Who’s your hero?

Although it’s St. Patrick’s Day today, I’m still thinking about Valentines Day. I’ve just thought of a great gift every husband would love: a list entitled “TEN REASONS WHY YOU’RE MY HERO.”

Since Nate is gone, it’s too late for me, but I know he would have loved receiving such a list. Many men are under-confident in their abilities as husbands, and written reassurance would probably feel good.

The list could be ten character qualities you’ve seen in him or ten experiences during which you’ve watched him perform well. Wives and husbands often share secrets no one else knows about, and a hero-list might be ten of those. Or it could simply be ten reasons why you love your man.

Once in a while I see a Facebook comment between a husband and wife that’s upbeat and complimentary. Because it gives me a little burst of joy, I imagine the recipient feels joy-times-ten. Sadly, though, it’s more common and much easier for us to take our spouses for granted and assume we’ll always have them. The fact that more marriages break apart than stay together is a testimony to the lie of that assumption.

But there are ways other than divorce that marriages can fail. Loneliness is a cancer difficult to cure. When schedules get crowded, we expect spouses to understand and sacrifice couple-time for the greater good of the whole. The needs of children, too, can override time together and squeeze the love out of a relationship.

My mom often said, “You began as a couple and will end there too, so make sure you put him first all along the way.”

This is a mouthful when it comes to everyday life, and I wish I’d done it better. Nate did well enough for both of us, which probably caused me not to be as attentive as I should have been. But I missed many a chance to enrich his life by not communicating that he had hero status to me. Three sentences he often said were, “I love you; thank you; and I’m sorry.”

In a wife’s mind, these valuable words are the glue that holds a relationship together. When a person says these things, he/she isn’t taking a partner for granted but is nourishing the relationship and moving it forward.

Marriage was God’s idea, and once we tie the knot, he’s involved. Whether we sink or swim is important to him, and he offers to help us when the relationship gets frayed at the edges. I believe he’ll also quiz us about our behavior when we eventually stand in front of him. It’ll be part of “giving an account” of how we lived.

My chance to better my marriage is over, but those who are still married can lavish happiness on their #1 earthly relationship while simultaneously gaining God’s approval. So, putting your husband on a hero-pedestal becomes win-win for both of you and makes every day Valentines Day.

“Each of us will give an account of ourselves to God. Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another.” (Romans 14:12-13)

Come and eat!

Wise women have said the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I believe it.

When Nate and I got married, he came to me from a childhood of enjoying the creative cooking of his mother, Lois. She had a lavish cook book collection and used it often. As a newlywed, I realized I’d have to learn to cook if I was going to make my man happy.

Fortunately there was an effective buffer between Lois’ high-class dinners and my incompetence in the kitchen: university food.

Nate’s memory of those home-cooked meals dimmed as he ate in college dining halls from 1963 until we married in 1969, and his expectations were wonderfully low.

After 40 years of cooking thousands of meals for him, I remember only one word of criticism. I’d made a teriyaki stir fry, one of his favorites, but the sauce had turned out thin. Because it wouldn’t stick to the veggies or meat, I used a tip from Mom, adding a bit of corn starch to thicken the juices.

When Nate came to the table, he saw what we were having and said, “Mmmmm. Stir fry!”

We all sat down, heaped food on our plates and dug in. Nate had already eaten three forkfuls by the time I took my first. “My word!” I said. “What’s wrong with this stuff?”

That’s when Nate’s criticism came. “I kept trying, because I couldn’t believe it tasted so awful. What did you do to it?”

“I have no idea,” I said, walking my plate toward the disposal. That’s when I noticed the corn starch on the counter. Unfortunately, it was really baking soda. How I’d mixed up an orange box with a white can I’ll never know. But after we’d all enjoyed frozen pizza, we had a good laugh over my error.

Although I never became a skilled cook, I did learn one valuable principle preparing meals for a big family each day. More important than flavor, smell, ingredients or presentation was volume. Everyone was happier with a full stomach, and filling them up became my #1 priority.

Nutritionists might label that eating-suicide saying, “The food pyramid should be #1.” But my experience was that not having enough was worse than having only some of a perfectly balanced meal.

This principle works well with our spiritual eating, too. We can hold out for a gourmet meal: a peaceful place to read the Bible, a notebook to write in, a pen that works and a set of commentaries. We can wait to pray until we’re sure of uninterrupted time. But if we do, we’ll always be on the edge of spiritual starvation without enough to eat.

God is well aware of our fast-paced lives but creatively delivers spiritual nourishment as our appetites for him grow.

Scripture refers to its words as milk (for beginners) and meat (for the more advanced) and encourages us to taste it. So apparently the old adage does have some truth to it: the way to a person’s true heart is indeed through the stomach.

Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” (John 6:27)

Almost the Duggars

Last week while driving from Michigan to Chicago I listened to a fascinating radio interview of Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar, the Christian family with 19 children and TV fame. Our family had its own Duggar-esque experience in 1989 when my sister’s family moved in with ours for a while.

We were 12 children and 4 adults, morphing into a family of 16 for six weeks. The kids look back on that time as the highlight of their childhoods. Mary and Bervin’s family was adding a second story to their ranch home. Without water, heat or benefit of a roof, they needed a place to stay.

We begged them to bunk with us, knowing how much fun it would be, and they agreed, but with one stipulation: that they buy all the food for the duration. Of course Nate and Bervin wrangled over this, but I saw it as God’s lavish blessing. Our family was at its low point financially with Nate’s business collapsing that very year.

I’ll never forget the night Bervin walked in our front door after a day at work carrying a fresh watermelon. Nate and I hadn’t splurged on fresh fruit for many months, and the sight of that big watermelon refreshed my soul. With 18 around the dinner table that night (my folks included), that melon came and went pretty quickly, but it tasted sweeter than any I’ve had since.

During the weeks we were together, the chicken pox hit, as well as the school science fair, but we also celebrated several birthdays, a couple of graduations and a few blue ribbons for those science projects. There were no squabbles, despite having to sleep on the floor, cram into vehicles and wait for meals. It was a happy time for all 16 of us, and when my sister’s house was ready for them to move back, we mourned the separation.

Not everyone likes to “live large.” Having to wait for the shower or being without private space can be frustrating. But God is deliberate in putting families together. He matches up husbands and wives and calls some to be single. He sends biological babies or not, sometimes choosing to bring children from the other side of the globe to complete a family.  He asks some couples to be childless in order to parent the children of others. His creativity in grouping us knows no limits.

We can arrange or rearrange things to suit ourselves, but stepping away from God’s lead is risky. His best may seem endlessly “just around the bend,” but we can trust that whatever he’s preparing will be worth our wait. Putting people into families was his idea first, and he knows how to satisfy our needs to love and be loved.

I’m single now, but I’m not lonely, because God has called me to it. Remembering our Duggar-esque weeks as a mega-family, though, makes me grin… and want to take a nap.

“Father to the fatherless, defender of widows—this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God places the lonely in families. Rejoice in his presence!” (Psalm 68:5-6,4b)