Believe it or not this post is not exactly a red-warning sex post. It is actually about my last weekend and a marriage seminar I attended with my wife. We attended an Assemblies of God Marriage Encounter this past weekend. Now some people might suddenly assume that Mrs_theGeek and I have been having problems. Of course this is true but not in a significant sense of the word. We are married and we are human, this means we have different opinions and occasionally even get grumpy. When you add ministry into it there is a lot of stress so we might even … fight.

Seriously though, we have a good strong marriage but this is because we attend things like the AGME weekend. I have shared in the past that I believe a couple must value their marriage and a big part of that is spending time building a stronger relationship.

This past weekend was great for so many ways. We got to spend it together without ministry or the kids. I love both but we do need time away for just each other. to make things better we stayed at a nice hotel right on the beach at Virginia Beach. The weather was almost perfect. The water was a bit cold, which is to be expected this time of year, but it was sunny and comfortably warm all weekend. Our room was ocean side so we got to watch the ocean a lot. I also got some great fish tacos, which I’ve been craving.

The AGME focuses on a single mode of communication, and it really helped us to talk about some areas that we haven’t been able to deal with this weekend. I feel closer to my wife and that is always good. The mode of communication is about writing letters to each other. Of course most people know that this helps to formulate words so you are less likely to say things you will later regret. Then talking about the letters together.

I would personally recommend a AGME weekend to any married couple. Especially if the others have such a nice location.

Have you attended any kind of marriage retreat or seminar? Did they help build a strong marriage? What important thing did you learn/experience?

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Youth this week was very full. I don’t mean student-wise. I totally didn’t count the students. I’m really bad about that. The subject was really deep and we covered a lot. I saw some comments on MySpace that make me feel like I should share about a specific part of the service. I’ve started showing more videos because they help to illustrate my points in some pretty spectacular ways. This past week we watched this video:

A couple of the students were asking what it meant and I explained it. I talked about my first real relationship. I talked about how quickly I fell in love and how much it hurt when she broke-up with me, how great it felt when she came back and how much worse it hurt when she left again. It was a couple of months before I was ready to date again and then I really wasn’t ready. I went through a series of insignificant relationships. I never dated a girl for more than 3 weeks and immediately broke-up with them if they started acting too lovey. When I started dating the future Mrs_theGeek she pursued me. She was cute and seemed nice so I didn’t push back. She told me she loved me and I literally told her she didn’t. It took months before I would let her say she loved me and months more before I said it back.

I had been broken and hurt even without sex. That’s the thing with relationships. We get involved and get hurt and don’t want to be vulnerable.

The change in my life didn’t come from the future Mrs_theGeek. I would have run the first time she said she loved me if I hadn’t already changed. God began a work in me. It didn’t change me completely over night but with time I become vulnerable again. I stepped out of my fortress and opened myself to Love.

God is good and He wants us to be open and vulnerable because we need Him and each other. That takes openness and vulnerability.

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I watched Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightening Thief last night. If you are thinking about watching it, then I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers. It is a good movie but the basic plot is a rehash of The Clash of the Titans which is more or less the story of Perseus and some feats he accomplishes as told by various ancient Greek sources. Of course that is kind of the whole point so I guess it isn’t right so poke fun at the fact that this plot is totally hijacked. The obstacles that Percy must overcome, though, are not limited to those that Perseus faces. They mix in various encounters form Herculean and Odyssean myth. This makes the rehashed story feel more fresh and new.

It does do a pretty good job of blending it into a modern American tale though. Throughout the story various mythical creatures make appearances and most blend into their setting well. For example, ***Spoiler Alert*** Percy must overcome the cult of the Lotus eaters (from the Odyssey) in a Las Vegas casino. End Spoiler There are several other examples of these new versions of ancient myth set in America. Many are picking at American culture in a light and fun way so I really enjoyed the movie.

One word of caution. This is ancient polytheistic mythology. There is, in my opinion, no tie in to Christian theology. In the first 5 minutes of the film Poseidon comments to Zeus about them being omnipotent. This is a serious breach of the proper understanding of the word. Percy is not even remotely a Christological type and should not be thought of in this way. Paul, when addressing the scholars on Mars hill, does not try to use their myths to try and explain Christ. He uses the setting and their religious mind set as a point of common ground to introduce them to the One true God.

For strict entertainment purposes I feel that this was a good movie, but not something I would let my young children watch. It did have some scary moments and the theological perspective is not what I feel my kids are ready for. In a couple of years when I can sit down and talk these issues through with my oldest in a more logical manner then I wouldn’t see this as being problematic, but for a 6 year old it just doesn’t fly with me.

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Today’s title bout features two super heavy weights in the emotions that drive us. I wrote the following for our local paper on behalf of another organization that submits a weekly column to the paper.

***

For one human being to love another that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof; the work for which all other work is but preparation.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Love is eternal where lust is temporary. This is a plain and apparent fact as easily seen as the nose on my face, which is quite noticeable from even a great distance. The problem comes when one confuses love and lust. Often people claim to be “in love” only to “fall out of love,” but in truth they were “in lust” which is as easy to fall in to as it is to fall out of. Consider the relationship between a parent and child. This should be our basis for understanding love because it is our first experience with love. Each party must fail severely and often before love might fail. Parents who truly love their children do so regardless of the choices the child has made and regardless of how painful those choices might be. Often terrible parents are loved by their children regardless of how much it hurts for that love to not be returned. Imagine if all relationships were so pursued.

Since love will always outlast lust, the lover must take time for lust to fade so that love might grow just as a great tree must grow slowly until the weeds around it die and it can be in full sun and grow great and true; then nurture that love through respect and care. Only after those first joys of lust have passed will a couple experience true love in their relationship, the kind of love that exists beyond the hurt and pain.

It is also true that love is patient and perseveres in all things. This is why waiting for love is the only way a relationship may endure. Often a person says to another, “If you love me you will …” but the truth is that if love exists, it will be patient and forgiving. Lust demands instant gratification where love will carry through to the end. Lust is a sprinter that expends all his energy in seconds while Love is in a marathon race and she knows to keep an even pace throughout so she will not tire too quickly or stumble in the many rough places along the way.

This is why so many relationships fail, love gets confused with lust. When those feelings of joy and giddiness fade the energy of lust is spent while love is just getting started. Love must be given time to grow in the absence of lust or it will never reach its maturity. This is a difficult process because lust is passionate and intense driving a couple to spend time together where love is kind and gentle liberating a couple to their own interests. In this, individuals growing in love must overcome themselves and spend time with their love so they might experience a deeper understanding of love. If the lover were to say to the beloved, “I just do not love you anymore,” the lover is lost in confusion. The lover meant to say, “I no longer lust after you.” Love is an endless ocean and lust is a desert wash. The rain will cause the wash to overflow and rage intensely but once the water has flown into the ocean the wash cracks with the desert heat. Follow the water into the ocean and love will never run dry.

In this season of love, consider that love gives while lust takes. Take the time to seek out the gifts of love. The gifts of love are not available at the store but can only be found in time, empathy, and compassion. These true gifts thrive in love but suffocate in lust. When you look into those special eyes and say, “I love you” please do not lie to your heart.

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It seems unfair that I only have one post currently marked as “My Experience As a Husband” considering that this is one of the biggest parts of my life. I love my wife dearly. We have been married for 10 years now and going strong. This Monday my wife will be celebrating her 30^th anniversary of birth. Of course this is 29 the sequel as my wife insists she is not turning 30.

I guess it is time for an introduction. My bride is Susan. She is not a geek, but she does love Science Fiction and Fantasy. We met when she was 15 and dated for 4 years before getting married. She was born and raised for a while in California. I like to joke about it but she was born on a farm. Technically she was born in a house on a chicken ranch that her grandparents managed in Mira Loma, CA. She still lived in CA when I was there as a young boy but moved to Arizona at 11 and then to Oregon at 14. June 18^th 1999 when she was 15 her family arrived in Oklahoma. The following day we met at Youth Camp. We are the exception that proves the rule.

We have had hard times including losing 3 children through miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. Statistically we should have been driven to divorce but through it we have been driven closer together instead of apart. I wish I could figure out what makes our marriage work and give that to others, but the truth is we work because God holds us so long as we refuse to let go.

As I go forward I plan on writing more about my lovely bride and our marriage.

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I should be putting up one of my fiction posts but I really want to get through the vacation, talk about King’s Fest, and get back on my regular schedual. The last time I walked about my vacation I was in Northern CA and my wife was in Southern CA. Of course it wouldn’t be a vacation if I didn’t get back to my wife so late Tuesday morning my FIL finished the project he had to work on for his non-ministry job and we headed to Southern CA. With stops it was over a 12 hour trip. We left about 11am and arrived to our location at 1am the next day. I drove most of the trip because my FIL has a bad habit of getting very drowsy behind the wheel but not saying anything. When he starts looking tired and drifting I ask if he is ok, but he always says he is fine. Makes me very nervous so I’d rather just drive.

After arriving at 1am we had to wake up at 6am to head in for the first day of Disney Land. It was a bit overcast but that was actually kinda nice. At some point I sent a tweet via my phone stating MILs shouldn’t be at Disney with you. At another point I sent a tweet out asking why emos would be at Disney Land since it must be against their code or something. I didn’t see many but there were a few.

We had a great first day. Unlike many theme parks, my kids could ride most of the rides. There were a couple they couldn’t, like the Indiana Jones ride, but over all we could take them on far more rides than they weren’t allowed to go on. My oldest son enjoyed most of them, but my youngest daughter was scared of a lot of them. We tried to decide if she would like the ride before we took her on, but she didn’t want to be left out and pitched a fit anytime we didn’t take her. If it was marginal we would give in to the fit and inevitably she would be scared and scream.

Honestly I’m not sure if she insisted on going on the rides because she didn’t want to miss out or if maybe she likes being scared. The way she screamed I would think it wasn’t something she enjoyed, but she kept going back for more. At one point she went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and was terrified. I thought this one would be ok but she hates getting splashed with water. There are a couple of small drops and she got a tiny bit wet. Later there is a wall of fog that the project a waterfall onto so as we went under she started screaming, “no, no no, not again.” I tried to get her to touch it just before we went under but she wouldn’t. She did pretty good through much of the ride.

My oldest daughter wanted to ride everything. I mean everything. Even the rides she wasn’t quite big enough to ride she begged to ride. Her favorite ride that she asked to ride over and over was the Tower of Terror. This is an elevator ride themed after the Twilight zone. It is all very creepy on the wait and when u get on the ride you sit in a seat with just a lap belt. Then the elevator goes up in the dark and you watch a couple of segments. One is a “mirror” that shows everyone on the ride then it gets weird and distorted. The next shows people getting into the elevator and disappearing into lightening. Then you rise to the top and the elevator doors open overlooking the park. After a short wait you drop then rise and drop and bounce up and down then go all the way up and back down. My 5 year old daughter couldn’t get enough of this ride. My oldest son didn’t care for it and my wife didn’t either, so I had to take my daughter on the ride a couple of times.

Next I’ll share about meeting characters on our last day at Disney.

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Yeah I had a 2 week trip but definitely not a vacation. I think the problem is a difference in how that word is defined. My MIL, who I talked about extensively yesterday, seems to think that doing things other than work is the same as a vacation. I tend to think of a vacation as something that should be both fun and relaxing. I’m not opposed to doing things, but I like to enjoy what I’m doing, not just mark off a list of things that I have done.

Let me give a couple of examples. I wanted to visit the redwood national forest. Turns out there are more than one and more than one kind of giant redwood. Did you know that? Yeah I learned that a couple weeks ago. We went to the costal redwood forest between San Francisco and Eureka on our 10 year anniversary. Honestly I’m ok with that. I would have enjoyed spending the day walking trails with my wife. At one point this kids needed to go to the bathroom so my in-laws took them while we walked ahead on the trail we did walk. I got to have a nice 20 minute walk before the kids caught up with us. I really enjoyed it. The problem is that this was just the morning stop on our way to Eureka and we made a couple more stops on the way before having lunch and watching a movie in Eureka and then eating dinner before driving several hours to where we stayed. It was a series of check lists of things we needed to do for the “vacation”

I could plan a two week vacation visiting the giant redwoods so an hour was just stressful.

The one thing I kept saying I wanted to do was take my kids to the beach for a day at the beach. I wanted to let them play in the sand and water and experience the tide coming in so this is a daylong event in my mind. The date for this trip kept getting shuffled around to accommodate other things and in the end it was relegated to the Saturday after 3 days of Disneyland before a birthday party for my wife’s grandmother. It wasn’t worth it to me to drive 2 hours to the beach to have just enough time to let the kids stick their feet in the water before driving 2 hours back for a party. So the one thing I did want to do didn’t happen.

Tomorrow I’m going to start talking about what we did do and there was a lot of fun in what we did. I just need to get this off my chest. I know some people like this kind of vacation. They want to go to Hawaii and do a million things. In the end they have more memories but in my opinion they didn’t experience Hawaii. When I went I tried to limit what we did to one thing a day. We were there for 2 weeks and did a lot. I made a point of being in the ocean every day the entire trip. We saw all the major must see attractions but also found a few obscure sights that we had to hike to. It was the best vacation I’ve ever had because we got to experience the island instead of marking off a dozen things on a check list each day.

I saw an ad for a tour bus. They went on about all the things you would see and how much time they spent at each location. At one point they said you get to spend 90 minutes in the national forest that the trip was named after. It seems my mother-in-law would love to go on tour buses. A lot of people would love to go on tour buses. That is why they have these tours and good for them, but I’m not like that. I want to explore and find things. I want to ask a local about the best place to eat on the cheap. I want to walk through a city not drive. I’m just weird I guess.

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Have a very merry un-vacation …

Ok or something like that. Actually there were a lot of good things about my vacation but it was more than a little stressful. I want to share a lot of the good things including pictures, but I don’t want to really mix the good with the bad so I’m gonna pull all that out right here right now.

Let me just say that 2 weeks was neither long enough and way too long. It wasn’t long enough because there are things I wanted to do that we didn’t have time for and it was way too long because of all the stuff we did do. My mother-in-law (MIL) is the root of most of the problems. She isn’t a terrible person, but she is pretty self-centered and thinks I’m a villain. Seriously.

When my wife and I were dating she told everyone to pray for us to break up because I was a witch or satanist. She thinks anyone “evil” is a witch or satanist. She thinks I’m abusive to my wife and children now. She has often told me and my wife this. Needless to say her outlook taints her view of me. For years I tried but I pretty well gave up. I don’t go out of my way to make her mad but I’m not out to make her happy either. In the end she gets mad at me either way so I just don’t waste my energy.

That is the background on the problem between my MIL and me. Of course that is the simple version. She just can’t help herself. It isn’t just me she is really mean to everyone but doesn’t get it. She told my sister-in-law that she wasn’t good enough for her son. My brother-in-law didn’t believe her but now my SIL will not stay in the same room as my MIL by herself.

Anyways, when we got there I was trying to play nice. I complimented my MIL right off the bat and she rejected the compliment. I was kind and courteous until she started complaining that my wife wanted to ride with me. It was the day before our 10 year anniversary. I had to put all our anniversary plans on hold because of this vacation which was scheduled to be convenient for my MIL. It is horribly inconvenient for me as any YP could tell you. My wife had been riding everywhere with my MIL and she wanted to come with me. My MIL pitched a huge fit and I just walked away. I wasn’t rude or hateful I just left.

Later I got into a fight with my wife and my MIL felt the need to get in the middle. This time when I walked away my MIL followed and kept getting in my face over it. I told her blatantly that I didn’t want to talk but she didn’t get the hint. I let her keep talking but didn’t even look at her much less talk. She went on and on and on then got mad because I wasn’t responding. She said, “what have I done to you to be treated this way?” Yes, I understand she was trying to be helpful but she can’t help when she won’t listen. She is busy trying to help the wrong thing because she refuses to listen.

That is really the heart of it all. She hears what she wants. She thinks I’m a villain so everything she hears is translated into villain speak. Tuesday we had to drive back to San Francisco and she wanted to take her sister into LA and go all over downtown LA. She wanted my wife and daughter to come and my wife told her yes, but that she wanted to leave before 1pm. The is reasonable because much later and it would take a couple hours to leave LA. My MIL wanted to stay there till 4pm because it was only a 6 hour trip. She wouldn’t listen and got into a fight with my wife. She kept asking my wife “what do you want to do?” My wife kept telling her she wanted to go but to leave by 1pm. My MIL would respond with, “what if I don’t want to leave that early” to which my wife got upset because my MIL would then ask what she wanted to do as if the question was never asked and answered before. Eventually my wife broke down and yelled “I’m sorry I’m a horrible daughter. I should just go kill myself.” Then she threw the phone she was holding and ran outside.

She eventually calmed down and my MIL talked with her but didn’t hear anything she said. I know because the end result was that she got her way but whatever.

On Sunday before this we were talking about something much the same and my wife kept telling her what she wanted but my MIL wouldn’t listen and kept saying what she wanted. My wife was getting frustrated so I tried getting her some space and told my MIL she needed time to think but my MIL accused me of trying to manipulate my wife. This whole time she was giving my very rude and hateful looks. She does this quite often because she wears her thoughts on her face and she is rarely happy. Her eyes were narrowed, her forehead scrunched, and her lips pursed. I know I shouldn’t have but after nearly 2 weeks of getting the look and getting griped out I had to burn off some steam. I started mimicking her face. She got really mad. I’ve made her more mad but I think this was the most angry I made her on this trip. Later she walked up to me and said, “I’m sorry.” So I told her, “I forgive you.” I knew she wasn’t sorry. She didn’t sound recalcitrant but I forgave her anyways. Then she said, “Now you’re supposed to say you are sorry.” Yep, there it is. She wouldn’t even say what she was sorry for because the point was to get me to apologize. I gave her the same apology she gave me and she fished for more. “You should say you are sorry for making faces at me.” Then she went on to explain that she can’t help it and so it is wrong and I’m not honoring her and I wouldn’t treat me own mother this way …. Of course it doesn’t occur to her that my mother would never treat me like that either. My mother wouldn’t treat anyone like that and she would reprimand me for treating my MIL like I did even if she did laugh after I left the room.

So the day we were leaving my MIL was trying to talk to me again saying we needed to work all this out. I’ve had this talk with her pretty much every trip. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. I guess I’m not as crazy as most people say because after running headlong into a brick wall enough times I give up and go around. I said pretty much that in nicer terms and kindly told her I didn’t really want to talk this through with her as we got ready to leave. She kept insisting so I told her a bit more bluntly that I have no need to try and work things out with her when she thinks I’m evil. She kept going and eventually said, “Well maybe I unconsciously make hateful faces but maybe you unconsciously try to stop me from being a grandmother.”

I think that gives a pretty clear picture of the problem. She thinks I’m evil and that shades her view of me and explains away her rudeness to me, but no matter what I do she has always thought I was evil. I know it isn’t just me. In fact, the fact that she treats most people like this assures me that I’m not the evil person she thinks. When everyone in the world is the problem maybe they aren’t the problem.

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As a minister I have already decided I will not perform a wedding unless I am satisfied with the premarital counseling the couple has received. This is a very important part of preparing for marriage. The simple truth is dating does not prepare a couple for marriage. Anyone that is married can validate this fact. To be honest, even good premarital counseling doesn’t completely prepare a couple for marriage. Most couples go into it thinking they already know what they need to know. “I love him/her.” That is enough isn’t it? Well, to be honest no it isn’t. There will come a time when you will doubt your love. There will come a time when you will be angrier than you thought you ever could be. That is what happens when you are close to a person. You open yourself to them and little things that wouldn’t bother you in a friend or dating type of friend will drive you crazy in a spouse.

The biggest problem, though, is that even couples that go through premarital counseling don’t think about how to continue to strengthen their marriage down the road. Most professions require additional training and certifications as long as you are in the career. Sure, you can be in many entry level type jobs without continuing education but who wants a marriage equivalent to flipping burgers for a living. I’m not knocking that job but let’s be honest. It is a much better job for teens and college students than for someone in their 30s or 40s.

All marriages will benefit from regular counseling, seminars, or other marriage building sessions. A good marriage will get better. In fact a couple in a good marriage is probably involved in some kind of program to improve their marriage. Maybe they read couple books together or try to go on marriage retreats once a year. They might actually go to a church couple’s class or some other kind of class like that. The point is that they understand that a good marriage takes work. We can always learn new things about our spouse and ourselves. Couples that think that going to something is admitting a problem probably have a problem they are trying to cover up. Those kind of problems will eventually come out and usually in a bad way that leads to the marriage dissolving.

If you are planning on getting married then make sure you get good premarital counseling. If you are married then get involved in building a stronger marriage even if you think you have a strong marriage. Start now before you have a problem.

What kinds of things have you done for your marriage lately?

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I haven’t had much time to rest in the past couple of weeks. We had a pretty fun bit of puky sick going through my wife and kids last week plus our v-day event and our 24-7 prayer week next week on top of all my normal sort of stuff.

I’ve been pretty blessed that I didn’t have to miss any with sick myself. Sure I did feel a bit queasy the other day but I think that is because my daughter puked on me and that can make most anyone feel a bit ill.

I took today off and my wife wanted to go shopping. I really need to buy some new clothes and we have a couple of gift cards to spend on clothes. This morning I wake up feeling ick and not at all like making a shopping run.

My wife puts up with quite a bit but she isn’t that in to it when I cancel shopping trips. Oh well I’ll make it up to her another day. Not much I can do when my body finally gives in to all the nasty traveling through the family.

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