One Week

I watched a film that I liked. I'm not recommending it, because I like to recommend films that other people will enjoy. I'm not even sure that I enjoyed it. I just liked it, and that is all I can say.

Anyway, in it, she said, as she does so often, "Did you ever love me?" and he says, like he does so often, "Not like you deserved."

And then I read about it in Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas. Listen to what he says.

"Love is not a natural response that gushes out of us unbidden. Infatuation sometimes does that - at the beginning of a relationship at least - but hate is always ready to naturally spring forth...One of the cruelest and most self-condemning remarks I've ever heard is the one that men often use when they leave their wives for another woman: 'The truth is, I've never loved you.' This is meant to be an attack on the wife - saying in effect, 'The truth is, I've never found you lovable.' But put in a Christian context, it's a confession of the man's utter failure to be a Christian... so a man who says, 'I've never loved you' is a man who is saying essentially this: 'I've never acted like a Christian.'" 

I had a CT scan yesterday for my throat. It's been hurting for a long time, so my primary ordered: CT scan, neck with IV contrast for pain with speaking/singing. They warn you that you're going to feel like you peed your pants, but it doesn't really prepare you. When they put the dye in, my whole body felt hot from the inside like they poured chicken noodle soup in my all my primary veins in a sudden sort of way.

In marriage counseling, they tell you that you can't be satisfied by a person. Your soul is hungry for nothing more shallow than a relationship with your Creator. Your spouse just isn't going to infuse your veins and make you suddenly satisfied in your core. I really don't know much about marriage, but I know that it's about love. And I know that love is about selflessness, looking at the same person everyday, knowing them more everyday, and saying, "I choose love," which is to say, "I choose life."

I know even less about divorce. I've mostly just heard of people who go through it or whose parents went through it. Lately, I have a friend who's looking at it right in the eyes. It seems like people have to get divorced because somewhere along the line, somebody looks at the same person everyday, knowing them more everyday, and says, "I choose myself," and one or both parties never recover from it. There are a lot of books out there right now that talk about reconciling your marriage by changing yourself. But there comes a point where you have to realize that there are two people in a marriage. Sometimes one of them really loves themselves...or is it "hates themselves"... so much that they can't stop thinking about themselves and their feelings. Self-centeredness and relationships don't go together like shoo bop shoo wadda wadda yippity boom da boom.

wet, wait, and white.

I was sitting in the shower thinking about how water is the stickiest substance, how waiting on God means being conscious that He's not here yet, but knowing He will be, and how to reconcile diversity.

It sticks to everything, and we call that wet. It even sticks to itself. Sometimes you have a hair on your hand, and you can't get it off because the water is just so sticky. The trick to getting it off is to put it under a stream of water glue, and the water will stick to the hair more than it makes the hair stick to you. We clean ourselves off with water, because water sticks to everything that isn't stuck more to you. It's why our arms and legs don't go down the drain.

God says "Blessed are those who wait," and "Wait, I say, on the Lord," and things like that. We have to wait for Him because He's just not here right now. I mean, He is, but not like He will be. And we're waiting for that day. And it's a lifetime wait, and it's a daily wait. And we live like we know He's coming, like He's coming more everyday.

Reconciling diversity is harder, though. I find places where diversity isolates. And then I find places where people don't let skin make any difference, because they find ways to relate elsehow. But that's not really what I am talking about. I'm talking about diversity in a broader sense (always thinking in the broader sense). When people are just totally different. We all know those people, the ones with whom we don't even know where to start. We know them pretty well - we've been around them enough - but when it comes to relating with them, there is zero. This is the puzzle I am talking about. Is there a place where this type of diversity does not isolate?

People are friends, because they can relate about something. Do you find it amazing that God made a way to relate to us? Can you think of anyone more different than you and God? But then ..."He became flesh and dwelt among us," and then "God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God." It's the ultimate reconciliation of diversity for the sake of relationship. He became something else just so we didn't have to be isolated from Him. He simultaneously made us something else, too. Maybe it's the hint I'm looking for. Like how couples start to look alike after years and years of marriage. They become the middle of one another.