With This Ring: How to Keep a Mid-Life Crisis at Bay?

It first fit the hand of her great, great-grandmother.

Hand engraved before there were machines to do it, vintage script reads "Norman to Marie 1898". This simple band of gold saw the turn of the 1800's into the 20th Century.

Queen Victoria sat on the throne, wielding her broad influence in fashion and furnishings with unprecedented longevity. Here in the U.S., President William McKinley faced unrest at home with the Spanish American War, economic challenges, and inherited problems from a still-smarting division of a nation lingering from the American Civil War. Some things never change.

Living, breathing men and women created that history we only read about in books. Those in our family tree had their hands full making a living the best they could, I imagine.

Marie wore this ring as Victorian gave way to Edwardian. She made her life raising three children in Alabama and Mississippi. Her large, capable hands must have worked hard in those days before dishwashers and automation. I see whitewash on the old home place in the photo we have, and I remember whitewash comes only after moving up in the world. There was no extra paint to spare in those days.

Her youngest child, Minnie, came to possess the ring, who passed it on to her only child, who gave it to his son.

This is where I -- though only for a fleeting moment -- come in, if you'll permit this point of personal reflection.

My husband, upon our marriage in 1982, wanted to wear this ring of his paternal great-grandmother. We had it engraved in the only space left to reflect our initials and date. I still see his tan hands wearing this ring in my mind's eye, though time does a number on us and has its way of enlarging joints. As time moves on, so do we in a manner of speaking. I have outgrown my wedding ring size too.

He is sporting another substitute band that fits now, and our youngest child chooses to wear this family ring daily, along with my too-small ring my groom placed on my finger on this day years ago.

Thirty years ago today to be exact.

She wears them as a reminder of a love that promises to endure.

When we pass along truth to another generation, it is difficult to know what will really last and what will be like chaff in the wind in their own times. Fierce winds blow now. I feel it all around.

I pray this ring will remind her that Love does not love 'as long as I feel like I love you'.

It does not love 'until a better offer comes along'...nor does it love as long as its needs are met.

Love -- we have learned and are still learning every day -- is an act of the will: Love is not a feeling; Love is something you do. Do the things love does.

We learned this from our friend and pastor, Dr. Maxie Dunnam, in our early years of marriage and have drawn from that fount of wisdom many times over the years.

We have needed the reminder too many times to count.

Just this week my husband brought home a book, LOVE is Something You Do, by John R. Bisagno. In the center of the book - half-way through exactly -- stands a chapter on the mid-life crisis. Read from this, all who think they are too young to be affected and those who believe it's too late, I urge, because it is never too late to do the right thing if given the opportunity.

We might be squarely at middle age -- who is to say? -- but this chapter has some nuggets I'd like to share, mixed with my own thoughts.

We need its common sense and wisdom, as this commodity is not so common anymore. Perhaps it was prevalent in 1898, but our social context today has an overlay that is "all about me."

Can we do anything to keep the mid-life crisis from eroding a marriage?

1. Rejoice in the stage you are in right now. Mid-life has many reminders of fleeting youth and attractiveness. Some grasp desperately to cling to virility and desirability as they see it. When we learn to accept with grace whatever stage we are in, we do well.

2.Seek out wisdom and learn from Godly people, not just from those who support what you want to do; that's the easy way out.

3.Remember there is no perfect marriage. Ours will not be either.

4. Counteract the allure of the affair. Face up to what you have to lose.

5. Stop rationalizing. Those excuses are the voice of the tempter.

6. Face the facts. Do not compromise your honesty.

7. Follow the Biblical prescription: Repent. Remember your first love. Do the first works. This is what Jesus said in Rev. 3 to his bride, the Church, who had forsaken him.

For those who do not successfully navigate the mid-life (or early-life or late-life) challenges of marriage, know that God's grace is sufficient for us.

There are so many who are suffering the heartbreak of a divorce that they did not seek and do not want. I wish to be able to bring more healing and wholeness, and humbly show the way to the only Way I know to receive reconciliation and forgiveness and grace for the rest of the journey. This, too, we try to pass on from one generation to the next so that each will be equipped for the challenges of a new day.

From 1898 to 1982 to 2012 and for each day thereafter.....bread for the journey!


(and, yes, I know that merely by posting this reflection, I am setting myself up for increased challenges/frustration/temptation -- whatever you might call it -- on the homefront. I believe that is a price we pay when we take such a stand. It's nothing new. I pray to be faithful and not give a foothold to that avenue of attack. )

A Vow Remembered

Most of us live with a manageable level of daily fears or dreads as part of the rhythm of life. Daily reminders of God's word to 'fear not' help keep our focus away from what we fear and clearly on the One who gives strength to overcome life's challenges.

Some folks encounter terrifying, bewildering circumstances when what we fear actually comes to pass. One such person weaves in and out of my week with spontaneous appearances, a ready smile and good joke. He works nearby and pops in occasionally. I had seen him for many months before I knew the rest of the story that I share with you here.

You may have heard that we have presently a generation characterized by refusal to commit. To anything.
Ours is an age when commitment means as long as I want to do it.
When faithfulness means as long as I'm interested in you.
When vows are reduced to empty promises and hollow posing.
Shattered dreams and broken lives testify to the ravages of this mindset gone mad.

Hal's is similar to a true-story inspired film that is playing on the big screen right now as The Vow, except that his is not a Hollywood romantic comedy. He is walking it out day by day by day. We see few examples of his kind of faithful devotion in the face of hardship, so I choose to spread the word. If you want to know what commitment or integrity looks like, read further.

Thanks, Hal, for more than a faded snapshot to remind us of a great man. Your story plays reel to reel. We need more men and women like you in our lives! Thanks be to God.

Beautiful Love Letter

I mentioned last week the national outlay of $14 billion dollars on this holiday called Valentine's Day. Quite a large sum for ribbons, cards, flowers and gifts that - to hear a man at the bank say today - are "merely obligatory, being devoid of meaning entirely because someone has decreed that men must pay out or else." Sort of like negotiating with hostages, he said: "nobody wants to do it, but sometimes you just have to."

"I hate this day," he said again. "Women have just set us up."

I wonder if he has found ways to creatively express his love for his wife 364 days a year given his dislike for February 14?

By sharp contrast, I have another picture to offer of love today.

It will never enter the national retailers data bank nor will anyone report on its significance economically. But if you can find a more powerful picture of what love is, I want to see it.

When you can take a moment of quiet and give the attention without skimming, please read a powerful tribute of a young husband to his wife.

I marvel at the inspired words of Eric for Sarah, friends of Sam and Bennett in Houston:

Sarah's Transition

February 14, 2011:

Sarah is currently in the process of transitioning out of this life... away from her current worn down body and into an indescribably beautiful one. She is very close to leaving the cocoon and becoming the butterfly she has always been so symbolically drawn to. Her condition has dramatically worsened over the past several days, and given her current symptoms, we are being told that the time for her to pass is very near. Currently, she is having few lucid moments, and the ones she is granted are spent straining for those three precious words that exemplify her life... "I love you." Rest assured that she is certainly enveloped in love. Please pray for a painless and peaceful transition, and those of us here struggling with the huge void caused by the loss of her presence.

I think Sarah's light has shown so bright that this earth can no longer contain it. It's time for her to go to the true source of that light, to stop being the lone lantern shining into the darkness, but to join the grand symphony of radiance. It would seem selfish to keep her after she has worked so hard and is this close.


Shine bright firefly, shine bright... with tears in our eyes we cherish the path you illuminated.

-Your husband

See http://sarahchidgey.blogspot.com/2011/02/sarahs-transition.html

Come quickly, Lord Jesus. And mend the broken hearts left behind.

We understand that Eric is paying the high cost of loving, a price we all have to pay sooner or later. May we pay willingly, though painfully, when we know the priceless gift that is ours in love. May God grant us strength and courage to face an uncertain future because we trust that God is faithful to accompany us the full distance of the journey. We do not go alone.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. I Corinthians 13: 1-13

Happy Anniversary

December 28, 1952 was another century ago. So much has changed since then.

1952: before Barbie, Elvis, color television, microwave ovens, push button phones, Tupperware, The Beatles, facebook, polyester clothing, Bic pens, zip loc bags, $100 tennis shoes, $50,000 cars and trucks, and children with their own cell phones. And there is so much more.

"What is this world coming to?" they would surely have said had they known what would unfold over the years to come. But they did not know, and that is part of the blessing. There is a place for innocence in our lives.

58 years ago my parents married as two young lovers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Only 19 and 20, they found each other early and so began a lifetime together, building hopes and dreams on the only foundation they had: a shared faith and commitment to build a family together. They were undaunted by obstacles that would derail many today.

While they had no money, they had the talent and drive to work hard and persevere during some very lean years. I have seen the physical copies of her handwritten budgets from the early 1950's showing enough money every few months for my mom to buy a 75-cent tube of lipstick or rouge. And drugstore lipstick starts around $7.50 today! But we know about inflation, and I am not stunned by that price disparity alone. The beauty is how they worked together....as a team....and through many years....to accomplish this task of building a family and life together. She did not demand that she needed more than $.75. She knew what was available and worked together to determine how to manage it. My mom was always and is still an excellent manager of resources. She is capable and trustworthy.

I cannot help but contrast this to the young moms I have heard who complain that their husbands do not give them enough money, compared to others of their friends. I hear so many folks today talk - and I have done my share, I confess - of pitting themselves against their spouses as though they were two opponents sparring instead of two partners working together to accomplish a common goal. We can totally miss the boat with this attitude.

They had the emotional support from loving family members who believed in them. This is no small task. Each couple who marries has the potential to be successful and grow together in unity, though statistically over half of them will be divorced in a few years. We covenant to support new couples in our families, to undergird them and help equip them to weather the storms they will inevitably face. But naming storms is not the task of a newlywed; they are more inclined to name dreams and face an uncharted journey in their boat with arms linked and eyes forward.

Somewhere along the way Life happens.

When we say 'for better or for worse,' we do not think it will get worse.
When we say 'for richer and for poorer,' we do not think we'll become poorer.
When we say 'in sickness and in health,' we do not expect to become sick.

The wise couple learns how to face their reality - and sure and certain stormy weather - and remain together in their little boat. Sometimes it calls for a pail when we take on more than we think we can withstand. Sometimes we need a shelter in a storm. Do we know where to turn? Do we have a compass setting for a safe harbor - a place or person to help us and restore our bearings until we are seaworthy again? We can help be that port in the storm for one another when we are willing. And we can help steer one another toward Jesus, Lover of our souls, whose resources are never depleted and whose ability to love is not based on performance or mood.

I am thankful for 58 years of marriage in my parents' lives, and for their example of working to overcome the odds against this feat in our society. My sister in law said today, "I think they are over the hump."

I think so too.
May you have smooth sailing in the year ahead, and, as the old Irish blessing says, may the wind be always at your back.
I love you more than you can imagine.


Image taken from a 1880's marriage certificate. Graphics Fairy.

Quite the Personality

A young mother replied last week to her husband who noticed her fatigue and exasperation at the end of day bewitching hour with three small children at home:

"You should see me earlier in the day: I am quite the personality between ten and two! I really am a lovely woman!"

So cute, that Jenn. Quite the personality between ten and two... We do have some good hours in the day when we are at our best - before the internal corrosion and external erosion do a number on us. This is especially common among young moms.

I have long lamented the structure of our society which sets up busy couples and families to leave home early in the morning, pour their time and energy into the job to be done all day (with and for someone else), then return home at the end of each day spent physically and emotionally with nothing but remnants for those dearest to them. Think about it. We are our most presentable and perhaps kindest to everyone else we encounter all day, then our mates get the leftovers.

The way of wisdom teaches me to prepare and to conserve so as to preserve what is important.

PREPARE.
I began to understand and prepare for this home dynamic when I was still a single young lawyer practicing with all men in a firm. One young man had just arrived at work, leaving his wife and new baby at home. He made some (unfortunate) comment about how nice it is to get to work and see someone fresh and dressed up first thing in the morning, while his wife is still in her bathrobe with a spit up on it. (I know: GRRRRR, right?) His remark was not any kind of pitch to me personally, but it did reveal a vulnerability in marriages I knew nothing about at my young age. His gross insensitivity to the immense life change his post partum wife also was experiencing notwithwstanding, he had put his finger on a soft spot no less real than that of his newborn son: the way we act and present ourselves to our mates matters. I was only 24, but I was adding to my knowledge base about marriage.

Since that time, I have been that young mom with babies and bathrobes and sweat pants. I know there are days when we can hardly see beyond three or four hour feeding intervals and naptimes! "You do the best you can do," is the motto I recall. I also know how easy it is for a woman to become so absorbed in the life of her child or children that her husband is relegated to a houseguest or distant boarder. That is a pitfall for many young moms today, and the chasm doesn't become readily apparent until empty nesting reveals a dearth of relationship between husband and wife.

But I also remember the example of my mother and have learned from her vast storehouse of knowledge and experience. I once questioned why she would have us clean up toys and turn off the t.v. and straighten up from the activity of seven children plus ever-present friends at the end of the day before our daddy would come home: "Because I want things to be in order when he comes home after a busy day." Every day. What I learned over time was that she knew how important it was to take steps to create harmony and order in a home - not based on a panicked, 'hurry up, Daddy's home!' - but consistently making the effort to honor him, them, and create space for family time together at the end of the day. Somebody has to usher this into play; it will not just happen on its own. It made her day smoother as well that she had a method for shifting gears and transitioning, as it would be termed today. It mattered that he was home. And we also learned that the marriage was central; we children were not in control.

Honoring and preferring one another as husband and wife are not words we hear too much about these days, but more on that later...

Forty-plus years later, the picture is different for many of us, but the point is the same. Both mom and dad are likely coming home tired at the end of the day, perhaps after picking up children from day care on the way. One may not be there much ahead of the other to 'head chaos off at the pass', but the desire to do so can still drive us to help create space for rejoining one another. Every day. In fact, it is precisely that desire to love and to serve and to please another that makes all the difference. It's all about the attitude we bring to the task. This may call for a change of attitude to make that step if it presents a different pattern. It takes a certain amount of energy as well, and we need a reserve tank for that purpose. There is a take off and landing in each day, and we do well when we learn allocate resources all the way through. Every day.

CONSERVE.
Just as a pilot must conserve fuel for a long journey and manage the ascending and descending speeds, we must conserve our energy so that we do not repeatedly burn out by two or five p.m. and run on fumes the rest of the day, as is often the pattern. I say 'repeatedly' because there are surely some days where we just can't get it together. Like my friend's comment above, I, too, have many of them. Let it go! Be gentle on yourself.

Here are some of the ways we can conserve and generate a bit of renewed energy for the balance of the day. Not surprisingly, there are no secrets; you've heard it all before. Look first to the basics when addressing any problem, I always say, then...throw a lot of love at it.

1. Don't forget to breathe. Breathe deeply. Specifically, inhale through the nose to the count of five, and exhale through the mouth, blowing air out through pursed lips. Repeat for several minutes.

2. Palms up. Know the power of posture to signal a return to your center from the frenzied outer spirals of anxieties and worries. You can cue yourself...direct your own attention this way. Bring yourself into the present moment. Relax for a few minutes at your desk...in the car....pick your spot. Do this with hands open in front of you, palms up.

3. Pray. Don't know what to pray? Just come in silence. Even a heartfelt 'Gentle Jesus...' will help us center before the One who can give us a respite while in the midst of the busiest day. Draw yourself up to healing springs of Living Water and ask to be refreshed.

4. Take a nap, if possible, for no more than 20 minutes. The power nap can do more to clear a tired mind and weary body than we ever knew. I can almost hear you saying, "if I had the luxury of taking a nap I would not be in this state!" So it may not be in the cards right now, but one day...or year... it might work.

5. Drink water. Addressing an often overlooked deficit, staying hydrated is of utmost importance. If you've had coffee and tea during the day, drink twice as much water. And while you are wondering if you want to drink water, drink some water. Late afternoon or evening sparkling water with lime slices or splash of cranberry juice is a welcome change too. My friend, Julia, keeps a pitcher of water with sliced lemons, oranges, limes, carrots and cucumbers floating in it. Anything for variety helps.

6. Tend to basic needs. If you have young children, remember they are likely hungry or tired at the end of the day as well. Be prepared with something to eat, or a healthy snack, so that you do not erupt in frustration and fatigue at their whining when they are merely hungry and tired themselves. So have a plan for supper. Online emealz and other resources are plentiful! Dust off the crock pot. Pick up something healthy. Suppertime comes around every day, so we need to plan for it. That's part of being the grown-up: we must step up to the task.

7. Consider a change of attitude. Invite a new spirit of desiring one another, a new way of relating to one another, to replace tired habits and broken routines. You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Make a move toward sanity.

8. Go for a walk/exercise as a part of the day or week. Do I do this? Not nearly enough. But I know it to be important and cannot avoid mentioning it. Exercise presents a connundrum, because we think it requires more energy than we have, yet it actually is energy-giving!

Others will come to mind when I put this to bed, and I will gladly add yours when submitted.

PRESERVE.
A 1950's article made the rounds on the internet, and I was in the company of women who ridiculed and mocked its suggestions to the homemaker to help create an atmosphere of calm in the home at the end of the day. There were lines such as, "take your husband his slippers while he relaxes in his easy chair" which were met with guffaws and near-hysterical hoots, and I can see why! I recognize that the tone of the piece sounds as foreign in 2010 as a Leave it to Beaver rerun. But, that homemaker was my mother, married in 1952. I might disagree with the suggestions of the piece, but cannot find fault with her desire to honor her husband - and he honored her - or to teach her children to clean up and prepare for a nighttime routine. Fifty eight years later, they are still each other's dearest friends and soulmates. She is a wise woman...

I have lived long enough to have seen the difference in homes with unadulterated chaos and those with some form of harmoniously living together. I choose to take steps toward serenity and joy in the home - even though there will be times of chaos in the best of plans. There is grace and forgiveness along the way; nobody does it perfectly! But we encourage one another to present our best selves to the homes and loved ones waiting for us at the end of the day.

Lord, Indeed you have bestowed each of us with quite the personality by day, but somehow we lose it by night. Restore unto us the desire to please You, to honor You and those You have given us to love. Renew our calling and refresh us as we seek to live into what You would have us do. Help us preserve the sacred commitments we made to one another and to you - to love, to honor and to cherish each one in our families. Amen.

header borrowed from www.executivehomemaker.com, a site I discovered when trolling for an image, and one of many seeking to give support and tips for life in 2010.