(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…

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(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.

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(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.

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(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.

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(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!

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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

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 “She looks well to the ways of her household…”

Proverbs 31

If you are one of those people who organizes, arranges, orders, and tidies  every part of your life and home, I have a project for you.

Me.

Here’s the deal. In just a few weeks I’ll be packing up the guest house where we’ve been since October and moving into our fixed up new-old home. (No, it's not nearly as cute as the one in this picture but it's coming along…) And I’m loathe to move in all my not-very-organized-ness along with us.

I need systems, ways of storing and hanging and generally keeping my house clutter free and efficient to use as well as easy to clean. Because, you see, I am neat but not organized.

And more— I am a perfectionist with a craving for cleanliness living with dear, beloved, frustrating people who are, quite frankly, not all that into perfect.

Most people walk into my space and think I must be organized because I am tidy. But I’m not. Underneath that illusion of organization is a messy layer of chaotic cupboards and a never-neat garage.

And it bothers me. A lot.

This cottage is the smallest house I’ve ever lived in. For now, until we build the Great room onto the back, we’ll be living in 1250 square feet with the barest minimum of storage space.

And my lovely, pampered vintage red Mercedies needs to live in the garage. She’s looking so bedraggled and abandoned these days waiting for me in the mud-splattered driveway. She’s way too old to be outside.

The bathrooms in our cottage are tiny. The two of them together take up less room than our Master bath in our last house. Yet I’ve managed to stuff a boat of a bathtub into “my” bathroom, leaving barely enough room to turn around.

I’ll have 2 really great six-inch cabinets tucked into the wall behind the door. In there I’ll have to fit my plethora of pretties: lotions, hair goo, make-up and bubble bath. All those products that make me feel and smell and look like what those brilliant marketers want me to want to feel and smell and look like.

Is there a way to organize all that stuff in a way that appeals to my inheritantly feminine love of beauty?

Our walk-in closet is about half the size of the one I’ve left. And that’s after robbing the hallway of its linen closet and pushing the guest room back a bit.

Where in the world will I store towels? And toilet paper?

I do, however, have a pantry. A real pantry with a door and not-yet-built shelves. Any ideas on that one?

I have this idealistic idea of creating a space that is delightful to look at. Not rows and rows of plastic (Portland’s greenness is rubbing off on me), but something fetching. Old canisters mixed with… I don’t know what… but I’m hoping some of you get the idea and can give me ideas.

I will have a nice big shelf in the garage to put some overflow. My husband is a fan of Costco shopping after running out of niceties like toilet paper too many times. (See what I mean by not being organized? The poor man has stopped trying to fix my mind and just stepped in to stock up.)

Here are a few questions for those of you who do this kind of thing: 

1.    How do you keep under your sink from becoming a goopy mess?

2.    Where do you keep stuff? Kitchen towels and all those random lids that don’t fit anything? Plastic wrap (I’m not that green) and toothpicks?

3.    How do you store spices? I wish there was a mandatory same-size spice law.

4.    What do you do with your hair dryer and curling iron and flat iron? Mine are always a tangled mess. I have to extract all of them to get to one.

I envy those of you brave enough to cut off your hair and simply swing it in the air to dry but I think Phil might just have a heart attack if I did that.

5.    Anybody have any workable systems for keeping your house clean without having a fully dedicated cleaning day? I no longer have four kids to clean up after… but neither do I have four kids to delegate chore lists to.

I think this may be the first blog in all of history to be asking questions about organizing… so if you have a fantastic blog (either your own or one you love) that is all about this, please pass it on to me.

And I love pinterest pictures too! Send me great looking storage ideas and I’ll pin them to my board.

I love you girls,

Diane

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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.

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repost/2012

There is a story tucked inside a bigger story that grabbed my attention this morning and just will not let go. I keep seeing me there, and some of you. Maybe a little of all of us.

And I wonder what the Father means by it.

It is a story of a people who grew up with nothingness. No houses, no pantries full of special treats, no rich memories of a place to come home to.

Their fathers had messed up badly, their moms right there with them. Even though they’d seen the miraculous, been set free from horrendous enslavement, heard the actual voice of God, still they just couldn’t… or wouldn’t believe. Not really.

And they raised a generation who watched all that. These kids saw the suffering caused by unbelief. Experienced the consequences of their parent’s faithlessness. Smelled the scent of fear that caused a generation to turn away from God.

And chose different.

When these men and women grew up they decided to follow hard after God. No compromise, full on faith-filled obedience.

Over their tent doors hung cross-stitched motivations like:

Love the LORD your God,

Walk in all His ways,

Obey His commandments,

Be faithful to Him,

And serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Joshua 22:5

And then these men and women were offered a rich land to live in. A land unlike the dessert they’d known all their lives.

Instead of tattered tents, they’d live in cozy cottages clustered within the walls of friendly villages. The women would gather each day around a well with an endless supply of fresh water. Instead of that tiresome stuff to eat each day that they’d grown up on, they would have fresh vegetables, meat, fruit, maybe even a glass of wine.

Bliss.

I can just imagine their hunger for home.

For hope.

But for a small segment of these young men and women, that hope would have to be put on hold for a while.

They had made a promise, a commitment that they dare not break. They’d seen the consequences when their own parent’s choose to renege on God.

You see, two of the twelve tribes of God-followers were assigned space on the eastern side of the Jordon River. The rest got the west.

The two tribes in minority loved the land they’d been given because it was perfect for them— rich with the grazing land their livestock needed.

But their brothers in the remaining ten tribes needed their help to clear out the western lands before they could occupy it. That meant months and months more of living in those worn out tents…

They feared God more than they feared their own raging wants and so they choose to obey no matter what.

Days and weeks and nights spent being faithful when all they wanted was to go home.

And I wonder this morning how they kept going.

Every day.

Through battles and weariness and boring weeks of waiting.

How did they do that kind of faithfulness?

How do I?

And the answer lies tucked into end the story.

Their leader, Joshua, is old now. His hair is grey, his once strong back bent.

Yet fierce words of challenge and choice boom from his mouth as he looks his people in the eye.  He doesn’t cushion his speech with niceties.

Choose today whom you will serve…

All those alluring idols their parents pursued? So easy, so satisfyingly safe, so undemanding… or

as for me and my family, we will serve the LORD! 

Without the slightest doubt, this new generation of God-followers chose-

We are determined to follow the Lord! We will serve the LORD our God. We will obey Him. Joshua 24:21,24

And they did. Every day. A whole generation

They weren’t perfect. They made mistakes. But they did it.

They chose.

From my heart,

Diane

Can you tell us how you choose? Every day? What helps, what makes it possible when all you want to do is whatever you want to do?

Because I see a whole new generation of Jesus-followers who are choosing to be faithful.

May your tribe increase!

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