I love those moments.

Since then, I’ve been making a determined effort to chase my family, and specifically to seek after my wife. I don’t mean that I’m doing it in ways that are necessarily easy for me, but in ways that make the biggest impact in her weekly routine. For example she loves it when I cook breakfast for the family on Saturday morning. Cooking is one of my least favorite things to do, ever. You get the gist, this is harder than it sounds.

An Unhealthy Assumption

The closest thing I have to a life goal is sitting in the title of this blog: to become the man I should have been all along. I want to end better than I started. Who doesn’t, right? But I’ve been carrying around a hidden, unhealthy assumption in that motto. When it comes to the finer details concerning what constitutes becoming a better man, the assumption has always been that I’m the judge. I am the authority that not only holds the luxury of selecting the criteria for success, but also where exactly I measure on the scale at any given moment.

I want to reject that notion.

The practice is foolhardy when you really think about it. If I could noodle my way out of my own disfunction, chances are, I wouldn’t be in the position of needing improvement. Or perhaps I would be much further along towards being the humble, selfless, charitable, and patient person I aim to become, instead of going to bed at night often feeling defeated and regressive.

It’s a Team Sport

Very well then. Self improvement works best with teamwork, therefore I need, at the very least, one other person. A teammate. I’ll start small, with only one. Now, if only I had someone I could trust. A top draft pick! A confidant who holds my best interests at heart and is willing to love me in spite of my foul moods and selfish behaviors. You know the sort of person I’m talking about, not some here-today-gone-tomorrow free agent that can easily be wooed away by another team with a bigger budget, but a person who has been patriotically loyal to this franchise since the early years.

I’m not above using sport metaphor to encourage men to listen to their wives. Clearly.

Yes, there is one person uniquely qualified to help me be a better person and her name is Brenda. Because she is my wife she gets to see the highest, shiniest bits of my character that radiate with brilliance on my best days, and the lowest, most decayed portions that wrinkle noses on my worst. She has a front row seat whether I like it or not.

So, even though I don’t tell her often enough, I want everyone to know that she is my trustworthy advocate, my cheer leader and deliverer of tough love on my journey to become the man I should have been all along. Today, as part of my chase, I want to reaffirm her role in this area publicly, so that she knows I cannot do it alone, and to be more specific, I would not want to do it without her.

Noodling your way out of your own dysfunction requires an excruciating amount of trust, but here is the secret. It’s only excruciating when you care more about being coddled than you do about being better.

Ever get the feeling you’re chasing something you shouldn’t be chasing? I get that whisper sometimes. “Chris, what are you chasing?” Which is a silly question, because I know what I’m chasing. The whisper, on most days, can be deciphered like this, “Chris, you’re chasing the wrong thing.”

The whisper. What a pain.

But I listen because I don’t want to spend my days chasing the wrong thing. Things like dollar signs. Like approval from faceless strangers. Like video game scores. That stuff doesn’t satisfy my soul.

I want to chase my children. I want to chase my wife. I want to pursue them and enjoy them and build them up. I want to stop being consumed with myself for just 5 [expletive deleted] minutes. I want to lead them with the heart of a servant.

But “the chase,” by itself, isn’t enough.

I want to win the chase, and actually capture them, I want to capture them so they know what it is like to risk their hearts to another person and have that trust honored. They need to know it’s possible. They need this, they deserve this, and it’s my responsibility to deliver for them to be whole.

So today, I commit myself to the chase.

This is part 3 in a multi-part series that starts here.

When I imagine divorce I see in my mind a common person balancing in the center of tightrope. They balance precariously, looking from one platform to the other, wondering which journey to make, the one towards marriage, or the one towards divorce. It is safe to assume that both routes carry risk and associated dangers and now that I think about it, neither platform is really, truly “in sight”. There is a haze masking them from view.

It takes great determination for this person to stay still and maintain balance in the middle of the rope, let alone move in a direction. So there they stay, legs wobbling, airplane-arms outstretched, physically and mentally paralyzed.

How does a person in such a predicament move in any direction, let alone the one towards marriage? By process of elimination. A judgement call must be made here. One of these two paths must be the better, and therefore the other must be the worse.

If you want to save your marriage you must first believe something very unpopular and counter-cultural about divorce.

3. Believe That Divorce Is Worse

Marriages die. They don’t dissolve or evaporate or otherwise disappear without a trace. They die and they leave their rotting, stinking carcass for all to see. We try to mitigate the smell with aerosol cans full of sympathetic eyes and listening ears and affirming nods but the stains are still there, plain as day, long after the haze of benign advice has evaporated without leaving streaks.

One of the noteworthy things about death is that loved ones closest to the deceased are changed forever. If you are a child of divorce, or if you are married to one, then you know this is true. There will be fallout and it will ricochet through lives like a pinball thrust down a chute and slammed mercilessly around a machine.

Again I refer to C.S. Lewis:

Christianity teaches that marriage is for life. There is, of course, a difference here between different Churches … [but] they all regard divorce as something like cutting up a living body, as a kind of surgical operation. Some of them think the operation so violent that it cannot be done at all; others admit it as a desperate remedy in extreme cases. They are all agreed that it is more like having both your legs cut off than it is like dissolving a business partnership or even deserting a regiment. What they all disagree with is the modern view that it is a simple readjustment of partners, to be made whenever people feel they are no longer in love with one another, or when either of them falls in love with someone else.

I think most married couples fool themselves in the end. They “legally separate” and find a comfortable routine with less fighting and more harmony. First they think to themselves, “This isn’t so bad.” And that leads to, “It will probably look like this after the divorce, too.” Those thoughts are reenforced with “Surely this is better than the hurtful words and fighting and tears before we separated!”

The fallacy here, I believe, is ignoring the reality that when you divorce you trade in one set of problems for another, while still retaining key behaviors that contributed to the divorce in the first place. And lets be realistic here, you really are gambling about which set of problems are worse. It is easy and foolish to assume that problems will be removed and that is all. It takes almost no effort to overlook the reality that divorce is not a removal at all, but actually, an exchange. In fact, divorce is a life-long trade made with insufficient information during a period of mental exhaustion and emotional duress.

How on Earth can a wise decision be made during, or immediately following, a period of such magnificent handicap?

It can’t.

I have watched men and women, whom I love, sprint towards divorce and the whole time I’m thinking NO! NO! NO! Do NOT sprint towards divorce! Run the marathon of forgiveness! And grace! And love! This is not a simple readjustment of partners, don’t you realize that you are about to undergo surgery and neither you, nor your loved ones in the waiting room, will ever be the same again?

In light of all this it is my argument that in most cases I’ve witnessed, and as a default position, divorce is nearly always the worse decision of the two.

If you are considering divorce right now please ask yourself this question. Am I trying to make things better? Or am I trying to make things easy?

[image: theophene_guy]

Remember, this series of posts is for the future, adult versions of my children in the event that they face the decision between staying married and securing a divorce. Do I know people in difficult mariages right now? Of course I do. Quite a number of them actually. Do I want each spouse in all the various couples to read this stuff?

Without question.

But don’t assume this post is about you. The #1 reason I write this blog is for my children to know the younger version of Brenda and I.

So, if you’ve made it this far I’m going to assume that you didn’t altogether disagree with part 1. If you thought I was flamboyantly idealistic in the first part then you can relax a little. I have no intention of getting all inspirational and stuff on this one. Actually, I’m going to employ a different tactic and you should probably stop reading now. I’m almost certain you’re going to be offended because I don’t know of a nice way to convince someone to not be a liar.

2. Believe That Promises Should Be Kept

A marriage is a promise at least and a binding contract at most. We make promises and enter into contracts for a reason. I shouldn’t have to say this but feelings are a terrible reason! Would you advise that someone make a lifelong promise because of how they felt for a certain season of life? I hope not. So why then would you choose to break a promise under the same conditions? If you’re trying to solve your way out of a problem I’d like to recommend not using the same toolset that got you into trouble to begin with.

I believe that in most cases this is what divorce is at it’s root: It is a lifelong decision made because of the absence of the feeling recognized as “being in love.” A promise, however, should be kept regardless of the presence, or absence, of this feeling. I can’t be more plain than that.

C.S. Lewis writes:

And, of course, the promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry.

If you want to save your marriage you have to believe in promises, and not just the ones that others have made to you. Have you not, your whole life, been a staunch advocate for others to keep their promises to you?

Haven’t you?

Another question, how many of the arguments that moved your marriage to this point were caused because your spouse broke a promise to you?

I see.

Look. All I am asking, or rather all I am challenging you to do, is esteem your own promises above all others or shut up already about what anyone else owes you.

If you want to save your marriage you need to believe that promises should be kept. Especially yours. Especially when it’s hard.

[Go to Part 3]

This is part 1 of a multi-part series.

I’ve never had to rescue my marriage from the jaws of divorce so everything I am about to write can be chalked up to idle speculation and whimsy.

Last year I watched two dear, close, married friends casually realize that they were no longer in love with each other. They were happy and successful at the time and they just sort of grew apart. You know how it is, things change, people change, it just happens. It was nobody’s fault really and the divorce proceedings were quite amicable. Remarkably, their friendship has actually been strengthened by the whole thing.

Last year I watched two dear, close, married friends emotionally rape each other for a while, tire of it, and then do the only sensible and humane thing. They wrestled their wedding vows into a sack, dragged them off into the woods squealing and thrashing, bound them to a stump, and blew their collective brains out.

One of these two stories is true and it really doesn’t matter to me which one. I don’t want either to be the story that my kids recite about themselves when catching up with long lost friends. So, in the event that they do face difficult times in marriage, I want to go on the record with how I believe one can be saved.

1. Believe That Love Is Not An Emotion

I heard a man say once that love is not an emotion. What he said was:

“Love is an act of the will, accompanied by emotion, that leads to action on behalf of it’s object.“

If this is true then we’ve been taught a lie. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been told that love is something that happens to me and not the other way around. It’s something I “fall” into and “fall” out of. That love is quite unpredictable and equally out of my control. I’ve been taught that love is an emotion.

But love is not a feeling. It is grander and more noble a thing than that. Another way to say it is that love is not merely biochemical. It is not a rush of endorphins or the perfect cocktail of serotonin. It sort of sounds silly until you realize that some of the most epic and inspiring acts of love are those that are expressed in direct opposition to personal feelings. Like when a wife forgives her husband’s infidelity, not because she is feeling at all loving or sentimental, but because she is honoring the love she felt in the past and choosing to believe she will feel it again in the future.

Let me tell you about emotions. Emotions go on vacation. They leave and forget to bring you with them. Or they blend in with the scenery like a chameleon so that you cannot detect them. Or they go to work and they stay there, sending your husband home every night without them, so that it seems like he is only alive when he is away from you.

But love? Love is different. Love is an act of the will, accompanied by emotion. It is more intricate, more ornate, and more holy than a simple feeling could ever aspire to be.

If you want to save your marriage then the first step is to believe that love is not merely an emotion.

[Go to Part 2]

Happy Anniversary my love! You’re my favorite!

I am sitting in a large, comfortable bus as we take a day-long tour of London. It’s December now and the contrast of the cold outside upon the heat inside has created a perpetually thick matte of condensation on my window. I reach up and write with large, friendly letters the words “Stupid American” into the fog, followed by an arrow that points down and ends where my face begins. The words are written backwards inside the bus so that spectators outside the bus can read them in the right direction. My girlfriend of 4 years is sitting beside me and my family, who lives here in England, is with us taking in the sights and history of the city. My Mom shares with me, “In England a hundred miles is a long distance, but in America a hundred years is a long time.” It is my love’s first trip here, but not mine, and I am beside myself with excitement to show it to her.

I should stop here and say that it has been no secret through most of our courtship that we are going to be married. As we have made our way through college, dating and living separately, we have passed the time by planning our future life together. I have made it a point to tell my love throughout this courtship that she will never know when I am about to ask for her hand in marriage. On several occasions I have told her, “You are going to think you will know when I am about to ask you, but you will be wrong. I promise you will never see it coming.” I am hoping that this will be my brilliantly played victory in psychological warfare.

And so it is not by accident that today is a few days after Christmas, but not quite New Years Eve, and that we are traveling London. My love does not notice one of my hands spending an unscrupulous amount of time in its corresponding pocket. She is far too distracted with everything to suspect that I am guarding a secret in the shape of a diamond engagement ring. She should be curious as to why, as we approach Westminster Abbey, my family has decided to sit outside the historic church instead of accompany us inside, but just as I planned, she is not taking notice.

Together we drink our fill of the 1400 year old abbey which is shaped like a giant cross. This, we learn, is a place where kings were crowned, royal families were sewn together, and national treasures were laid to rest. We meander through the hallways marveling at the names of historic figures entombed in the very floors and walls around us. The anticipation of the impending moment is circling the rim of my heart like a twister circles the chain-link fence of a trailer park, just before leveling it completely. This grand Gothic masterpiece is the final resting place to monarchs and scientists and poets. From Henry V to Elizabeth I. From Geoffrey Chaucer to Charles Dickens. From Sir Isaac Newton to Charles Darwin. We stand in awe, again and again, that surely one hundred years is a mere drop in the bucket of time for a place such as this.

My love and I have reached the center of the abbey, in front of the altar. I looked around, breath in the moment through all my senses, and say…

“This place is beautiful.”

“Yes,” she replies.

“This is the place where kings have been crowned and royalty has been married for hundreds and hundreds of years,” I remark with purpose.

She doesn’t respond.

“This would be a romantic place for someone to propose, don’t you think?” I offer casually.

“Yes,” she agrees softly, admiring something off in the distance.

And then, in the heart of Westminster Abbey, with my would-be wife half distracted and not paying me much attention, I get down on one knee, in front of God and Charles Darwin’s bones, and I cast an anchor into to sea of time that will be ours forever.

The project is you, Husband 1.0. Your wife was first attracted to your 1.0 feature-set. She got by with them at the time, and most of them were quite handy, but they’ve become a bit long-in-the-tooth lately. She’s become more and more frustrated that the promised 2.0 features have been delayed and deployment is behind schedule. And who can blame her? First of all 2.0 is going to rock. It will be more like Dad 1.0 in certain ways and less like Dad 1.0 in certain other ways. Second of all, usability requirements and standards have changed since then. Even so, it is important to keep in mind that these new features need to be done right, and that takes time. 

As a husband, though, I can relate to the fact that I often feel under appreciated for the 1.1 upgrades, service packs (SP3), and hot-fixes I have applied to myself over the years as I steadily work on version 2.0 of myself. That’s a real drag. Also, can you really be held accountable for the fact that so many 1.0 features are not compatible with parenthood?? I mean, Husband 1.0 was never even tested for that user base. No wonder it doesn’t behave predictably. 

In the meantime, just remind her that the wait will have been worth it. *If* you can actually deliver.

Here I go almost getting ahead of myself.

I have to stop here and say that it was no secret through most of our courtship that we were going to be married. As we made our way through college, dating and living separately, we would pass the time by planning our future life “after college.” I made it a point to tell my love throughout this courtship that she would never know when I was about to ask for her hand in marriage. On several occasions I told her, “You are going to think you will know when, but you will be wrong time and again. I promise you will never see it coming.” This was my brilliantly played attempt at psychological warfare.

And so it was not by accident that it was a few days after Christmas, but not quite New Years eve, that we travelled London that day. My love did not notice one of my hands spending an unscrupulous amount of time in its corresponding pocket. She was far too distracted with everything to suspect that I was guarding a secret in the shape of a diamond engagement ring. She should have been curious as to why, when we reached Westminster Abbey, my family decided to sit outside the historic church instead of accompany us inside, but just as I planned, she did not take notice.

Together we drank our fill of the 1400 year old abbey which is shaped like a giant cross. This, we learned, was a place where kings were crowned, royal families were sewn together, and national treasures were laid to rest. We meandered through the halls marveling at the names of historic figures buried and entombed in the very floors and walls around us, all while the anticipation of the impending moment circled the rim of my heart in much the same way I imagine a twister circles the chain-link fence of a trailer park before leveling it completely. This grand Gothic masterpiece was the final resting place to monarchs and scientists and poets. From Henry V to Elizabeth I. From Geoffrey Chaucer to Charles Dickens. From Sir Isaac Newton to Charles Darwin. We stood in awe, again and again, that surely one hundred years was a mere drop in the bucket of time for a place such as this.

When my love and I reached the center of the abbey, in front of the altar, I looked around, took in the moment, and said…

“This place is beautiful.”

“Yes,” she replied.

“This is the place where kings have been crowned and royalty has been married for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

She didn’t respond.

“This would be a romantic place for someone to propose, don’t you think?” I offered casually.

“Yes,” she agreed, admiring something off in the distance.

And then, in the heart of Westminster Abbey, with my would-be wife half distracted and not paying me much attention, I got down on one knee, in front of God and Charles Darwin’s bones, and I made us a little history of our own.

Then we had our first daughter.

Fathering children has a way of changing a man. I quickly realized that lofty musings and wishful thinking were no way to lead my family. So I went back and re-read the chapter in that book. I took it to heart when Andy challenged me write out my goals for my family. They say if you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time. I didn’t want to hit this target. So I opened Google Docs and I began drafting, in the words of http://dictionary.com, a system of fundamental principles according to which a nation, state, corporation, or the like, is governed. Substitute “or the like” with “my family.”

I began drafting a Family Constitution.

It became clear, in short order, that one document would not suffice. Maybe it’s the patriot in me, that my parents raised, but our Family Constitution felt remiss without an accompanying Bill of Rights. So I drafted one of those also, for the children.

After I had worked on it for a while I knew I needed external review. Actually, my new Family Constitution required it! I have a group of close friends and family that I consider my personal advisory board. I mean that literally. I have a group in my address book titled “Personal Advisory Board.” When my drafts were complete, I sent my board the following email.

Now that our family is growing, the time felt right to go ahead and write down some of our goals. Please feel free to question any of them. The wording, the importance, etc. Maybe they overlap, or maybe some need to be divided. Chew on it. Take your time. I guess the main thing I would like your advice on, is if I am missing any huge areas, principles, categories, or topics.

These two documents represent values that [Dewdette] and [Dewde] intend to prioritize as we raise our children and live our lives here on this earth. I’m sure it will be a growing and changing document. It will grow while we grow, as God teaches us lessons throughout our lives. I hope it stays very simple and concise as opposed to wordy or redundant.

That was 2 and a half years ago. Now it’s time to dust this puppy off. Reevaluate. Revise. and Refine.

The Family Constitution

Integrity

• To hold honesty as the foundation of our ethics.
• To always choose the harder right, as God defines right, over the easier wrong.
• To be sincere and genuine in our endeavors.

Charity

• To enrich the lives of others with our time and assets.
• To always rebuke with hesitancy and gentleness.
• To keep a sense of humor.

Wisdom

• To obtain counsel of reputable peers.
• To listen twice as much as you speak.
• To fellowship with God through prayer and study.

And also.

The Children’s Bill of Rights

• To be safe and nourished.
• To be given love, rooted in patience and tenderness, not contingent on decisions or actions.
• To be taught by example hand-in-hand with instruction.
• To be given unconditional respect, not contingent on decisions or actions.
• To be guided in the skills necessary to navigate life with peace and contentment.
• To be forgiven of all trespasses.
• To be disciplined with predictability and consistency.

I post them here for two reasons. First, I seek constructive feedback. Especially if you are of an alternate world view. Christians have a history of being terribly myopic. Actually, I have a history of being terribly myopic. And not just in the 5 years since my conversion, but my 10 Atheist years before that.

Second, I hope to inspire you in the same manner that I was inspired. Please consider, if you haven’t already, articulating your goals in written form, as you lead your family. I can name dozens and dozens of changes Dewdette and I made to our lifestyle as a direct consequence of the conversations we had while I drafted these documents.

This is time well spent.

The scene begins with me loading our yuppy dishes into our yuppy dishwasher in our yuppy suburb of Atlanta. You can see already that I’m a real person, with real problems. I stood there putting in plate after plate, getting more and more hacked off by the minute. My wife had already loaded most of the dishes before me and I was just topping them off and finishing the job.

The problem is that Dewdette and I were raised to load a dishwasher in two distinctly different ways. Obviously I think my way is “right.” So as I was putting those last few dishes into the dishwasher, the correct way (cough), I couldn’t stand it anymore. My inner jerkhole came out to play.

“Why do you insist on loading the dishwasher this way?” I demanded.

She didn’t respond.

“Don’t you know when you do A, B, and C it causes X, Y, and Z?” I continued impatiently.

Still silence.

“And have you even considered points 1 and 2? I mean… Come. On.” I concluded with an exasperated grunt.

I was in a crappy mood. I don’t remember why but I had probably stayed up too late the night before toying around on the Internet or playing video games. I’m extra cranky when I’m tired.

Once I finished spewing my word-vomit, she looked over at me and said something that cut me to the core and completely disarmed me. In a quiet voice she said,

“The way you are talking to me right now makes me feel like this is the most important issue to you in our marriage.”

Just thinking about it now, as I type this, I can almost feel the wave of guilt wash over me again.

Immediately, I knew she was right.

Immediately, I knew I had to apologize.

I mean, I love our marriage! And I am well aware that we have significant issues that we are working out and making progress towards… but for crying out loud the dishwasher thing isn’t even on the radar! What was I thinking?

Sydney and Savannah,

I don’t know who you will marry one day. I don’t know if you’ll marry a selfish jerk like me, or worse. Maybe years of being exposed to my outbursts and temper tantrums will turn you into insensitive jerkettes.

I do know this. If you are in the wrong you should apologize as soon as humanly possible. And if your spouse is in the wrong please, please, please confront them about it in a quiet manner like your mom did with me here. I’m a work in progress. Chances are, your husbands will be too. How you handle yourself with them will either bless them or curse them.

This is just one example, out of countless others, where your mother’s grace towards me has helped me get to a place I should have been all along. I’m so thankful for her.

Love,
Daddy

Eventually, later that day, I did apologize to my wife. Let’s assume that it’s as easy and fun for me to apologize as it is for you. It’s not pleasant, but it is necessary.

So what about you, reader? Has your inner jerkhole come out to play with your unsuspecting spouse lately? Go apologize. Or have you been the victim of a drive-by word-vomiting? Did you handle it with character or did you vomit back?

It only takes one to break a cycle.

Be the one.