I am married to the perfect man.  Not everyone’s perfect.  But my perfect.

June 30, 2001.

He is perfect for me.  And I see God’s wise hand written all over our lives the longer I live with Pat.

Do you know what’s funny?  In college, my friends all thought I would marry a pastor.  Across the board, through-and-through, the girls closest to me set their sights on guys in ministry as they thought about  me.  There were the guys in youth ministry.  The guys in homeless ministry.  The guys in music ministry.  The guys on track to pastor-ships.  These were all the ones I was told I would marry.  Had to marry.  You’d be perfect for the life!

But I knew differently.  I remember insistently denying their persistence and defending my internal sense of who I saw myself with.  And it wasn’t anyone in full-time ministry.

Wonderful men they were.  And as I see glimpses of many of them now through Facebook, they are truly exemplary husbands and fathers.  God is good and answers the prayers of many, many girls.  And their parents too!

But I sat in that little closeted room on 4th Central, and I knew where I wouldn’t fit.  I was RA at the time, and generally lived with a steady stream of girls in and out of the space each day- and each night.  I committed to praying about this “guy” my junior year of college.  I knew that I desired marriage young.  I knew that I desired family young.  

But who knows? I thought.  Lots of people desire lots of things, and especially when they fall according to our timing.  Life is nice when it’s according to our plan, but God works according to His plan.  And this was the humbling part of the process.

And so I started to journal and pray and trust God with finding this man, whom I hoped really existed.  

I told my friends after some time: I think that I would like to marry a guy who works for Bellsouth and lives in the suburbs.  I don’t think ministry-wife-life is for me.  And I KNEW it wasn’t for me.  Too little autonomy.  Too much structure.  And that frightened me.  Life lived in a suburban context, lived quietly but intentionally, seemed a better fit.  And I knew it then.

Summer after my junior year arrived.

And as chance and God’s goodness would have it, so did Pat. 

Babies. Summer 2000.

He literally plopped down into my life the first week home, allowing us a full summer to get to know one another and begin to learn to love.

He worked for Bellsouth.

He lived and had a house in the suburbs.

God has a sense of humor.  I could write a Mom-thesis on this point, but that would be a story for a different day.

Parents to Anna. Pregnant with Josh.

That wasn’t what attracted me though- the job and the house.  Those were pieces.  But it was more the LIFE.  I knew I could do HIS LIFE.  I knew I could support and under-gird him in this life that he was already living and would continue to live.  I knew I could do long work hours.  I knew I could do corporate.  I knew I could do suburbia.  I knew I could be what he needed as a programmer, “owned” by a company.

Parents of two

And that is what a wife is: the person her husband needs her to be, as she is there for him in the life God gives him.  She is the one behind him- not always perfectly.  But she is the strength behind his every-day.

5-year anniversary trip to Maine.

I am thankful for the years we have had.  They have been 9 years of marriage, 10 years of togetherness.  We have been together long enough now that it is hard to recall what I ever did before I could call him in or about my day.  We are ONE person, as evidenced by our perspectives and parenting.  Mostly by our humor.

He gave me Emma, his mini-me.

I love him.  And I love the life God has given us together.  I love being his wife.  I love that he is father to my kids, and loves them in the sacrificial way that a man should: giving up time and sometimes hobbies and interests for the sake of giving himself to them. 

Dad to 4. He loves them like so uniquely.

Leading them in their teaching about God.  Teaching them about marriage as he models careful and respectful and loving care of me. 

He documents EVERY occasion

Bellsouth and suburbs isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.  God takes us in vastly different directions. 

But living this life with Pat has suited me to a T. 

And I am truly, daily thankful.

The year we were married, Pat and I had some pre-marital counseling.  I say some because we were in a church with attendance at around 10,000 or so, so there’s only so intentional one institution can be.  Well-intentioned does not translate into accountability.  But we were counseled to some extent- though it may just be me- but I maintain that post-marital counseling would be profoundly more effective than pre.  Once the wedding march is over is when couples really need help wading through the issues greater than where to eat out for dinner .

I digress.

One session, we were asked to make goals for our married life.  Now, this is actually really hard to do before you are married.  Seriously, you cannot look 10 years into the future and remotely know what your life will look like. You are blinded by the beauty of new and exciting love, and it’s tough to imagine that there might be a time when you will have to encourage yourself to love this person who has your heart now.   But, I suppose it’s better to run with the stored-up enthusiasm and set higher goals, because it IS helpful to aim high in all things.

So, we wrote down all these goals.   I still have the list to laugh at/smile at/be proud of.  It’s a piece of my former self.  Incidentally, the same self who also said I would never raise my voice at my kids.  Yes, that silly self.  She is not currently residing here anymore.

Goals as of 2000:

* To never go to bed angry.

* To never raise our voices at one another.

* To never argue with children around.

Etc.  Etc.  There are more or less 40 jotted points.  Over the years I have high-lighted the goals as we have reached them- anywhere from financial to parenting goals.  Lots of ideas represented, tons of hope in every stroke of the pen and each bulleted point.  I especially love the parenting goals: Oh, how funny they are.  We were still dating, hadn’t even been married for 24 hours yet, and setting out to be the world’s best parents.

What can I say? No one has ever found me amusing for this long.

Oh, sweet innocence, where have you disappeared to?

We have reached a primary financial goal.

And we have reached exactly two of our family goals, out of that big bunch.  The rest are life-long attainments I am quite sure.  But do you want to know what our achievements are?

To have 4 children. Done!  By the time you have to learn sacrifice and selflessness and putting another first with the inclusion of the first baby, learning it with our fourth has been more special in many ways- and more skillful in others.

And to always say I love you when we hang up the phone.

That second one is a habit we began when I was in college and we were dating long-distance.  Each night, we would catch up over our days and pray over the phone.  I atop Lookout Mountain, GA and Pat 120 miles away in Atlanta.  Before saying good-night we would say “I love you”.  This became a habit that translated into quick calls while we were engaged: “Hi, hope your day was good.  Miss you.  I love you”.

And this became the response that followed our marriage into the suburbs, and into a life of children and diapers and  tending to them.  So now it sounds something like this: “Hey, can you pick up formula at Costco on the way home?  Okay, thanks.  Love you”.

It’s amazing how much the simplicity of this statement affects my day.   It’s a simple three words, or two if we are lazy.  And it’s automatic, so I would not boast that there is thoughtful passion or perhaps even profound emotion attached to our words at times.  That would be lying.  No one is tingling- passionate about their spouse each and every moment.

But that is why I am thankful for the automatic.  It’s secure and it’s meaningful in its own way.  Pat and I- like most parents- tell our kids I love you each day, and at some level it may not seem to affect them a whole lot one way or the other.  But, speak with some one who has never heard those three words from a parent and you will be reassured that daily doses of automatic love…and regular reassurance of value and meaning spoken to another person…

…add up to tremendous security.

There are always more heights to reach in marriage, but I am thankful for the goals we have reached together.  We are less individuals and more a team.  Less focused on the simply romantic, and more concerned with the other’s well-being.  And onward we plough, looking always upward toward God, asking Him to make our marriage and family something beautiful.

What are your goals?

Does anyone follow ABC’s The Bachelor?

I used to.  I probably shouldn’t admit so, but I used to.  I used to like the show a lot.  But not in the way you should like something- because it fills a need or it satisfies.  Or because there is something fun or healthy about it.  I liked it because it was trashy, and at some level trashy voyeurism appeals.    And let’s admit it, ABC is onto women and junk and they do not disappoint with their scenes in hot-tubs and darkly-lit rooms.  With their shows of cat-fights and drama.  With their exploits involving good-looking men and beautiful women.

The Bachelor is the best of all that is raunch: and it is eaten up with a spoon.

Back when Anna was a baby, I was kinda struggling.  Who am I?  Where is my life headed?  Etc.  College was over, and with it life with tons of friends around.  Marriage was newly-wed marriage: good, but a little less secure and most definitely less gracious.  We were still figuring things out.  I can literally recall sitting in our office, emailing friends and thinking “My life has no glamour about it.  At all”.  Most of my friends were still dating and travelling, and I was home with a helpless baby and a husband taking classes at night.

Now no holds-barred, Anna was the beginning of the best for me but I didn’t realize it then.  I couldn’t appreciate what I had because I didn’t realize it for what it was or would be.  Or could be.  Or even,what it could not be. I had known a few years of getting dressed every day, working out when I wanted to, wearing make-up, dating a little.  I was so free and so put together.  It wasn’t glamor by anyone else’s standards, but looking back it was the most that I would ever have (and it certainly wan’t this).

I am convinced it is the glamour that appeals to women about The Bachelor.  The magnetism comes from flowers and beauty and exotic everything and romance and a love story.  But I think it must be the glamor more than anything that holds and transfixes.  And this almost embedding in someone else’s life and experiencing vicariously some of it.  After all, if the show was about a fisher-man living in a shack and seeking out a stout and weather-beaten and sturdy woman for a life of hard work, no one would watch.  Ratings would not even surface.  One piloted episode would be all there is of The Bachelor: Newfoundland Fisherman.

No one wants to feast on poverty and ugliness. 

Women love a good love story and The Bachelor promises what we all at some level want:  the rose-strewn fairy-tale.  With plenty of wealth and glamor to spare.

But nobody gets the fairy-tale.  The fairy-tale is riding off into wedded joy, without speed-bumps and hurt feelings and forgiveness.   And no one has that but we all want it.  Especially women.  We want to believe that there is a man out there who will never step on our toes or say unkind words.  Who will fly us over Maui in a helicopter and light thousands of candles and tell us how beautiful we are. Who will read our minds and souls, and bring us flowers and woo us until the day we die.

But unfortunately, we cannot get around the pesky issue of reality.  We are both married into baggage- each other’s and our own.   We settle into life together and have a baby or two and have to start to fight to have this beautiful relationship we want.  It is a shock how hard it can be at times.  On the day we get engaged and are all sparkly and filled with wonder, it is hard to imagine it can be very difficult to love some days.  That there are days or weeks where we will struggle to say even one kind word.  Or build up or encourage. 

The Bachelor ends at the fairy-tale.  With the roses and the sunset and the Harry Winston diamond.  But the show closes right where the rest of life begins.   Because the minute the camera cuts, reality will start.  The couple’s capped and whitened teeth will not save them from arguing.  Their beautiful bodies will not prevent them from being unloving.  Their diamonds and lavish vacations will not prevent what they want to avoid: reality.

I would not trade all the money in the world for my ex-bachelor husband.  This imperfect man with his flaws and sins.  In fact, I would not even want to repeat time and go back to dating him again: because who he is now is so much better.  I would never desire he and I to go back to the days of more money and more freedom: because the very reason we love each other better now is because we have fought to love without.

Without glamor.  Glamor only places a band-aid on the real issues of our hearts.  We cannot escape who we are by going to Maui.  What is in our hearts: the selfishness and the holding onto anger and the rude words and the unkind thoughts.  These parts of us are so embedded, they will follow us to the ends of the earth.  Mature love is built on giving up, not indulging or escaping.  By looking our sin full in the face and dealing with it and considering someone else better in the process.

The Bachelor ends there.  With the beginning of the real.  And the network knows that.  It knows full well that two days later the couple will be fighting over her hurt that he slept with two friends previous.  It knows that love no matter how sweetly professed, cannot be built on such grotesque selfishness.  It knows that mature love- true love will never take root on such a fragile foundation as polygamous dating.

And so the show wraps up, because no one wants to see the ugly.

So Jake Pavelka has his abs and his money and his job and his romantic side in full-force.  But I counter with: Give me big and sacrificial love.  Give me REAL love.  The kind that teaches and explains and works through life.  Give me love that is mature enough to move beyond being… a Bachelor. 

My husband is generally the one to plan our dates.  And generally they fall into place something like this:

Get in the car.  Drive somewhere.  Turn around because we decide we cannot commit to a location so far away.  It is 7:30.  We panic.  Bed-time is just around the corner.  And we have not slept in since Y2K, so we want to be cautious with our evenings.  Wind up at California Pizza Kitchen.  Pat scolds me for listening in on all the conversations around us (last time it was two teenage girls discussing their decision with lesbianism).  He tries to seat me away from people or I am very dull date.  We talk a little and check the time.  And wonder whether everyone went to bed alright. 

And then we head home.  Exhausted from our time driving around the suburbs and eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.

Well, this weekend is my turn to plan.  We have eaten our satisfaction out of pizza joints- they simply don’t hold the romance anymore.  And Pat has not had much to look forward to lately.  He has worked around the clock for almost an entire month.  Our poor children are suffering ill effects from his absence, and I am actually wondering how to administer spankings to 3 children all at once, myself. 

It is all in the stealth chase, I think. 

So I am planning an over-night for him, without any small dependents.  We will stay local to Chattanooga.  And even though my greatest desire is to sit and do absolutely nothing,  Pat’s love-language is: outdoors.  And  since this is all about him, I figure that outdoors + wife + new camera = great and profound happiness.

I think we’ll stay at here, at the Chattanoogan.  (www.chattanooganhotel.com).  We have visited once before, and it is very nice.  Contemporary- which is not my favorite style -but somehow the pieces come together at this hotel and it all works out well. 

I am a fan of the fireplaces all around.  And I hear there is a warm indoor pool- so, we will have to incorporate the kids somehow.  Leaving them out of the water would be so cruel after our mixed-up, decade-long southern winter.

Speaking of cruel: I had hoped to avoid a bathing suit for well over 2 more months, since Will’s exiting my body has left it a little confused.  My stomach used to have some self-respect, but not anymore.  No more. Kathy Kaehler’s step aerobics is a step in the right direction and the improvements are on the up-swing, so I can’t complain too loudly.  But I do need to be careful with that one.  KK  has the build of a Ken-doll and that is not the end-result I am aiming for.  Something a little more stream-lined would be good.  

Truly, in all likelihood our hotel will have large towels pool-side.  At least that is the hope and vision I have, so that I can sweetly wave at Pat covered head- to- toe in children, from the safety of a chair.  Exposing my winter-white self is something my emotions simply cannot handle right now.

Back to Pat:  I am very proud of him.  He has worked so hard lately, and he never complains.  His attitude is eternally good.  And when he comes home after working 12-hour days, he is a father and a husband too.  A really nice one.  His boss sent him a gift-card today as a gesture of kindness, and I noticed it went far in his mood.  We have been ships in the night he and I, waving to one another as we pass by in the hall-way.  He with his lap-top, me with kids and homework.  These are not the cycles of marriage I enjoy.  The ones where we are both having to give all that we have and without rest.  But really.  This is a recession and jobs and money have risen to a whole new level of respect for me. 

God has been very good to us.

Back to booking.  Taking on planning has been more fun that I thought.  I think it is an inward satisfaction of deeper control issues, but also a sense of: “Oh good.  This ensures that I am not staying in a Motel 8″.  Which is where the two of us disagree.  Motel 8 is a subject of nightmares to me, but to Pat on the other hand, such accomodations are completely fine.  After all, a room is a room.  He thinks environment is over-rated and budget is fine.  Generally, I do my best to win these arguments.  Because I personally am a proponent of: Have you watched Dateline and their spy-cam hotel series?  We need to make careful decisions with bed-spreads and such. 

Back to planning…….

Pat is out taking photos tonight.  He and a good friend have a similar interest in photography, and have had a couple of opportunities now to “shoot” together.

Anna was funny over dinner this evening, asking me in a confused tone: “So Mama, Daddy is out taking photos of Mr. Scott?”  And I could picture the two men in mid-town posing and smiling, taking turns capturing one another.  These two southern boys in the middle of Virginia Highlands , blending right in.

  No dear Anna.  They are taking pictures with their own cameras of interesting things, not of one another…

Pat rarely gets “time off”.  Now that we have signed our inalienable rights away to liberty and personal space, there are few opportunities to be alone.  Or to experience “free time“.  So, we grab these moments when we can, cancel when we can’t, and enjoy dabbling in our hobbies as life permits.

For me, hobbies are anything related to friends, fabric or paints.  And sometimes cameras.

For Pat, a hobby involves lots of complicated buttons.  And preferably really expensive buttons that he tasks me with keeping the kids away from while he is at work.  And I think to myself that goodness!  That is such an unfair battle, because buttons to push and toddlers are a blissful marriage.  So, how do I win this war?  Pat, have you met our daughter, Emma?

These clicking, snapping contraptions with multiple lenses make him so happy.  Since we were married almost 9 years ago, Pat has replaced his camera 4 times- (which is actually better than his wedding-ring -replacement count, which is currently at 6.  He is not wearing a ring now, because he  tends toward combining wedding rings and kayaks, forgetting that wedding rings cannot swim).

But he takes some good shots, I think.  (All of these shot in Oakland Cemetery, Marietta).  He knows his complex buttons.  And he studies his manuals.  And he goes online and reads about apperture speeds and angles and shadows. And then he gets enthused and goes out and creates something beautiful.  

I see how much photography means to him.  And when I choose to not be selfish about his time away from me, I see that he is a man, yes.  One with a job and a family.  But he is also a person created to be creative in his own way.  He needs that time, as do I.  Time to support and feed the part of him that goes beyond work and responsibility.  The part of him that exists as really and truly as his “worker-bee” side.  He is good to give me time to do my things.

And I want to be better and better about giving him time and space, to do his thing.

Knock, knock on the door. 

Hi, UPS-man.  Nice to see you this morning.  You in all your head-to-toe-brownness.  (Could the higher-up’s not be consulted as to the possibility of incorporating one more pigment into your uniforms…just a thought).  

Here you are, and top of the morning to ya, although to be perfectly frank, I heard you approximately 30 seconds before you arrived, roaring up the street.  (Why incidentally, do you use my cul-de-sac to do wheelies?)

For me?  A printer?  Oh, you silly man you.  That is not mine. 

 Hello!  I am a female.  I would not conceive of ordering a printer.  There is obviously a mistake.  I cannot sign the dotted line.

Sure there’s not a cute pair of shoes nestled in your truck of tricks out there?  Your sleigh of goodwill and cheer.  Sure there is not something remotely fashion-related out there? 

Canon Pixma MX860

Just this, eh? 

Well.   Let me think.  There was this one time I had mentioned to Pat: “I would love to have a printer that prints graphics.  So I could make cards and photo transfers for shirts and such”.  But that’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

I mean, none of those dresses I ever liked ever flew on the wings of a dove to my house.  The Gap + Pat’s credit card never came through for me, so why this?

One could say that I am loved woman.  You could even argue that my husband is the sweetest, noblest knight to ever wield a sword.

Or, we could all just be honest.  Call a spade a spade.  And acknowlege the fact that this here Pixma MX860 toy…

… it’s TOTALLY for him.

Wink:).