60 Years In Sixty Days:1997

 1997: She Said Sure 

1997 was a year of great change for me. I started the year miserable and lonely.  Which is a line from the movie Marty.  But I  had not yet seen the movie Marty, which is a pretty good reason to be miserable, but I had others. 

I was living in a different state than I am now.  A state of  habitual sin.  A state of unfulfilled desire. A state of deep regret.  A state of hopelessness.  I mean South Carolinas not the bad, you can play tennis year round but I wasn't nearly the man I wanted to be and I was doing nothing to change.

A friend sought me out and offered me the hope of real change.  As I started to work through my issues and allow God to change me from the inside out.  I discovered something.  I discovered someone.

I had a friend in a different state.  She was in a state of healing.  A state of awareness.  A state of discovery,  She was changing in Illinois while I was changing in South Carolina.

W e had been friend for going on 7 years.  Everyone else noticed that we were meant for each other.  But we were oblivious.  Why would I date her? I would ask, she's my best friend.  Then one Day I said I should court her, she's my best friend.

She flew down for Spring Break and it was clear that courting was like friendship with help.  By the time Spring Break was over I knew and put an emerald engagement ring on layaway.  

In July I moved back to Illinois with marriage on my mind.   .  When I earned enough to pay for the ring I asked her parent for permission to marry their daughter. They said yes and I made reservations at a fancy restaurant for the proposal.

After Spring Break I had written lyrics for a proposal  and gave it to a friend who had written music for other songs I had written.  About the same time I got the ring paid off,  he sent me the  cassette with the song on it.  I asked a H.S. senior from our youth group to accompany me at a fancy restaurant.  On the big night, he chickened out.  So instead of bringing an accompanist  ala Breaking Away.  I brought in a cassette player ala Say Anything.

I was so nervous.  I could hardly eat dinner.  Because I knew I was going to propose. I turned on the tape player and began to sing:

It's A beautiful night

Your a beautiful girl

I thank God for the day 

That you brightened my world

The song continued and when I ended with the title question Will You Marry Me My Darling?, Amy was unsure of what just happened.

/I had a  habit and still do of showing all my poems, songs and writings to Amy to see if they are any good.  She must have thought that's what I was doing.  

"Is that what you are going to sing when you propose?" She inquired.

"This is me, proposing," I replied.

So she said, sure.

After which, she took out a piece of paper from her purse of all the ways she had known that I was going to propose that night.  It turns out that since I had telegraphed my intentions, that she also was very nervous and didn't eat much of her dinner either.  So our first official act as an engaged couple was to go to Denny's and have another dinner.

We got engaged 26 years ago this month.  We have been through many changes since then but I'll always remember 1997 as the year God changed two people and led them to the path of being one couple.
"

                                             

GoodArticle on the Culture of Dating

Kudos to the matriarch of a local home schooling family who alerted me about an article by Bryana Johnson in The College Conservative via Facebook.

A non-sexy start to blogging A to Z

 as in Abstinence

Sunday April 1, 2012

Hi.  My name is Dave aka Home School Dad or HSD.  You can just call me HS or D.  Whatever floats your boat.

This is my first installment of Blogging A to Z.  For 26 of the next 31 days I will be blogging in alphabetical order.  This is a pretty big to do at the blogosphere;click here to go to the main blogging A to Z page.  Some participating blogs are having a theme intertwined to their A to Z posts.  Not this cat. I am going to stick to what this blog does best, randomness.Some posts may be meaty, even controversial, while others will be whimsical and still others will  be boring.  (Don't believe me?  Stop by tomorrow.) 

Today's word is abstinence.  Abstinence as defined by the Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th Edition) means voluntary forbearance  especially from  indulgence of an appetite or craving  or from eating some foods.  This is a fine definition but not the one most people think of when they hear the word.  Most people think of abstaining from sex, specifically from abstaining from sex prior to marriage.  This is the meaning I am referring to.

Abstinence has become a bit of a dirty word in our modern age. In our society, sex is regarded as a rite of passage into adulthood.  Those who want to promote abstinence are often ridiculed, belittled or at least labeled impractical.

But when you think about it, abstinence is immensely practical.  Let's think about abstinence in how it pertains to one of the most divisive topics, I can think of, Following the Cubs or White Sox  Abortion.

Abortion is so divisive, that  the language describing it varies depending on which side of the issue you are on. Those who favor abortion,  speak of a woman's right to choose  and are labeled pro-choice.  Those against abortion use terms like sanctity of life and are labeled pro-life.  These are misnomers if ever there were misnomers.  Most so called "pro choicers" that I know hold life to be very dear.  Many are passionate against war or the death penalty because they hold life so dear.  Nor are prolifers really anti choice.  They want to see women with unwanted pregnancies "choose" to come to term and make "choices" that will benefit themselves, their child, and in many cases married couples unable to have their own children.

So what do you need to have an abortion?  You need to be pregnant.  And what do you need to be pregnant?  You need to have sex. So abstinence is a very practical way to limit the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country and thus the amount of abortions.

Abstinence is practical  in terms of birth control,  preventing disease, even in promoting self esteem.  If you only have sexual relations with one person in your lifetime, there is little chance of suffering by comparison.  It is practical in addressing sexual education for the next generation.This, we did it, they're going to do it, let's have them be safe about it approach is about as effective as the let them figure it own on their own, we did approach.  My kids have been told early on that sex is for marriage only.  Amy and I also have the testimony of our own abstinence during our friendship and courtship to back up our words.

So some of you are probably saying practical schmactical promoting abstinence in this day and age won't work when premarital sex is rampant.   I'd say part of the reason why it's rampant is because of this false idea that abstinence is impractical.  I mean that argument is certainly on the menu at Bob's House of Self Fulfilling Prophecies.

Resistance to abstinence and acceptance of abortion are both built on the faulty assumption that our bodies are ours alone and we can do with them what we want as long as no one (except a fetus) gets hurt.

The truth is that our bodies are a gift from God who created us. God fashioned Adam out of the dust of the world he had made days earlier.  He didn't stop with Adam.   He made Eve from Adam as Adam slept.  After that He instituted marriage and procreation. After that he called it a week.  I think one of the reasons why Biblical creation is regarded as faith or fantasy rather than science or history is to ignore this idea that our bodies our not are own. 

Abstinence prior to marriage is key to building a healthy, happy marriage.  Self-control is possible with the help of God,who according to 2 Peter 1:3  has given us everything we need for life and godliness. I'm not saying abstinence is easy, many good things aren't.  I'm saying that abstinence is worth while.  I'll share more of mine and Amy's experiences with abstinence in later posts.

So that's A.  Come back tomorrow for a boring post. 

Alzheimers: The tale of two Robertsons

As a rule, I don't pay a lot of attention to Evangelist/Talk Show Host/Politician Pat Robertson. This week, however, he got my attention when he answered this question from a viewer . . .



Robertson's comments are the beginning of a slippery slope of ethical issues that can confront a marriage. People change in marriage even when there is not a physical cause for the change. I am a much different person than I was 13 years ago and possibly not the man Amy thought I would become. When I got married, I thought I would be at the company I was working at until I retired, much like my Dad did before me. But 5 years ago I lost that job which led to the journey I am now as the primary home educator of the family.


His phrase Alzheimer's is a kind of death is a chilling one. You could replace Alzheimer's with mental illness, Lou Gehrig's disease, cancer and even joblessness if you wanted. While all of these change a marriage and often not for the better, they are not a reason for divorce.


A different perspective comes from the example of Robertson McQuilkin who was president of Columbia Bible College and Seminary (Now Columbia International University, which I attended in 1995). In 1981 his wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

His decision was to retire from public life including his president ship of CIU in order to care for his wife. Listen to his resignation speech. It is a rebuttal to Pat Robertson's response. Except it was delivered 2 decades before Robertson. It is the Godly response of a man who so obviously loved his wife.





Mcquikin gave that speech in 1990 and took care of his wife from then until her death in 2003.


His phrase "it's not I have to, but I get to" is such a different thought than Pat Robertson's response. What if the Robertson from Virgina answered the viewers question by citing the response of the Robertson from South Carolina? He certainly wouldn't be the subject of ABC news reports and hundreds of comments on the 700 club FB page, but he would be much better grounded biblically. Which presumably, is what his 700 club viewers are tuning in for.


On a more personal note, about the same time Mcquilkin was dealing with his wife's Alzheimer's, my grandfather passed away of a disease that for 2 years masked itself as Alzheimer's. Before that most people in my family figured my robust grandfather would outlive my frail grandmother .


But in the 2 years that my grandmother took care of my grandpa a transformation took place in her. She was put in a situation that tore her apart but in the end made her a stronger and more vital person. My grandfather died in 1989 and this "frail" woman he left behind lived 16 more years remaining active in the lives of her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. In 1989, I did not know my grandmother very well; being 1 of 30 grandchildren will do that to you. But in the last act of her life, we spent much more time together. My older two children spent much time with her. During the last few weeks of her life she would come in and out of consciousness. One night my wife overheard her having a conversation with God. She was telling Him that she could not go yet because there were still great grandchildren she had not met. One of those great grand children she was referring to was Puppy who was born a few months after Grandma died. I believe the experience of caring for her husband was at least partially instrumental in her strong finish in the last act of her life.




McQuilkin wrote an excellent book in 1998 about 20 years into Muriel's illness, about his wife and his decision to care for her. A Promise Kept is not only the name of the book, but it also defines what McQuikin, my grandmother, and so many others did through the years. Pat Robertson shrugs off those vows in the video while so many others have embraced them.

Go Ask My Dad

HSD Rewind time again. Going back to March 2009 when I wrote this . . .

Some of you may know that I would someday like to write a book. I often say I am working on a book, but that does not do justice to my friends who are actually working on a book. I have ideas for a book on relationships. From time to time I may talk about some of those ideas here. Recently Mama Archer's post was about relationships. In the post she linked to something she wrote in a blog called Weekend Kindness. What she shared was actually from a paper her daughter had written about finding a spouse.

Many of the standards her daughter mentioned are those I am imparting in my daughters. Specifically, a courtship model, that involves the active role of the parents especially the father. When my 9 year old was younger, I taught her what to say if a boy ever wanted to marry her. The response is "go ask my Dad." She still remembers it, and has not fought with me about it, yet, but that day may come.

My youngest child, also a daughter, is 3. She is leaving what I call the "save them every day" stage. The part of their life when you seem to be keeping them from physical peril at every turn. We spend so much of their early child hood keeping them from physical harm, making rules to keep them safe. Before they use a tool that could hurt them, we instruct them, and give them careful supervision while learning new skills.

I am not sure why with all that care giving I would be willing to withdraw all that guidance when they become of dating age. Many parents seem to think they have no chance of asserting control in any of those areas, so they do not try. I was greatly encouraged to read that Mama Archer's daughter plans to allow her parents an active role in determining her future husband.

I will write more about these issues in the future.

Meanwhile back in 2010. My youngest is no longer in the save her every day stage. It's more like the save the house from her stage. I have still not gotten very far with the "book". I have written a few more posts about relationships.

Differences

Martians are from Mars; Venusians, Venus.

Women are different than men, no duh! But men are different than men and women are different than women. So if I want to understand Amy, I don't need to understand all women and then branch out to Amy. I need to understand Amy, her needs, strengths, and intricacies.

Not sure exactly where I am going with this, except to say that interpersonal relationships are best explored individually rather than holistically. I think I have observed this more keenly because both Amy and I are more atypical than typical representatives of our respective genders.

Example: 12 years ago I bought Amy her engagement ring. I had been friends with Amy for about 7 years and we had discussed rings as friends. I knew she liked Emeralds and wanted an emerald engagement ring rather than a diamond. So I brought her an emerald engagement ring. I then went about telling friends and co-workers of my purchase. They were all sure that I had made a dreadful mistake in not buying her a diamond, or in just not letting her choose the ring she wanted. The only dreadful mistake was bringing the subject up with any of them. It turns out that while Amy's taste in engagement rings was atypical, my knowledge of her preferences was accurate. She loves that ring and I am confident that if I would have succumbed to pressure and purchased a diamond ring for her rather than an emerald all I would have communicated to her is that I did not "get" her as much as I thought I did.

So those are my Six words for this Saturday. To see what other word sextets are sweeping the cybernation head over to Show My Face dot com.

Next Time: Cycling Update

Married Eyes: Not Open and Shut Case.

My daughter is becoming obsessed with her wedding. If it were my ten year old this would be a little disconcerting, but understandable. It, alas, is my 3 year old. She has been peppering us with marriage questions lately. The most recent was a doozy:


"Do you have to close your eyes to be married?"


Well yesterday we watched our wedding video from '98. We showed Lucy that yes our eyes were indeed open.


You bloggers know that every thing that happens in the life of a blogger reminds them of a good blog post idea. Well this most recent Lucyism was no exception. It got me thinking about the expectations we have when it comes to relationships.


When it comes to marriage, some people enter in with their eyes closed. They do this for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes it is simply not having a proper understanding of the differences between men and women.


I heard an excellent sermon series a few decades back by Bill Hybels, Senior Pastor of Willow Creek Church. He stated that men often compartmentalize their activities. When a young man is wooing a woman, he will pull out all the stops: candlelight, dinners, moon lit walks, poetry, flowers, candy, the whole bit. Hybels stated that after the wedding that the husband will now refocus those energies that he put into courtship, into advancing his career. So now the energies that were devoted to his fiancee are channeled into making a better living for them.



Hybels goes onto say that the woman felt that this "special treatment" was going to continue long through the marriage. When it ends the woman may begin to wonder if they married the right person. Hybels does it much better justice than I do, but the point remains opening your eyes to the inner working of the opposite gender especially of that special someone can make the transition from romance to honeymoon to marital life that much smoother.



Other times eyes are closed based, as they say in court room dramas, "from making assumptions not based on facts in evidence." By this I mean, for instance, if you are romantically interested in someone who has the second largest collection of Star Wars Action figures in the county, you shouldn't be surprised that once you're married, he continues to buy new ones week after week.


Many times closed eyes occurs from settling. People often feel that they have to lower their standards in order to find a marriage partner. Sometimes, as we will discover in a few paragraphs, they do need to as their "standards" were unattainable. Often, however, standards are lowered for no other reason than fear of being alone the rest of their life. I have seen teenagers lower their standards for this reason. Teenagers!


Here are two examples of what people should not settle on:


1. If you are a Christian do not marry an unbeliever. This is what the bible calls unequally yoked. The word picture is that of two different sized oxen plowing a field. Tethered together pulling in different directions, no useful plowing can be done. The same is true of the person trying to please God and the other trying to please only themselves. Don't just take their word either. Look closely at their life.


In applying for jobs when I was in college, I would often be asked how many words a minute I could type. Now I could have certainly exaggerated my WPM in order to have a better chance at the job. The thing was, that the employer generally followed up the application process with a typing test to determine my true WPM. This is a good practice in relationships as well, look for outward evidence of professions.

2. Do not marry anyone who is ever physically, verbally, or emotionally abusive. Too many people marry known abusers, thinking either they deserve the abuse or that they can change the abuser. If someone hits you once, the deals off. Don't think that you need to marry them because this might be your last chance. You need not to marry them for the same reason!


Other settling that can be avoided is marrying out of fear rather than love. The bible states that perfect love casts out all fear. I did not marry until I was in my mid 30's. Prior to courting Amy, I was getting to the point where I was considering lowering my standards. I t would have been easy for me to lower my standards and settle for less than God's best for me. Instead, I yielded my will to God. For the first time in almost 15 years, I felt at peace with the idea of being single the rest of my days. It was at that point that my eyes were opened to the possibility that my best friend of 7 years, could also be the woman I was looking for all my life. Amy also had accepted singleness as a gift rather than a curse and had chosen not to settle for something outside of God's timing.


As I stated before, sometimes our eyes can be too open. My older sister planned her wedding out for years before she ever met her husband. Specifically she had planned out all the songs that would be played at her wedding reception. I think she had 8-10 hours of must songs by the time she met Andy. Mercifully, not every must song was played at her wedding.


In the same way not every thing on your list for your future spouses attributes may need to be there. Over the years people change and what you felt was a must for a spouse when you were married could no longer be true 5 years into the thing.


As I have mentioned here before I plan on following a courtship model for my own children. This means I will be very involved in my daughters' and son's selection process. While courtship may not be for everyone,I strongly advocate the involvement of parents, other family members, and friends in the spousal selection process.

My lists for my childrens' spouses may be different than their own lists. This would be for 2 reasons: 1) As their father, I have a certain amount of insight into their character and their needs. 2) As a married man, I will have a better understanding of what is needed for a strong marriage than they would. I plan on taking advantage of the many opportunities I have to relate these insights to my children as they grow.

So no Lucy, you don't have to have your eyes closed to get married. I'm gonna keep my eyes open, on your behalf.

Next time: Four Weddings and a Funeral. Part III.

The Goalie on the Bench.

Hockey Lessons

Life Lessons from the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team

Why doesn't life go as planned? The answer to that question often gets back to who is doing the planning. No one ever plans on being born, but once they get here, boy do they want to be in charge of the planning!

People often see the design in their lives in retrospect. Such is the case of Steve Janaszak. By 1979 Steve had already been goalie of two national championship teams at the university of Minnesota. He had just been voted Most Valuable Player of the 1979 squad. His coach, Herb Brooks, had just been selected to helm the U.S. Olympic team. Most pundits figured Herb would choose Jany as his starting goalie for the U.S. No one expected him to be an MVP again, not when going against the vaunted Soviet Union and other hockey powerhouses, but no one expected him to be an asterisk either.

Twelve hockey teams represented their countries in 1980. Twenty players per team, 240 in all. 239 of them played in the Olympics. Only Jany rode the bench the entire event. Coach Brooks had prepared him for this eventuality, that Jim Craig was going to be His only goalie for the Olympics. On the face of it this did not make sense, many of the games were very close, but there were some games that Jany could have easily got some time in.

Janaszak took the entire situation as a pro. Early each morning he took practice shots from his assistant coach, so he would be ready if called upon. Instead of being bitter, aloof and distant from his teammates, he remained positive. Off the ice he bonded with his teammates going to the Olympic Village, hanging out and watching movies together. On one such occasion he encountered an interpreter working in the complex. That interpreter eventually became his wife.

Imagine if it was too much for the NCAA MVP to play the part of back-up. Or if he just went through the motions, and kept to himself at the Olympics hiding in his room, feeling sorry for himself. He might not be the contented husband and father of two daughters that he is now. Janaszak, states in retrospect there is no question what he would rather have the personal glory or the family he has been given. It may have been different if things went as he had planned.

I think there is a little in the Janaszak's story in many how did you meet your spouse stories. I would love to h ear yours. If things went by my plans I would have already been on the mission field by 1990 and not still in college. This means I would have not met my wife in 1990. At least not in the student union of Western Illinois University. Some people call it luck, others a happy accident. I call it the providential hand of God. Just a reminder that life does go as planned. Especially when we're not the ones doing the planning.

Next Time: Free

Hero

Hero: Becoming the Man she Desires

By

Fred & Jasen Stoeker

I was given another book to review in the Library Thing Early Reviewer program. Click here to learn more about the program and read my previous review.

When I put my name on the hat for a copy of hero, I was unaware that this is the third book of a trilogy (Every Young Man's Battle and Tactics being the previous two). This book is thoroughly readable without reading the other two. I enjoyed this book so much that I am planning to read the first two later on this Summer.

In Hero the authors take a disheartening topic the failure of young men particularly Christian young men to be sexually pure and make an invigorating, hopeful but still immensely practical approach to male female relationships.

Fred Stoeker, His son Jasen, and his daughter in law Rose tell a story of victorious G rated living in a R/NC-17 world. Many books with multiple authors lose something in the transition. Not the case here, brief casual introductions make transitions as easy to follow as if they were merely microphone changes in a lecture hall.

Hero faces the cold hard facts that Christians particularly men are falling deep into lives filled with pornography, masturbation, and multiple partner sexual relations prior to and during marriage. Hero takes the life stand of Jasen Stoeker to not kiss a girl until he kissed his wife on his wedding day. The book basically begins with that kiss and then weaves it's message through the Stoeker family history of being statistics in the Playboy revolution to Fred's desire to make a change in that history and Jasen's stands for purity in Jr. high., high school and college along with Rose giving her back story and a needed feminine perspective.

I strongly recommend this book for all men but especially for fathers and single young men.

Next Time: Newspaper Chicken

In which I review a book.

From time to time I will be reviewing on these pages books, c.d.s, movies and the like. Today I will be reviewing Date or Soul Mate? by Neil Clark Warren, the founder of eharmony.com. I am not sure if I have ever disliked a book more than this one. (If you haven't figured it out yet, this will not be a positive review.

The subtitle of the book is How to Know if Someone is Worth Pursuing in Two Dates or Less. By that title, I expected a corrective if not an indictment, of the current dating system. Since I hope one day to write a book questioning the efficacy of dating in choosing a mate, the title had me at hello. The problem was that after hello, he lost me.

One of the many problems of this book is the author really never tells you how to know if someone is worth pursuing in two dates. His book reminds me of the old Steve Martin stand up routine:

Martin: Tonight, I am going to tell you how to make $1,000,000.00 and never pay taxes.
First, make a million dollars. Second, don't pay taxes.

Illuminating isn't it? Clark Warren seems to be saying in this book I am going to tell you how to meet your soul mate in two dates or less: First, meet your soul mate. Second, do it in two dates or less.

I actually agree with the author's main premise that many young people cheat themselves and their potential "soul mates" by staying in prolonged relationships which they knew very early would not lead to a successful marriage.

That premise would make an excellent magazine article. As a book there's not enough material. So the author advocates an unnecessary system that takes the majority of the book to explain.

He equates finding a soul mate to shopping and says that each single person should have a ten item list of must have qualities and a ten item list of must not have qualities they are looking for in a marriage partner. Further they should bring that shopping list on every date.

Even though the author admits that the number 10 is an arbitrary number he counsels strongly that you should not continue in a relationship unless the prospect has all 10 of the positive qualities and none of the negative. In later chapters he advises if the have none of the 10 negative qualities, it is sometimes okay to look for "a diamond in the rough." This is not the only confusing and contradicting advice he gives. While he says you can know in 2 dates if the person is worth pursuing he still suggests at least 2 years of dating to know for sure.

Dating in my opinion is a flawed system that can't be fixed by arbitrary rules. His rules seem superfluous to me. More than once the author tells stories of people who knew early on that the relationship they were in was a troubled one. If they "knew" this without benefit of a shopping list, why do they need one now? If dating relationships are to continue the way they are (something I hope to address in future posts) we should learn to not settle for less than God's best for us, but that does not mean by creating arbitrary rules to govern our actions.

Next Time: Take me out to the Ball Game.

Go ask my Dad.

My last post was about a give-a-way at Mama Archers Blog. I posted it because that is how one enters the give-a-way. Today, I am posting about a post that appeared on her blog last year. Again, my motivation is to earn another entry in her give-a-way. But more than that it gives me the opportunity to broach a topic on this blog that I have not as of yet brought up.

Some of you may know that I would someday like to write a book. I often say I am working on a book, but that does not do justice to my friends who are actually working on a book. I have ideas for a book on relationships. From time to time I may talk about some of those ideas here.

Mama Archer's post was about relationships. In the post she linked to something she wrote in a blog called Weekend Kindness. What she shared was actually from a paper her daughter had written about finding a spouse. Many of the standards her daughter mentioned are those I am imparting in my daughters. Specifically, a courtship model, that involves the active role of the parents especially the father.

When my 9 year old was younger, I taught her what to say if a boy ever wanted to marry her. The response is "go ask my Dad." She still remembers it, and has not fought with me about it, yet, but that day may come.

My youngest child, also a daughter, is 3. She is leaving what I call the "save them every day" stage. The part of their life when you seem to be keeping them from physical peril at every turn. We spend so much of their early child hood keeping them from physical harm, making rules to keep them safe. Before they use a tool that could hurt them, we instruct them, and give them careful supervision while learning new skills.

I am not sure why with all that care giving I would be willing to withdraw all that guidance when they become of dating age. Many parents seem to think they have no chance of asserting control in any of those areas, so they do not try. I was greatly encouraged to read that Mama Archer's daughter plans to allow her parents an active role in determining her future husband. I will write more about these issues in the future.

Next Time: Turtle Soap is Best