The best love in the world

I was compelled to write a new blog because of my rediculously long absence from Blogger.com since, well, July i think.  I've since been married, honeymooned, and away from my wife for the first time since 1 1/2 solid months together.  Times are changing, bodies are learning new sensations, and understanding and insight is expanding like never before.  

An entirely new relationship is mine to 'have and hold' now for the rest of my life, and i am also an addressee of the Bible which i have not been before.  All this is incidental to me now as a husband.

I have made one choice that leads to hundreds more life-changing choices.  I never saw this coming, for i only saw the one door that led to all the other doors. They said i would be ready when i got here.  I guess the best i can say for myself that i am ready to be ready.  

God has been convicting me to the uttermost what all it means now to be a husband.  No more interests in girls, that's for sure, and every interest in me whittled down to one - my wife.  I have to grow in love for people (toward this one first); i have to love others as i am loved (starting with this one); i have to be true in my relationships (starting with this one); i have to be virtuous and not vicious in all my dealings (starting with her) i want God to hear and care for my prayers (a reward for my listening and caring for my wife first).   

The marital relationship is a conduit of one's true self.  The good, bad and ugly show up in marriage life and become evident to the conscience, and hopefully the negatives are corrected because of the influence of conscience before they fester and boil over into the other partner's life and heart.  

An axiom carried along in some mechanics' minds is that 'everything affects everything.'   Everything has a result somewhere.   From the pace you walked this morning to work to the food you ate or didn't eat tonight, elements of your life have been affected.   

The words written in my journal, the thought i had just now, the places my eyes looked yesterday in Toronto... those affect me even now in some fashion.   The marriage part of 'everthing' is being affected too.  

My past presuppositions, expectations and dreams, and my present contemplations and actions are not without impact to this propeller of marriage.  The premise of marriage is easy; each person's job is to be as a propeller turning to keep the relationship, which is like an aircraft, going straight forward in flight.  So long as both propellers are turning with the same power, the machine is smooth and happy.  But like an engine, everything affects everything, and the result shows up on the propeller.  Bump the power lever; change the fuel; drain the oil; ice over the intakes; extend the inertial separators; disconnect a wire; lenthen an adjusting screw... the variables are endless.  Each of those changes initiates a chain reaction which ends at the propeller turning faster or slower than normal.  

All our human frailities with which we were born manifest themselves in the failures, poor habits, personality weaknesses and flaws, spiritual undisciplines and compulsions and make up the total package of 'you' and 'me.'  When we marry, all those things are coming into the union and affect the marriage itself.   Don't tell me that there is a perfect marriage or perfect couple because no one is perfect, no not one.  All have missed the mark which our Creator desires for us to reach.   Only through Him can a marriage endure through the turbulence of outside tribulations and the inside, hostile environment of human hearts.  

When it comes to loving my neighbor as i am loved... i can never match God's standards.  This is deeply convicting because my love, i know, is certainly often corrupted by my human frailties and vices, even without my knowing it.  Judgment passed on me due to my love would be dire indeed; but sometimes, knowing this is okay, though, because by my failures and depravity i see a more wonderful contrast that is the glorious love of God.  

I sat down today and meditated for awhile on Romans 4:25.   It says, simply, "Who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification."   

This is a portrait of complete, intentional love.  For a world that wants to sin...a world that wants to oust the rules, judgement and love of God... unto this world Christ came for to save.  Our offenses sent Him to the cross; God was compelled of Himself to lay down His own life for our iniquities.  

Then look what He did next... He raised up from the dead so He could prove that He has power to remove our sins from us and if we allow Him, what he will do next is proclaim our innocence.   He not only died to take away our sins, but He also came back to life so He could victoriously display you and me as innocent creatures.  That is love, my friend.  

Unlikely passage about marriage

Since marriage has become all the rage this summer with my sister getting married, and me getting married, my mind has been in a very sensitive, highly associative marriage-mode. Just about everything i look at reminds me of marriage somehow. Yeah, even food reminds me of marriage; how else can a guy get good food everyday unless he's married (especially to a chef like Charisma)?
I was contemplating again about marriage just now, and a reminder came (i believe placed the Holy Spirit) of what i read yesterday from Matthew 18:

v18 - Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven:
and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

At the altar in front of God and man, and on the marriage bed in front of God and each other, there is a binding covenant made which speaks of everlasting care and closeness between a married couple. A marriage license is written on earth; the same is written in Heaven. All of heaven and earth permits and demands that a married couple protect, provide for and pleasure each other in the same manner that God through Christ relates to us.

This is not the end of the lessons we can draw from this passage in Matthew 18:

v19 - Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask,
it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.

Consider, then, the power of praying and soul-knit couples. Married people should aspire to grow together and humbler spiritually because God calls upon two people to ask (call for, beg, crave, desire) conjunctively before he will make a move for them. In marriage, we have perpetual, interested attention from God whilst we are in agreement together.

The remainder of the chapter also summoned me to consider what else comes with marriage: compassion and forgiveness. All the books say, and i've learned by experience, that marriage is the proving and growing grounds of one's compassion and forgiveness toward another human being. God is very attune to spouses' sensitivity towards each other, and especially a husband's sensitivity towards his wife (see 1 Peter 3:7). This is a very serious point. Our salvation is based on God's forgiveness through the sacrifice of His own innocent Son, Jesus. So if we fail and refuse to blanket this forgiveness to others, we are mocking the sacrifice of Christ, saying that more compassion and forgiveness is required of us than what was required for ourselves. We're playing the part of the holier-than-thou hypocrite, and nobody --nobody -- is holier or more innocent than anyone else. What differentiates us is our attitude towards God of "Thy will be done" or "My will be done."
The Matthew 18:21-35 passage is the whole parable, but here is the crux:

v. 22 - Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant,
even as I had pity on thee?

That's not what i want to hear when I see my Father in Heaven! Yet I confess that, more every day, I merit a herem over my head rather than a halo on this point alone.
Marriage is a grand opportunity to realize who we are in God's perspective: we are the pure, lovely bride of Christ untainted by our sin because those are all washed away. He has infinite compassion on us because He is the infinite and eternal YHWH. He bathes us in His righteousness, and marriage is a chance to show another human being what it looks and feels like to be bathed in righteousness. It also tests our humility and servitude (Philippians 2:4-8) because by no other means can we have compassion on others as God has had compassion on us.
Thank God for marriage, which calls for us to live victoriously, or to fail miserably, in our appreciation of God's love, care, compassion and forgiveness toward us.


post-script:
My prayer is that Philippians 2:4 and Matthew 18:22 will be real for me in my future days.

A thought about Charisma.

Every now and then i have an especially good thought about Charisma that i want to keep locked up somewhere before the 'little love-distracting foxes' come and invade.
This thought came while reading a book:
"I should take each day as a chance to win Charisma's heart again."
This is what women want... Women want to be wanted, cherished and understood. They also want to wrap up their beloved in their love to warm, nurture and care for him.
Sometimes cherishing a woman and trying to understand her is a forced exercise, but God tells us to do it (probably because that is not in a guy's nature; we are not told to sin and that's what we do best). For the man who is willing and disciplined are earned many rewards. Seeing Charisma happy delights my heart, and I feel her happiness and interesting-ness. I need to selflessly give of myself to her - which is what she wants, and what God tells me to do - and through that giving comes a happy long-term relationship (i suppose so; i'm not there yet!).
I have only one life to live, and this life i now live I do live by the grace of God because that life could have ended several times over by now! What a noble honor to live so someone else can have a better journey through life...

Moving along

I've been stuck in Peachtree City, Georgia for the last week and a half. just sitting here. yeah. doing everything other than flying... wedding planning, extra sleep, more writing, studying to renew my CFI license, and working out more.
i visited a good friend in Greenville, SC over the weekend-- Robbie Heindl and his sweet wife Megan. I slept over at their place Saturday and followed them to church, then to Robbie's parents' house for lunch, then took a nice afternoon nap, then played Wii Mario Cart and ended the night with pizza.
The drive back to Peachtree City was interesting. I got lost (didn't have a map) and met a homeless guy to whom i gave granola bars, leftover pizza, beef jerky, 4 pair of socks and a single quarter. it was neat because i had brought my laundry over to Robbie's to get washed, and there i was with an opportunity to give that clean laundry away to someone who needs it more than i.
i'm gettin up tomorrow morning to fly to Groton, Connecticut (KGON) in hopes of actually putting in some aerial surveillance time. so i gotta go to bed now and get my beauty sleep.

Five-minute update

So i got this idea today.
why not take just 5 minute bites of time to spend on things that i really want to get done during the day? so often i get busy on some task and let go of my wish-list of things i want to accomplish during the day. but that very task i concentrate on is subject to lots of distractions, so many sometimes that i don't find myself even finishing it after a huge investment of time! so what about taking smaller, more focused bits of time to do more things? how much time? maybe 5 minutes. sounds good.
so i want to blog more. how much can i write in 5 minutes? enough to summarize the day and pick out an interesting thought in my head.
so i want to study KingAir procedures and systems more. over a week's time, i can study and keep a lot in my teeny brain if i only study consistently.
pushups?
writing to Charisma?
praying?

consistency is really the key.
ok, 5 minutes is up! bye!

Mumbling on matrimony

Five weeks.
Five days.

On the scale of a lifetime, that length of time is only a blink of an eye away.
It seemed to happen all in an instant - meeting, proposal, planning. The next blink of an eye will be her fingertips grasping a golden ring and slipping it onto my finger in the presence of our friends, family and our Lord.

Married.

The idea is hard to process when i'm so close up to it. It's like looking at a planet from a telescope and analyzing it and thinking I know it, then I fly up to it til it's so close and large that it fills my whole view. Then I feel overwhelmed and mesmerized in that I really didn't see it for what it is until I got so close. I'm attached to my old perspective and almost want the old perspective back because back then i could get filled with romantic feelings then leave my telescope and do something else.
Just as we can make celestial bodies something they are not because we are so far away, so can we bachelors/ettes make marriage something they are not because we just are not there yet.
One must obtain a rite of passage, and a fuel for the fire, and a last-chance-to-abort countdown and a blast-off.
I'm discovering at this moment that marriage is very much like space travel, can you tell?

As one breaks through the 'atmosphere' of bachelorhood -earth - the rules fall away and one is free to roam and explore all these new unrestrained dimensions.
Likewise, once the momentum builds up you keep going...and going. This journey cannot be retried.
Situations have to be dealt with and resolved.
The only way off the ship is death.

I think that guys and girls differ so much on their expectations of marriage. Girls know from the start that 'this lifestyle and this guy is all i ever wanted!' guys, on the other hand, we're kinda narrow-minded. we short-change ourselves by looking forward to that short space of time that may or may not happen overnight, and and wrestle with our selfish desires to keep stuff to ourselves like money, space and time. but the more virtuous side of a guy will be a reminder of the really, really great things to look forward to in marriage...

>he only has to go out and do what he does every day at work. then come home to a sweet lady who's been cleaning his house, cooking his dinner, striving to keep herself cheery all day so he can feel that his world is really alright.
>he gets to go to sleep and is entrusted this precious human body to hold onto and keep safe
>of all the dumb things a guy can do, there will be somebody to always respect him...his wife
>even when his care for life and himself fails, she will keep caring.
>she creates a home to surround him, and she makes a home for him inside her heart too.

marriage will unveil the weaknesses and weirdness of each individual, but one can find great contentment in realizing that through marriage we can sample a bit of heaven, as well as increase our longing for God and ultimately to make our eternal home with Him.

back to writing..maybe

this is the place where i've dumped the weights of my conscience, processed problems and made sense of my world. but this place i've quite let alone for awhile, and there is a big, unfillable void between that time and now. there is no use catching up. catching up on six months is hard to do.
Paul recommended a very noble practice to keep one's sanity: "forgetting what is past and reaching forward to those things which are ahead..." writing contributes to that too because, with the art of the written word, my mind relaxes and enjoys refreshment from thoughts that have just lay here for awhile. Issues need to be processed and resolved and then really forgotten and moved beyond.
In our minds we take the tangible 'matter' of life and make an 'issue' out of it in such a way that is silly and unnecessary. If only matter stayed as matter in the ways we regard it, we could move past it, like walking from one street to the next.
a blog is for rambling.
i'm wanting to go to bed soon. because i can. I'm on a project! yay! i get to take some much-needed alone time to unwind and rest and, perhaps most importantly, make some extra money and get flight time along the way. Now, if my fiancee is reading this she's probably thinking 'much needed alone time?!' , as if being alone suddenly became something i need since being with her. Well, i'm fortunate that she also understands that an introvert needs to sit alone after awhile and listen to concertos and write and not hear any other human voice. Perhaps one of marriage's greatest challenges will be adjusting to being a round the clock people-person. More specifically, a her-person. But i've become keenly aware of my occasional need for quietness, motionlessness, stillness, serenity. Simply sitting here staring at letters lining up in file across the screen is therapeutic. And by virtue of the fact that i have not done this for awhile.