and when
I heard the song Near You Always, I realized that I was in love with
him. I knew, however, that he didn't feel the same way about me (hah) so I
had to
guard my emotions with every ounce of will I possessed. He didn't make it any
easier, though, because he never stopped treating me as though I were a lovely
and precious human being. Near You Always always made me think of Curt, and
I still do. The difference is that now I can completely omit the word don't from
the lyrics.
Near You Always
Please don't say I love you,
those words touch me much too deeply
and they make my core tremble
Don't think you realize the effect you have over me
Please don't look at me like that
It just makes me want to make you near me always
Please don't kiss me so sweet
it makes me crave a thousand kisses to follow
And please don't touch me like that
makes every other embrace seem pale and shallow
And please don't come so close
it just makes me want to make you near me always
Please don't bring me flowers
they only whisper the sweet things you'd say
Don't try to understand me
your hands already know too much anyway
It just makes me want to make you near me always
And when you look in my eyes
please know my heart is in your hands
It's nothing that I understand, but when in your arms
you have complete power over me
So be gentle if you please, 'cause
Your hands are in my hair, but my heart is in your teeth
And it makes me want to make you near me always
Your hands are in my hair, but my heart is in your teeth
And it makes me want to make you near me always
I want to be near you always
I want to be near you always
I want to be near you always
Curt's response
When I was in high school, I had a girlfriend. I dated her not because I loved
being around her but because I was lonely and I thought having a girlfriend
would solve that. It didn't. But I still behaved the way I thought a boyfriend
should behave, which meant that I often told her I loved her. It was a complete
lie, but I didn't realize it until after we broke up. Once I understood the
weight of those words, I vowed to myself never to tell any woman I loved her
until I was ready to marry her. It wasn't that difficult, because I never even
felt like saying that to any woman until I grew to love the woman who
would eventually become my wife. There was a period of a year or more when
I could have truthfully said to her, "I love you," and I desperately wanted
to say those words—at the time, I just wasn't ready to marry
her yet. I did tell her about my personal
vow, hoping that she would realize my feelings without hearing that verbal
expression of them, but I didn't tell her I loved her.
When I proposed, I serenaded my beloved with the song Do I Love You by
Cole Porter. During a musical interlude in the song, I told her I loved her
over and over again. I continued telling her throughout the evening. Since
then, not a day has passed without my saying, "I love you." Whenever I hear
that song, I think of her and of what a relief it was to finally give voice
to my passion.
Do I Love You?
Do I love you do I?
Doesn't one and one make two?
Do I love you do I?
Does July need a sky of blue?
Would I miss you, would I, if you ever should go away?
If the sun should desert the day, what would life be?
Will I leave you, never?
Could the ocean leave the shore?
Will I worship you forever?
Isn't heaven forevermore?
Do I love you, do I?
Oh my dear it's so easy to see,
Don't you know I do, don't I show you I do,
Just as you love me.
Will I leave you, never?
Could the ocean leave the shore?
Will I worship you forever?
Isn't heaven forevermore?
Do I love you, do I?
Oh my dear it's so easy to see,
Don't you know I do, don't I show you I do,
Just as you love me.
Thursday, June 17, 2004
Canine joy
Mrs. Happy and I currently rent a house in New York. It has some advantages
over owning, but many disadvantages as well. Perhaps the most painful disadvantage
is that we're not allowed to have a dog. One of the first things we do when
we move into a house of our own some time in the future will be to invite a
dog (probably a boxer) to live with us. I bring this up not because it has
anything to do with marriage, but because I just got my computer fixed and
I'm feeling lazy enough to recycle quotes from some books that I've read as
well as a short essay I once wrote.
Jollyblogger recently
posted a
quote by G.K. Chesterton that I had never read,
but that makes me want to read more from Chesterton:
But there is something deeper in the matter than all that, only the hour is
late, and both the dog and I are too drowsy to interpret it. He lies in front
of me curled up before the fire, as so many dogs must have lain before so many
fires. I sit on one side of that hearth, as so many men must have sat by so
many hearths. Somehow this creature has completed my manhood; somehow, I cannot
explain why, a man ought to have a dog. A man ought to have six legs; those
other four legs are part of him. Our alliance is older than any of the passing
and priggish explanations that are offered of either of us; before evolution
was, we were. You can find it written in a book that I am a mere survival of
a squabble of anthropoid apes; and perhaps I am. I am sure I have no objection.
But my dog knows I am a man, and you will not find the meaning of that word
written in any book as clearly as it is written in his soul.
I don't know if Dean
Koontz is a Christian, but he is without a doubt spiritual.
And he loves dogs. Here's a quote from his novel One Door Away From Heaven:
Every world has dogs or their equivalent, creatures that thrive on companionship,
creatures that are of a high order of intelligence although not of the highest,
and that therefore are simple enough in their wants and needs to remain innocent.
The combination of the innocence and their intelligence allows them to serve
as a bridge between what is transient and what is eternal, between the finite
and the infinite.
...
For those who despair that their lives are without meaning and without purpose,
for those who dwell in a loneliness so terrible that it has withered their
hearts, for those who hate because they have no recognition of the destiny
they share with all humanity, for those who would squander their lives in self-pity
and in self-destruction because they have lost the saving wisdom with which
they were born, for all these and many more, hope waits in the dreams of a
dog, where the sacred nature of life may be clearly experienced without the
all but blinding filter of human need, desire, greed, envy, and endless fear.
And here, in dream woods and fields, along the shores of dream seas, with a
profound awareness of the playful Presence [of the Creator] abiding in all
things, Curtis is able to prove to Leilani what she has thus far only dared
to hope is true: that although her mother never loved her, there is One who
always has.
From an essay by Will Rogers in 1934:
I have often thought my friend O.O. McIntyre gave more space in his column
to his little dog than I do to the United States Senate. But it does show
that he knows human nature better than I do. He knows that everybody at heart
loves a dog, while I have to try and make converts to the Senate.
In London, five years ago, old Lord Dewar, a great humorist and character,
and the biggest whiskey maker in the world, gave [my] children a little white
dog, a Sealyham, saying: "If this dog knew how well bred he was, he wouldn't
speak to any of us."
We have petted him, complained on him, called him a nuisance, but when we
buried him yesterday, we couldn't think of a wrong thing he'd ever done.
His bravery was his undoing. He lost to a rattlesnake, but his face was towards
it.
From an essay by me in 2001:
I love dogs because they are without a doubt the
most lovable creatures inhabiting this world. Puppies live every day as though
it
were their
first,
rushing around,
playing at every hint of provocation, rejoicing in their lives as if they
remember how it was not to live. As they grow, so does their love. Older dogs
are mellower
than puppies, not out of fatigue or boredom but rather maturity. An older
dog understands the deeper value of life, especially the life of a loved one.
An
older dog has a better understanding of the complexity of human emotions
than many humans do. The very presence of a dog can drain negative feelings
out
of anyone, and their service to mankind has been well documented in literature,
TV, film, and oral tradition. Every single dog that I've had for more than
two
weeks left an indelible imprint on my life.
I think that people who don't like
dogs fall into two broad categories: people who like cats better, and people
who don't like animals at all. I can only pity
people who don't like animals. They deprive themselves of the unspeakable
joy of communing with other of God's creatures. Of people who prefer cats
over
dogs, I hold the opinion that <deleting some nasty comments about
cats and the people who like them more than dogs—I've mellowed a little
in the last three years - Curt>.
Any
other animal, with the possible exception of the horse, requires little
in the way of maintenance, affection, time, and love. And any other animal,
again
excepting the horse and maybe the dolphin, provides nothing like what a
dog
does in the way of loyalty, companionship, and unabashed fun. <deleting
a few more nasty comments> People who love dogs
understand that the rewards of relationship are far greater than the conveniences
of coexistence.
I think E.B. White also had some wonderful things to say about dogs, and I
know James Thurber did, as well as Fred
First, but I've already exceeded—for
the first time, I think—my self-imposed limit of 1,000 words
per post.
I'll have to save those for another time.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
technology is wonderful
We are experiencing technical difficulties. I may not be posting anything for a few days until I get a computer issue resolved.
Monday, June 14, 2004
Marriage advice
Yesterday
I was cleaning out one of our kitchen drawers and I found what appeared to
be a collection of recipes bound together by a single metal ring. I looked
at them
more closely and saw that the first recipe card proclaimed "Recipe for A Wonderful
Christ-Centered Marriage! We All Love You!" It was a party gift from one of
Mrs. Happy's bridal showers back in March of 1998. All the ladies at the shower
wrote marriage
advice on recipe cards and gave them to her at the end of the shower. Here
are some of the nuggets of wisdom we received early on. (These were all hand-written.
I have tried to preserve all the capitalizations, spellings, and notations
as much as possible.)
Make the big effort to "make memories." Right now it will al
be special, joyful times. In a year or two…it may take more effort~but it
will all be worth it. Have Candlelight dinners once a week! (it makes
it all taste better AND do this once the kids come too :) Surprise Kurt
with notes of love in his lunch box - socks drawer… Ask His mom how
to fix his favorite meal & dessert…then do it! Make every day Precious!
Never go to bed angry with one another.
<this card consisted of a picture of a gingerbread man with the various
body parts labeled>
• eyes to
always look for the best in each other
• ears to always listen
• arms to give a hug every morning & every evening
• an extra large heart to always forgive and always big enough for growing
love
• feet with no heels, so you can never turn & run away, but always move forward
together
Always remember to keep God first, then each other. Don't let all the business
of life start to become more of a priority than each other. When children
come along remember they do not come before the husband or the wife. Remember:
God - first
family - second
everything else - third
One word for your stable marriage: forgiveness. It worked for us!
1) Have plenty of laughs. Make lots of jokes especially when circumstances
aren't perfect. 2) Cook in large quantity and freeze the leftovers.
I can say for sure that this is all good, practical advice. Still, we didn't
really listen to it or understand it at the time. Having been through six years
of marriage and learning this all from experience, it makes a lot more sense
now.
