Of Marriage and Bouncy Bits

When I was born, a tiny little Amish girl that hated scratchy braids on my neck, I was born into a meek heritage.

Meekness permeated my life. I had meek friends, went to a meek church, attended a meek school with a lovely little meek school teacher who padded up and down the aisle in impossibly tiny sneakers. And yet, a thread of not-meekness plagued me.

I conformed, bent and forced myself to appear meek.

I met my husband, got married, and put even more effort into my meekness. I “knew” what being married meant, and I intended to do it right the first time.

I ceased to have a mind of my own, my fiveness (enneagram) bubbling just under the surface.

I smiled impotently instead of sharpening my sword.

I disobeyed, disagreed, and was deeply dishonest in this pursuit of being the perfect wife.

“For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.”

I read this verse at first with a sinking heart. I was commanded to be unafraid. Seriously God, not gonna lie, that’s kinda a taller order than what I can do.

“Isn’t that kinda the point, you can’t, but I can” He replied.

I thought about it for a while.

I felt afraid of not being afraid anymore, but still, there sat the words looking at me. I thought of the implications. Not being afraid of my husband’s reaction if I told him the truth? Not being afraid of my friends no longer liking me if I told them the truth? Not being afraid of losing another pregnancy, or of my overfed, not a pig dog dying? Yea. This makes sense.

I threw out my buckets of dishonesty and refilled them with blunt, honest, free of guile discourse.

I burned my impotence at the stake and basked in the warmth of the flames as I strapped on my boots and sharpened my sword with smooth strokes of the stone.

I got to my feet and ceased to be afraid. I was a woman of God, finally. I knew my place, and my place was fighting alongside my husband who I had promised to be a helpmeet to.

And something magic started to happen. Turns out honesty is a good thing, which was a real shocker. Turns out when you are not afraid, God puts on his heavy work gloves and steps up in front of you with a 2x4. Turns out you don’t have to do so much of the grunt work yourself. And best of all turns out you no longer have to do the things that you are not given grace for. Turns out we aren’t meant to provide our bodies to help the entire world with every little whim they have, you are only responsible for the truth.

“The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. ”

I discovered also that I wasn’t meant to be my husband’s church mouse. I was his warrior. I was his closest ally and his most dependant colonel. He told me fondly one day that I am like a little standardbred horse, hitched beside a Percheron. What I lack in physical strength, I make up in heart.

You see, we’ve been reading Genesis all wrong. We all ‘think’ it was Eves's fault that she ate that accursed fruit, but what we forget is that Adam was right there with her. He was all lounging around with his naked bits out being supportive as she reached out, plucked the fruit and bit into it. Who even knows, maybe he was distracted because her naked bits were all out for the whole world to see, and no, I doubt her hair was strategically hanging over her breasts as The Ark depicts.

Them was nekkid, nekkid as the day they were created. And together they ate the fruit.

When God came strolling by to visit, they immediately felt ashamed over their naked state and quickly made fig leaf clothes that probably fit uncomfortably and poked them when they moved. And they hid, they were so ashamed, they hid because their best friend would just know by looking at them. Because he sees everything. I wonder why they thought covering their naked bits would stop God from ‘seeing’ them.

I am going down a rabbit trail, with great difficulty I must pull myself back.

God axed Adam exactly what on earth had transpired, although I’m sure he already knew. And this is what Adam said, “The woman whom YOU gave to be with me, SHE gave me fruit of the tree and I ate”.

Oh Adam, tsk tsk. Blame blame blame.

And we are still blaming today.

It’s the first thing we do when our partner falls. We step to the side, and we point our finger and we say “this is all your fault”. “Now I will stand over here to the side and wait while you gather your granola up in your bucket and clean yourself up again for me”.

Except they weren’t meant to have to scoop all the granola up by themselves. We were given each other to help the other scoop up their spilled granola. It makes the job so much more difficult than it needs to be. Granola is pesky to pick up, just like life is when one or the other makes a terrible mistake and we step away quickly before the mess gets on us.

How embarrassing to owe people money.

How disgusting of you to be caught in sexual sin.

How could you let something so horrible happen?

“You get over there in the dog house and scoop up your granola while I will wait over here, where it’s clean, to see if you get every little crumb”.

And so separated we walk forward. Depressed, naked, afraid, and ashamed.

And impotent.

Completely, hopelessly impotent.

Denying the responsibility and power of being part of a three-strand cord, and refusing to fight alongside.

And so we fall, again, and again, and again, down through the ages, past Moses time, straight on up through the centuries until now. Only a few discovering this powerful truth, millions discovering it too late. Marriage, done successfully, one of the greatest triumphs of the human race, but when separated and veering off God’s course, becoming the most destructive heartbreak, leaving humans and their families reeling with pain.

I’ve walked this road with several friends and it’s not the easy, cookie-cutter solution many people desire to think of it.

It will crush you.

It will break you down and eat you alive.

In this the mother of all spilled granola we can stand up and shout, Man of God, RISE! Woman of God, get to your feet! Shed the mantel of shame and rejoice in your God who is a God of redemption and healing. Again we can stand beside our fellow human beings who have fallen, and lift them up. Standing shoulder to shoulder, our power united, making you stronger, more invincible, an overcomer that brings honor and glory to God. Don’t ever for a minute assume self righteously that they chose that path, or that they chose it glibly. Press in close and walk with them. Gather their pain up by the armload and carry it alongside them.

But this isn’t the path most of us take. We step away from the divorced single parent. We put them over there in their corner where their struggle and pain cannot get us dirty.

We are going to put our friend who is dealing with a DUI, neatly out there alone to struggle and strive on his/her own while we piously drink our beer and do not drive, over here where there is no mud on the floor to mix with our granola if we spill it.

The friend who got pregnant, but isn’t married. Her baby doesn’t get to be celebrated. Only humans brought into this world who’s parents are married in a grotty old church get to be celebrated. Of course, when you were dating, you did all kinds of things, you were just smart enough to raincoat it so nobody found out.

Our friends who file bankruptcy clearly did this to themselves. Now they can clean their own mess up and we will be over here buying sweaters with a credit card waiting to be friends with them when they are in better shape.

That friend who cheated on his wife, how shameful. We will quietly judge him from the sidelines and ask his wife how she can bear to be around him. We would never ever cheat on our husband. We are too good for that. Not that it stops us from almost having a fender bender because our eyes rolled out of our head and down the street after the buff, muscled man running down the sidewalk with nothing bouncing. Or the woman running with everything good bouncing. It’s just so much better because no one sees my heart, while you were stupid enough to spread yours on a cracker and put it in the town square.

Now bring it home. Bring it close and personal. Now it’s your husband. And like Adam, you step away and shed responsibility faster than me getting away from a snake in the grass. “Your spilled granola, not mine”.

(Ultimately this flawed blog post is about marriage, so with great difficulty, I will bring it back to that, with a nod towards the subject of hurting friends.)

What if instead, you picked up your sword and stepped up beside your fallen spouse or friend. What if you fought alongside them, supporting, encouraging, and speaking the truth. What would happen if your husband who watched porn, knew that you were the person to confess it to. What if he knew you were the person he can come to first, knowing you would fight tooth and nail, for him. What if your husband looked lustfully at a woman, and you are the one he tells because he knows that you know you don’t fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of the air. You will take that to the father and fight for him alongside him.

What if we fought for each other in the bedroom. What if we took God seriously when he says my body is not my own, but my husband’s, and his not his own, but mine? What if that didn’t just mean we must submit when the other one wants to have sex, yet again (sigh, he got some last week, and more than once a month is a lot to ask for) What if that verse meant that we do not cease to care about our body, our hair, and how we smell. What if we also take it to mean that we put serious effort into being exciting and self-respecting, and enjoying sex as much as him.

What would happen if we realized that his weakness is my strength for a reason? It was meant to be like that. it doesn’t mean he/she is hopelessly flawed, it means he now has the strength that you lack, and you have the strength he lacks.

What if you were actually supposed to marry a man/woman that is so different from you that you hopelessly wonder if you will ever agree on anything, and I ain’t talking about mayo versus salad dressing, or whether or not it’s appropriate to wear jeans to church or a 3 piece suit. I am talking about deep, theological, biblical truths. You look at each other in horror, how can they be so wrong about something so clear.

Don’t separate yourself emotionally from your spouse over this. Separate yourself from this issue, together, and commit to being willing to have your mind changed. Both of you. Then patiently wait upon the Lord. His power and sufficiency have shown himself to us over and over to bring us to one mind, often both of us wide of the truth and meeting in the middle.

Sure, there have been sparks, and red faces and frustration shown aplenty in our marriage, as we hash out our differences. We are both too stubborn to just “change” our minds on the strength of the words of mere flesh and blood, especially since the other is SO wrong.

I imagine God looks at us and says “wow, have they learned nothing”.

But we can’t hear him because we are too busy showing the other how wrong they are. We’ve allowed the current issue at hand to separate us. Satan is pleased of course. He need not even get involved. We are placing ourselves in a nice position for his meddling later when the bouncy woman or the bounce-free man runs past. Although to be honest, he barely needs to get involved there either. We’ve got that one in the bag by ourselves as well. We lust, compare ourselves, judge, and become jealous all by ourselves, because our bits bounce too much or aren’t bouncy enough, or maybe our husband bounces more than the non-bouncy man. I may change the subject now. I am a little tired of thinking about non-bouncy men, and perfectly bouncy women. If you don’t get my point by now, you must be determined to not get the point at all and I must cease to strive.

I am committed to this man, not because he deserves it or because he is perfectly non-bouncy, (although he is) and has all his ducks marching in neat rows (although mine are milling, while his are marching) but because I said: “I will, in sickness and health, in bounce and no bounce”. And by George, I will love the Lord our God with all my heart, mind, soul and bouncy bits so that I can have the strength to strap my boots on, pick up my sword and fight if I need to.

Because he is worth it, and so is my citizenship to Celestial City.