He Loves Me

My husband doesn’t say “I love you,” much. In the 25 years that we have been married, I would guess he’s said it maybe 30 times, and rarely without prompting from me.

Up until recently, this has really bugged me. Who wouldn’t be bugged by that! If you love someone you should say it. Right?

But Jeff’s not like that. He doesn’t write me poetry or send me flowers. He doesn’t kiss me before going off to work in the morning, or end our phone conversations with “love you.” He just doesn’t.

Years ago I used to think the reason for this was obvious. If he didn’t say “I love you” that must mean he didn’t. Seemed logical. But that didn’t make sense. If he didn’t love me, why did he stick around? Why did he provide for us and why did he appear to like to do stuff with me? Why did he give me back rubs, and go on walks with me? Why did he talk with me about important family decisions, and tell me stories about when he was a kid, and listen to me tell him stories about anything and everything I was thinking about? To put it simply, why has he stayed faithful, in good times and in bad times, unless he truly loves me?

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

Nowhere does it say, “Love says ‘I love you’ on a regular basis.”

On the contrary, here’s what God has to say in 1 John 3:18:

“Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

Jeff may not say it in words or speech, but he loves me. I see it in his actions and I know it’s true.

So I’m not going to let it bug me any more. If I don’t hear him say it out loud in the next 25 years, that’s okay. I know the truth. He loves me. His actions say it loud and clear.

Advice for the Lovelorn

This past Saturday my daughter and her boyfriend of 19 months split up.

Since then we’ve all been trying to help her through it.

My husband offered her this bit of advice, “Don’t start dating again until August.” (She’ll be attending Martin Luther College by then.)

My advice came in two parts.

1) Focus on all you’ve got. (And then I listed off all she has going for her, and quoted Philippians 4:8 & 9.)

2) Take care of yourself: Eat, drink, and sleep. (I knew she’d never start feeling better if she was starving, dehydrated, or sleep-deprived. I’m a mom. I worry about these things.)

Her older sister told her that in a good relationship each person brings out the best in the other person. Then she said he did her a favor by ending it, and that she was too good for him. (I thought that too, but I didn’t want to say it.)

Then on Tuesday a friend who knew nothing about my daughter’s break up, recommended the “Ask Carolyn” column in the Trib. A few days later I googled Ask Carolyn, and eventually came upon the following article. Obviously, the situation “Devastated reject” wrote in about wasn’t exactly like my daughter’s. But I forwarded it to her anyway. I thought Carolyn’s reply was loaded with sound advice.

Here’s what the article said:

Dear Carolyn: My boyfriend of seven years left me for a 20-year-old (we're both 26). Throughout it all he has tried to be kind and reassuring to me, but I can't seem to reconcile that with the wholesale rejection of everything I have been to him, everything I am and everything I could have been. We've had a tumultuous history, but we always worked through our problems and I really thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.

I tried to reason with him and lay out our entire history, and while he agrees it has been worthwhile and that he was happy with me, it's still not worth it to him to give up this new girl. I don't know if he's saying kind things only to make me feel better or if it's an outright lie. I'm so confused about the last seven years now.

I'm trying to take things day by day. I keep trying to remind myself that I did my best, and I can't force him to love me. I just get overwhelmed with these feelings of worthlessness, though, and I feel like I'm losing everything. What else can I do? - Devastated reject

If you're worthless because one person doesn't want to date you anymore, then pretty much everybody on Earth is worthless.

A persistent sense of helplessness means it's time to get screened for depression. Until you reach that point, though, don't discount your inherent power to put this loss into perspective.

Every one of us gets rejected almost daily. X will choose not to sit with us, Y will choose not to call us, Z will ignore something we post on Facebook. Minor rejections all, but they're the ones adolescence teaches us not to think about, because dwelling invites complete social paralysis. And that acquired reflex of prioritizing and blocking-out is important.

Different people have different thresholds for rejection, but, just by living from one day to the next, we all leave behind rejections of all shapes and sizes, sometimes without even noticing we've done it. Someone says something unkind behind our backs, and we learn by accident; a potential employer sends our resume to the shredder, or an admissions committee says uhhhh . . . nope; our friend/love/relative realizes s/he isn't happy, and we are identified as one source of that unhappiness.

It's normal to feel hurt, and painful memories rarely fade completely. But it's also normal for a combination of time, careful thought and a well-populated life to work in concert to put these emotional injuries where they belong. Specifically - and rightly - they become the opinion of one person, blended in with the opinion/companionship/reward/satisfaction/enrichment of everyone else you know and everything else you do.

This is the process you need to undertake, consciously. Look around you, and form this phrase in your mind: "I am looking at people who all have been rejected, in ways that would make them wince to this day." Then watch them shop for groceries, hold hands with partners, peck at their laptops in coffee shops, drive their kids to lessons, jog or walk dogs to their digitized personal soundtracks, draw breath after breath after breath.

You two became a couple as teenagers. That at least one of you would grow away from the other over seven years was a likelihood just shy of a certainty. Grieve the loss, yes, and learn from it; envisioning a new future takes time. But in the meantime, stop blaming yourself (and/or, ahem, the new girl's youth) and place this whole disappointment in the "[Stuff] happens" file. It's the fattest one in the drawer.

Good advice, wouldn’t you say.

Well, it’s been almost a week since the break-up and I’m happy to report my daughter’s doing just fine. I’d like to think it’s because of all the great advice we’ve given her. But I suspect the real reason is that my daughter has been blessed with some of the best friends a girl could have. Within hours of her break-up they were there for her. And all week they’ve been showing their love and support in the form of kind words, sweet gifts, and lots and lots of hugs.

Here’s a little music to end this week’s blog. I’m dedicating it to all my daughter’s friends.

She loves you, and so do I!

Love and Marriage

I’m dedicating this first blog to my husband Jeff. As of last Monday, we have been married 24 years. I suppose I should have posted this blog on July 12^th, but in the first place, I didn’t have a blog then, and in the second place, that was just two days after my oldest daughter’s wedding and I was still recovering.

But having been married for a score and four years, and because I recently watched the love of my life walk our firstborn down the aisle, I have a few things to say about love and marriage.

Love.

They say “love is blind.” I’m not sure who “they” are, but I have it under good authority (the Bible) that true love “keeps no record of wrongs.” When you’re in love you see the object of your affection through a strange filtering system. You think their laugh is adorable, their eyes are amazing, and every crazy idea they suggest is brilliant. If your loved one wrongs you in any way, all it takes is one heartfelt apology and you believe they’ll never fail you again.

If I wasn’t in love with Jeff the first time he kissed me, I knew I soon would be. That kiss knocked me off my feet. And then he asked for another, and I was a goner.

About a year after that first kiss the filtering system began to malfunction and I came to realize we had nothing in common. I sang in the choir. He couldn’t carry a tune. I loved to dance. He refused. I had a clever sense of humor and told wonderfully exciting stories. He didn’t.

I told him all this in a crying fit one night and stomped off to my dorm room, certain our relationship was over. He called me the next day as if the “conversation” never happened. (I guess love is deaf too.) We were engaged a few months later.

Marriage.

The very fact that Jeff and I are as different as night and day is, ironically, the secret to our happy marriage. Just think about it. Would you want to be married to a person who is as poor (or terrific) with money as you are? Someone as funny (or boring) as you are? The good news is God wired us in such a way that we are rarely attracted to people just like us. Shy people fall in love with outgoing people. Disorganized people go for the A types, and funny people need an audience! That’s why I ended up with Jeff. “He completes me.”

In spite of this, living with a person who is good at everything you’re not has its drawbacks. I often find myself back in that “we have nothing in common” mindset. It’s inevitable. But then I remind myself, “This is what marriage is all about.”

My daughter found this quote recently: “Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?” She thought it was funny. I thought it accurately described the downfall of most marriages. You have to be willing to take your spouse for what he or she is and not expect much else. That’s what happily married people do. They put up with each other.

And now, a Shakespearean Sonnet. I had to write one for my writer’s group a few months back so here it is. I call it “Jeff.”

Jeff

My husband is a person without charm;

A quiet man who some may find a bore.

In crisis he will barely show alarm.

In joy his features vary little more.

But oh, how I adore this stoic man;

His countenance as cold as it may be;

For in the fiercest storm no other can

Assure me all is well, as well as he.

And when the house is filled with happy cries,

I spy a sweet contentment in his eyes.

Happy Anniversary, Jeff. Your kisses still knock me off my feet.