andwhenimmissing you

I want to tell you everything, without leaving out a single detail. But where is the beginning? And what is everything?

If a woman marries a man, she’s trusting him with the rest of her life that he won’t hit her, cheat on her, that he’ll work hard, that he’ll pay the bills, that he’ll love their children, that he’ll finish the race well, that he’ll walk with Jesus ‘til the end, that if she gets sick, he’ll look after her, that if she is dying, he will be faithful to her. Gentlemen, it is a terrifying thing for a woman to trust a sinful man.

You’re not a morning person until you wake up next to the love of your life and watch them open their eyes to start another day with you; then all of a sudden you realize how much it pleases you to rise and be greeted by a soul brighter than the sun.

You know something, though, that I find very interesting – and again, psychologists didn’t know this until relatively recently – is that men are born every bit as relational as women are. If you look at films of newborn baby boys and girls, you’ll see the baby boys just like the girls, gazing into their mother’s eyes, you know, needing that relational exchange of energy. When the mother looks away, they could see the dismay on the child, even the boy would cry. They need relationship. So the question is why, as they grow older, does that change? And the answer is patriarchal culture, which says to boys and young men that to be needing of relationship, to be emotional with someone is girly. That a real man doesn’t ask directions or express a need, they don’t go to doctors if they feel bad. They don’t ask for help. There’s a quote that I really like, “Men fear that becoming ‘we’ will erase his 'I’.” You know, his sense of self. Whereas women’s sense of self has always been kind of porous. But our “we” is our saving grace, it’s what makes us strong. It’s not that we’re better than men, we just don’t have our masculinity to prove.

I’m not into convincing people I’m worthy. I’m into people who’ll convince me on my worst days that I’m still worth the world.

Take me back to the beginning When Love was patient, love was kind Back to the place when we first started And we weren’t so proud to change our minds

I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don’t want to look around any more: I don’t need to look around for anything.

Soothe me when I ache, tell me all the bad will pass. I need comfort now.