I had a wonderful Christmas...I hope you did too.
Before I dive into the post, I'd like to note a couple of things about the picture which accompanies this post:
1. I just discovered the joy of "Flickr" photo sharing, as evidenced by the fact that there IS a picture accompanying this post. It's a fun tool, check it out.
2. If I would have known I was going to discover Flickr, and post a random happy-moment-with-wife picture from Christmas morning to my blog, I would have come up with something better than a skin-tight red pajama shirt to share with the world.
3. In case you're wondering, that angel over my shoulder is the "top of the Christmas tree" variety of shoulder-angel, and not the "whisper better ideas and gentle admonishments into my ear" variety of shoulder-angel. She stopped coming when I hit puberty.
Now, back to the post.
Christmas wrapped up all of 56 minutes ago. Stacy and I did lots of Christmasy things. We wrapped presents together, we drank coffee together (mulled cider was in short supply), we decorated our tree together, we listened to Christmas music together, we ate with and hung out with my family together, we opened gifts together, and we watched A Christmas Story four times together as it repeated on TBS.
It was a wonderful Christmas. Perhaps the best we've had.
In a couple of days we leave for her hometown to hang out with her parents and family. Their celebration of Christmas, much like Hannukah, lasts for eight days. Her mom is one of 10 kids, and each day the entire extended family moves from house to house looking at who got what and talking about who they got it from and then asking that who how much she paid and how much she could have paid if she would have driven across the state line to buy it and used a coupon. Stacy's family is fun, and, like mine and yours and everyone else's, full of characters and oddballs and drunken uncles and crying babies and fun cousins with life-partners. I like going out there, and it'll be a relaxing three days.
I hope your Christmas was brilliant, warm and deep, and that the Indescribable Love I felt was with you too. God is good, and this was a magnificent time of year to re-learn that.
Peace,
Justin
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Monday, December 11, 2006
"You know that old saying about how you always hurt the ones you love? Well it goes both ways."
-Jack, Fight Club (1999)
A friend recently moved into our house for a few days.
She moved into our house, because she moved out of hers.
She moved out of hers, because her husband abused her. A lot.
She moved into our house. For the second time in a week.
The hardest part wasn't that she left him. The hardest part was that she had to do it twice. For me, that hardest part was that she walked back into her house...kids in tow...into the home of an abuser...and lay down next to him again.
I've much to share with you, but tonight I want to share this. I'm amazed and I'm confused and I'm really, really sorry for her, and for her kids. And, in some weird way, for her husband. This is not my world...I'm lucky that way. I live in a home with a woman who I not only love, but most of the time really like. My wife lives with a husband who she loves and most of the time likes, and who they both, deep down, believes won't ever intentionally harm her. I live with a woman I yearn to see after a long day, and she lives with a man she can go to bed at night knowing wants the best for her. I believe that Stacy and I could bring kids into the world and, somehow, raise them to be people who respect and love the opposite sex. Not because we're better, I don't think. We grew up that way...our kids will believe it because our parents, at some level or another, believed it. We were lucky.
My guess is that my friend's husband grew up in a home where he saw his mother treated with contempt, shame, and disgust. My guess is that his father was dominating, and his mother either stooping or overcompensating by raging against the kids. That's just my guess. I'm fairly sure that my friend grew up in a place where she questioned her own worth, and where her parents, by example, taught her that she was only as good as her foul shots and her pretty smile, and she had to know that someday she would slowly lose both.
I think she went back into that house not because she truly believed he would change, but because she believed she didn't deserve for him to. She's smart, educated, strong and beautiful...and yet she learned along the way that she wasn't worth true love; just marriage, and children, and a house, and the abuse.
We helped her get away. For now. I don't know if she'll stay away. I wonder if some twisted sense of destiny will bring her back to him. God, I hope not. No woman deserves that treatment. None.
I'm angry with my wife at this moment. I'm not going to tell you why, because it's her business and it's my business. But it doesn't matter. I'll be over it tomorrow or the next day or maybe next week. That doesn't matter either. What matters is that, by God's grace and decent parenting, I'm choosing to love right now. I'm loving by breathing slowly, remembering who she is and who I am, and typing furiously at my blog until I can fall asleep. And tomorrow, when I wake up and head off to work, I will choose to kiss her goodbye. It is my choice to love her, and it's a choice both of us make each day, whether we feel it with everything we have or whether we conjure it in spite of some squabble, petty or otherwise.
I'm not a great husband. But I'm a good one. And when our friend calls us tomorrow to ask us if she should return to her husband again, I'm going to close my eyes and, for as long as it takes, be grateful for what I have.
Please pray that she stays away, and that he seeks help. Her story is one of millions, and she and her kids deserve better.
Peace,
Justin
-Jack, Fight Club (1999)
A friend recently moved into our house for a few days.
She moved into our house, because she moved out of hers.
She moved out of hers, because her husband abused her. A lot.
She moved into our house. For the second time in a week.
The hardest part wasn't that she left him. The hardest part was that she had to do it twice. For me, that hardest part was that she walked back into her house...kids in tow...into the home of an abuser...and lay down next to him again.
I've much to share with you, but tonight I want to share this. I'm amazed and I'm confused and I'm really, really sorry for her, and for her kids. And, in some weird way, for her husband. This is not my world...I'm lucky that way. I live in a home with a woman who I not only love, but most of the time really like. My wife lives with a husband who she loves and most of the time likes, and who they both, deep down, believes won't ever intentionally harm her. I live with a woman I yearn to see after a long day, and she lives with a man she can go to bed at night knowing wants the best for her. I believe that Stacy and I could bring kids into the world and, somehow, raise them to be people who respect and love the opposite sex. Not because we're better, I don't think. We grew up that way...our kids will believe it because our parents, at some level or another, believed it. We were lucky.
My guess is that my friend's husband grew up in a home where he saw his mother treated with contempt, shame, and disgust. My guess is that his father was dominating, and his mother either stooping or overcompensating by raging against the kids. That's just my guess. I'm fairly sure that my friend grew up in a place where she questioned her own worth, and where her parents, by example, taught her that she was only as good as her foul shots and her pretty smile, and she had to know that someday she would slowly lose both.
I think she went back into that house not because she truly believed he would change, but because she believed she didn't deserve for him to. She's smart, educated, strong and beautiful...and yet she learned along the way that she wasn't worth true love; just marriage, and children, and a house, and the abuse.
We helped her get away. For now. I don't know if she'll stay away. I wonder if some twisted sense of destiny will bring her back to him. God, I hope not. No woman deserves that treatment. None.
I'm angry with my wife at this moment. I'm not going to tell you why, because it's her business and it's my business. But it doesn't matter. I'll be over it tomorrow or the next day or maybe next week. That doesn't matter either. What matters is that, by God's grace and decent parenting, I'm choosing to love right now. I'm loving by breathing slowly, remembering who she is and who I am, and typing furiously at my blog until I can fall asleep. And tomorrow, when I wake up and head off to work, I will choose to kiss her goodbye. It is my choice to love her, and it's a choice both of us make each day, whether we feel it with everything we have or whether we conjure it in spite of some squabble, petty or otherwise.
I'm not a great husband. But I'm a good one. And when our friend calls us tomorrow to ask us if she should return to her husband again, I'm going to close my eyes and, for as long as it takes, be grateful for what I have.
Please pray that she stays away, and that he seeks help. Her story is one of millions, and she and her kids deserve better.
Peace,
Justin
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