Surviving Our Troubles, Part 1

Surviving Our Troubles: “Solution Talk”

One day when Jesus was in Jerusalem for one of the Jewish feasts, he took a side trip to the pool of Bethesda -- a pool that purportedly had healing powers. (Tradition said that on occasion an angel would stir the waters and the first one in the water after that stirring would be healed.) As a result of the pool’s reputation and its covered colonnades, it became a gathering place for a “great number of disabled people -- the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed.”

One of the pool’s patrons was a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Standing over the cripple, Jesus asked him: “Do you want to get well?” Jesus’ question -- which deserved a hearty: “Of course!” -- was answered with a weak complaint: “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” This man, who was broken in body and in soul, kept returning to the pool out of habit, not out of hope.

Why did Jesus ask such an obvious question? Because not everyone wants to get well. As I was recently waiting in a doctor’s office, I overheard two women try to top each other’s stories from their medical history -- “Well, I had surgery one time and had to stay in the hospital for 3 months!” I could tell that they both relished telling their painful stories. But were they interested in getting well? I’m not sure.
Why don’t sick people want to get well? Because solving problems is hard work. It is easier to whimper over your friend’s rejection than to forgive her and seek reconciliation. It is easier to moan about your fatigue than to develop an exercise program that will restore your energy. It is easier to commiserate with the complainers than to enlist with the committed. It is easier to discard a dying marriage than to learn how to love again. It is easier to stay depressed than to change the thought patterns that feed your sadness. It is easier to criticize the ministries of your church than to join one of those ministries and try to make a difference.

Psychologist and author Mary Pypher’s counseling philosophy is based on “solution talk” rather than “problem talk.” The person who wants to get well is the person who fixes his eyes on solutions: “Lord how should I view this situation differently? What actions can I take to begin solving this problem? Don't let me merely fuss or fret. Show me how to survive this ordeal.”

Stepford Wives

Claire (played by Glenn Close) was a brilliant scientist who murdered her husband and his girlfriend when she caught them in bed together. Horrified by the ugliness of her deed and the world around her, she asked: “What could I do to make the world more beautiful?” Her answer was to turn her dead husband into a robot who then recruited other men who wanted “perfect” wives. Claire believed most women were “over-stressed, over-booked and under-loved” and wanted a “better world where men are men and women are loved and cherished.”

Who wouldn’t want a little less chaos in their world? a trouble-free marriage? a safe world for children? an end to drunken drivers? Claire’s husband, Mike, explained to Joanna (Nicole Kidman) and her husband, Walter (Matthew Broderick) the benefits of scientific engineering: “If you could streamline your partner, if you could overhaul every annoying habit and every physical flaw, every moment of whining and nagging and farting in bed, just imagine being able to enjoy your mate only at their best.” Sounds appealing, doesn’t it?

But what kind of world would that be? If Stepford is any indication, it is not an appealing world. When Walter was tempted by the appeal of the perfect wife, Joanna asked him: “Is this what you really want? women who behave like slaves?” And then she asked: “These machines, these Stepford wives, can they say “I love you”? When informed that they could say it in 58 languages, Joanna, with pleading eyes, asked Walter: “But do they mean it?” She then planted a passionate kiss on her husband’s lips.

Walter ultimately chose to give his wife her freedom -- believing that a free, though imperfect love, was far-superior to the counterfeit, coerced love of a computer-chip wife.

God had a similar choice to make. He could have created a “Stepford” world where there are no victims or violence, arguing or apathy, criticism or coldness. Instead, He created a world where the pots can complain to the potter, where “the sculptures can spit at the sculptor.” Like Walter, God didn’t want robotic perfection.

William Thompson imagined the questions God pondered while creating us: “What if I veil My Divinity so that the creatures [won’t be] overwhelmed by My overpowering Presence? Will the creatures love Me? Can I be loved by creatures I have not programmed to adore me forever? Can love arise out of freedom?” God, like Walter, took the risk of freedom. He knew that force would never produce love. Our God delights in the passionate embrace of free human beings.

Marital Building Blocks, Part 5

God shouts: “Get naked!” to marriage partners -- “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” At times, this involves the shedding of clothes, but even more the shedding of pretense. This disrobing of our identities can be difficult in the early years of marriage because courtship is often an elaborate game of Hide-and-Seek. If I am trying to win your love, I may apply some makeup to my uglier traits.

Fortunately for us hiders, marriage is designed to strip our masquerades. Mike Mason explains: “One of the hardest things in marriage is the feeling of being watched.” This “constant surveillance ... can wear one down like a bright light shining in the eyes, and that leads inevitably to the crumbling of all defenses, all the customary shams and masquerades of the personality.” Our attempts to hide from each other are about as feeble as a child holding his hands over his eyes and proclaiming: “You can’t find me!”

When our family bought our first hand-held computer game, I became quickly, though unknowingly, addicted. One day I was sitting in the living room chair when Cathy left the house to run some errands. I was so immersed in the game that I lost track of time. When I heard her returning, I glanced at my watch and realized that I had been playing the game for nearly two hours! Of course I didn’t want my wife to see me still playing the game so I quickly stuffed it under my chair and grabbed a book. As I sat there, a stabbing question penetrated my charade: “What are you doing, you big phony?!”

During the early years of my marriage I was asked by friends if I was surprised by what I learned about Cathy. I responded: “Yes, but not nearly as surprised as what I learned about myself.” It is in the everyday interactions of marriage that we see our true selves. Our mates “are mirrors in which we are constrained to see ourselves, not as we would like to be, but as we are.”

It is distressing to have our sins uncovered. Sadly, many people run from one mirror to another not realizing that they are running from themselves as much as they are running from their spouse. God alone can give us the unlikely desire to know the truth about ourselves. And how does he “slip us this bitter pill? Fortunately, the pill is lavishly coated with the mystery we call love” -- which alone “can shield us from the horror or knowing what we are really like.”

Marital Building Blocks, Part 4

There is one word that is conspicuously left out of God’s marriage manual (Genesis 1-3). It is the word “love.” Instead, couples are commanded to “cleave” (NIV: “be united”) to each other. When two marry, they are called to stick together. They are to form a bond that will endure through sickness and in health. It is this "til-death-do-us-part" commitment, rather than romantic feelings of love, that creates the one-flesh unity: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh."

Feelings of love wax and wane. As Mike Mason has written, emotional love won't sustain a marriage for very long: Marriages which are dependent on love fall apart, or at best are in for a stormy time of it. But marriages which consistently look back to their vows, to those wild promises made before God, find a continual source of strength and renewal. It is not passion that stirs me out of a warm bed on a winter night to tend to a sick grandchild while my exhausted wife catches up on sleep. Nor is it passion which motivates me to pay bills or change a dirty diaper (yuk!) or vacuum the house. I do these acts ungrudgingly (or at least I try to do them ungrudgingly!) because I have made a commitment to serve my mate.

But this one flesh relationship does not mean that we don’t need others. Carole Mayhall warns: I have seen too many wives try to force their husbands to meet their every need--a feat no human can do--and in the forcing have destroyed what could have been a beautiful relationship. Both husbands and wives need a variety of relationships to become whole people. No person can meet our every need.

If I am called to meet the needs of my spouse, what are those needs? Wisdom demands that I make her needs a subject of scrutiny. Through the years I have learned that she does not handle the pressure of an impending trip very well with all its extra errands, laundry, and packing added to her normal responsibilities. As a result, she can become a bit irritable. So what does God ask me to do? To stick with her in her grumpiness -- to help with some of her errands, to cut back on my schedule, to not snap back when I become irritated with her irritation!

Cleaving then is a commitment. It is a promise to love and serve your partner whether he becomes bitter or fat or unemployed or argumentative or boring or inattentive or jealous or selfish or ugly or lazy or insensitive or greedy or sickly. We have taken vows before God to love our deeply flawed mates for life. May God give us the grace and the strength to just that.

Marital Building Blocks, Part 3

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, lost his wife when his daughters were young and never remarried. He apparently transferred the emotional bond with his wife to his daughters, becoming very dependent on their devotion. On one occasion a lonely Jefferson wrote to Martha: “I am chilled by my solitude. It makes me wish the more that you and your sister were here to enjoy it. I value the enjoyments of life only in proportion as you participate them with me.” His possessive love was apparently reciprocated. After Martha had been married for nearly a decade she wrote to her father that no “new ties can weaken the first and best of nature.” No wonder Martha’s husband had severe mental problems. He was in competition with his father-in-law for the love of his wife.

God knew that the transition from our biological families to our created families would not be easy. So Genesis guides us in this process: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” One of the very first challenges for newly-weds is to “leave” their birth families. But what does this mean? Mike Mason explains that “marriage is not a joining of two worlds, but an abandoning of two worlds in order that one new one might be formed.” The birth family must no longer be the primary source of affection or advice or aid.

I distinctly remember the first time I became ill after Cathy and I were married. Do you know who I wanted to comfort me? You guessed it. I wanted Mom! She was the one who had nursed me for 20 years. When I was home sick, she would bake me chocolate chip cookies and change my sheets each day and say all the appropriate words: “Oh, I’m sure you feel awful, honey.” Cathy had not had any practice in taking care of a sick person. After a day or two of being sick, her attitude was something like: “Don’t you feel better yet?” We are thankful that we lived nearly 1000 miles from our parents so that we were forced to learn how to care for each other “in sickness and in health.”

Even when the kids have a proper perspective, the parents may try to hang onto their former roles. Parents may be too pushy in telling their kids what jobs to take or how to invest their money or how to discipline their children. I know a young couple whose mother was continually critiquing her married daughter’s large and small choices -- “You’re not going to buy a dog, are you?! That would be foolish since you both work fulltime.” After repeated violations, this young woman’s wise husband went to his mother-in-law and explained as graciously as possible: “You can’t talk to my wife that way.”

Does this mean that parents can’t help their children financially? can’t offer advice? can’t live nearby? Not at all. But they must give them enough space so that they can become their own family, making their own choices.

Marital Building Blocks, Part 2

It is often said that in choosing a mate, “opposites attract.” Sometimes these personality differences can be profound:

Some love cluttered, knick-knacky rooms, while others need bare simplicity. Some people compulsively plan the future, while others take full pleasure in the present. Some must eat lightly but regularly throughout the day, while others eat according to appetite, irregularly. Some crave silence and find it necessary for intimacy, while others have to talk. Some hold to old customs and practices, cherishing pictures, memories, and family re-unions, while others ditch the pat joyfully to risk some new, uncertain thing. (Walter Wangerin)

God said he would create a helper “suitable” for Adam. The Hebrew word for “suitable” means literally “corresponding to.” God’s plan is that these differences compliment, rather than compete against, each other.

I was attracted to Cathy not only because she was cute and confident, but also because she was conscientious. I could always depend on her to be on time, to carry out her responsibilities, to fulfill a promise. On the other hand, Cathy was attracted to me because I am more spontaneous -- after all if you focus too much on being responsible you might miss out on some fun. Why would anyone want to study on the first warm, wind-free day of spring?!

The challenge for couples with these sometimes gaping differences is to learn “to play a duet in the same key, to the same rhythm.” God puts opposites together so that each will learn from the other’s strengths. Cathy had to learn that deadlines are often less important than spending time with a friend, that a tidy house was a lesser priority than a developing child. I had to learn that I couldn’t be responsible without lists and schedules and calendars.

But the lessons aren’t learned easily and the failure to adjust to these differences can erode a marriage. Before we were married, I was impressed and attracted by Cathy’s ability to get things done. But I didn't realize that once we were married she would make me one of her projects -- now she wanted me to get places on time! And Cathy didn’t realize that my spontaneity could devolve into irresponsibility -- household repairs might be placed on indefinite delay. In a good marriage there is a continual process of learning how to profit from each others strengths while not being bankrupted by their weaknesses.

Marital Building Blocks, Part 1

"We-just-don't-love-each-other-anymore" is the most common excuse for ending a marriage. But is a lack of love the primary reason for today's fragile state of marriage? I don’t think so. When God introduced the idea of marriage in Genesis, the word “love” was as scarce as clothes were. There were other ideas which formed the building blocks for a healthy marriage.

First, marriage is designed for companionship. At the conclusion of each day of creation, God wrote an epitaph: “And God saw that it was good. . . . And God saw that is was good. . . . And God saw that it was good.” But even before Adam and Eve’s rebellion, God declared that something was not good: “It is not good for the man to be alone.” Though Adam enjoyed intimate fellowship with his Creator in a perfect environment, he was still incomplete. God created us to be social beings who need other people. Marriage is probably our best opportunity to enjoy this companionship.

When Cathy and I were dating we were together constantly -- meeting between classes, sharing meals, attending sporting events, taking long walks, joining a campus Bible study, participating in retreats, etc. Unfortunately, as author Mike Mason points out, most married couples don’t maintain anything close to this type of commitment. Instead, “great amounts of energy are channeled into other concerns, into friendships and social life, into careers, into the raising of offspring, into every conceivable cause except the cause of marriage itself.”

A husband works at an insurance agency while his wife teaches at a public grade school. He hunts and fishes with his buddies while she participates in a book club with her girlfriends. He serves on the finance committee at church while she teaches a girls’ Sunday School class. With such disjointed lives many of these couples drift apart.

Knowing that relationship building demands chunks of time, God gave the following instructions to new husbands: “If a man has married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to his wife.” (Deut.24:5) If marriages are going to be strong and help fulfill our great need for companionship, then husbands and wives must lavish time on each other in significant ways. Cathy and I have attempted to do this by sharing housework and yard work, reading books to each other, ministering to some of the same people, riding bikes together, entertaining in our home, nurturing our grandchildren.