Things about love / marriage:
- I had notions of marriage which were unrealistic, but they were tied to things that were important for me to recognize.
- I really had no real idea of what it means to love someone, in deeply sacrificial ways.
- I discovered that I wanted marriage (Tami, actually) to fill things inside of me, to take care of things inside of me that only God could take care of.
- I cannot maintain an image of myself (for myself or for my wife) that will engender (or require) love. Love can only be offered, without requirement.
- My ability to love is not contingent upon my understanding of the love I receive.
- Being loved is not contingent upon my being viewed as right.
- I can love at nearly any cost and therefore I don't need to defend myself (in order to preserve my notion of the love I want or think I deserve).
- Most of a life of love is facing a common direction and walking towards it together, not towards each other (though that, too, is allowed at times).
- Sex is what the 'knowers' said it was, a by-product of something else, and only occasionally a path towards it. And, that it is not what those-who-don't-know say it is.
- Joining each other in the simplest of things send some of the most powerful messages to each other -- presence (as some have called it).
- There had to be space for things to go on that had nothing to do with me...things that Tami was working through, that I was threatened by, things that threatened my sense of the ideals I was seeking.
- There are few things more powerful than forgiveness.
- Things take time, in order to be seen clearly.
- We have only just begun to live, even as the things that seemed like 'life' wither away.
- Many of my needs / desires were highly cloaked (mostly from myself, but also from others).
- I really needed Tami to come through for me when in fact she really didn't.
- Not nearly as much was about me as I assumed (and therefore that I am in even less control of anything than I realized, less able to make anything good happen than I suspected).
- I am by nature completely consumed with myself. That to be unconsumed requires kinds of death to myself.
- It took a desperation of myself to free my grip on my expectations of my wife.
- Desire cannot be suppressed or managed.
- Anger is an important signal of something. That it calls me towards something.
- I never thought I was good enough and that I, in fact, am not, but that is more OK than I thought it was.
- 'No' is OK, and so is the disappointment of others.
- I must accept my design, not try to design myself.
- Pursuing God and how and what He has made me for (strength) frees up my wife to allow God to pursue her -- she doesn't have to operate from the pressure to take care of me...which will lead to a natural and healthy way of contributing to my care.
- Willingness for exposure to community was (is) a critical path towards life for me
- What deep and spiritual friendship is -- that words are really important and that presence is even more important
- Feeling abandoned and being abandoned are two different things -- I have never been abandoned
- Staying with community has been a life-line to learning these things about my marriage, myself, Tami, God, etc.
- I am deeply loved by my wife, in the ways that she is capable of loving me. That to require something different, to require different ways of loving me is a violation of something within her.
- Genuine wonder about my wife really frees me up from evaluating my relationship based on what I get out of it.
- Tami has a deep and profound beauty that is uniquely constructed for her and for her to offer to her world
- I have come to love the way she gives herself away
- I can join that beauty and seek ways to breath life into it
- She is courageous to look at herself as the Spirit prompts her
- I am deeply grateful for Tami's integrity and the desire within her to follow God
- I can trust God (especially over longer periods of time that I would have guessed) to allow her, to teach her how to love me the way I need to be loved (as opposed to the way I want to be loved). -- we often fought about this early on
- I can fully trust what God is up to in my wife, even when I don't recognize what it is.
- It took the likely destruction of normal and good things in life to help me see past my expectations out of life.
- Whatever I thought I was losing, I was gaining far more
- I must fight with God more than I fight with my wife. And, when I am fighting with her more than Him, something is wrong.
- Grieving needs to be among my greater muscles.
- Being willing to grieve was more important than trying to resolve something.
- God is very firm, gentle (even when harsh), but very firm and that this is a good thing, something that I can rely on, relax in.
- I can wait for God, in me, in my wife, in my kids.
- As my notions of Him got sorted out, He was way ahead of me and that I need to trust Him almost all the time with almost everything.
- God uses an awful lot of the normal experiences of life to teach us what we really need to know.
- I have no idea how much goodness God has ready for me and that, therefore, it is rather silly to try to broker for it. That the world has no idea about this kind of goodness.
