With My Body, I Thee Worship

Re-posting one more of my best. . .

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A while back, a phrase came into my mind (phrases do that to me, from time to time; it's my cross to bear), and it hasn’t left me alone ever since. It’s from an old, traditional form of the Catholic wedding service (incredibly geeky, I know, but what can I do?). Anyway, at one point during the vows, the bridegroom says to the bride: “With my body, I thee worship.”

With my body, I thee worship.

There is a real depth there, a real richness, that goes beyond merely “I love you,” or even, “I want to have a life and a family with you,” although those things are certainly included in it. It captures very well how I feel about my wife, and how I aspire to have my life be joined to hers.

On multiple levels, sex is an act of worship – Catholics would invoke the grace of the sacrament of Matrimony. But in a simpler, earthy sense, I can simply say that I mean to worship Jenn. Not, obviously, in the same sense in which I worship God – I would mean something like ‘reverence’, or ‘venerate’, or ‘honor’ or ‘esteem’, but none of those words capture the full sense of what I mean the way that ‘worship’ does. Jenn is worthy of veneration, just like, say, Catholic theology would say the saints are worthy of veneration, but she is the saint whose life is bound up with mine.

GK Chesterton wrote that being constrained to one woman was a small price to pay for the privilege of having even one woman, and that sense of reverential gratitude resonates deeply with me. Getting to know Jenn – really know her – is like being let in on a great mystery. As a Christian, I want to go “further up and further in” (to borrow a phrase from CS Lewis) – grow deeper in my love of God, and give myself more fully to Him. In an analogous way, I want to ‘go deeper’ in our marriage, and the life we have together. I want to know Jenn better, be known better by her, give my life more fully to her, and that begins to get at the ‘worship’ I aim to give her.

I have often remarked to Jenn that reproducing ourselves together is the coolest, most amazing thing we could ever do. In a way, it is the biblical 'one flesh' in its most concrete form (or, if you will, in our case, eight fleshes). I mean - think of it - we're making another PERSON out of the substance of the two of us, and our love for each other.

In Holy Communion, Catholics believe that we receive Christ directly into our bodies (there is a very earthy aspect to Catholic theology that I find immensely appealing). In an analogous way, we give ourselves, and receive each other, directly into our bodies when we make love, under the covering of the sacrament of Matrimony. It’s all so rich, I can scarcely say what I really mean.

With my body, I thee worship.

Utterly, completely awesome. . .

My Love

I started this blog a dozen years ago to talk about marriage and family life, as I've known them.  And to tell the world about the wonderful-ness of my wife.  So, I give you a two-for-one re-post in honor of Jenn's-and-my 38th anniversary. . .

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The Love of My Life

A few years back, a blogger wrote me an e-mail, in which she said, among other things, “You entered into marriage with the love of your life.” And I know what she was talking about. Jenn is indeed The Love of My Life, and blessed am I because of it.

A few years ago, Jenn had a little daily tradition - when I would come home at the end of the day and she heard the back door open just before dinner-time, she'd call out, “Is that The Love of My Life?” Which was wonderfully heart-warming for me. I'd usually respond by saying, “I sure hope so!” And as time went on, the younger kids joined in the fun. So that, when I opened the back door, 8M would often come running; when he saw that it was me, he’d run to Jenn, calling out as he went, “Mom! It’s The Love of Your Life! The Love of Your Life is home!” It doesn’t get any better than that, let me tell you.

But, truth to tell, I didn’t marry the Love of My Life; I’m married to the Love of My Life, but she wasn’t that when we got married. Some of you actually did marry the Love of Your Life – your high-school sweetheart, maybe, or someone whom you just knew, within minutes of your first meeting, would end up sharing your life with you. That wasn’t the case for Jenn and me. When we got married, I was marrying a very good friend, someone with whom I shared several important life goals and aims, with whom I got along very well, and whose company I enjoyed enough to think that we could actually have a life together. She agreed with me enough to accept my proposal (heck, the two of us getting married was probably her idea, before it was mine); we got married, and la, la, how the life went on.

It’s almost funny to look back on it now, but Jenn still tells people that our first year of marriage was the worst year of her life. Her adjustment to the new ‘life-together’ was a bit harder than mine, I guess. . . But, somewhere along the line, over the ensuing years (38 of 'em, now), she became the Love of My Life. We put in the necessary work, we shared our lives, we suffered together, and in the process of all that, our two lives became one, to the point that I can’t imagine my life without her. This woman, whom I liked and admired way back when, has proven to be even more solid, more admirable, and more amazingly wonderful than I thought she was. . .

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Only My Love Does It Good to Me

There are times when I’m simply overwhelmed by the wonderful-ness of my wife. Times when I just look at her and ask myself, “How is it that the most amazing woman in the universe threw her life in with me?” And I’m just in awe of my good fortune.

There might be a few women in the world (stress on ‘might’ and ‘few’) who are physically more beautiful than Jenn, but when I consider the strength of her character, the beauty of her soul and spirit, she blows them all away. I’ll say it again – she is the most amazing woman in the universe. I almost feel bad for the rest of you guys that she’s my wife. Almost.

And the thing is, I’m well aware that I did nothing in particular to deserve her. I’m still not real sure why, all those years ago, she brought that rubber ball to me, when it seems like there must have been lots of more desirable guys than me available to her. But I’m glad she did. I’ve often described how we knew each other pretty well before we ever got to the point of courtship. And that’s what’s most amazing of all to me – she’s told me many times how God told her, before I even proposed to her, “What you see is what you get with him.” She had a pretty good, sober assessment of my character. AND SHE STILL MARRIED ME! That blows me away, and I’m grateful for it every single day I’m married to her.

And even now, after 38 years, I’m still blown away. She knows me way better now than she did back then, and she still throws her life in with mine. For all the clear-eyed, sober appraisal of my character she had when we were courting, there are lots of things, not all of them good, that she’s only learned from living with me for 38 years. And she still stays married to me. Amazing!

“Somewhere in my wicked, miserable past, I must have done something good.”

Simply flat-out amazing. . .

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So, thank you, My Beloved, My Life-Mate, My Partner, My Closest Friend, The Mother of My Children, My Wife.  If the last 38 years have brought us to a place we never imagined, what will the coming years bring us?  As they say in Narnia, "Further Up and Further In!"

Bliss 36. . .

36 years of Connubial Bliss. . . and counting. . .

Thank you, My Beloved, for throwing your life (and your DNA) in with mine, these 36 years.  I am utterly grateful. . .

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It might have been six years ago, when we were celebrating our 30th, that I stopped at the store and, in preparation for the anniversary festivities, bought a dozen roses, a box of Jenn's favorite candy, and a magnum of champagne.  As I was checking out, the clerk, a woman about my age at the time, looked at me with wide eyes, and sputtered, "WHAT DID YOU DO?!?"

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And it seems a fitting observance that this coming weekend, Jenn and I will be helping to put on a retreat for married couples at a parish Up North, not far from my hometown (of course, when you're Up North, 'not far' is still an hour's drive. . .)

A Pair of Heart-Warming Vignettes. . .

Or at least, so they seem to me. . .

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One night recently, Jenn and I were in our bedroom, preparing to retire for the night, when she looked at me, grinning broadly.

"We're doing it!" she said, enthusiastically.

Um, doing what, Sweetheart?

"We always said we wanted to grow old together, and we're doing it!  We're growing old!  Together!"

What could I say to that?  Yes, we are.  And there's no-one I'd rather grow old with than you, dear. . .

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I was a recent visitor to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn (a very cool place, if you're at all into historical machinery).  At one point, I was walking across an open space past a group of a half-dozen or so girls, who were, I would guess, around seven or eight years of age.  One of the girls, bolder than the others, perhaps noting my, um, girthiness, combined with my mostly-white beard and graying hair, approached me to ask, "Are you Santa Claus?"

I smiled at her benignly.  "No," I replied. "I'm his brother."

As I walked away, I heard behind me a chatter of excited voices - "That guy is Santa Claus' brother!"  "Really?!?"  "No, he's not!"  "Uh-HUH!  He told me!"

And I smiled. . .

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The weather around these parts has been unseasonably warm/dry for December.  High 30s/low 40s, and aside from a couple inches the week before Thanksgiving, we really haven't had any snow to speak of.  And thus, I've gotten in two rides, for 27 miles, so far in December (and 1063 for the year).  I've also flatted three of the last four times I've gone out on my bike (*aaaaarrrrrggggghhhh*).  My working hypothesis is that, the roads being just slightly damp this time of year, stones stick to the surface of the tire, and slowly get pounded through to eventually puncture the inner tube.  But. . . December miles.  I'll take all I can get. . .

(*update, 17 December*)

I finally took my bike in to the shop to see if he could figure out any hidden causes of my recent rash of flats.  Turns out, I had three pieces of glass lodged in my tire, none of 'em so deeply that I could discover 'em with the standard run of my fingers across the inside of the tire (I always do that because, you know, if you leave the cause of the flat in place, you're gonna get repeated flats. . .) (D'oh!)  So, when I'd go out and ride for 20 miles or so, the little sharp edges would keep poking at the inner tube until, Voila! a complete puncture occurred.  So, one new tire later, I'm (I hope) back in business. . .

Bliss My Soul. . . Again. . .

Just a quick note today to mark the arrival of Jenn's-and-my 34th wedding anniversary (or, put another way, the successful completion of 34 years of wedded bliss) (Well, Jenn might not agree that all 34 of them have been exactly blissful, but why quibble?  It's been good.  Mostly.  ;)  )


Thank you, My Beloved, for throwing your life in with mine, and for loving me so very well for lo, these 34 years.  I'm well aware that you didn't have to do that, and blessed am I that you did, and that you stayed with me even when I made it hard for you.  You have made my life both richer and happier, and I'm grateful for every minute we've spent together.


Happy Anniversary, My Love.  I owe you, big-time. . .


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You may have noticed that I've spelled my wife's name with two 'n's above.  This is a change of somewhat recent vintage, so as to distinguish her from our neighbor Jen, who lives across the street, and is in a women's group with her, in our Christian community (and who, coincidentally, also writes a blog of her own; hopefully, it wasn't too confusing to see the occasional comment from 'Jen' who seemed to know things about our family that I'd never blogged about. . .)  Besides, her mother, for whatever reasons of her own, has always written her nickname as 'Jenn'.  So now, you can, too. . .

2-1/2 Weeks

Thursday, May 29, 2014 - Jen and I have one of our marriage-prep sessions (#4 of a series of 7) with an engaged couple from our church.

Friday, May 30 - Graduation open house for the son of a dear friend, whose husband died a year-and-a-half ago.  Happy, for sure, but sad that Dad wasn't there to share it with him. . .

Saturday, May 31 - Wedding of a young man, classmate of 3M, who was one of my Little League players, back in the day. . .

Sunday, June 1 - Baptism of 3M's baby girl

Monday, June 2 - 1F's birthday, celebrated quietly at home with wine and gin-and-tonics.

Wednesday, June 4 - 7M's confirmation Mass.  4M was his sponsor, and St. Sebastian his patron saint (something about the images of ol' St. Seb stuck full of arrows caught his imagination, somehow. . .)

Saturday, June 7 - Another marriage-prep session (a double, #4-5) with another engaged couple.  Also 2F's baby shower, and another graduation open house (which, you know, means that at least we don't have to cook).

Sunday, June 8 thru Tuesday, June 10 - Craig & 4M are in Seattle, finding an apartment for 4M (recent college grad that he is) to live in when he goes back in July to begin his job with a large, well-known purveyor of fine coffee.  Cheesy tourist photos to follow:

Saturday, June 14 - Ordination to the Catholic priesthood of our next-door neighbors' son, another former Little Leaguer, and former classmate of 3M.  Also 2F's birthday (her 29th) (no, really!).

Sunday, June 15 - First Mass for the newly-ordained young priest.  Which puts an entirely different twist on Father's Day (to say nothing of how his Dad is busting his buttons). . .

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For those of you keeping track at home, that's officially a crazy-busy 2-1/2 week stretch.  Looking ahead, it calms down, but only a little.  We've still got more marriage-prep sessions, and 4M's going-away party on the 28th (I didn't anticipate that his moving away across the country would have quite the emotional impact on me that it's had).  So, this June is pretty much a target-rich environment. . .

And, for the Catholics among my readers keeping score, you may have noted that five of the Seven Sacraments are accounted for in the above calendar entries (actually, to be perfectly candid, I'm pretty sure that, somewhere in the past 2.5 weeks, I've gone to confession, although I'll decline to go into detail on that one).  So if anyone is feeling sick, come on over, and we can get you anointed, and fill out a Sacramental Bingo card (kidding! . . . I'm kidding!)

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And, it being Father's Day, and me being a father and all, I am grateful for my kids, each and every one of them (joy, grief, heartbreak and all) (did I mention the joy?), and to Jen, for making a father of me in the first place. . .

Thirds

Four months ago today was Jen's-and-my 33rd wedding anniversary.

Which means that, today, we've been married for a third of a century.

Time flies when you're having fun, eh?

(And, for those who are wondering - you know who you are - a second third would take us both past our 90th birthdays; but we can talk about that once we make the half. . .)

;)

Going All-In, Year XXXII

32 years ago today, Jen and I threw our lives in together, in front of God and everybody, in Holy Matrimony (although the tangibility of said holiness has been more in evidence at some times than others) (*sigh*).

I can say, in all honesty and sincerity, that, over 32 years of marriage, our union has come to a place I had no inkling of at the outset, a depth and richness my 24-year-old self never imagined.  I have been challenged to my very core, and had things called out of me that I hadn't known were there to be called out.  Being a husband and father has made me a man, and called me out of my youthful immaturity in all manner of ways I never saw coming at the time.  (We occasionally give a talk on Marriage at our church, and we've often made the point that our children help make us holy; many people only need two or three children in order to get holy, but we're a harder case. . .)

So, thank you, My Beloved, My Life-Mate, My Partner, My Closest Friend, The Mother of My Children, My Wife.  If the last 32 years have brought us to a place we never imagined, what will the coming years bring us?  As they say in Narnia, "Further Up and Further In!"

Back to the Drawing Board, I Guess. . .

Recently I was having a (*sarcasm alert!*) calm, rational discussion with one of my teenagers about his/her frustrations at some 'outrage' or other that Jen had perpetrated on her/his life, when the teen in question said, in an exasperated tone,

"You have no idea what it's like to live with her!"

Well, dang. . .  And here I thought that, in 31+ years of marriage, I had gotten to know her, just a little. . .

A friend of mine likes to say, "Grandchildren are your reward for not killing your teenagers."  I used to think that was funnier than I do now. . .

I never cease to be flabbergasted by the capacity of teens (some of them, anyway; perhaps mine, disproportionately) to recapitulate their behavior as newborns.  In some ways, they act like giant balls of 'I Want', whose conceptual universe ends at their own skin. . .

Lord, have mercy. . .

Dueling Selfishness

This is another re-post, from four-and-a-half years ago. But it seems decently apropos as we head into Lent. . .

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I've been blogging here for [almost five years now, off and on], and I've told you several great stories from Jen's and my lives. In the course of [30+] years of marriage together, we've really come a long way, and I've enjoyed sharing with you all some of what we've learned over the years.

But we're not this wonderfully saintly couple living in a faint glow of unearthly light. We can be as petty and selfish as anybody else; probably the biggest thing we've learned over the years is how to repent and apologize sooner than we used to.

(I'm going to wander off on a parenthetical tangent for a moment here. I used to work for a company that forbade us to utter the word 'problem'; there were no 'problems', went the cliche, only 'opportunities', or at worst, 'challenges'. So our inside joke was, "Houston, we've got an opportunity. . .")

From the beginning years of our marriage, our most persistent, uh, 'challenge' has been what I call 'Dueling Selfishness', or, as Jen puts it, 'My Needs; No, My Needs'. For various reasons, I think we both grew up being fairly accustomed to getting our own way. Which meant that we were ripe for some real choice ego-clashes when we were married: "Of course, you can easily see that I need thus-and-such, so you should just step aside and let me have my way." "But, it's even more obvious that you should defer to my needs, isn't it?" And so it went.

Over time, we got tired of the endless circle of 'My needs; no, my needs', and started learning to deal constructively with the situation. Sometimes, it meant one or the other of us had to defer to the other; sometimes it meant finding an agreeable compromise. But the most fundamental change was to our attitudes.

The biblical epistle to the Romans tells us that we should strive to "Outdo one another in showing honor," and that was a real straightforward challenge to us. We had been outdoing one another in asserting our will, and here the apostle was urging us to outdo one another in looking after each other's good, rather than our own. And what a fundamental transformation that brought. Rather than trying to manipulate Jen so that I got what I wanted, I needed to simply look after her good; and likewise, she needed to look after mine before her own. And the result was that both our needs got met, without all the bickering and anxiety.

Of course, this entails a pretty significant 'leap of faith' - that, if I give up worrying about my own needs being met so as to look after Jen's, my needs will indeed be covered. And likewise for her. I honestly don't remember if one of us 'went first', hoping the other would 'catch on', or if it was something we worked out together, but in the fullness of time, the magic worked.

Someone has said that marriage is not a 50/50 proposition, it's a 100/100 proposition. That is, it's not about me giving half and Jen giving half; it's about both of us giving all we have - my life for hers, her life for mine. And it's not about 'keeping score' of who's putting in more or less than the other. We both just 'go all-in'.

And of course, we've learned this perfectly, and our marriage is a smoothly-running machine, all the time. . .

Well. . . no - not really.

. . .

The thing is, the 100/100 marriage takes a LOT of trust between spouses, and when trust is damaged, it isn't instantly built back up [human beings being what we are]. The hurtful stuff doesn't just dissolve when the apology is made and accepted; it leaves psychic wounds behind that take some time to heal. But we're building some 'good history' with each other, and establishing a firm base of trust which we can stand on, even when some peripheral chunk of trust is damaged. Because we've got many years' worth of experience now that the other is looking out for our good, it's easier to treat specific instances of selfishness as aberrations.

So it's worth me telling you that we aren't this perfect couple with a perfect marriage - I'm as selfish as anyone else, and I can be as petty and pissy as anyone else. But, by God's grace, we've learned how to be married in some good and life-giving ways.

And may God have mercy. . .

The Love of My Life - 30 Years and Counting

Today is Jen's-and-my 30th anniversary (and on the auspicious date of 8-9-10, no less). In honor of the occasion, I tried to think about what I could say about her, and our marriage, that I haven't said before. And I'm sure there must be something wonderful about her that I haven't said before - her wonderfulness is certainly greater than my meager powers of description. But, the best thing I could come up with (I'm still pretty tired from summer camp, I guess) is a pair of re-posts (the ol' Two-for-One Anniversary Special); which I hope you'll all enjoy. . .

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Our Flashy Wedding

I have many memories of our wedding day. I remember washing my car in the morning, more to kill a couple hours until I had to be at the church, than because my car was so dirty (this ‘what to do until you have to be at the church’ question is a major one for grooms; I’m given to understand that brides don’t typically find themselves at quite such a loss for how to fill their wedding-day mornings. . .)

Once I arrived at the church, there really wasn’t all that much for me to do. All my groomsmen showed up in a timely manner, my brothers took their places as ushers, and I just took some chill time in the sacristy, as the guests started to arrive.

About a half-hour or so before the wedding was supposed to begin, my head-usher, a guy I’ll call ‘Tom’ for purposes of this story, with whom I’d shared a house while I was in grad school, came into the room where I was relaxing, a concerned look on his face. “Ummm. . .” he began. (I don’t know; it just seems to me that your head usher coming to you a half-hour before your wedding, saying “Ummm. . .” might not be a good thing). “Ummm. . . there’s a retarded guy out in the parking lot, exposing himself to the guests as they arrive.”

I just stared at him, blankly. “So, what do you want me to do?” he asked, as I contemplated the image of my grandmother being greeted in the church parking lot by a mentally-challenged flasher. The fact that it was a Catholic church parking lot is probably worth noting, because my family is not Catholic, and some of them, possibly including my grandmother, held less-than-flattering opinions of Catholics and Catholicism, even apart from any consideration of parking-lot flashers.

“Huh?” I replied, quickly grasping the gravity of the situation.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Tom,” I replied, with all the mellowness I could muster at that point, “I asked you to be my head-usher so I wouldn’t have to think about stuff like this. I’m sure you can figure something out.”

For a couple seconds, he stared back at me. “Right,” he finally said, and hustled off. I’m told that the police were called, and our flasher friend was relocated away from the church parking lot before too many of our guests’ retinas were seared with images of his genitalia. The wedding proceeded without too many further glitches, Jen and I were well and thoroughly married to each other, and the rest, as they say, is history. . .

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The Love of My Life

A few years back, a blogger wrote me an e-mail, in which she said, among other things, “You entered into marriage with the love of your life.” And I know what she was talking about. Jen is indeed The Love of My Life, and blessed am I because of it.

A few years ago, Jen had a little daily tradition - when I would come home at the end of the day and she heard the back door open just before dinner-time, she'd call out, “Is that The Love of My Life?” Which was wonderfully heart-warming for me. I'd usually respond by saying, “I sure hope so!” And as time went on, the younger kids joined in the fun. So that, when I opened the back door, 8M would often come running; when he saw that it was me, he’d run to Jen, calling out as he went, “Mom! It’s The Love of Your Life! The Love of Your Life is home!” It doesn’t get any better than that, let me tell you.

But, truth to tell, I didn’t marry the Love of My Life; I’m married to the Love of My Life, but she wasn’t that when we got married. Some of you actually did marry the Love of Your Life – your high-school sweetheart, maybe, or someone whom you just knew, within minutes of your first meeting, would end up sharing your life with you. That wasn’t the case for Jen and me. When we got married, I was marrying a very good friend, someone with whom I shared several important life goals and aims, with whom I got along very well, and whose company I enjoyed enough to think that we could actually have a life together. She agreed with me enough to accept my proposal (heck, the two of us getting married was probably her idea, before it was mine); we got married, and la, la, how the life went on.

It’s almost funny to look back on it now, but Jen still tells people that our first year of marriage was the worst year of her life. Her adjustment to the new ‘life-together’ was a bit harder than mine, I guess. . . But, somewhere along the line, over the ensuing years (30 of 'em, now), she became the Love of My Life. We put in the necessary work, we shared our lives, we suffered together, and in the process of all that, our two lives became one, to the point that I can’t imagine my life without her. This woman, whom I liked and admired way back when, has proven to be even more solid, more admirable, and more amazingly wonderful than I thought she was. . .


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Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart. Spending the past 30 years together with you has been a joy and a privilege.