Loss of Identity in Marriage

A common theme among some ‘spherians this week is loss of identity in marriage, specifically wives, who allegedly should loose theirs in the name of elevating the status of their husbands and being godly women

Allow me to plainly state, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. In this tangled mess of vines, roots, trees, and who is the bigger stick, blech. Which than begs the question, why do I read this dross and try to understand? I suppose because I am curious about why the world is rejecting both marriage and Jesus Christ Himself, and also recoiling in horror, rejecting the very idea of men leading in anything, at anytime.

Somebody smart gave me a piece of armor to use when wading through this muck, keep your eyes on Christ, and look to your own husband as an example of the sweetness to be found in marriage, in the character of men, in love the way God designed it. Ahh, both of those concepts soften my well armed heart…..

Anyway, loss of identity in marriage can be a real challenge, for both men and women, and no it is nothing to dismiss, demean, or ignore. It happens sometimes for a season, sometimes in the midst of raising children and life’s chaos, you become somebody’s mother, somebody’s wife, until you are really no longer a person in your own right. Hubby and I frequently refer to each other as “mom” or “dad” and honest to goodness it is because I have gone and forgotten the poor man’s name. He is really no better, a few times he has told the children did you ask “that woman?” What woman? The one that lives here, the one you call mom. What the heck is her name again??

I am very blessed because my husband has always had some awareness of the danger that can come from completely losing yourself, your sense of identity and personhood. Who you are outside the definition of wife, mother, sister, daughter. We are not our work, we are not our families, we are actually people in our own right. People with needs of our own.

Marriage, one flesh is not actually about being absorbed, grafted in, erased, it is about becoming a better version of yourself. It is about being the kind of person that attracted your spouse to you in the first place, and then amplifying and improving on that. It is about coming together, the two parts becoming greater as a whole. Symbiosis. Marriage lifts us up, it elevates us, it does not erase us.

This is similar to the way Christ takes the essence of who we are and makes us better, calls us to our higher selves, fixes what is broken. The fragrance of who we are, the essence of our being is not erased in the process, although some of us may hardly recognize ourselves when He is finished.

Jack Nicholson has a great quote in a movie where he says, “so many men complain about how their wives are dead inside, cold, how they’ve changed….and they’re the ones that killed her!”

Oh such harsh words, but words of wisdom indeed. It is in the nature of women to start to take on the identity of our families, our husbands,  our children, and to risk losing ourselves in the process.

I sometimes think of Eve, she seems to have forgotten who she was, the daughter of a most high God, having an identity in Him, a lapse which made her really vulnerable to, did God really say that? In essence Eve is so busy feeding her husband, gathering fruit, and talking to serpents, she is ripe for the plucking. You have no identity Eve, let me give you one, hisses the serpent.

As I’ve said, I’ve been so very blessed. Hubby has always known that someday the kids will grow up and move on and it will be just him and I. There must be enough “him” and “I” left over to keep that attraction going.  That sweet fragrance of who we are, the essence that entwined us must be preserved, because that is what draws us towards one another.

It is so vitally important that men, rather than tamping down and squashing their wives, lift their own selves up higher and encourage her to do the same. Leadership is a launching pad, not a lid.

Ahh, the authoritarians...

For those who lament the lack of church discipline, the rebellion of wives, the authoritarians who say such unkind things to me sometimes, those who blame women for all the ills of the world, those who try to create Christ in their own image, harsh, judgmental, controlling, ready to pounce and punish us all…

I wonder however, how do you not see the tangled nature of it all, the symbiosis at play? Feminism and militant atheism for example, not something that just sprung up out of a vacuum, but an emotional response to what was often unjust church discipline. The way all those beautiful scriptures about marriage and submission, were perverted and used against women to justify abuse. All those who preached chastity from the pulpit on Sunday morning…. and yet raped our children. Those who continue to this day to shriek about whores and Jezebels and rebellion….but cannot even see their own.

We did not listen to the least of these, which means we did not listen to Him.

Oh, and speak to me of the prosperity ministers on TV with their private jets, those flying the rainbow flag high above the cross, and those who have edited Christ out of the church entirely, least He cause offense.

Or those who preach racism and hatred and pervert my beautiful scriptures..

I don’t know how you fix it all, but I watch us swing from one extreme to another, the love of Christ all but forgotten in many quarters, until I am uncertain I even want to be standing near a church when He returns.

I fear very little these days, but that I do fear, standing too close to those who do not know the love of Christ, those who misappropriate scripture. That fear does not surprise me but what does surprise me is the vast unchurched church that seems to share my fears, those believers who claim nature is their church, those stunning views more comforting cathedrals than a little building with people in it. Christ’s people. They fear standing too close to Christ’s people! I wish that truth weighed heavier on our hearts.

I think too much, I care too much, I analyze these things like a scientist, always wanting to collect the data so we can get about the business of fixing a broken world. Last week someone led a prayer for wisdom and I laughed wryly, oh be careful what you pray for, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find…..but you won’t always like it! Wisdom is a heavy burden to bear indeed, because the knowing is not the same as the doing. There is a special kind of torment in seeing and understanding….and yet still being powerless to do anything at all except standby and watch helplessly. They didn’t call Jeremiah the Weeping Prophet for nothing.

These days I don’t pray for wisdom, I pray for the bliss of ignorance, for the freedom to enjoy the simple things, and in His kindness He often grants me exactly that, moments of rest for my soul.

And yet eventually He always calls me back, that still quiet voice whispering urgently, Listen to Me…..Make them Listen to Me…

I do not know how to speak to deaf ears, how to show eyes that cannot see, how to speak to a world that will not listen, and time marches on without mercy, closing in on us all. Time is of the essence, there is an urgency here, a deadline that will not be met.

These are the things that weigh heavy on my soul as we enter into all hallows eve, the high holiday of the dark things, all twisted up in frivolity and light heartedness, that odd merging of sexuality, death, and violence that is so often seductive, the sexy vampires and dolled up zombies, and the more serious gathering of witches, wiccans, and outright satanists right here in the 9th circuit of hell.

I am such a wet blanket these days, what should be a parade of silly of zombies is actually everyday life with meth and heroin addicts, the sores, the wasting away, the falling out teeth. I pass zombies on the street everyday and take little joy in them. And the vampires, the emotional and spiritual ones, as well as those who do drink blood, they are repulsive, not endearing.

All in good humor however, there is a half constructed dead body in my living room, yet another uncompleted project abandoned by my child. Surely my daughter, I taught you better than this! One simply does not leave their dead bodies laying about the house where others may trip over them….

Listen to Me, He whispers, lighten up and do not let the melancholy roll in like the gloomy drizzle and overcast. Do not despair, I got this thing. He does you know. He’s got this thing. All that is required of me is to be a sweet and pleasing fragrance unto Him, that soft whisper that reminds one of lily of the valley.

Those who insist on trying to perceive me as the enemy, don’t even understand the nature of the war.

"Ownership of the Christian Message?"

Barry has been engaged in an interesting discussion called Ownership of the Christian Message in which all the various forms of Christianity are being looked at. Which then begs the question, how do you cope with all these different views and how do you know which one’s are true?

I’ll tell you how I cope, I tend to descend into complete hysterics and start shrieking about moral ambiguity while tossing teacups at people’s heads. I only partially jest here, a world without any rules at all where anything goes is a bit like free-falling through the universe and sure to evoke complete panic in someone already as melodramatic as I am.

Keep in mind that I am not talking about slight variations in doctrine, like the way some  believe the Lord’s prayer says “forgive us our sins” while others believe it is “forgive us our trespasses” and still others believe it says “forgive us our debts.” These are trivial things in a world run by insane clowns, let me tell you. No I’m speaking of things like the atheist church or those who don’t believe in the Divinity of Christ or those who have removed Christ from the picture entirely. I call these people “-ians.”

Barry mentions some “clergy who have taught that belief in the Resurrection, Christ’s divinity, and God as a being, are not essential to the Christian faith.” Yes, this is a real thing in the world, although somewhat rare because that is so contrary to the entire foundation of faith. From Catholic to protestant, through all denominations, there is one thing that unites us all and that is the Divinity of 

Christ, His resurrection, and our own salvation through Him. That is the basic fundamental message. Take that away and no, you cannot be a Christ-ian. Look at the word there.  Now some may well call themselves disciples, followers, prophets, or saints, but we’ve all got the Divinity of Christ in our minds and hearts.

Everything from that point forward becomes a matter of belief, study, opinion, the language you speak. You do not really have to believe in creationism or the end times or hell or even in the trinity. This is all just background noise, feedback from the speakers, or perhaps the spices and flavors we add to our food. It is not the bread itself. Accepting the Divinity of Christ and surrendering to your need for redemption, is often called justification. Sanctification is a word sometimes used to describe the process of allowing Him to do His work within you. Faith is a process, we are all works in progress.

Outside the context of faith and theology, and into the realm of emotion and psychology, there is this thing called spiritual abuse. There are people in the world who call themselves Christians, who abuse children, who condemn, ostracize, and bully others, and they do it under the guise of faith. Good grief, this is an appalling thing that will truly mess with your head. I have a powerful faith, I am not a child, and it still messes with my head. This is an issue that truly pushes my buttons. It is wrong to abuse others, but to attempt to separate and alienate them from their Creator just takes it to a whole new level. The harm that can be done there is just astronomical. These days it seems as if many people coming to faith actually have to first unlearn things, rather than to learn things. That is not so easy.

I’m reminded that scripture addresses this issue in a myriad of ways, from clearly stating that those who lead others will be held twice as accountable, to making it quite clear that “whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.” There are wolves in sheep’s clothing and false teachings. In the bible Christ Himself spends a great deal of time addressing the religious leaders of the day, the pharisees. In the final chapter of the bible, Christ does not have a bone to pick with prostitutes, addicts, and atheists, He has a bone to pick with churches. It is not the lost who are accountable for Christ’s word, but rather the found.

So in answer to ownership of the Christian message, it belongs to those of us who claim Him name. Now needless to say Christians cannot control the actions or behaviors of everyone, but if we are talking in a moral and spiritual sense, I believe we are all called to get the word out and to properly represent the faith, to heal some of those spiritual fractures, and to speak up when we see something wrong. Once again, it is not the lost who are accountable for Christ’s word, but rather the found.

Spiritual abuse however, is not doctrine, it is not faith, and it is not the church. The personal is not political. One’s experiences and suffering at the hands of others does not define all of Christianity. Christ is to be our representative, not some lost or abusive soul professing His name.

So how do you discern, how do you know what is Truth? You go straight to the Source, you ask Christ into your heart and you invite Him to teach you. You humble yourself and you allow Him to speak to you in a language you understand. You pray, you read the bible, you allow the Holy Spirit to fill you and teach you and guide you. You avail yourself of bible studies and other believers, of church, always remembering who is at the top of your relationship, whose favor your seek. Christ should always be first.

This entire discussion, all the confusion over what to believe, the uncertainty over who owns the Christian message, all stems from putting people in Christ’s place, from not recognizing who the Source of our faith really is, from transferring authority from Christ over to a group of believers or a denomination….or over to people who abused you while professing His name.

It is both simple and complex, but if you truly wish to discover the Truth, you let go of all that you think you know, you surrender yourself to Christ, and you allow Him to light your path. It is a leap of faith, but you can trust that He will show you the way and order your steps.

Will you ever be asked to change how you perceive something or what you believe in? Most likely. Will He ever lead you astray? Nope, not ever, not if it is Christ who leads you.

If He Truly Loved Us....

A common theme spoken by non believers is that they simply cannot allow themselves to believe in a God of love, if that same God would allow us to condemn ourselves to eternal torment. Yes, I said, “condemn ourselves,” because really we have free will here and can avail ourselves of all the love and salvation that is being offered to us at any time. He doesn’t really condemn us, we condemn our own selves.

The whole idea reminds me a bit of someone who is drowning and there is a lifeboat and we refuse to get in it because “if you truly loved me, you’d pick me up and put me in it, whether I had the good sense to climb aboard or not.”

“If you truly loved me…..” probably a love test women are more likely to be familiar with than men, because sometimes we do like to test those waters.

So how could God possibly standby and watch us condemn ourselves to eternal torment? I don’t know, but sometimes I wonder how naive one must be to not recognize that this is precisely what many of us are called to do, although on a much smaller scale. Ever watch a loved one waste away with drugs and alcohol, completely powerless to do anything about it?

Ever cared for a diabetic who refuses to manage their diabetes, knowing full well exactly what awaits them? Sores that won’t heal, infection, eventual amputations, blindness, organ failure. Or we could probably avoid all that and just change your diet a bit, exercise, regulate your blood sugar. Forgetaboutit, often people prefer to just do things their own way, the hard way. I don’t know why, but I’m not any different.

It’s a bit amusing in its tragedy, but I can’t tell you how many people I have tried to educate, tried to explain that if you are lucky to live long enough, you will begin to slowly decompose from the inside out, doomed to lose toes, a leg, both legs, until eventually you will die. The answer is nearly always, “Shut up lady, and just hand me my snickers bar.” And yet still I persist, love compels me to, to beg, to plead, to flatter, to cajole, to pray, to use every skill I have to offer to win them over, often to no avail.

It’s sad, life is full of enough things that are genuinely out of our hands, things we simply cannot control. It makes no sense to me that we would then bring additional misery down upon ourselves by being so stubborn and yet we do, all the time. Even I do.

If He really loved me…… He would show up in person and prove His existence so I could be free of doubt.

If He really loved me……..He would know who and what I am and take my choices away so I don’t hurt myself.

If He really loved me…….He would end all the suffering in the world so I don’t have feel bad about it.

If He really loved me………He would not expect me to be accountable for my own choices.

It’s somewhat fascinating, authentic love actually requires all four of those things. There must be some doubt, some freewill, some suffering, some accountability. Without those four things, there is not authentic love, but rather a cheap imitation.  Without doubt there can be no gratitude, but only a sense of entitlement. Without free will, it’s not love but rather Stockholm syndrome. Without suffering there will be no empathy. Without accountability and personal responsibility, love becomes nothing more than narcissism, selfishness. We often tend to want love on our own terms by our own definition, but God’s love really is perfect, far more perfect than we often understand.

He created us, placed us in paradise, laid beauty at our feet, breathed life into us. Even when we betrayed Him, he gently clothed us in skins and set us forth to make our way in the world. When we again betrayed Him, he still did not annihilate us all, but made arrangements to salvage what was left of us. Then He came down here, walked in our shoes, empathized with us, experienced what we experience, faced temptation, grieved over what He saw. Then He was betrayed again and He willingly died for us, suffering on our behalf, so we would not have to pay the price, not have to suffer the consequences of our own actions. He died for us. What greater love is there??

And yet some still insist on trying to say, well, if He really loved us…….

The question is all wrong. The question should be, what kind of a moron would reject such clearly proven love and why?? Don’t be offended, compared to God, we’re all morons. If He really loved us……If one cannot see how much He truly does, the error is on our end. Always.

Things I Wish I'd Known as a New Wife

1. Men and women are different and do not speak the same language. 

There’s an old joke in our house, once while I was cleaning the oven my husband got frustrated with me and said “I don’t care about the oven, all I need is bacon, sex, and the remote control!” It’s a funny memory because he was totally serious, but my brain at the time could not conceive of anyone having such simple needs. I honestly believed he should be pleased with my oven cleaning efforts. Why? Because I would be pleased if someone cleaned my oven! But men are not us, men tend to value different things.

2.Men and women perceive love differently. 

 It’s a terrible injustice but what men tend to need in a marriage is respect, encouragement, and sex. All I really need is provision, protection, guidance, wisdom, someone to address my emotional life, identify my needs, build intimacy, establish trust, create loyalty, provide romance, encourage, nurture, support…..are your eyes glazed over yet? Oh, and also I am insane, so in my case those issues are going to be a bit more complex.

All in good humor here, but those needs of mine seem perfectly reasonable to me. That is how I relate to other people, that is how I express love. That is often how women relate to each other. Should be a piece of cake, we do it all the time. This is a perfectly normal way of being in the world! Men however, are not women and it is not reasonable or fair to expect them to be. Men have their own way of loving women and it is really rather sweet, but we have to give them room to express it.

Good husbands often get to know their wives very well and will grow into being able to meet many of those needs, over time. Just as I learned that cleaning the oven was not an effective way of earning my husband’s favor, men too adapt and learn how to respond to their wives. My husband now knows me better than I know myself.

3. Men really need to feel respect to feel love. 

To this day, nearly 3 decades into marriage, this one still throws me sometimes. It is simply not my world so sometimes I forget, but it is genuinely important for men to feel respected by their wives. It is so easy to make a glib joke or an off hand remark and hurt them. It is so easy to unconsciously undermine them. Men need to know that they have great value and worth in our eyes and we have to show them. How we perceive husbands means everything to them. To not have a woman’s respect is actually painful.

4. Men have to teach their wives. 

That’s probably politically incorrect to say in a world that seems to want to resist all implications of authority, but how else are wives to know what husbands need and want? We are not mind readers either (although we are better at the mind reading than you are.)

Consider this young man I know wryly telling me recently how his wife looks at him with such disgust in her eyes when he comes home from work. He’s now avoiding her, he’s becoming unhappy, there is tension there. So has he talked to her? No! Well sorry, but you’re going to  have to actually talk to your wife! I honestly have no idea what is going on there, maybe he is tracking mud in the house, maybe her face is just frozen that way, or maybe she’s trying to get a reaction out of you. Regardless, ignoring it won’t make it go away and she may well be twice as frustrated as you are simply because you are completely ignoring her. Do  not try to live that way, speak up.

Hubby and I are quite playful these days and know each other well, but there have been many times he’s had to speak up because I had no idea I was doing something to offend him. A few times I knew perfectly well and just didn’t care. Turns out he doesn’t like that either.

4. Contempt is the enemy. 

 There are some studies coming out now that seem to verify that precise thing, that the leading cause of divorce is actually contempt. I see that reflected in the world around me, too. Contempt can be a sneaky bugger, women especially can slide into it, because it’s a tool we have, it’s the opposite of respect and it has the power to wound. Also, our culture currently promotes a great deal of contempt towards men, almost as a way of life. Contempt however, kills love, on both sides of the equation. Men do not feel respected and women do not feel safe.

One thing I did get right, I knew to put my relationship with Christ first. There is a hierarchy there and Christ is always at the top. When people get that wrong, we can start to put unrealistic expectations on our spouses, start to believe that they should be able to fulfill us and meet all our needs in a way that really only God can. Marriage really can be the most amazing tango and spouses can become very near and dear to us, but we love from an overflow, not a deficit.

                              

"Biblical submission is Not Passivity"

I promised another post on submission within marriage, but the Peaceful Wife has many lovely articles that address these issues even more thoroughly. Here is a link to one I enjoyed in which she dispels some misconceptions “Biblical Submission is Not Passivity.” Here is a key phrase I really liked, “from this position of great strength in Christ, we submit to our husbands.”

My own words often reflect that  idea too, submission is actually strength in Christ, it is not weakness before men. It is actually an empowering tool for women that allows you to have a more peaceful marriage, enables communication, and helps to facilitate more love and empathy between husbands and wives.

There are many misconceptions about wives being doormats or Stepford wives and marriages being dictatorships, prone to abuse. It’s kind of sad, biblical concepts of submission are so maligned and misunderstood, some people reject them out of hand, and some women reject faith entirely based simply on those misunderstandings.

Another way to look at the word “submit” is that it simply means “to yield.” The opposite of submit is actually “to engage in battle.” There’s nothing wrong with a bit of friendly competition between the genders, a good water fight or wrestling match, but to be “engaged in battle” as a way of life within marriage is exhausting and tends to make everyone miserable.

Submission plays well with natural biology, even outside of the context of faith, and it tends to bring out the best in men and women. There are two forces at work there, the male and female. All in good humor here, but those two forces play very well with each other when they are in harmony and working in a complimentary manner.

When a wife says something like “I will never, ever submit to his authority!” it kind of makes me laugh, because you already have, or at least you are halfway there if you have married someone! “Authority” however, is another word that tends to conjur up all kinds of resistance and negativity. Like it or not however, there is authority granted in marriage. Just from a legal perspective you have now granted a husband authority over your debts and finances, authority over your health care decisions, authority over many aspects of your health and well being. They are now responsible for those things simply from a legal perspective. From a Christian perspective, their responsibility extends even farther.

To grant somebody all of the responsibility and yet to deny them any authority, is actually somewhat cruel. I’ve been in that situation myself, where I have been expected to take on all of the responsibility for everything that can go wrong, but was granted none of the authority that might have enabled me to actually have some influence and say in the matter. It’s kind of an exploitative, unpleasant situation to find oneself in. I referred to my job title as scapegoat, because that is really what I become, someone  designated to take all of the blame with no power or influence.

It can be really beneficial for wives who resist the idea of submission within marriage to really explore what that means and what is going on within you. There can be great healing that comes from taking that journey, from facing our fears, from exploring our perceptions about authority, and from contemplating our trust issues. It not only can help us to get to know the nature of our own selves better and lead to happier marriages, it can strengthen our relationship with Christ Himself.

Why E-Books Stink

Actually e-books don’t stink, they smell like nothing. Gone is the stale musty scent of times gone by, the faint hint of vanilla and old ink.

You cannot get disgusted at an e-book and hurl it against a wall. There are people walking in the world who will never know the deep satisfaction that comes from slamming the receiver on an old telephone down, or hurling a book against the wall. That is sad.

You cannot comb garage sales and back alley bookstores seeking some ancient and well-loved copy of a rare e-book, some obscure piece of pulp fiction or a trashy little bundle of sci/fi, covered in dust and yellowing about the edges.

With e-books, there’s no reason to leave your home at all.E-books, well they self destruct. They cannot go missing for 40 years in someone’s attic only to be discovered among the cobwebs like some rare and priceless treasure, long hidden in a desert tomb.

You cannot tear the pages out of an e-book. This is an exceedingly cruel situation to find oneself in, especially when the author has done something with a character you do not like. How can I fix it for you, if I cannot tear out your pages and shred them?

You cannot write in the margins of an e-book. How can I possibly correct your grammar and cheap editing if I cannot scribble all over your work? There are things that must be said, notations made, sentences underlined. Who pours indifference over a book and refuses to converse with it? Who does that??!

E-books can die on you right in the middle of the best part! There is nothing worse than being threatened with a low battery right when you are about to get to the crux of the matter.

With a paperback one can always light a candle or get a flashlight when the power goes out. With an e-book, one is compelled to travel for miles just to find a public restroom with an electrical outlet so as to continue the story.

E-books lack the scars of love, the stretch marks and coffee stains that come from being well-loved and well shared. There are no torn covers, no wrinkles and finger prints that reveal this delicious little book once shared intimacy with others.

There are people who will never catch a whiff of an old cigar, the stale musty scent of times gone by, the faint hint of vanilla and old ink. People who will never know the joy of blowing off the dust, tucking those brittle yellow pages back into their spine, and lovingly caressing your new-found treasure.

That is very sad.

I, however, have known all these things and have inhaled the joy to be found there, devoured the contents within, and when disappointed, hurled the thing at the wall. How do I explain these things to my children and grandchildren, these secret things that are being lost and stolen, these moments they will never understand?

Red Pill Epiphanies

I’ve written about the manosphere several times, and frequently the red pills. Red Pills are a subset of the manosphere, this group of men and a tiny handful of women who use a lot of Matrix terminology to support a kind of cult like mentality that revolves around masculinity, generally male superiority in all things. I’ve written rather hysterically about some of the “Christian” red pills when it has become obvious to me that some have strayed so far from scripture as to send me into a full-blown anxiety attack. These are not small theological quibbles, but rather huge and unmistakably problematic themes like we don’t believe in love, Christ, several books in the bible, or women in general. From there we progress to “pour your hatred over them all..”

Not all mind you, I do not paint all so-called red pills with the same brush, but many of them.

So Roosh, one of the foundational forces of red pill ideology has apparently become a victim of the very cult like mentality he helped to create. He has now been kicked out of the middle school mean girls club, the red pill cult. That’s some comedic or perhaps karmedic justice right there.

My bad for laughing at the poor guy’s human foibles, foibles we all share, but you have to remember this guy has spent a decade trying to teach men game, pick up artistry, how to treat women as two-dimensional sexual beings unworthy of any respect. Also, he’s been pretty down on marriage and spirituality.

For those who don’t know, Roosh was on Dr Oz not long ago, has a strong internet presence, has written books, gives lectures etc. These are not small time bloggers I speak of, but rather people with a large following.

So Roosh appears to have had an epiphany of sorts. He has come out against the entire red pill ideology and decided to reject it completely and create this new thing called “neomasculinity.”

Okay, all mocking aside, I nearly cried when he wrote this, “Once a man has gotten his fill of casual sex, and is looking for deeper meaning in his relationships or satisfaction with life, the red pill has few answers..”

Dang Roosh, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell so many of you all along!! One cannot simply pour women into the abyss of one’s soul. As entertaining as that may appear to be, eventually there is nothing but emptiness to be found there.

Dare I hope?

He goes on to say, “There is no denying that game works, but it can’t exist in isolation without a complementary ideology that gives men life guidance besides just sex…..

Amen!

(and)… for one can easily see the folly of elevating the value of men while not doing the same for women..”

Dang, you make my heart sing, Roosh. Let’s take it a step farther, shall we? One cannot elevate one’s own self by repeatedly trying to tear down women. That becomes nothing but a race to the bottom.

In his comment section he goes on to speak of some issues with evolution and evo/psych theories. Like hypergamy perhaps?? Well knock me over with a feather, you don’t say??

So neomasculinity it is. From all appearances it seems as if someone has wisely managed to observe that evo/psych theories are often highly flawed, that not even men can find genuine spiritual fulfillment from endless casual sex, and that there’s a slight possibility that men actually have a higher purpose in the world.

I nearly sprayed my computer screen when I read this comment, “Neomasculinity? It was once called Christianity before it became the feminized Churchianity of today …”

Oh, oh, so, so close! Nevermind the hyperbole about alleged feminized churchianity, you have hit the nail on the head there! Christianity! What you seek is your higher selves, your Creator, fellowship with the other humans. Christ is calling you, the most perfect example of masculinity ever known to walk the face of the Earth. You don’t need red pills, or neomasculinity, you just need to read the darn book. It explains everything! It starts out with two naked people in a garden and ends in wedding. In between those pages are the best (and worst) examples of the character of men and women ever written. The bible is not only a guidebook on how to make your own way in the world, it is a blueprint for civilization.

It is a blueprint for love, too. Love, something so many of the lost boys don’t believe in anymore. That is what breaks my heart. Not just romantic love, but Godly love too, the kind that teaches you that you have genuine worth and value in the world. So much value that you were actually worth dying for.

Worth and value you all so desperately want to also see reflected back to you in a woman’s eyes.

Here is Roosh. I’m compelled to link to him out of respect, but that is not an endorsement. I’d sure welcome him as a brother in Christ, however.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the way we draw towards ourselves the validation of our own experiences and perceptions of reality. It is the story we tell about ourselves and the world around us.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. In a way it really is. We create our own realities, define the little individual planets we all live on. A bit like decorating, we will bring the things that match our decor, home with us. We are the interior designers.

Often we do this with little or no awareness. It is seldom a conscious thing. Our brains are simply taking in data and defining the world for us. See, here are the edges, parameters, boundaries. This is how the world around you IS. This is how other people are. Adapt, adjust, and survive. That is pretty much all our brains do. They don’t filter out this info, moralize it, or even ask if it’s true in the context of the greater world. Not unlike a computer, they simply provide us with data based on our experiences and perceptions.

We are the authors of our own stories however, we have the power within ourselves to change those scripts, to alter the outcomes, to redefine the data, to totally control and change our own perceptions. We are the dreamers of our own lives.

It’s a bit ironic, human nature appears to love control, we want the power, we envy authority, and yet most of us are terrified of seizing it. To seize authority over this one aspect of ourselves that we really do have control over, is to take personal responsibility. With that comes accountability, often tainted by shame, blame, and a keen awareness of our own inadequacies. We are not quite the cool unicorns we thought we were, we are vulnerable, flawed and subject to the whims of the world around us.

One of the greatest deceptions of all is this idea that resisting authority, our own and that of others, puts us in control. We deceive ourselves when we do this because what it really means is that we are bound, ruled by an unrecognized script, trapped in a perception malfunction. It’s a protective and defensive stance, we are walled off, usually as a result of some kind of wounding. It provides us the illusion of control, but it is only an illusion, a deception. In truth we are compelled to walk out a script that is replaying in our minds over and over again, even when we are not aware of it. That’s not freedom, it’s a type of bondage. It is not control, it is the result of having lost control.

As long as we remain in this state, we will continue to draw things towards ourselves that confirm our own biases. Confirmation bias is neither good or bad, it simply is. When we become aware of it and seize control and authority over it, it can be a powerful tool because what we seek, we shall find. What we desire, we pull towards ourselves. Seek good things for yourself.

Confirmation bias is a pretty powerful spiritual law. It can be downright uncanny. One of the easiest ways to spot it in action is in the world of dating and relationships between men and women. A woman who has a negative perception about men and herself will, without fail, date all five of the greatest yahoos in a 500 mile radius. She will confirm her biases about herself and about men in general and it will define her entire world. She will conclude, all-men-bad.

A man may well have five ex wives and spend all his days bemoaning the evil nature of women. He will fail to see that he is the only common denominator there, that rather than being a complete victim of the story he now is living, he is actually the author.

To say such things tends to raise people’s hackles. It’s strange, but we’re often far more comfortable perceiving ourselves as victims of a cruel world rather than as the authors of our own stories. We tend to struggle, resist, avoid seizing our own authority over these stories. It’s a shame too, because that is the one thing we are granted full control over. We cannot change events, circumstances, the world around us, but we sure can change our response to it and our response to it is everything. It becomes our entire universe, the little planet we orbit on, the dream we are dreaming about our own lives.

sanitized truth and fairytales

As a kid I was blessed to have gotten my hands on an ancient book of fairy tales, many ancient books actually, the original Nancy Drews, the Wizard of Oz. Some people don’t realize it, but these versions are different from what we see today. They have characters full of dimension, angst, suffering, sometimes a rare triumph and victory. We have edited and sanitized these stories, bringing them more in line with the political correct attitudes of today. The modern versions of Nancy Drew are so flat and two-dimensional, so full of stupid and boring, she has been rendered nearly impotent, transformed into something so unappealing many girls have no interest in her at all anymore.

I remember reading many of these tales and being horrified, traumatized even. But is that not the sign of a really good piece of literature? Isn’t it somehow wonderful to finish a book feeling as if you had just walked through those adventures yourself and to now look up and realize your very perceptions of reality itself have changed?

When it comes to fairy tales, disneyfication happened, sanitizing those tales into something pleasant and charming, something people would find appealing to share with their children. We don’t want any trauma here, no uncomfortable feelings, and certainly not any complex moral issues that might cause one to think too critically or to question anything. Also, everyone must always get their prince or princess and live happily ever after in a palace….

I’ve been known to run around singing like a teapot a la Angela Lansbury or trilling to the forest creatures like Snow White, so it’s not as if enjoying these versions are bad or something.

It’s simply that in the modern western world we now live a rather sanitized and insulated existence, walled off even from the nature of our own selves. Even love is now reduced to something akin to a Hallmark card, a somewhat flat and two dimensional thing involving receiving little commercialized tokens of affection and endless romance. It is no surprise we have so much divorce, so much unhappiness, so much frustration. Where’s my happily ever after, the trilling forest creatures, the palace I ordered??

In the Gift of the Magi, she sells her hair to buy him a chain for his watch, while he sells his watch to buy her some combs for her hair. Those somewhat comical stories of human foibles and sacrifice for love are all but forgotten today.

In the original Little Mermaid there is no fun loving Ariel. She gives up everything, her identity, her very life itself, just to taste what it is like to have a human soul, to suffer unrequited love. She sacrifices her very life just to know human suffering. She does not get her prince in the end, she sacrifices herself and finds God instead.

Cinderella isn’t really a story about true love and finding your prince, it’s a story about suffering and grief, about unfair circumstances and injustice and the cruelty of human beings. It’s about sexual competitiveness, power struggles, and the hierarchies of human nature. It’s a about preserving your soul and keeping your heart soft in the face of such challenges. It’s about the beauty to be found in suffering, graciousness, humility. “Cinderella,” the name itself, in all it’s different versions and translations, means one whose worth is not seen on the outside.

Beauty and the Beast is about sacrifice too, about letting go and learning how to love in the face of fear. Beauty must let go of all her preconceived notions, her fears and simply trust her heart, take a leap of faith. But the Beast must let go of Beauty herself and risk living under a curse for the rest of his life. There are lovely themes about freedom, sacrifice, and love, woven all throughout the original story.

These are such valuable and important life lessons to know, so I perceive the loss of these fairy tales as a kind of theft. We have been robbed of the truth about our own selves and deprived of the commonality of the human experience.

Pinocchio, he wants to be a real boy, but he is trapped in his own deceptions. Truth is something we as people tend to have a hard time with, always thinking we can improve the tale of ourselves, simply by retelling it in a fashion more to our liking.

Taking Responsibility For Marriage

Something I can hardly stand to read are the thoughts of married men who hate their wives and feel miserable, powerless, and trapped in their marriages. "I can't wait until I'm dead." Oh, brother.  People of any gender feeling miserable and powerless tends to annoy me, but men especially will push my buttons when they're in this state. I kid you not, I want to pitch things at their head.

So what do all these miserable married men have in common? They totally blame their wives. They blame society, they blame the very nature of women, and they certainly blame the horrid woman they're married too.

And in the process they hand all their power away! See, the problem with blaming somebody else is that you're telling yourself you have no power and no control over the situation, because it is now all about the other person.

The thing about blaming yourself, about believing you are fully accountable for the state of your marriage, is that it puts the whole situation back under your control. People don't like to do this, pride I suppose. Just typing that word "blame," I am aware of all the negative connotations. Heaven forbid we ever "blame" ourselves for anything. It's always someone elses fault. Just think, "blame equals power and strength," and perhaps it will be an easier pill to swallow. Like it or not, that's what leadership is all about. The buck stops here. We don't blame the privates, we blame the officers.

Even if you are married to the most awful person ever, blaming them adds to THEIR power and strength. If your spouse is truly a jerk, the last thing you want to do is hand them more power.

 

Now, flip this around, to the female side of things, when I was first married I really was a jerk. It was pretty much all about me, all of the time, and I wanted control. I did not empathize with my husband at all. I thought men were jerks, marriage was miserable, and I certainly blamed him for just about everything I possibly could. Honestly, I have no idea how he put up with me, but he did.

He didn't blame me, even when I was to blame.

What happened is I finally realized I was totally responsible for how happy or miserable my marriage was going to be. I had to humble myself to the possibility that it may be my fault. It was humbling but it was also unbelievably empowering. That's an interesting paradox within the framework of submission, but that is what strength in weakness looks like. Surrender all and you become incredibly powerful.

In 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 scripture speaks to this, "power is perfected in weakness" and "for when I am weak, then I am strong."

It's a bit amusing, lots of men on the internet complain that women today are not submissive enough and I just want to laugh. Submissive women are powerful women, so be careful what you wish for.  Read the book, it explains everything. There's this garden and these two naked people.... 

Also, those words Paul is speaking in Corinthians, those are words for men. Strength in weakness, it's not just for girls....

Anyway, men and women are not that different in regards to the amount of control and influence we have over our own relationships. It is tempting to blame the other person, but that is a position of weakness, devoid of all power. One problem we're seeing today is that people expect their spouse to make them happy and there is very little understanding of the nature of sacrificial love. When somebody fails to make us happy, there is an ugly amount of Ex-hate, man-hate, woman-hate, spouse-hate, which just fuels the whole deception and makes the world an unhappy place to live.

This is an issue that runs close to my heart because marriage rates are on the decline, divorce is rampant, and there are miserable people on my planet, disturbing my peace.

The Woman With The Perfume

The story of the woman with the perfume, the anointing of Jesus, is to be found in all four gospels, Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 7, John 12. The story varies slightly depending on who is doing the telling, but the essence of that message remains the same. The depth of meaning in those few short paragraphs, the lessons to be learned there, never cease to amaze me. It is a profound teaching and one that must have made a powerful impression on the disciples.

It's a lovely tale about a woman who takes the finest perfume, very expensive stuff, and pours it on the feet of Jesus and wipes it with her hair. It's a very submissive act, a gentle thing, a sign of great admiration and love, and perhaps longing and regret and grief. Jesus is not going to be with them much longer. Does she know this? I suspect so, some part of her is aware that time is short. She's been saving this perfume for a long time and perhaps she has asked herself, "what am I saving this for?" We do that with our nice things, tuck them away for a special occasion. This is perfume that could have been used for a burial, an attempt to show your honor and respect for somebody you loved that has passed on, but how sad if she had waited. Why should we not pay tribute to the living, let them know how much they mean to us, fill the air with the fragrance of our love?

Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.

The telling of the tale really reveals some things about the nature of men and women, about how we relate to each other, about the different ways we perceive the world. Each version of the event tells you a little bit about what's in the heart of each of those disciples. Matthew and Mark report the disciples were indignant about the woman's act. Luke wants everyone to know she was a sinful woman, a woman in that town who lived a sinful life. Some report she anointed Christ's head, some report His feet, most likely she did both.

John tells us about Judas Iscariot who is particularly peeved, on account of the fact that he has been dipping into the money bag and helping himself. Judas, who would later betray Jesus, is quick to point fingers and condemn this woman. In his eyes, she's just wasted the equivalent of a years wages, precisely his own sin. He himself has been siphoning off money, wasting it so to speak.

That is the teaching that really resonates with me in the re-telling of this event, the way we tend to judge others through the eyes of our own sin. We do like to project our own flaws and faults onto other people, almost as if they were mirror images of our own selves, and when we see our own selves reflected in another, we are often rather horrified by what we see.

"...whoever has been forgiven little, loves little."

Judas sees waste in this woman and thievery. Luke sees her alleged sinful past, likely of a sexual nature. John is amusing, he wants us to know that Martha was busy serving, while this woman apparently was not. But Martha is doing all the work, while this other woman is getting all the attention!

What Christ sees is incredibly profound. He sees everything, each of them attempting to project their own sin upon this woman. He also sees the beauty at his feet, the tribute she is paying to Him, the love she is showing. He knows what is in her heart too, and He does not let the disciples make ugly what she has done.

That taking of what is beautiful and attempting to make it ugly is such a typical and rather unpleasant characteristic of human beings. Jesus tells Luke, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown...whoever has been forgiven little, loves little."

She loves greatly, deeply, passionately, because she knows her own self, she knows her own sins, and she understands the depth and the power of Christ's love, the true meaning and value of forgiveness and acceptance and mercy.

Those who do not are simply caught in a pride trap, carrying a burden far too heavy for us to carry alone, so we are compelled to try and share the misery with others. The sad thing about that is that even if other people try to lay beauty at your feet, you cannot see it, because all you can see is your own self down there, looking back at you with eyes full of condemnation and judgement.

Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.

Observing My Husband in His Natural Habitat

If women’s brains are a bit like hamsters running on a wheel, it should be said that men make the most delightful lab rats. Women are, after all, natural born scientists, the whole world like our laboratory. For the most part, we are always observing, experimenting, testing theories, and on rare occasions, proving ourselves not only wrong, but downright stupid.

Science, registered trademark, is a compulsion of mine. I could not stop observing and testing theories even if I wanted to. Naturally biology, the science of love, is my favorite. Observing people can be quite fascinating.

I am compelled to document and share this week’s research, even though my husband would likely kill me, metaphorically of course, if he knew I were blogging about him. Regardless, in the interest of science, risks must be taken, sacrifices must be made.

Monday, 4 AM: test subject appears irritable, uncertain if this is some kind of territorial thing or due to our kitchen being too small. I wisely retreat behind the purple lilies in the dining room to observe from a safer distance. Now camouflaged, invisible, I resist the urge to intervene, even though the test subject appears to be making coffee all wrong. So very wrong. So. Very. Wrong. I am now practically sitting on my hands, resisting the urge to speak, watching my emotions float by while I desperately seek to regain my objective brain….

Monday 4:20 AM: the introduction of coffee to the experiment seems to have had a calming affect on him…and on me. Subject is now in possession of the remote control, stalking TV channels like prey to be hunted. I hear snatches of conversation as he methodically rejects each one. I inadvertently glance at the remote. He catches my eye and growls softly. Yep, I have good instincts, that territorial issue I observed in the kitchen? It’s a real thing. Got it, do not even look at MY remote.

Monday 4:35 AM: The sound of his coffee cup hitting the marble table startles me. He does it again as if he’s knocking two sticks together trying to make fire. Subject has apparently not yet developed any language skills. Perhaps in another hour… I sigh and take his cup to the kitchen for a refill. Prior observation has taught me that his cup will continue to rattle on the table every few minutes if it doesn’t have something in it. I don’t know what possesses me, but I bring his cup back and slam it down nearly as hard as he did. He glances up and grins at me, eyes twinkling. It’s a smile that lights up the room, a smile I would die for. I speak the first words of the day. “You’re such a jerk,” I say, but that’s not what I’m thinking at all.

Monday 5:40 AM: He’s calling me again, from the farthest part of the house. I weave my way past shoes on the floor, stacks of folded clothes, past the washing machine, through the kitchen, across the vast expanse of our dining room, until finally I arrive at our front door. He smiles again, that smile I live for, and says sweetly, “would you like the remote?” Wait..is the subject offering me his most prized tool?? There is some sort of ritual happening here that I do not understand, but I carefully reach for the remote before he quickly snatches it away. Oh, I get it, a game! I love games. Since I do not know the rules of this game, I decide to distract him with a kiss and sneak the remote out of his hands. It works! Mission accomplished.

I return to the house, now in full possession of this home’s most valuable asset, the TV remote. Alone now, I pour myself another cup of coffee and stare at the thing like a mystery waiting to be solved.

I scratch my head and realize I am completely clueless as to it’s purpose. I point the thing at the television and as if in perfect synchronicity, a perky news girl announces, “studies have proven that in healthy homes, mother’s control the remote 68% of the time.” I ponder this bit of information for a moment, imagining shooting the beast with a tranquilizer dart, wresting the remote from his unconscious hands. 

Observation has taught me that even when sleeping, the subject has one eye open and can move surprisingly fast. Perhaps like one of our modern day fem heroines, I could don a cat suit and drop kick my way to the remote?

I smile coldly, suddenly aware of the power of what I hold in my hands. Healthy homes, indeed. How dare you, my little twit? I aim my weapon at perky news girl and cut her off mid sentence, smirking as she dissolves into a million tiny pixels......