(source)

For the next few weeks we will be reposting from He’s Not Your Prince Charming, reaching way back in the archives to remind and reteach and rethink what we’ve been learning together. I have asked my blog team to help choose their favorites, and I am hoping you will add fresh comments to shed new light on these posts.

In the meantime I will be writing ahead for the new series, studying, reading, thinking, and praying about what to say and how to say it. Any suggestions and thoughts about what you’re wondering about will be most welcome— after all, you are my girls! 

From my heart,

Diane

 repost 06/13

Dear girls,

I sit, this morning, in my “summer office” on the back deck. Surrounded by books and bits and pieces of notes I’ve jotted on scraps of paper, my Bible open and your comments ringing in my ears, I linger over a delicious pot of Singaporean tea as I ponder what to write.

How do I answer your cries of grief and longing, shame and wishes?

"… it seems that we have approached from all angles and I still don’t enjoy or desire sex, at all. I know I’m not the only one!"

"… my husband’s needs are being turned down by me because I am just so tired!"

"… I can be really tough/resentful of my hubby when he fails to live up to my expectations of him being my knight in shining armor who saves me from our kids, which then leads to zero sex drive on my half."

Oh my daughters! Surrounded as we are by messages and images and lyrics wrapping our womanly worth in our sexual allure, your honesty gives me an agonizing glimpse into your soul.

So many of you are haunted by a sense of loss, of being less-than, of inadequacy.

Just a few generations ago women were fed a different sort of lie:

"To the sensitive young woman who has had the benefits of proper upbringing, the wedding day is, ironically, both the happiest and the most terrifying day of her life. On the positive side, there is the wedding itself; on the negative side, there is the wedding night, during which the bride must “pay the piper”, so to speak, by facing for the first time the terrible experience of sex.

At this point, let me concede one shocking truth. Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware such an attitude! One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: GIVE LITTLE, GIVE SELDOM, AND ABOVE ALL GIVE GRUDGINGLY. Otherwise what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust."

(written by a “pious” Pastor’s wife to young women in The Maddison Institute Newsletter, Fall 1894)

Note the date- barely over a century ago!

And now?

Aren’t we living in the age of sexual enlightenment? Didn’t your parents fight the sexual revolution and win?

Aren’t we living free? Throwing our inhibitions to the wind as we indulge ourselves in sensual pleasure?

I don’t think so.

In fact, your letters tell me a different story. No less heartbreaking than the young brides a hundred years ago who viewed the wedding night ordeal as paying the piper in the terrible experience of sex.

Now 'pious' women believe a different lie: That sex just isn’t all that great most of the time.

In fact, a survey by the National Opinion Research Center seems to confirm that conclusion:

“Nearly one-quarter of American women never achieve orgasm and another half only climax occasionally. This means that almost three-quarters… go without orgasms either some or all of the time.”

(Intimate Issues, Dillow, Pintus)

How in the world do I line that up with the Song of Songs?

One hundred and sixteen verses smack dab in the middle of our Bibles so filled with erotic passion and unabashed pleasure between a young bride and her husband that unmarried Jewish men were banned from reading it!

Everything’s there- technique, adventure, disguise, fantasy, teasing, vivid description… all inspired by God!

Which leads me to conclude that the truth about sex is far different than the lie perpetuated in the nineteen century-

Lie #1: That sex is a terrible ordeal, and thus should be given grudgingly and seldom in order to have a “proper marriage”.

Or the lie of the twenty-first century

Lie #2: That sex is not all that great, and thus can be given grudgingly and seldom because its not all that necessary to a great and lasting and satisfying marriage.

Here, my dear girls, is the truth about sex:

• Sex between a husband and wife is meant to be great. Amazing. A mystical and magical intertwining of hearts and bodies in a powerful explosion of pleasure that creates intense feelings of love for a lifetime.

• Sex between a husband and wife is meant to happen often. Not as a special occasion when all the moods line up and kids stay away and there’s plenty of energy left over at the end of the day.

• Sex between a husband and wife is meant to be an act of intimate worship. Together. God is in that room! Watching, pleased, waiting for your expression of gratitude for such a surprising and soul-satisfying gift.

• Sex between a husband and wife is meant to be protected. It is fragile. Vulnerable. A target of all three of our enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. When sex is rare or gets perverted or causes pain or incites dread, something is wrong!

• Sex between a husband and wife is meant to be for you. Yes, you! You need sex. Your soul needs sex. Your emotions and moods are modified by sex. Sex is meant to make you happy, relaxed, free— to realize your own beauty, to relish your own body as you give yourself in abandon.

One of my favorite comments said this: "I need to see this topic with fresh eyes…"

Yes. We do. We must.

As women who are learning to listen to God, who are longing to be close to God, who are craving what He wants for our lives… we need to see the topic of our sexuality in marriage through the freshly washed eyes of Scripture.

Yes, we wish to be godly, giving mothers.

Yes, we wish to use our gifts and talents to honor God.

Yes, we wish to bring justice to far away places and hope to our neighbors.

But I think its time we audibly add another wish—

We wish to fully and frequently embrace our husbands in the intimacy of sexual passion— for our sakes and for his.

For God. For glory. For joy.  

And because this is so vital to the health of our souls as well as our marriages, I’ll be covering all five of these truths in coming posts. If you have any questions, please send them either via the comments (anonymous is just fine on private topics like this) or to hespeaks@ajesuschurch.org. I’ll try to answer in future posts.

From my heart,

Diane

P.S. Can you help me with this conversation? Sitting here all alone I feel awfully vulnerable. Your comments- whether the words are about your story or your longings or your questions… help me to know that I can keep talking to “my girls” about intimate issues.

(image by abi porter)

 “One of the true hazards of writing is that you yearn to write deeply honest things that rise up from lessons learned the hard way… then you have to learn those lessons the hard way.”

~ Shauna Neiquist in Cold Tangerines

This week I have been unpacking. A little early perhaps, as Firwood Cottage is not move-in ready just yet, but life does not wait and I’ve got things to accomplish. And so I pad about in stocking feet on a floor still hardening, trying to figure what to do with Too-Much-Stuff.

Way too-much-stuff. 

Which leads me to worrying. Where will I put it all? What should I get rid of? Those dishes I’ve had since our early years that I still like but don’t need? That pine hutch that takes up so much space and sticks out so far into a room too small but would be perfect for our too-big TV.?

I ask Phil.

Eyeing my too-big stack of pie pans waiting on the kitchen counter for a place to live, he answers honestly, “You don’t need pie pans. You don’t bake pies, Di.”

And just that fast I’m ruffled and annoyed and ready for combat. Because, you see, Phil’s mom made pies, and so did mine. Delicious, memory-making, mouth-watering pies: rhubarb, French apple, Boston cream, cherry- with real, straight-from-the-tree, pitted-one-at-a-time cherries.

Real women make pies. 

And now I’m not worrying about my too-much-stuff anymore, now I’m feeling my identity crumble the way my once-upon-a-time pie crusts did. Before I stopped making pies.

I live with an image of who I wish I were, of the woman I want to be: The woman with a perfectly ironed apron tied around her perfectly tiny waist, pulling a perfect pie out of her perfectly clean oven to feed her perfect family in her perfectly tidy-all-the-time house.

And then I look at me. Covered in dust from pulling boxes out of a disastrously dirty garage. Disheveled and discombobulated over too much stuff with a mind that can’t stop writing words when really I should be figuring this out.

And I don’t make pies.

Which I could excuse away if I could just keep my house perfect, but I can’t… or at least I don’t.

I want to, you see, but I live with two big men who live big lives.

My son, saving for his future, rushing off each morning, returning late every night, building, dreaming, doing, working… and messing up my tidy little house.

And Phil, that man I love, the one who reminds me that I don’t make pies— whose list is always too long and whose life is always too full. The one who dreams big dreams and packs life tight and invites me to join him in his journey.

How in the world am I going to live in this little house with two big men… and their piles of Too-Much-Stuff?  Too not-very-tidy men whose image of who they are is not in the least tied to how perfectly kept this house is. 

I go to sleep under the itchy wool of all my worries, waking up wound tight, uptight. It is dark, rain washing the coming day like those German hausfraus of my growing up years, who scrubbed the front step first thing every single morning, their own beauty all caught up in the cracked concrete.

Is that me?

Do I really believe this house is too small? Or is it just right? In our budget, with room to spare— for being generous, for living free. Just the right size for doing life different, the way God is calling us, the way we are longing to live in this fun, no-pie-baking chapter of our lives together.

For this former ugly-house to become home, our home— home for my two messy men and me— a woman learning to be who I am, learning to let go of who I am not— I am going to have to do more than unpack a few boxes. In fact, in order for Firwood cottage to become a place of rest and refuge, a place for refreshment and fun and good times, I am going to need to hang on to truths I know, but too soon forget.

1. That real women aren’t perfect.
2. That real women don’t expect perfection from themselves or those they love.
3. That real women aren’t afraid to let go of the past because they’re so excited about future hope, they hardly notice old glories.
4. That real women always make room for more life.

And that, my dear girls, is what living my life “hid in Christ” is looking like right now.

Messy, confusing, satisfying, exhilarating, daring, unconventional, and clinging close to the One who promises to finish this project of remaking me into a real woman.

And so, I ask you the questions that woke me up this morning:

Can we… women fitting ourselves tight in the Shadow of the Almighty (Psalm 91), learn to be who we are by simply coming in close to who He is?

Can we… women of such worth, such intrinsic value, (Matthew 6:19-34) stop trying to be perfect in order to learn to be holy? Wholly His, caught up in Him? Lost in His perfection?

Can we... women set free, (Galatians 5:13-15) give others room to become who they are? Letting go of tidy theories, those expectations that tie them tight and choke the life out of every one of us?

Can we live large and small at the same time?

From my heart,

Diane

P.S. Are you like me? Do you cling to an image of who you wish you were but in honest moments, realize you’re not? And that, indeed, you’re not meant to be? 

Please grace us with your stories, your wisdom, your struggles… we learn from each other…

P.S.S. I gave my pile of pie pans to a friend who makes pies…

(source)

For the next few weeks we will be reposting from He’s Not Your Prince Charming, reaching way back in the archives to remind and reteach and rethink what we’ve been learning together. I have asked my blog team to help choose their favorites, and I am hoping you will add fresh comments to shed new light on these posts.

In the meantime I will be writing ahead for the new series, studying, reading, thinking, and praying about what to say and how to say it. Any suggestions and thoughts about what you’re wondering about will be most welcome— after all, you are my girls! 

From my heart,

Diane

repost 09/13

Dear girls,

Last week I said: “I think its time we all moved past the resentment that makes us crabby and cranky and cold to our men.” 

We talked about the need to forgive, to let go of the anger that controls our spirits and contorts our view of conflict.  And I’m not just talking about those horrendous offenses that leave women mortally wounded. Because it is often those less-than –earth-shattering irritations that we forget need to acknowledge and forgive in order to heal up properly. Kind of like paper cuts that render our fingers hot and throbbing but don’t actually send us to the emergency room.

The little stuff.

This week I promised I’d show you how to forgive, but first I need to tell you what forgiveness is not. Because if we lump forgiveness in with all the other ingredients of conflict resolution we end up with a messy goop of impossible expectations.

Here’s what I don’t mean by forgiveness:

1.  Reconciliation:

Some relationships cannot be immediately reconciled by simply pardoning the person who hurt you. Abuse, for example. Or unfaithfulness. There are wounds that go so deep that only major surgery can heal them.

2.  Condoning:

Forgiveness is not the same as making excuses. Last week I wrote:

“Make believe doesn’t work here girls. You can’t pretend he didn’t mean it or it doesn’t hurt or you’re not mad… That’s just stuffing it and as we all know, that ugliness has a way of either seeping out of our pores or blowing up in our faces… And making excuses isn’t effective in the long run. He’s tired, pressured, stressed… but that can only go on for so long and then what?”

3.  Forgetting:

“The only way for the ‘forgive-and forget mentality’ to be practiced is through radical denial, deception, or pretense.”[1] It is not possible for us to forget, only to choose to “not remember” over and over again.

So, now that we’ve cleared away some of the debris attached to the concept of forgiveness, what do I do with all those bitter feelings that crop up when that husband or boyfriend or parent or friend wrongs me?

Here’s where to start:

1.  Be honest with God. No playing pretend games or shaming yourself for feeling the way you do. Tell Him all about it. Be specific. What exactly happened, what exactly do you need to choose to forgive? Say it out loud.

2.  Ask God for help. Only He can wrestle my immensely dominating will into sweet submission. Forgiveness goes against the grain of every base instinct we have.

3.  Trust God with the outcome. Anger is a means of control and of protection. To release this weapon requires that I entrust myself (my feelings, my heart, my future) into the hands of the only One who can keep me safe in the midst of all the hurt this life entails.

4.  Untwist the lies. You have an enemy who works with the offenses of others to smother us with untruth. Satan cannot stand our reflection of God’s beauty. He will use the hurts of others to try to convince us that we are ugly and awful and less-than. We need to separate those enemy-fed lies from what actually happened.

5.  Repent of my reaction. No one can make me angry. Anger is always, always, always a choice. What I do with that anger is my responsibility. We mess up relationships by getting on that roller coaster ride of you-hurt-me, so I-hurt-you-back, but you-started-it! The only way off is through recognizing my wrong response and repenting.

6.  Choose to forgive with my will. My long time mentor, Muriel Cook writes:

The world says, “If you don’t feel like doing something, don’t do it, because it’s not honest.” I’ve learned a secret: if I operate with my will, my emotions will eventually follow. But if I follow my feelings, my will goes along.[2]

7.  Act out forgiveness with my actions. Then Muriel illustrates her point with a story I’ve told my own daughters over and over again:

Let me show you what I mean. Every morning when the alarm goes off, my will and my emotions have an argument. My will says, “You’ve got to get up. You have to go to work today.” My emotions respond, “Oh, no, I can’t. I don’t feel good.” I never feel well in the morning. Now I have a decision to make. Am I going to stay in bed or get up? If I stay in bed, my will stays in bed too. So I get up with my will, go to the bathroom, and brush my teeth. My emotions still protest. It is only after I take a shower, drink a cup of tea, and start moving around that my emotions catch up with my will and I’m a whole person.

We do something similar when we forgive. We use our will, for Jesus’ sake, because He asks us to, and sooner or later our emotions follow.

That’s it girls. Forgiveness does not require years and years of professional counseling. It is not a process as much as it is a heroic act of our wills. The process part is the sluggish following of our feelings to catch up with what we choose to do with our wills.

If you’re finding yourself reacting to your man in unfriendly ways— snapping and snarling or withdrawing and colding him out, might the real cause be an unforgiving spirit?

Take this list with you and go on a long walk with the Father. Pour it out to Him. Let Him clean off the grunginess of unforgiveness. Let Him renew your love for your husband or your boyfriend or that guy who hurts your feelings. Let Him wash all those hurts away and leave you sparkling with the joy of your freedom.

From my heart,

Diane

PS: Here’s what we need: How do you act when you’re mad at something minor? Or have your feelings hurt. Can you tell us stories, even laugh at yourself? You might help us to be a little more honest with ourselves…

---

[1] Dan Allender, Tremper Longmann, Bold Love

[2] Muriel Cook, Shelly Cook Volkhardt, Kitchen Table Counseling

What if… God were to call on women to gather together to pray for their family, their friends, the people in their lives, the people they love?

What if…

God were to call an army of women to engage in intense, purposeful prayer?

What if…

hundreds of women answered that call and came together all at once to pray in one massive all-at-the-same-time gathering?

What if…

every daughter, son, husband, friend, neighbor and work associate of every one of those hundreds of women got saturated in prayer?

What if we prayed all night?

What would happen?

Several years ago a group of ordinary women set out to find out what would happen if we had enough faith and determination to venture out of our comfortable beds and pray all night for the people in our own circles of influence.

We were excited, a little nervous, and filled with the hope that God would show Himself to us in tangible, powerful ways.

In ways that made sense to us, in ways  that we could understand.

And He did!

Since that first Night in Prayer, nine years ago, the number of women who come, pajama clad, with pillows and goodies and hearts full of faith, has snowballed.

Women want to come! They bring burdens too great to bear alone: people they love who need Jesus, messy relationships they cannot fix, co-workers who are cold to the Gospel, teenagers taking terrible risks.

We walk in the door, every one of us, with a great burden to see hearts rescued by the Redeemer.

We have seen those Impossible Prayers answered.  Really! We have seen our own minds and attitudes and thinking changed dramatically. We have seen healings of bodies and perhaps even more miraculous, healings of relationships.

More than anything, we have experienced Jesus in a way we never understood possible.

This year would you join us?

We are gathering at midnight on April 4^th, through 6 A.M. the next morning to pray all night together… for those we love, for ourselves, for God’s kingdom to come crashing into our messiness here and now.

We’ll be gathering both on the Westside and at Bridgetown and at Sunset this year. I’ll be leading on the Westside and Tammy and her team will guide you at Bridgetown, while Carmen and her crew oversee the women at Sunset.

Will you join us?

I love the LORD because He hears and answers

My prayers.

Because He bends down and listens,

I will pray as long as I have breath!

Psalm 116:1,2

(NLT)

Filled with His hope,

Diane

Click Here to sign up.

P.S. If you’ve been to a Night in Prayer in the past, would you leave a comment here? I think your stories might just give some women the courage to come…

For the next few weeks we will be reposting from He’s Not Your Prince Charming, reaching way back in the archives to remind and reteach and rethink what we’ve been learning together. I have asked my blog team to help choose their favorites, and I am hoping you will add fresh comments to shed new light on these posts. In the meantime I will be writing ahead for the new series, studying, reading, thinking, and praying about what to say and how to say it. Any suggestions and thoughts about what you’re wondering about will be most welcome— after all, you are my girls! 

From my heart,

Diane

repost/4.12

Dear girls,

Last week we talked about all those differences that can make life and love so difficult. We talked about the three ways most of us women cycle through solving these conflicts of personality and values.

First we try to ignore that difference that’s irritating us.  Maybe if I don’t think about it, it will go away.

Only differences don’t go away. Instead they grow and chafe and loom larger and get blown up bigger.

Sometimes we convince ourselves that by clinching our teeth and determining to “overlook” it we’ll be okay.

Only differences cannot be overlooked in real life. That might work for dating but the very daily-ness of living with a man, day in and day out tends to aggravate those differences.

And then what we all seem to resort to when nothing else works: we take out our relational wrench and fix it.

Only it doesn’t work.

Ever.

In fact, I think many of those conflicts sited as “irreconcilable differences” are really just differences with a fix-it wrench doing deep damage.

Because, dear girls, your men don’t need to be fixed.

Just ask him.

Ask any man why he fell in love with his wife or fiancé or girlfriend and not one of them will tell you he loves her because he hopes she will fix him.

Help him… maybe. Challenge him…perhaps. But mostly what you’ll hear is something like this:

I married her because she likes me. 

Think about that for a minute because here’s where things get strange:

I did not marry Phil thirty-five years ago because he liked me. I married him because I liked him. 

When, just a few minutes ago I asked Phil why he fell in love with me, he listed all sorts of lovely reasons. But woven in there every phrase or so was something along the lines of: you understood me, you fit with me. 

My man’s way of saying, you liked me, and that made me like you even more, and think we could have a really good life together.

Because girls, that man of yours doesn’t want you  to  fix him— he wants you to like him.

When you and I set out to fix those differences that really bother us… he doesn’t feel liked.

When we heave a great sigh of not-so-subtle disappointment over yet another Sunday afternoon with the annoying noise of a football game drowning out our yearning for romance… he doesn’t feel liked.

And when we hint and poke and suggest and remind him again… he doesn’t feel liked.

It's like he needs. Great gobs of like. Loud like.

He needs you to like him whether he’s messy or manically neat. Whether he’s cool or… kind of dorky. Pudgy or buff, hairy or bald, pushy or polite, successful or out-of-work and out-of-steam.

Deep down he yearns to be liked just as he is, right now, today.

And you can do that, dear girls. You can like him. Yes, you can. It’s a choice we make.

But you’ll have to remember this: He’s not your Prince Charming.

He’s not supposed to be.

That place in your heart is carved out for God alone. He’s perfect. Everything you ever wanted and so much more.

And when you know that… you can look at that man across the table and just like him. A lot.

And all of a sudden those differences aren’t so bad. They don’t disappear, but they certainly start to shrink. You’ll start to wonder what you were so worried about way back then in those conflict-riddled days. You’ll see that you over-did it, that you made your relationship too much about you.

How do I know?

Because I’ve tried all three ways of dealing with those difficult differences between the two of us.  I’ve stirred up conflict, sent my man cowering into the corner of the roof, been that irascible, unsolvable, hard-to-please woman.

All because I forgot…

That Phil is not my Prince Charming. He’s the man God gave me to love, to serve, to help, to partner with— to like, for the rest of our lives.

And that's what this series is all about. Next week I'll show you what I've discovered about the four ways God asks women to love their men. And then we'll talk about how to do that in a way that makes him feel really, really liked.

From my heart,

Diane

P.S. Here’s your chance, girls. Tell us what you like about him. Your boyfriend, your fiancé, your husband… make a list and let us see it. And then tell him. I think you’ll be amazed at how much he loves being liked.

(image by Bethany Small)

…and all the people in that region begged Jesus to go away and leave them alone…

Luke 8:37

…the crowds received Jesus with open arms because they had been waiting for Him.

Luke 8:40

I sat before the fire this morning with a cup of steaming tea in one hand and my Bible in my lap. Groggy from sleeping too late, restless and needing real rest, I felt all unsettled inside.

The words caught me.

The story of a whole town pressuring Jesus to leave after He’d done good— rid a crazy man of his demons.

Why weren’t they okay with that?

And then right up against that question, rose the story of a whole town pressing in around Jesus for help and healing.

How did they know?

On one side of the lake an immense crowd gathered to beg Jesus to go away. To leave them alone.

On the other side of that same lake, equally insistent crowds waited with open arms to invite Him right into the midst of their stories.

Why?

Why would one person push Him away and another pull Him close?

And aren’t I just a little spiritually bi-polar too?

On some things down right rigid in my strict adherence to His Word…

and on others clearly disobedient and mostly unapologetic.

Why do I ramp up the intensity of my words in order to get my own way… when I well know that what God relishes in a woman is a gentle and quiet spirit?

Why do I lay awake at night worrying about my kids… when He has so clearly stated that He loves them with a greater love than I could ever grasp?

And why can’t I help myself?

Why don’t I stop?

Fully awake now, I scoot forward, lay aside my tea and sniff around these stories. What I find gives me much more than a caffeine jolt.

The ones who wanted Him away were afraid. Not of the stark naked, demon filled, manic man who broke through chains and dominated the countryside. They were used to him. Had it under control.

What scared them witless was Jesus’ undeniable power to bankrupt their undercover pig operation. Here was a kosher Jewish town making a killing on hogs.

They had a secret that Jesus knew about and they thought by pushing Him out of the picture they could keep stockpiling all that lovely stash without the whole world knowing.

And maybe I have secrets too. Secret pride. Secret fears. Secret things that feel safe to me. And I don’t want Jesus to have anything to do with my hog business.

Mmh.

Then there’s the other guys. They welcomed Jesus. Held open their arms and fairly wrestled Him into their lives.

A leader fell flat on his face before Jesus, blithefully ignorant of what everyone else might think. His daughter was dying and by golly this guy was going to do everything in his power to get the help he needed to save her.

He was desperate.

A woman grabbed onto the tassle at the bottom of His robe and held on for dear life, stopping Jesus’ journey through the crowds. Nothing and nobody was going to stop her from getting from Him what she wanted more than life itself. Weak and weary and tired of the isolation of illness, this woman would go down in history for her insistence that Jesus help her.

She was sick of being sick. 

I think there’s a treasure to be unburied in these side-by-side stories.

Something about fear and faith. And how you can’t have both. One cancels out the other.

Faith overrides fear and fear deletes faith.

I chew on this all day. Keep coming back to the stories. What am I missing?

I don’t want to be a bi-polar believer.

Moving from crisis to crisis, one season all good and peace-filled and other’s centered…

Too soon swinging to anxious, overwrought, ready to burst into tears because life is hard and how come that happened and why me?

Jeez.

And while I am praying and seeking and wondering, words jump out at me:

Faith.

Peace.

Believe.

Trust.

I know those words. And I know something else—

that the life I long for cannot be had as long as I insist on holding God to my way…

and

the life I long for is mine for the taking if I’ll only refuse the fear by fully entrusting every single teeny tiny facet of my life to Him.

Everything.  Everyone.  Fully.

And so I get up to face my day with three treasures tucked into my heart, stored in my mind, settled into my soul…

1.  It’s usually when I’m up against death and desperation- really scary stuff— that I come begging for Him.

2.  Not until I get sick and tired of being sick and tired will I live the life I long for.

3.  Fear is what gets in the way of what I really want.

These are three things I cannot afford to keep forgetting, and neither can you. But I’ll need the help of other women who want what I want.

Women who’ve declared themselves all His.

Women who are daring to trust Him even when they’re really not crazy about all that desperation and dying talk.

Women who are willing to call me out when I start hiding hogs again.

Women like you…

From my heart,

Diane

PS:  Can you write us some stories of times you fell on your face in full on faith that only He could fix those broken places?  We need to hear your songs of deliverance to help build up our own wobbly faith.

repost: 4.2012

(image by Hillary Kupish)

Like apples of gold in settings of silver
is a word spoken in right circumstances. Proverbs 25:11

Dear girls,

I started this series, He’s Not Your Prince Charming, so long ago I cannot seem to find it’s beginning. It has been a revealing and satisfying journey for me to share with you things I have learned and am still learning after 35 years of marriage to a good and godly man.

I’ve written to you about the beauty of a woman’s sexuality, about attitudes and admiration and freedom and friendship. I’ve told stories, attempting to be honest, trying to present truth with hope and just a tad bit of real life hilarity.

And I’ve heard your stories. You have given me the greatest gift a woman can give to a friend— your truth.

I’ve laughed and I’ve cried and I’ve worried. Sometimes I’ve smiled so wide into my computer that my husband has wondered what in the world I’m so excited about! I just keep telling him these are my girls…

That’s who you are.

You’ve listened and you’ve passed my words to people you love. Sometimes you’ve disagreed or pointed out holes in my thinking. You’ve added your own hard earned wisdom of how to do holiness in real life. You’ve counseled each other… nothing thrills me more!

Here is what I hope you have learned as we’ve talked:

1. That no man can satisfy that deep craving every woman has for intimacy and worth and validation and beauty.
2. That Jesus is the one you’re craving.
3. That He wants to draw you near in your brokenness more than He wants you to be perfect.
4. That He craves you too. Will I ever get over the wonder?

And…

1. That loving a man is an act of worship, by faith, in the One who calls us to love passionately, purposefully, beautifully.
2. That loving this way will take everything we have: our intelligence, our willingness, our creativity, our intuition and our wisdom.
3. That loving this way is a calling, an honor, and a choice.
4. That loving a man well can only come out of a place of being loved well by the One Man who fills your heart to overflowing.

And more… that God specifically urges wives to love their husbands by being…

1. his lover
2. his friend
3. his partner
4. his admirer

A couple of weeks ago, my blog team met and spent a long evening talking about what’s next. And though we could keep talking about how to love our men forever and ever… we realize that our lives are rich with relationships that need our focus. We have friends, parents, sons and daughters and roommates. And each of us is intent on drawing closer in intimacy with God in a way that is authentic and life changing.

With those priorities in mind, we have come up with a new series called simply WORDS. My focus will be on sharing with you what I want my girls to know. Things that I want to pass on; truths and wisdom I am learning or have learned that have made all the difference in my world.

For the next few weeks we will be reposting from He’s Not Your Prince Charming, reaching way back in the archives to remind and reteach and rethink what we’ve been learning together. I hope you will add fresh comments to shed new light on these posts.

In the meantime I will be writing ahead for the new series, studying, reading, thinking, and praying about what to say and how to say it.

And, drums roll… writing my first book. My dream of publishing a book is finally coming true. No doubt I’ll be sharing snippets here and there as I chip away at it for the next few months.

From a heart overflowing with love for each of you,

Diane

P.S. If there is a topic you’re longing for me to address, please let me know in the comments. My own list is growing…

(image by Bethany Small)

He calmed the storm to a whisper and stilled the waves. 

Psalm 107:29

The boys in the boat were in their element.

Fishermen raised by fishermen, these guys lived, breathed, worked, played, dreamed to the rhythm of the lake. So when a squall came up suddenly, surrounding them with gargantuan waves, swamping their boat, heaving their bellies… they knew enough to be legitimately afraid.

Hadn’t they heard the stories?

Of men lost at sea, bodies washing to shore months later, of widows wailing beside the graves of men too young to die?

They knew enough to be afraid. Desperately afraid.

In the front of their boat, Jesus seemed impossibly unaware of their troubles. Curled up to keep warm, his head nestled into a pillow, He slept right through— oblivious.

This week, I have been just like those fishermen.

Storms threaten to swamp my boat. Hard things: squalls, upheaval, unrest. Too many things coming too fast and I feel swamped, overwhelmed, afraid.

Afraid for my father, whose body is fighting too hard to breath. How do I live and laugh and joy while my dad, this man who has been my refuge, my picture of the Father, faces agony?

And then all the other minor waves which, alone, are entirely doable, but added together, swirl into a deadly undertow.

How do I do this?

I keep coming back to these men, boys really— rough and tough, confident in that swagger of strength that comes from a life well lived.

They know it all. They can do it all.

They’ve set goals, figured it out, worked out.

And then the storm hits and all they know to do doesn’t work.

And so they panic. And so do I.  And so do some of you.

But Jesus doesn’t get mad at our fear. He doesn’t slap us down, shame us, trade us in for someone braver and better.

He doesn’t even rebuke these guys for their audacious shouting in His ear.

Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. Frantically, they woke him up, shouting, ”Teacher, don’t you even care that we are going to drown?”

When he woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the water, “Quiet down!” 

Suddenly the wind stopped and there was a great calm. 

You’d think the next words out of his mouth would have been lined with disgust at these wimps. After all, they’d been with him long enough to know him as not only a miracle maker, but as a man with a message of a kingdom yet to come. Of God’s upside down kingdom where everything is not as it seems.

They were supposed to know by now that life is about more than success and tranquility and hunky-dory dreams come true.

And so should I. But sometimes I forget. And then I panic and get overwhelmed and frantically fearful.

But listen to what Jesus says,

Why are you so afraid? Do you still not have faith in me?

I hear his words and my soul stills.

There are lessons here for me, for us.

These men saw the waves and panicked.

I do that. Anything out of the ordinary mixed with a little bit of too much, thrown in with a cup full of liquid gunk and suddenly I’m sinking.

The key, I am coming to see is to trust God before hand.

To live as if difficulties are normal. To live unafraid of loss. To live unafraid of death.

And the only way to do that is to let go of my Christian bumper sticker view of life, instead, soaking my mind in Jesus’ words and stories. 

Jesus didn’t panic because He lived at peace with the imperfect.

These men saw the waves and assumed the worst.

And so do I. Give me enough waves; enough conflict, enough stress, enough bad news, and I assume the worse. I’m going to drown.

Two plus two equal the end. Woe is me. I can’t do this.

But it’s not true. I can do this.

I can do whatever He allows in my path because He is in me and He has overcome all my not enough-ness.

These men saw the waves and got mad at God.

I do this too! Don’t You care that I am going to drown?

There He is, all curled up comfortable, blissfully unaware of their sinking ship—  and they get mad. I mean major mad. Shouting in God’s face mad.

Can you relate to their reaction? Do you do that? Shout in anger when really you’re scared witless?

These guys knew His power, they knew He could save them, so why didn’t He? There He is, seemingly passive and unaware while their lives sink into despair. Right when they need Him the most, He falls asleep on the job.

Is it any wonder they got a little miffed at Jesus for sleeping through the storm?

But, I am coming to learn, sometimes storms are needed. And I don’t know all the reasons why, but I do know that He uses those sinking kind of circumstances to bring me in close, to draw me near.

Jesus didn’t always understand either.

And the not-knowing hurt. And yet, still He chose to believe— not in fairy tale endings, but in the great heart of His Father.

He chose trust.

And that’s where I am today. Done with the panic. No longer waiting for the worst. Believing and trusting because I’ve been doing this for long enough that to not trust Him is just... wrong.

Today I chose to believe that He is good and He knows and He cares.

Today I chose to believe that He calms my storms with His whispers…

From my heart,

Diane

P.S Are you facing some storms that threaten to do you in? Can I pray for you? I would love to hear both your fears and your trust… 

(image by Hillary Kupish) 

… thoughts on submission from a strong willed woman 

Wives,

submit yourselves to your own husbands

 as you do to the Lord.

Ephesians 5:22

For many months I have danced around the S-word. Rather than engage in controversy, I have chosen to be careful, to sneak in the occasional benign reference to an idea so seemingly archaic as to be seen as obsolete by many. A concept agonizingly riddled with conflict.

I’ve been careful for two reasons:

One, because historically women have been battered by bullying men and sanctimonious women with this word… and

Two, because women, in their struggle to wrestle culture’s thinking back into sanity, have been biting back, over the last couple of decades, with such militant ferocity.

And I, being a teacher and encourager to real women I know and love, have absolutely no desire to wade into either the sanctimonious or the ferocious.

Plus, I am a bit of a coward when it comes to conflict.

And so, today, I hesitantly nudge open the door to begin a discussion. Not a lecture. Not an argument. Not even a clearly defined teaching about what God meant or what He means and what every-single-wife-in-every-single-situation-really-ought-to-do.

Instead, I’ll simply tell you a story.

When Phil and I bought the house we lived in for the past 11 years, we made a hasty decision: an unfortunate combination of me not wanting to live in a rental while we belabored where to live, and him being influenced by outside pressures.

Practically from the day we moved in I’d been talking about selling it. Too big, too look-alike suburban, too much to maintain, too little actual space to accommodate our family gatherings, too expensive.

Yet every time we looked into selling it, putting pencil to paper to make sure it made financial sense, I reluctantly agreed with Phil. We needed to hang on to the house I didn’t like. Though he would have sold the behemoth house to make me happy, we both knew it was not the best decision and so we stayed.

I submitted. Not because Phil forced me to, but because he painstakingly and lovingly led me to see the wisdom of staying put.

Then one day the pencil on paper lined out a different scenario. A window of time in which the combination of our rising equity, low interest rates, and a multitude of must-sell houses on the market compelled us to start looking at what was out there.

I envisioned purchasing an old cottage, neglected but adorable, waiting for me to restore it to its former glory. We agreed that increasing our indebtedness wouldn’t be financially advisable, but that didn’t worry me. Our price range was generous enough to make me confident about my vision of home.

Then a friend told us about a house for sale. He told us to drive by it, see what we thought. He quoted us a price way under our allotted budget. The location was wonderful. I could hardly wait to see it.

Driving slowly down the street, I was charmed. Quaint cottages, huge trees, an area settled over a 40 year span, and the name of the street— Firwood Road—so enchanting!

The house, however, was ugly.

I mean really ugly. As in creepy ugly. As in this house was never anything but ugly. It was built ugly in an era of ugly with nary a hint of anything but ugly.

I was relieved to hear Phil agree with me. No Ugly House for us.

But then, over the next few weeks he started to change his mind. Putting that dratted pencil back to paper, he began to dream a different dream— the dream of financial freedom, of life really truly within our means.

The Ugly House kept coming up in our conversations about what that might look like. And I kept saying,

“No way, there is nothing redeemable about that house. It is just ugly. It has always been ugly. We don’t want ugly— I don’t want ugly.”

We bought the Ugly House.

We didn’t buy it because I heroically surrendered. I didn’t suddenly shrug my shoulders and give in. We bought it because, over hours and hours of talking together, my vision of our life began to change. I caught a whiff of what that kind of financial freedom might mean for our future, which, in turn, ignited my own dreams.

What might it look like to live with less? To be able to give more?  To be free to be generous even though we’re not rich. What might it look like to be able to close up our little house at a moment’s notice so we could run into adventure?

I got excited.

Then the friend who started this whole thing, along with a brilliant young designer we know, put more pencil to paper; moving walls, finding deals, figuring out how to transform the Ugly House into a cute cottage on our budget.

I got more excited.

We talked endlessly— using up whole forests of paper as we adapted the idea to suit us both.

He heard my soul-desire for beauty.

I saw his soul-craving for freedom.

We combined our individual desires out of love and respect for each other.

I realized in one of those rare moments of lightening strike revelation just how heavy a burden my husband had shouldered in order to enable me to do what I wanted to do: stay at home to focus on raising our children. And then, with an entirely empty nest, he let me quit my part-time job in order to pursue my dream of writing.

That enlightenment made me think long and hard. It gave weight to his vision for financial freedom. My respect for his sacrifice changed my approach to this next season of life.

And now we are getting ready to move into the Ugly House that isn’t ugly any more.

I’ve renamed it Firwood Cottage, an apt moniker that encompasses what it has become. Oak wood floors, fine wide baseboards, a refrigerator that harkens back to another era. I love this house! In fact, I am convinced it is going to become my all-time favorite home.

What seemed a sacrifice in the beginning has become a grand adventure.

Did I submit to my husband? Yes.

Was it easy to get to that place? No

Did I just roll over and give in? Of course not. 

Did we both have to let go of some strongly held opinions? Uh-huh. 

Did we reach a fairy-tale conclusion to our differences? NO! 

We had to chop off the much wanted great room drawn into our plans in order to afford the 5 foot soaking tub and the shiny sink I just couldn’t live without which made absolutely no sense to Phil. We’ll be saving for a long time to add that family gathering space back into our plans.

But we’re on the same page, making similar sacrifices, determined to embrace a simpler, smaller, living-within-our-means life.

Together.

And that is what submission looks like in the marriage of two strong-willed, yet strongly committed people— compromise, communication, conflict, coming to new conclusions.

Submission is so much more than merely giving in.

Submitting to my husband is messy, fraught with mind-changing, mistake-making decisions.

Submission to my husband includes embracing, envisioning, rethinking, probing, questioning… my husband’s ideas.

And yes, I believe that submission is mutual…  yet in the end it is my honor to choose to submit to the man I married, to follow in the footsteps of the “great women of old” who choose to submit to their own husbands because of their ultimate trust in God. (I Peter 3)

My take on submission may be different than yours. My circumstances most certainly are. And yet, in the end, we are simply sisters— women connected by our passionate love for Jesus, each of us trying to work that out in our own lives.

And maybe that is why, just a few minutes before God nudged Paul to write those words urging wives to submit to their husbands, He made sure he scribbled this:

“Don’t act thoughtlessly, but try to understand what the Lord wants you to do.” (Ephesians 5:17)

From a heart still learning what this all looks like,

Diane

P.S. How about you? How are you learning to act thoughtfully about submission to your own husband? And for those of you not yet married, have you thought about this? Does the idea of submission scare you? Have you seen this in someone's marriage that makes sense to you? I'd love to hear.

(image by  Bethany Small) 

We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up his permanent post as high priest for us, in the order of Melchizedek.

Hebrews 6:19

The Message

And so, God willing, we will move forward to further understanding…

Hebrews 6:3

NLT

Dear Dad,

There is so much I do not understand. So much that remains a mystery to me, veiled by a mist of what I don’t know, can’t grasp, don’t like.

I don’t understand why you, of all people, would suffer.

Why every breath comes as a gasp, why talking ends in spasms of body wrenching, back heaving coughing, why you must remain tethered to that tube of oxygen in order to breathe at all.

I don’t understand why we have to say good-bye.

Why, after having you always there; my stability, my fixer of broken things, my logic-minded advisor— why soon I won’t.

You, who have spent the better part of your life explaining why, showing how, teaching me over and over again the way to do life in fine, ordered, rightness— won’t be with me anymore.

I don’t understand why life ends in death, why you have to go away soon, why you can’t stay and watch my grandsons be like you, why you can’t keep holding my hand and squeezing it just so I know you’re with me.

I don’t understand why Mom will be alone.

After all these years of sticking by your side, or figuring it out, of learning and growing so that your differences are all ironed into one workable weave of cloth like a blanket around these generations to follow. Why will mom have to end life alone?

And what’s more, I don’t like it, not one bit. I want you to stay. I want you strong, hiking in your mountains, taking me with you, talking to me about my dreams, telling me I can do this, telling me I’ve made you proud.

Oh Dad, I do not understand. 

And maybe that’s okay. Maybe I don’t have to get this right.

Maybe having you all these years as my dad has shown me that I don’t have to understand, that I can hold on and trust. That clinging is okay because the Father does understand even when I don’t and He can be trusted because He is like you… or maybe it’s that you are like Him.

Maybe learning to trust you has taught me how to trust the One you trust.

And maybe someday I will understand. Maybe someday I’ll smile and nod and even laugh at God’s audacity to take the incomprehensible and make it good.

I don’t understand, Dad, but I trust the One who does, and for that, I will be forever grateful.

From my heart,

Di

(image by Hillary Kupish)

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I got in an argument with my husband.

I know that might shock you. Pastors and their wives don’t fight, do they? With all that training and talking and generally being super heroes in the spiritual world, how could they possibly lower themselves to ugliness?

We do. And we did.

But the possibility of coming out the victor in a scuffle with a professional communicator has a probability factor of practically nil. And so, frustrated with my inability to wrestle him into agreement, I decided to write it down— to make a list of all the things I was mad about.

If I couldn’t out-talk him, I’d try to out-list him.

First, I decided I’d better read my bible.

After all, we all know that winning an argument with a preacher requires Scripture. I’d come locked and loaded. Clearly, I needed God on my side in order to sway him.

But this was a Monday morning and somehow I’d left my bible at church the night before, so I rummaged around the bookshelves until I found a different bible—an Amplified Bible.

Ah ha! Just what I needed to amplify my message of frustration to my man!

This, my dear girls, was way before I learned that God speaks to His children if we will only listen. I wasn’t listening. I didn’t know I should be. I’m not even sure I would have if I’d known.

I was just mad.

Retrieving the barely used bible, I sat on the sofa, ready to load up on I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong verses. And just as I did, a big chunk of pages fell out, spilling God’s Word, quite literally into my lap… to Ephesians 5:33:

However, let each man of you [without exception] love his wife as [being in a sense] his very own self;

There it is! Surely, this must be the Lord giving me what I need to pound some sense into that man of mine…

I kept reading…

and let the wife see that she respects and reverences her husband [that she notices him, regards him, honors him, prefers him, venerates, and esteems him; and that she defers to him, praises him, and loves and admires him exceedingly].

Oh.

I put my pen down. Tore up my list. Got on my knees and wept.

My husband didn’t need a list of what he was doing wrong in order to love me the way I wanted to be loved… 

He needed a list of what he was doing right in order to be loved the way he needed to be loved.

And that’s just it, isn’t it? The moment we launch a crusade to bring all his manliness under our control so that we will be loved the way we want to be loved, we lose all possibility to be loved… or lovely.

But when we finally get it, when we get sick and tired of trying to lasso all that wildness, when instead we set him free to go and conquer his world, his way— something unexplainable happens— we fall more deeply in love with the man that he is.

We don’t feel more loved… we feel more love.

After years and years of being surrounded by women… of leading and teaching and counseling and loving women… of being a woman, I have become convinced that this is the one beautiful, mystical silver thread of sameness that runs in every woman’s veins—

We respect and therefore we love. 

Somehow, I think, if we understood this better… if we became convinced of the truth of who we are and who we are made to be, every one of us would pay close heed to this tiny tidbit of truth tacked on as a seeming afterthought to God’s pointed command for husbands to love their wives.

It’s almost as if God is trying to tell us something…

And too, I believe, if our men knew this about us… I mean really understood that our love for them is intangibly tied to our respect for them… it would make a difference in the way they live the every-day with us.

And so, my dear girls, don’t you think it’s time we focused our minds on honor; preference, admiration, respect… maybe even a pinch of… veneration? Knowing all his flaws and failures, eyes open to who he was yesterday and will probably be again tomorrow, might we dare let go control enough to just flat out admire him?

To see him through eyes free of bitterness for who he hasn’t been, for what he hasn’t done, for all those things that disappoint down deep?

Because, the truth is, when I purpose to notice those things about him that make me prefer him, when I regard him through the filter of honor, that’s when my chest fills with those feelings of love. 

And so, my dear sisters in this struggle to get it right, here is our own list…

OUR LIST:

1.    Respect him

2.    Reverence him

3.    Notice him.

4.    Regard him.

5.    Honor him.

6.    Prefer him.

7.    Venerate him.

8.    Esteem him.

9.    Defer to him.

10. Praise him.

11. Love him.

12. Admire him exceedingly.

And my prayer:

That… we would become a rare remnant of women skilled in the art of admiration.

That…  we would do it on purpose, not mindlessly burying our heads in the sand, but mindfully choosing honor anyway.

That… single women would gift their brothers with golden words of sincere regard.

That… married women would grace their husbands with exceeding admiration, showering them recklessly with words and gestures and expressions of approval.

And that the men God has gifted us with would see themselves thru the eyes of the One who created them and is crafting them into His ideal…  because we do.

From my heart,

Diane

PS. Some of you are great at this. Most of us are not. This week after Valentine’s Day might we focus on this aspect of loving our men?

And can you sneak in here and tell us how you did?

And for any men who dare sneak a peak into our place here, would you tell us how your wife or girlfriend or just-friend purposely gave you the gift of great respect? We want to learn.

(image by Hilary Kupish)

Dear girls,

For too many years I spent all my relational energy loving my husband the way I wanted to be loved. After all, doesn’t the Bible tell us to do unto others as we want them to do unto us? 

So I did unto him in the hopes that he’d do the same unto me.

But it didn’t work. Because Phil was too busy doing unto me what he wanted me to do unto him.

And, in truth, we got into a lot of crazy-cycle struggles over this well-intended-but-doomed-to-failure way of thinking.

So I started over.

First, I let the truth sink deep that my handsome, godly, charming, and ever-so-strong man was not and would never be my Prince Charming.

Then I began the long, slow learning that all my hopes and dreams for a love that satisfies can really, honestly be known in Jesus. I drew close. I heard. I began to feast on His love, to see His affection for me—for the me I really am.

And though we all sigh and swoon when someone sings a song about loving every part of me just the way I am…

… it’s not true… or possible. Because no man will ever love any one of us just the way we are…

Except One…

And now I am learning something new. Something no one ever told me.

I am learning how to love a man the way he wants to be loved.

And so, for the next several weeks, I will attempt to unlock the mystery of loving a man in a way that actually makes him feel loved.

As you read my list, remember this: every man is different. Same species, vastly different variations. This is my list for my man: a good man: a following-after-God man.

And remember this too: I am writing about marriage. Which puts #20 (for most husbands, most of the time) right there at the top of the list.

Twenty Ways Of Loving Your Man:

1. Respect: Respectful words, facial expressions, gestures, actions.
2. Encouragement: That strong undercurrent of belief that brings courage to a man who wars for his family every day.
3. Friendliness: A woman by his side who likes him.  A lot.
4. Freedom: To be who he is right now and who he wants to be someday.
5. Acceptance: Of who he is and who he isn’t.
6. Space: To breathe deep, to spread out, to be a man in a woman’s world.
7. Loyalty: Fierce by-his-side belief in him.
8. Forgiveness: For all those every day mishaps that make you crazy.
9. Fun: Laughter, light-heartedness, surprising joy.
10. Intrigue: Mystery and mystique without drama and confusion.
11. Agreement: As in the antithesis of constant conflict.
12. Help: To make his life better, easier, more fun and more fulfilling.
13. Adventure: With you by his side… or at least in the sidelines, cheering him on as he meets the dare.
14. Food: It’s still the way to a man’s heart.
15. Understanding: A refuge for real relationship.
16. Mercy: When you don’t give him the tongue-lashing or eye-brow raising he deserves.
17. Grace: When you do give him the warmth and welcome he doesn’t deserve.
18. Submission: Pouring all of yourself into his mission.
19. Solutions: because fixing it is the way a man takes care of his own.
20. Sex: lots and lots of warm, welcoming, fiery, consistent, memory-making, always-available sex.

And so, my dear girls, we begin another series. Starting next week I’ll be posting every Monday one word about loving a man in the way he really wants to be loved. The way, I believe, God designed you, uniquely, to love your man.

From my heart,

Diane

PS: This list is incomplete! Can you add what you know? Show this to your husband or your friends and ask them? I’ll be rearranging this list and adding yours as I delve into this next series.

PSS: Jay Payleitner has written a book I go back to again and again called, 52 Things Husbands Need From Their Wives. It’s insightful, funny, encouraging, convicting, and wise. Read it if you’re in need of inspiration.

(photo by Bethany Small)

Back when I was high school during the now-vintage era of the 70’s, computers were monstrous machines. They were housed in massive buildings, attended by men in white lab coats and thick glasses. No home computers, no laptops.

As students, we wrote our essays and term papers on typewriters— the electric kind if we were lucky.  Usually by hand first, then plucked out laboriously on the machine, slow and careful lest we hit the wrong key, leaving a permanent imprint on the perfect white paper.  Most teachers allowed no more than 3 errors per page.

My dad allowed no errors. A typo was a mistake. Why wouldn’t I aim for perfection?

Dad was not normally a tyrant, but he knew me well. Papers were my ticket to the grades he knew I could get but wouldn’t if I didn’t use my strengths. And tests were not my strength. My befuddled mind just wouldn’t grasp such unimportant details as dates— Was that signed in 1776? Or was it 1667?

But assign me to write a story about what life may have been like back whenever-it-was, and I’d bump those grades back up to where they belonged.

How many hormonal implosions did I unleash on poor dad when he red-marked my papers? And believe me, I could implode with the best of them! Drama and you-don’t-love-me and no-one-else’s-parents-torment-their-kids-like-this!

But nothing moved the man.  Instead, he calmly waited out the storm and told me, Good job, you’re getting it. Now do it again. 

And so I did. Until I got it right. Until it was good-grade worthy and I could hand it back to my dad to see his smile and that slightest nod that meant more than my name in lights.

Stretch back a few more years. We lived in Germany, in a small hamlet surrounded by fields and forests. A magical place. Dreamer that I was (and am) I remember all the wild and wonderful imaginings as I stared out my bedroom window at the castle one town away.

But on Saturdays I had to unstick my head from the clouds and do chores. Dusting, emptying garbage, wiping windows and cleaning the car— a tiny Opel sedan that carted our family of five all over Europe during the days we lived there.

Back then cars had windows that locked by pushing a small lever that looked like a golf ball tee. But when ten-year-old hands washed the inside of the Opel’s windows, that tee inevitably got in the way, leaving fingerprints unwiped. And Dad just marched me back to do it again. After all, he’d paid a whole dime for the job!

And do you know what? I still get in the corners. And I still proofread and correct over and over again, wanting to get it right, all the way right.

Because my dad taught me that details make the difference. Whether writing a paper or a book, or washing windows or making friends— details matter.

Was Dad picky? Yeah, a little.

Was Dad unreasonable? Never.

Did I respond well to his insistence on doing things well and right? Uh… hardly ever.

Am I glad he did? Absolutely! So very thankful that he instilled in me a sense of honor about work and pride in doing it well.

And do you know what? I really don’t think that Dad cared all that much about finger smudges on windows. I doubt he enjoyed reading my clunky papers about dinosaurs or the history of the printing press.

I think he just cared about me. He loved me enough to uproot my natural laziness and make me uncomfortable with less-than.

He wanted me to know the satisfaction of a job well done, of life done well.

And he was willing to do what he needed to until I got it right all on my own.

Thank-you Dad, I’m so glad you did.

From my heart,

Diane

Six Things My Dad Got Right:

1. He had values of his own that he determined to instill in me.
2. He was nice (mostly) about it.
3. He didn’t let my whining and wailing cause him to slack off.
4. He taught me to focus on my strengths.
5. He told me what my strengths were— out loud and often.
6. He kept at it even when his job demanded his attention.

P.S. Right now my dad is very, very ill. Would you pray with me for him? I leave in a few days to go to be with my parents at their home in the Sierras. Knowing you're praying would make all the difference to me. And if these Dad Stories have helped, will you leave a comment? It would bring me great  joy to bring him stories of how his own story is influencing yours.Thank you.

You can see previous DAD STORIES here.

(image by Hillary Kupish)

Tomorrow my son’s long anticipated book, Loveology, will appear on the shelves of bookstores.

Today I sit at a coffee shop in Portland with my own copy in my lap and marvel.

This is my son— the one I taught to form letters and read words. The same boy who, in ninth grade, agonized to meet his page quota for a paper on Silas Marner. Not because he couldn’t do it, but because he fought his teacher’s insistence that papers must be long and wordy.

This book isn’t wordy.

Instead, John Mark has broken the worn-out publishing paradigm that insists that more is better. He has written a treatise on marriage for a generation that reads fast—to the point, crystal clear, wise, and raw.

For the first chapter of my reading, I did what I always do. I got out my pen to underline the most important points; my way of remembering what I, as a way-too-fast reader, need to take with me.

I underlined nearly every sentence.

Then I started taking notes. Along the margins, in my notebook. Arrows and circles, numbers to follow along more closely… I found myself treating Lovelogy like a workbook.

Pretty soon I stopped reading it for a review and started reading it for me.

For my marriage.

For my understanding of the Father’s intent when he made Adam one way and Eve another and then told them to go and do their task to change the world.

And then, about half way through this book, I had to stop and close it tight for a while.  Because through these words my own son put on paper, the Father began to speak deep into my heart about things I thought I knew but didn’t.

About men. About marriage. About God. About me.

And also…

About purpose, about pleasure, about the point of it all.

And then I had to grieve, just for an honest little while.

Because I didn’t know this plan for marriage 35 years ago when I married Phil. I knew some, but not nearly enough. And if I had known, really understood what marriage was all about and what marriage was for, I would have done those first years differently.

Why didn’t anybody ever tell me?

That marriage is for more than my own happiness.

That my success as a wife is not measured by my success at making my husband happy.

That marriage is about achieving something far beyond ourselves, something that can and should and will, if we let it, change the world.

And that is what my son’s book is about— a plan from God to change the world.

I’ve gushed more texts to John Mark as I’ve read his book than is seemly— I can imagine the rolling of his eyes as he dismisses his mom as slightly manic.

But I’m not sure he’ll ever be able to fully understand how fairy tales shape a woman’s heart. And how crushingly sad a woman feels when she realizes she didn’t marry Prince Charming after all. Or how embarrassingly bad a woman can behave when those dreams don’t carry her away on the white steed of her imaginary world.

My first years of marriage were not what they should have been because my view of marriage was not what it needed to be. I married a good and godly man and still managed to shame him for being less than I needed.

Why?

Because I thought about marriage mostly wrong and so I did marriage mostly wrong.

Loveology is the right way to think about marriage. God’s way.

Steeped in Scripture, filled with background and history and explanations and word studies, this book fully explains. John Mark makes sense of the mystery Paul talked about while exploding the myths most of us believe.

I needed this book.

You need this book if…

• you hope to get married some day
• you are afraid to get married
• you want your sons and daughters to go into dating and marriage with God’s wisdom to guide them
• your marriage failed and you want to understand why
• you’re unhappy in your marriage and want to know what to do
• you want hope
• you want truth

And most especially, read this book if you’ve been following these He’s Not Your Prince Charming posts.  Because John Mark explains all the why’s and what’s and how come’s that keep haunting your misplaced dreams.

From a heart

… bursting with pride in my son,

… humbled by my own brokenness,

… thankful for the faithfulness of my husband,

… and hopeful for the next generation,

Diane

PS. Who’s going to the Loveology event in downtown Portland this weekend? Let us know in the comments and look for me, I’ll be there!

(source)

repost.2011

When my children were little they had chores.

Somewhere I’d read about the importance of each child participating in the every day tasks of running a household so that they would feel fully at home there. Those assignments were good for their self-esteem, “according to the experts”, and who was I to argue?

So I made lists. And Chore Charts. And we stuck stars next to tasks completed and handed out allowance and pats on the back and lots and lots of praise for a job well done.

Or at least done.

But I didn’t realize that I had chores too. Chores assigned to me by a loving Father who knows I need to belong.

I just thought I had work to do. Too much work. Work that harried and harassed and made me crabby some days.

Work is different than chores. Work is endless and pointless and exhausting and defeating. It’s over and over again without end and without purpose.

Work is getting things done…that have got to be done …that I don’t want to do.

( an original quote from the lazy wisdom of Diane Comer)

But one day I stumbled upon a story about Jesus that changed my mind about all that work.

It’s a story about a man who was born blind. Couldn’t see a thing. And because he was blind he had to beg or die.

He couldn’t work.

That man would have loved a list of things to do. But he just sat by the side of the road, choking on dust, begging for a bite of bread. Pitiful.

And Jesus came along that road with His entourage of disciples and critics and hangers-on. Lots of dust, lots of noise.

And the man must have looked a mess because someone saw him and wanted to know why he had it so bad.

Whose fault was it? His parents? His own?

Right in front of the man whose ears worked fine, they questioned and probed and snickered and said things loud that they should have whispered.

And I think Jesus got a little annoyed at their rudeness.

But I don’t know because He didn’t say. I’m just guessing.

His next words aren’t about blindness and finding fault, but about glory and God and the way He does the most amazing things because He is amazing and bigger than we think and better than we are.

And then He launches into a lecture about doing to this crowd of talkers.

“All of us must quickly carry out

the tasks assigned us

by the One who sent Me,

because there is little time left

before night falls…

and all work comes to an end.”

~Jesus (John 9:4)

Next thing you know, Jesus makes a pack of mud for the blind man’s eyes and gives him an assignment.

“Go wash off the mud.”

And the man did. He did what he was told. Exactly what he was told. And he did it right away. He didn’t argue. He didn’t debate.

He just went and washed.

And that is sometimes- oftentimes- the way God does things.

He gives us a task to do. Something simple. Inglorious. Like scrubbing mud from blinded eyes…

Or getting up at 4 a.m. to open at Starbucks…

Or lacing on running shoes…

Or going to school for what seems like forever…

Or wiping babies bottoms and toddlers tears…

Or embracing broken husbands…

And we get a little dirty, splattered with the everyday stuff.

No glamour. No applause. No fake smiles.

Just mud.

But it’s our task. Yours… mine. And if we don’t do it...

if I won’t do it... it won’t get done.

And that will be the end of a story that should have ended better. Could have ended better, if only I’d obeyed.

I don’t know what your chores are. I haven’t seen the chart He’s constructed or the stars He’s gathered to stick next to your name.

But I do know mine. And they’re different sometimes from the things I’ve put on my list for the day. Different even from what others expect me to do. If I tried to do what everyone else thinks I ought to do I’d just curl up and give up and cry and never try again.

But His list is different. Custom made for me. For now.

I know what He wants me to do so its time to stop talking and go do it.

And I’d better hurry because pretty soon I won’t be able to. Night is falling. He’s getting ready to tuck us into bed and tell us His bedtime story and sooth us with His songs and let us rest there until the real work begins.

And I can hardly wait.

From my heart,

Diane

(source)

I wake up ready to write. Words are on the tips of my fingers as I rummage around for tea things and my Bible and all the pens and odds and ends that make up my morning time of listening.

I know what I want to say, where to go with this post about the how… how to really, honestly make Him— Jesus, the Redeemer, the Father, the Spirit, the I AM— my Prince.

How to find all my peace and satisfaction and balance and wisdom in Him.

How to love Him in real life.

And then something comes up. A conflict I can’t control. Two people I care about at odds. Both right, both wrong.

I want to fix it… I would if I could but clearly, I can’t.

And so I get mad. Furious inside. No one’s here to hear but none-the-less I’m silently ranting and raving and bashing heads.

So much for writing. So much for anything.

I sweep the floor, clean the sink, anything but write. All the while I’m talking to an invisible someone, no one, scolding and telling and setting them straight.

A crazy lady.

Tired of my own out-of-control emotions, I step into a hot, steaming shower intent on washing away the dirt and grime and product in my hair and on me.

That’s where I am when I hear His voice:

Di, are you really angry? Or is this fear? 

What are you afraid of that I cannot handle?

It takes another hour to let myself fully hear His words. Because…

The anger feels good… the fear feels real… letting go feels unsafe. Or untrue. Or something.

And then I remember one comment left with a question I couldn’t really answer and it’s been bothering me ever since.

I know that I am writing this on a good day, so do you have any pointers on how to stay focused on the real prize of Jesus’ love when my mind starts to run wild?

And here I am with my own mind running wild and my emotions drug along behind in a chaotic chase to nowhere. On this not-good day I wonder, where is that bone-deep peace? How do I get back to that place?

A friend texts me. She knows enough to be on the look out, to be listening for me.  And sometimes that’s just how God speaks His peace, through another who is in a better place to hear. 

Read John 6:30-43. I think there might be something in there for these guys…

I read these words and they’re for me, I know it. I need this. Peace begins to come before I even know why. I read again.

The story is about a group of honestly seeking people, asking what to do. Like me. Like you.

And Jesus cuts through all the mix of emotions and motivations and sides and says it simple:

 “This is what God wants you to do: Believe in the One He has sent.”

Just believe.

I know enough to know what His choice of words is about. I’ve studied this before.

Believe means trust. Or entrust.

And suddenly it’s all clear, His voice so loud it stops all my crazy-lady ranting.

He wants me to so fully and entirely entrust this conflict to Him that I let go of all need to control. To be right. To tell everyone what they-ought-to-do-and-think-and-say-and-feel because I said so and now let’s all be happy.

Because my way won’t work… and I know, after all these years of watching Him, that His way will.

Maybe not exactly the way I want it to, maybe not all neat and tidy and happily ever after, but somehow, someway, He will triumph.

Chaos and churning calms and I enter that oasis of quiet. Rest. Peace. A chest full of joy.

Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. I have changed.

Not because I followed ten steps or imagined what I wanted.

But just because He spoke.

And that, my dear girls, is the answer to the question I didn’t know. When bad days come and I am a mess, when I cannot or will not and don’t even want to cleave close because all my way seems safer… He speaks even then.

That, my dear ones, is grace. Amazing grace.

Being intimate with God, being close to Him, hearing from Him, isn’t about me following a certain set of steps or rules. It isn’t about me getting it right.

I shake my head in wonder. Who loves like that? Only one… only Him.

And yet, the truth is, I must obey. I must take at least one small step in the direction He says. I must choose. He won’t do it for me unless I take that tiniest step towards Him.

A pithy quote I retweeted this week becomes more than pith…

There are no "little obediences." Every opportunity to obey prepares us for greater challenges of faith in the future. -Dr Bruce Ware

Today’s messy story prepares me for tomorrow… and all these years of yesterdays prepared me for today.

I’d heard Him before and so I knew it was Him. I’d heard these same words from the Word before and delved deeper because I hadn’t understood and so when I needed them just now I knew what He meant.

Every single morning when you choose to get up earlier than you want, to deny yourself the warmth of bed and make room to hear by pushing your nose into His Book and staying there with wide open ears… those are the “little obediences” that prepare you for the greater challenges of faith that real life brings to every one of us.

Even when you feel nothing.

And now I’ve told you a story instead of giving a list. Instead of telling you how as an expert, I’ve shown you how in my own mess.  Because this is truth.

This is how He meets me, how He speaks. Right into my world where people do conflict imperfectly and I cry and rant even when no one’s here to hear.

Right here in my not-so-happily-ever-after life, the one I can’t seem to fix to my own satisfaction. He brings me in tight and let’s me be me… and makes me more than I am.

He is enough.

And that’s what I mean by he’s not your Prince Charming. No man can do this. Not even my godly, good man who has loved me so well all these years.

And truth be told, I’m glad he wasn’t there in my mess. I would have scared the guy half to death.

From my heart, still learning, still listening,

Diane

P.S. There’s more, so much more, but this is what comes first. Brokenness, obedience, daily-ness.

Will you help continue this conversation with your own stories… and keep the questions coming, I’m listening.

Dear sons,

There is a story in the Bible just for men.

Well, maybe it wasn’t originally meant just for men, but it’s so typical, so like what happens every day between men and women, that I think every man should know this story and learn, lest they follow the same path and wreck the same havoc with the same mistake.

Here’s what happened:

A man took over a struggling business. For three years this man threw himself wholeheartedly into his work. He put in long hours, stayed up late worrying about what might happen if he failed. The man worked every connection, every possibility, every person he knew to come alongside him. He exerted his considerable leadership abilities, convincing the brightest and the best to come on board.

And he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. His company’s holdings increased, making it the largest company in the world. He was lauded and applauded everywhere he went. Wealth poured in. People praised him.

He’d made it.

One day, the man decided to throw a party in celebration of his success. He invited everyone who’d contributed, from the most influential of investors to the lowliest suppliers. His entire board was there, each one looking smug and satisfied with the wealth of their holdings.

The press reported on his party with praise-filled reviews: “a tremendous display of the opulent wealth and glory of his empire.”[1]

Part way through his party, and more than part way inebriated, the man sent for his wife. He wanted her to strut her sexuality in front of these business associates. To let the men there know that his success in the bedroom reflected his success as a man.

When she refused to comply, he went ballistic. He said things he shouldn’t have. One thing led to another and he ended up wallowing in his own mess. One of those stupid things a man wakes up to regret.

“But after Xerxes’ anger cooled, he began thinking about Vashti…”[2]

Every time I read the story of Esther, I get stuck at the party scene. Something went terribly wrong and its what goes terribly wrong too often.

Somehow this whole group of smart, successful men managed to misinterpret the words of a woman who no doubt wanted to help. She knew he’d wake up the next morning embarrassed by his own lack of judgment.  In reality, this wife’s refusal to make a fool of both of them was for his own benefit as much as hers. And she wasn’t in a position to whisper politely in his ear.

And so, here are some things I think every man ought to know about what every woman wants… ways to help you avoid the mistakes made by Xerxes. Though I seriously doubt any of you would be quite so off-the-charts foolish as he was, still… he misread his wife and lived to regret it. Keep these questions tucked in for when you need them— it might just make all the difference.

Three questions to ponder:

(before you do/say/start something you’ll regret)

 1.    What does she want for you?

Too many men think that women just want something from them. The reality is that good-hearted women, even when they come off as bossy and difficult to please, always want the best for their men.

Is she hinting and poking and suggesting something over and over? Instead of batting her words away like a pesky fly, take a moment to listen. She just may be on to something. Something that will improve your own life and relationships and ability to succeed.

A wise man actually asks her what she’s getting at. Nicely. Then he takes her words and thinks about it. She just may be on to something.

2.    What worries her about you?

If you have a woman in your life who frets over some hidden flaw of yours, you are the luckiest of men.

I know it’s hard to see it that way, but here’s what most men don’t get: Women have a unique ability to see every one of your flaws and still admire who you are.

The reason she’s worried is because she knows and dreads the consequences you so blithely brush off. She’s not nagging simply because your flaw irritates her— she’s fussing because she knows your flaw may well sink you on your path to success.

And she wants you to succeed! A woman admires a man who is good at what he does and she knows she can help you.

When she corrects the way you relate to your kids or acts appalled at how you treated the barista behind the coffee bar, it’s because she cares about you. She knows that in this world a man’s success depends, at least in part, on how well he relates to people.

A wise man listens to all those worries and takes heed. Like a warrior consulting his scouts, he pays attention. Then he takes her worries to God and humbly listens.

3.    What is she trying to fix for you?

It is instinctive in a woman to fix. She can’t help it, she can’t stop it. A good-hearted woman cannot fathom twiddling her fingers while one she loves suffers or might suffer or once suffered.

That’s why she offers advice so much— not because she thinks you’re less than adequate, but because she wants to help. She wants to offer her own strength to make you shine.

To make life better.

The problem is, most men interpret all those hints and suggestions and ideas for improvement as nagging.

It’s not. At least that’s not the way she means it.

And neither does it have anything to do with disrespect. Women offer each other advice all the time. It’s the way we love, the way we tuck our people in and make their lives more bearable.

A wise man sees the big picture and interprets all her fixing as her way of loving. He listens, hearing her words and all the loyalty behind them. And every once in a while he thanks her for being so passionate and fierce and wise and caring.

My advice to every young (and not so young) man is to regularly sit down and invite the woman who loves you to answer these questions honestly. Make her a cup of her favorite coffee, sit out on the back porch, and lean forward to listen.

She loves you. She cares how you come across. She’s probably more aware of how people respond to you than you are. Give her half a chance and she’ll coach you well and wisely.

From my heart,

Diane

PS: Girls, can you give us advice on how to say it right? How to be both respectful and honest with these men we love?

---

[1] Esther 1:4

[2] Esther 2:1

(source)

WHAT EVERY WOMAN REALLY  WANTS FOR CHRISTMAS 

We’ve browsed through magazines, linked onto websites, and made our wish lists. Clothing sizes, shoe preferences, colors and particulars. Everything we think our men need to know in order to give us a Christmas to remember.

Now, armed with ideas, men are heading to the mall, determined to get that one thing they hope will make a woman happy.

And so, I have a list of my own to give the men who love the women I care about. It won’t break the bank or your back, but it will give her exactly what she really wants from you this Christmas.

Ten Things To Give The Woman You Love For Christmas:

1.  Your Attention- full and undivided.

Uninterrupted by cell phone rings and texting dings. She knows you can’t give it all the tim e, but for Christmas won’t you try? Do it on purpose.

2. Your Eyes- it’s the stuff of romance.

When a man looks into a woman’s eyes she knows he sees her. But it doesn’t have to be Hollywood mush. Just a moment of linking up, of homing in on the window to her soul. Dive deep. There's a person of unique value in there. Look for what she cannot say.

3.  Your Touch- purposeful and affectionate.

A way of showing her you connect with her. Women crave those brushes of love against their skin. To run your fingers across her heart, you'll need to step into her space and bring her into yours.

4.  Your Stories- give her a memory, a picture in your mind that you’ve tucked away somewhere of her being who she is and you loving that part of her. Tell it well and she’ll know for a moment that you really do know her.

5.  Your Hope- she sees everything not right with the world she’s trying to create for those she loves.  Tell her it’s okay, that perfection isn’t perfect, that love is messy and so is real life and you love her no matter what.

6.  Your Honor- What is the thing she does remarkably well? Have you told her? Have you told her in front of others? It’s not a woman’s way to brag about herself. Can you be her trumpeter?

7.  Your Depths- Give her those hidden hopes and dreams and thoughts and observations that will never be part of a quick phone call. She wants to know you way deep down inside.

8.  Your Help- Christmas can be overwhelming for a woman. So much to do and so many glossy pictures of others doing it better. Get up and help her. Lend a hand. Make life a little easier for her so she can be who she really is. And jump in before she gets crabby about all the work, she hates herself for being like that.

9.  Your Generosity- Can you choose in the midst of the pressures of real life to give a little more extravagantly than anyone would expect? Add a flourish. Make her coffee and cover it with whipped cream. Buy her something she doesn’t need. Bless her.

10.  Your Love- That’s what she really wants.

Every woman I know wants to be loved. To be considered better than average in a world that measures our success by means we’ll never attain.

To be  held in a place so uniquely special to you that you’re willing to give your attention, your eyes, your touch, your stories, your hope and honor and depths and help and generosity just to be sure she knows how much you love her.

We want to feel loved.

You have it in your power to give that kind of love this Christmas to your wife or your girlfriend, your good friend, your mom.

Will you?

From my heart,

Diane

P.S. How about telling us that one remarkable thing you love about her? We’d love to hear— I’d love to hear!

Dear friends,

Since God loved us that much,

We surely ought to love each other.

I John 4:11

//www.hespeaksinthesilence.com/?p=8694

FAITHFULNESS

(part two)

Dear girls,

I wrote last week about what every woman wants— faithfulness. And though I may use implication here to dance around and hint and subtly imply, God isn’t quite so shy with His words:

May your wife be a fountain of blessing to you…

 Why spill the water of your love in public, having sex with just anyone?

Why be captivated, my son, by an immoral woman,

or embrace the breasts of an adulterous woman?

And then, as He often does, God answers His own questions. He gives both husbands and wives the way to avoid what He terms “incredible folly”:

Drink water from your own well— share your love only with your wife.

You should reserve it for yourselves.

Don’t share it with strangers.

Proverbs 5

And so, my dear girls, we need to talk about our part in the faithfulness we want forever. Because to “just say no” to the pulsing need and power of his sexuality is not God’s plan— nor is it enough.

God created marriage as a safe place for a man to entrust his sexuality to a woman whose desires are cultivated by his.

The beauty of His story is evidenced in the way a man responds to the unveiling of a woman’s body. And then the desire a woman experiences when her husband  responds.

An enticing dance between two entirely different and uniquely created people who want the same thing— union, completeness, satisfaction, love. 

Last week I wrote to the men about how to be faithful to their wives. And yet even as I was writing, I realized that this cannot be the responsibility of men alone. We, as woman, have a role to play in our husband’s faithfulness. Just as he does in ours.

And so today I want to argue last week’s points backwards. To talk to you about partnering with your husband so that he doesn’t have to fight “every man’s battle” alone.

Three Ways To Help Your Husband Be Faithful:

1.  By focusing on him.

When life gets busy and kids and careers and all the gazillion realities of real life for real women overwhelm us, our men generally get back-burnered.

They’re strong, they’re independent. They can take care of themselves.

And so we forget what we knew when we were first connecting— that our men need times of our full attention. They need us to see them. To pick up on the subtle hints that maybe their world is running a little ragged.

They need us to notice the victories of every day. To applaud their strategies, to recognize their contribution to a better world.

Our men need us to be proud of them.

Because, frankly, most of our men are being sent the message that they’re insignificant, insufficient, inept and unnecessary. And sometimes, unknowingly, we add to that pile of inadequacy by simply not seeing them.

2.  By delighting him and delighting in him.

Thirty-six years ago when I was doing everything within my feminine powers to capture Phil’s heart, I had this science of delighting a man down pat.

Did I flirt? You bet I did. Did I make him smile? Yep. Did I hang on his every word, rub his shoulders, dress myself attractively, wear shiny lipstick? Of course I did!

I wanted Phil to want me because I wanted him. And I still want him. I want all of him. I want only him.

Maybe it’s time we resurrected the art of alluring our husbands. Of enticing them to laugh. Of making them feel as good as they really are.

And while we’re at it, why don’t we remember what it was about him that got our attention in the first place? It’s still there, buried under the responsibilities and pressures of the battles he fights every day. And maybe we’ve lost sight of him because we’re too busy trying to remake him into our BFF.

Paula Rinehart, one of my all time favorite writers for women says, “If you hold up a negative lens, you’ll see what you expect to see.” And, “men aren’t women with big feet and beards, they’re completely other.”

She’s right, you know. These other creatures with beards and big feet will never measure up to a woman’s standard of perfection. They’re not supposed to. If we’re to delight them and delight in them we’d do well to remember that.

3.  By pursuing him.

My mother diligently taught me not to chase men. “Run just fast enough to get caught” was her 1950’s mantra. But when it comes to marriage, her dating advice runs on empty.

Husbands want to be pursued. To be sought after and admired and yes, he wants to know you’re aroused by him too. Your husband wants to be wanted. Of course he does.

And here’s the sad truth, girls: There are always women waiting in the shadows to pursue your husband.  

A wise woman who values her home knows this and makes sure she’s not simply using her husband as a garbage-taker-outer and kid-watcher.

A wise man who values his home knows this and sets high walls around himself to guard his purity.

A wise couple talks about this. They ask each other questions. They choose to focus on each other. They choose to find delight in each other and to give the other delightful memories. And they are both so busy pursuing each other that there’s really no room for anyone else.

That is what faithfulness really is: two people investing in each other to such an extent that nothing and nobody can wiggle into unseen cracks. Not babies or teenagers or anybody else. Ever.

From my heart,

Diane

PS: Okay, let’s hear it. Can you shake us out of our stupor and remind us how to focus and delight and pursue our husbands? Can you tell us how you are helping each other to remain faithful?

PSS: Just to be clear— a man or a woman is always completely and irrevocably responsible for his own faithfulness. We can join each other to fight against unfaithfulness, but it is ultimately always a choice a man or a woman makes.

Adultery is never, ever in any way the fault of the other.

Ever. 

FAITHFULNESS

Why be captivated, my son, by an immoral woman,

or fondle the breasts of a promiscuous woman?

Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you.

Rejoice in the wife of your youth.

She is a loving deer, a graceful doe.

Let her breasts satisfy you always.

May you always be captivated by her love.

Proverbs 5:20, 18-19

Dear sons,

Just a few weeks ago when I asked women to write and tell me what they really want from a man, I got so many responses I had trouble reading them all. Some funny, some sad, some silly, and many wise words of what women want and hope for and need in order to thrive.

Yet there was one thing I didn’t hear from even one woman, and it surprised me. Because I know that it is what every woman wants more than anything in a relationship with a man.

One thing without which every relationship is doomed…

One thing that is critical for the happily ever after…

Every woman, every single woman without exception, wants her man to be faithful.

Hers and hers alone from this day forward and forever.

So why didn’t anyone happen to mention faithfulness? Not even one?

I think I know. Because I am a woman too and it’s what we hardly dare talk about. As if merely mentioning the idea that my man might possibly choose someone else might jinx us.

It is the unmentionable, unimaginable, too-horrible-to-think-about worry of every woman.

Every single woman. 

My dear sons, I have scraped the wounded hearts of too many women off the floor. Soaked my own skin with their tears. Carried the weight of pain they were never meant to bear.

All because a man found it irresistible to slip between the sheets with a woman who had convinced him he was irresistible. Or because a man felt that somehow his own pulsing needs were more powerful than his promise of forever.

And no woman ever recovers that part of her soul that is lost when the man who chose her chooses another.

Good men fight every day for purity. Not for perfection, but for the strength and courage to “contain his own vessel in sanctification and honor” (I Thess. 4:4).

Yet I would like to suggest that faithfulness is more than simply staying out of another woman’s bed.

Faithfulness, the way a woman defines it, means staying wholly devoted to your wife through good times and bad, not matter how she is or how she looks or how you feel.

And so, my sons, may I offer you…

Three Ways To Stay Faithful To Your Wife:

1.    By focusing on her

Every woman knows she’s not The Most Beautiful Woman In The World. We are surrounded by the marketing magic of men (and women) who exploit the magnetic pull a woman’s body has over men.

Then we look in the mirror.

But when a man, a good man, looks at his wife and tells her she is beautiful, when he lets her see the sexual pull she elicits from him, when he uses his eyes to rebuild the beauty she thinks she has lost… something magical happens in her insides.

She feels beautiful.

The mirror doesn’t matter as much as what she sees mirrored in your eyes. She stands a little straighter, acts a little sexier, tries a little harder because you’ve given her what she really wants— you’ve given her your whole-soul faithfulness.

2.    By delighting in her

Every woman longs to be captivating. She wants to be so alluring, so lovely, so clever that she pulls you in to a cocoon of oneness with herself.

Forever.

A good man gets that. He understands that to remain fully faithful he must choose to remain captivated by his wife for the rest of his life.

No matter who else vies for his attention, no matter how much she changes, no matter that three kids have wrecked havoc with your once orderly home— NO MATTER WHAT!

To remain faithful, a man must remind himself every day how delightful his wife really is. And if he’s really wise, he’ll say it out loud.

3.    By pursuing her

Every married man, at some point, figured out how to pursue a woman. Some better than others.

For some men, that act of pursuit is something of a game. A battle to be conquered. A woman to be won.

For others it is more like a chore that needs doing in order to get what he wants.

Either way, may I suggest that just because she wears your ring does not mean you’re finished?

Women are, by nature, responders. God made us that way. Part of what a man gets when he pursues is this magnified response a woman emanates when she is being pursued.

Stop pursuing her and she stops responding. Keep pursuing her and she’ll flirt and give and be the delightful woman you want.

Pursue her heart. Ask her questions. Give her gifts that mean something. Carry her burdens. Share your fears. Lighten her load. Open her door. Keep taking steps towards this woman you’ve pledged your life to.

If you will do this: If you will focus on her, if you will delight in her, if you will pursue her heart, her soul, and her body— all of her— and if you will keep on doing it every day for the rest of your life, then you will be a faithful man.

To you faithful men, THANK YOU. Keep at it. You are our heros.

From my heart,

Diane

P.S. Girls, can you tell us how your man is delighting in you and focusing on you and pursuing you?

And men, can you chime in here? Women are reading this who want to know— how can we help? Has your wife helped you to remain faithful? Can you tell us how?

More on this next week...