Marriage Is NOT an Antiquated Institution

The day my life got better.

The other day someone made the comment that she didn't think that marriage was "important' anymore. The group immediately chimed in with various comments about how it was an antiquated institution and not really needed anymore. "In patriarchal societies," opined one newly minted college-grad, "marriage was a matter of survival." Apparently not any longer according to this batch of millennials. The whole thing started over a lament about the divorce of "Brangelina" - a relationship begun in unfaithfulness in the first place. In their disappointment over the end of another "true love", the ladies were prepared to say marriage was obsolete as an institution in the modern world.

I beg to differ. The survival of my own 42 year-long love affair with the one and only woman I ever married, has long depended on our refusal to don our parachutes at the altar. Standing in front of Pastor Milton Reiber in a country chapel in the piney woods of Mississippi, Sheila and I made a lifelong commitment to each other. Promises were made that brooked no backing out. The idea was never considered. We signed the pledge in writing. I still carry my now faded, wallet-sized marriage license with me wherever I go. What has not faded is the commitment that little blue document represents.

While others of my generation were pledging "till we fall out of love", my wife and I pledged, "Till death do us part." And we meant it, even though we had no idea of what a rough ride it might prove to be. Because of our stubborn determination to honor that pledge, through tragedy, trial, struggle, good times and hard times, we have both known that we could always look over and find our best friend and lover always there beside us. 

Are we the perfect couple? Hardly. Neither of us is perfect. We understood that going in. We did, however, know that we both served the same master and we both had chosen that our lives should end up at the same place. We tried our best to believe the best, do our best and trust each other's love no matter what. It's never been easy. Life isn't. Not with the devil our adversary walking about like a roaring adversary seeking whom he may devour. But for all the struggle we've endured, I would not trade the love I've shared with my precious wife for anything on this Earth - not fame, not wealth, or power.

We have traveled this life together as God has led us, she and I. God has promised to be our teacher and so we did our best to sit still in the classes. We did our best to learn, however uncomfortable the lessons being taught. Over the past four decades, we've done our best to serve our children, loved ones and our fellow human beings as best we knew how. It has not made us rich. Quite the contrary. But, it has, I believe, left the world a slightly better place for our having passed through it. That was our intent at any rate. God must be responsible for the outcome.

There are two kinds of people in the world - those who give and those who take - those who mostly wish to be entertained and to have others meet their needs and those who strive to meet the needs of others. The love that we chose, was the consciously giving kind - the sort that reveres the Golden Rule as opposed to lusting for the power of the gold that rules. We chose to give love rather than wait around to receive it. I truly believe that choosing to believe that love was something we do rather than something we strictly receive has made all the difference.

I'm a firm believer in marriage. It's God's teaching tool; something of a crucible in which the souls of a married pair are purified and strengthened, molded and melded. Marriage is not, of itself, some touchy-feely emotional state. It's doing first, putting someone else before your own self. It's living life deliberately and with principle. It's giving 100%, not 50/50. When you do that you have a relationship that always is more than what any one person can create on his or her own - it is always a relationship that is more than 100%, for when one is weak, the other is strong. And when both are strong, the two are more powerful than they can be separately and alone. If you've put the effort into it, the emotional state comes with it as a bonus and you are strong and faithful and powerful. 

God said it was not good that man should be alone. He was right. I know that for a hard fact. As poor as we are in this world's riches, as disabled as we both are in body and mind, and as tough as life sometimes gets for us, God has given us each other, two hearts beating as one, and that is enough for this life. The next one promises to be incredible and the great thing is that we get to start it as two hearts which have already become as one thanks to an intertwined life guided by the loving hand of He who set the universe to spinning.

You can't beat that with a stick.

© 2016 by Tom King

In Search of a Peach Along the Broken Road

Sheila and I singing with Jack Allen at the nursing home
before God smacked me upside the head...

.

I'm a mess tonight. I know my Sweet Baboo is coming home from Louisiana, but I'm worrying anyway and will till I get her home. Except for a quick trip home, she's been gone for three months. I lent her to someone who needed her and they nearly broke her. The song below really hits me in the heart. When I was a teenage kid, I just knew that my heart was out there wandering around looking for me too. I used to sit in the top of trees and wonder where she was and what she was doing and why I couldn't find her. And boy howdy did I ever walk that proverbial broken road. I used to sing that John Denver song, "She Done Stomped on my Heart" a lot and I sang it with feeling let me tell you.

Pastor Mike Hansen forced his way into my VGA dorm room after one of my old girlfriends broke up with me and sat me down and told me this. "Tom," he said, "God has someone who is your match. He's already picked her out and if you'll just let Him, He's going to send you a real peach." Pastor Mike was absolutely right. 

Unfortunately,I'm kind of a bull in a China shop relationship wise and girls were terrifying to me. There was even a rumor floating around the Girls Dorm at SWAU that I was, you know, "Not the marrying kind," and not in a good way. Truth was I was scared of them.

Sheila actually had to ask me to sit with her on the bus to Bible Camp where we eventually got together. She asked me mainly because she wanted someone to play guitar with and I was too chicken to suggest it. She had no evil designs on me. It was really cool not to have any expectations - just two friends making music. We'd already been playing on Sabbath afternoons at the local nursing home where we worked. So we had 8 months of guitar playing together already. So it was just a friendly invite and completely unthreatening for Mr. Chicken. I'd never met a girl like her before. No games. No manipulation. Just says whatever she thinks. I loved that.

In fact, like me, she'd just gone through a breakup only hers was with a fiancee. She was looking for company. We even got invited to sing one of her songs together at one of the meetings. I think God was hinting, but I was still too dim to get it. We talked a lot that weekend. We'd both been hurt pretty badly and we wound up feeling sorry for each other which actually helped.

Even then, by the time the weekend was over, we were on the bus going home and still wondering if we should get back with our exes. Turns out God had other plans. We experienced the moment differently. To me it felt like God had smacked me on the back of the head and said, "Pay attention, boy. This one right here beside you is the one. I love this girl and I'm giving you the job of taking care of her. Got that?" All that went' clearly through my mind.

Sheila meanwhile was seeing visions of she and I and our kids and our family like a sort of vision. We impulsively grabbed each others' hands and have been hanging on to each other for dear life ever since.

And she's coming back home to me on Sunday!

God is very good to me, even when He's whacking me upside the head to get my attention.

© 2016 by Tom King

The “Twilight” Myth

(c) 2013 by Tom King

The “Twilight” movies have been a huge hit with girls especially teenage girls ages 12 to 65.  There is an old and disturbing reason the "Twilight" movies are such a hit with teen girls.  They trade upon an old mythology that is just as flawed as it was all those millennia ago in the Garden of Eden.

The myth goes roughly like this.  All a bad boy needs to become a good man is the love of a good woman.  In “Twilight”, Edward is the ultimate bad boy – a vampire who lives by killing and draining the blood from human beings.  Now Edward has modified his behavior somewhat by only living on animal blood, but he still has the cravings. So you can tell he wants to be good, if he can only find a good woman to love who will save him.

Then, along comes a long-necked, pale young thing named Bella, who understands the bad boy, Edward.  She wins his heart and changes him forever. Edward becomes good, a terrible struggle ensues and everyone is saved and lives happily ever after. The only thing is, he bites Bella and she becomes a vampire too.  There's a moral there if you're looking for one.

The belief that bad boys will inevitably be saved because of the love of a girl has led more young women into terrible relationships than any other flawed belief about love (including the one about how love is a feeling). In 99 times out of 99 times, bad boys don’t reform because they love good girls.  Most bad boys (and bad girls for that matter) are bad because they choose to be bad.  All these kinds of unbalanced relationships do is use up the good girl and then cast her aside – usually with two or three kids to raise and an ex who ducks his child support payments. And women cling to their fatal attraction to these good/bad boys to a surprisingly advanced age.  I once had a 65 year old woman tell me she knew my father.  Now Dad was a notorious local bad boy.  My Mom married him because my Grandmother set them up, thinking that the love of a good girl would change his sinful ways. It didn't. He ran off with another woman when I was five after spending several of my toddler years in prison. This older lady, who remembered Dad as a teenager, a good church-goer and pillar of the community, told me (to my considerable discomfort) what a good looking boy he was. I swear she still had a lustful look in her eye and it was nearly 45 years later. It was more than a little creepy.

Unless bad boys and girls choose to change before they hook up with you, they aren't likely to do so afterwards. It's the ultimate narcissism to think that your naughty boyfriend or girlfriend will every change for you.

Change of the sort that makes good people out of bad people comes only from God and from the free will choice of the person doing the changing.  Any other reason for changing is doomed to failure.  Believing a loved one will change himself for you simply because the sex is really good sets you up for a big disappointment, because, it may surprise you to learn, you are not God. Expecting a bad spouse to change because they love you is like setting yourself up as God.  You expect behavioral change from your worshipper, the afore-mentioned bad spouse, because they love you and if they love you, you reason, they will want to do your will and change themselves into a form that is pleasing to you.

In the Garden of Eden, the devil promised Eve that she and Adam would become like gods. Lucifer lied.  I’m sure when Adam took the fruit, he too thought he could “save” Eve by joining her in her transgression. Ironically, it seems it was actually Adam who started the whole “I can save her/him through my love” mythos.  Women just took the idea and ran with it; possibly because there seem to be more really bad men than there are bad women for some reason.

And don’t write me an angry comment telling me it worked for you.  If true it would be an exception, that in its rarity, just proves the rule.  If you’re already stuck in one of those relationships, should you cut bait and run for it?  I’m not saying that at all.  I’m just saying that your loved one will never change for you. He may change because, through you, he meets God, but meeting God is the only way real change is gonna happen.  

My advice – start praying.  Never stop. It’s your only hope.

Tom King