RIP, Coach Woodin

HT: TC

It's not fair...

Today I had a beautiful day. I watered things outside in the coolness of early morning, and quilted away the middle of the day. Then I went for a hike with friends at the beautiful spot pictured on the right. It is very hot today, so I came home over-heated and tired, and took a cool shower and had a rest in my comfy chair.

And what did Dave do today? He slaved away inside all day, in secret places, keeping the world safe for democracy, and bringing home the bacon to boot.

It's not fair. But I am very grateful!

Some thoughts on love...

Many years ago, I was introduced to the concept of "love languages", based on Gary Chapman's book. I have found the identifying of others' predispositions to be often helpful. But Justin Taylor, in reviewing ideas from David Powlison, over at the First Things blog, has hit the nail on the head in regards to just how self-centered we can all become. Taylor quotes in part:

Powlison summarizes Chapman’s “full working philosophy” as follows:

“I’ll find out where you itch, and I’ll scratch your back, so you feel better. Along the way, I’ll let you know my itches in a non-demanding manner. You’ll feel good about me because your itches are being scratched, so eventually you’ll probably scratch my back, too.”

But therein lies the problem: Chapman takes an “is” and turns it into an “ought”:

Unwittingly [Chapman] exalts the observation that “even tax collectors, gentiles, and sinners love those who love them” (Matt. 5:46f; Luke 6:32ff) into his guiding principle for human relationships. This is the dynamo that makes his entire model go. This is the instinct that he appeals to in his readers. If I scratch your back, you’ll tend to scratch mine. If you’re happy to see me, I’ll tend to be happy to see you, too. So, 5LL teaches you how to become aware of what others want, and then tells you to give that to them. This is the principle behind How to Win Friends and Influence People and The 30-second Manager. It’s the dynamic at work in hundreds of other books on “relational skills,” or “attending skills,” or “salesmanship,” or “how to find the love you want.” Identify the felt need and meet it, and, odds are, your relationships will go pretty well.

I find these thoughts very provocative this morning. What exactly is my motivation in sharing my "felt needs" with my husband? Am I seeking his good, or my own gratification? Hmmm...

Couple this (no pun intended)with the excellent series on the "Myths of Marriage" by Glen Knecht being run (in parts) at the blog of First Pres, Jackson, MS, and I have lots to think about today. May God keep me from my default desire to please myself, and give me the grace to love my husband, and others, well.

On the redemptive part of marriage

It has often seemed to me that marriage is a picture of God's redemption for us. This is not a new or novel or original idea, of course. I think I am in good company here with the Biblical authors. A godly spouse covers and confronts our sin, and calls us to be what we have little confidence we can be. This is a little earthly picture of what God is accomplishing in us in an eternal way.

Recently my son, Ben, wrote a lovely poem for his wife. We were speaking with him about the poem today, and he said Elsa didn't care for it. What bothers Elsa is not the picture drawn of Ben, but the one drawn of herself. (If you haven't read the poem, please do! It's reprinted below.) Ben draws himself as frail and flawed, and Elsa as redemptive in his life. Those of us who know Elsa see her written all over that poem. And she only proves it by being uncomfortable with the praise Ben offers her there.

Every good marriage is redemptive. Dave believes I can be better than I, myself believe, knows the real me better than anyone else, and still chooses to love me, and calls me to rise to the occasion and return the good faith he gives me. He covers my sin when it needs covering, and confronts it when needed, though he is more gracious with me on that score than I deserve, covering far more than he confronts. He bathes me in prayer every day. His love makes me more lovely and lovable.

We can already see this at work in the marriages of both of our sons. What a joy it is to see them growing together, appreciating the deep relationships that can only be founded upon God. And I have daily reminder of God's grace through my own dear husband. God knew it was not good for us to be alone, and I am so glad He has given me such a blessing in my dear husband!

A Sonnet for my Wife by Ben Finnegan

How can I start, with what sincerest words
should I presume to some humility
or sadly boast of all my faults and failures,
or maybe calmly raise the possibility
that mine are not the hands that I would wish
to feel your fragile faith or touch your trust,
that I am fallen, broken, a work unfinished
shaped by shameful sins and lowly lusts?

While I am earthware, dust and gilded wire,
my frame and substance all corruption, you
lift your eyes and pray refining fire
because your love for me is pure and true.
You are clay the same as I, but bold,
bravely, humbly daring to be gold.

Some thoughts on marriage

My ddil, Nikki, called for a lovely long talk today-- the first since her marrying my son, Tim! That, combined with my other ddil, Elsa, sending a link to a great article made me decide to send you all some thoughts on marriage, "that dream within a dream..."

Elsa's excellent article can be found here, and is very fun!

Children are an important part of marriage. Here is a good post on discipling your children, and here is a great post on why children lie (and they all do sometime...)

Tim Challies has a thoughtful post on how children who are brought up in Christian homes can often neglect the Savior, and live on "borrowed grace."

OK, so maybe most of what I had saved up was more about children than marriage. But as a woman with two sons now married, can I help but start thinking about children again?

Happy anniversary, Dave!

This was Dave and myself 28 years ago tomorrow. We were babies then, with so much to learn!

On our first wedding anniversary, Dave wrote a sweet "Marriage Alphabet" poem for me, and on our 25th anniversary, I wrote one back to him. So at 49 or 50 years, it will be his turn again: and every 25 years or so is plenty! Mine isn't very good poetry-- and I have some excellent poets in the family-- so you will have to be generous with me! But Happy Anniversary, Dave! I'd marry you all over again!

A Marriage Alphabet (after 24.5 years)

Always together, from where we began.

Boys, we’ve watched grow from a child to a man.

Care is the way we look after each other,

Dying to self for the love of another.

Every day cuddling when the day is done.

Father and Friend, you’re a wonderful one!

G is for Grace, on which we depend,
and

Hope which will carry us through to the end.

“I” is for each of us, forming a “we”.

Jesus, is making a “one” of us three.

K is for kitchen, where we make a great pair,

Laughing and Loving and cooking out there.

Your Mom now has joined us as part of our home.


Never is when I will leave you alone.

One and Only: for me that is you!

Pain is for changing and growing anew.

Q is for Quicken, which helps with my math.

Running is always a part of your path.

Saving and dreaming and planning together,

Tenderness, Trust increasing in measure.

Useless are Satan’s attempts to defeat us,

Verily going where Jesus may lead us.

Wanting you still after all of these years, after

X-rays and chemo and trials and tears.

You are God’s perfect plan for me.

Zealous for you I forever shall be.

Wednesday Without Words

Weddings

Chris and Dave Finnegan, 1980

Jack and Shirley Hanson, 1959

George and Marilyn Finnegan, 1946

Joe and Marie Hanson

Rose and Ed Postel

Miscellany

Well, it's beginning to look a lot like Spring around here, as far as spring looks in Northern New Mexico at 6500 feet... We started pruning the old apple trees in our back yard this morning, before the characteristic wind storms kick up this afternoon. Spring is dry, and windy (I like to say that Arizona blows through on its way to West Texas this time of year), with warm sun during the day and frigid temperatures at night. But if you look, the signs are here that things are beginning to grow...like my tulips!

I love pruning (though my shoulders and elbow don't necessarily...) There is something about doing the hard thing-- cutting away the superfluous and harmful and encouraging the right and the true-- that is extremely satisfying. These are the same reasons I love teaching. It is, likewise, an agricultural endeavor that involves pruning and training, and standing back and marveling and watching as things grow.

And in the spirit of teaching and instruction... this morning on the BaylyBlog, Tim posted the following hilarious chart. I just had to share it for my two sons-- one recently married, the other engaged. You might as well face up to the realities now, fellas!


And lastly, today I completed another quilt (pictured below). It is entitled "Cerca de Jardin", which is Spanish for "garden fence", or at least I hope it is! It is a fence rail pattern, and is intended as the wedding gift for some dear friends later this month.

On fathers and husbands...especially mine

This morning Tim Bayly, my son Ben's pastor, has a thought-provoking post on our culture's hunger for fathers, and the theological implications of our hunger for our Father God.

My morning blog/news tour then turned to this amazing article in the Washington Post about a sacrificial love being played out as a devoted husband continues to care for his wife as she declines with a fatal neurological disease. (Thanks to T.C. for the link.)

Reading these this morning has made me so very thankful for my own dear husband. He has been a fabulous father, who sacrificed many things for his family. Because of his dedication to his boys, they did not grow up with a burning "father-hunger" that debilitated them, and they are both becoming adults who are taking their places as men who will be strong husbands and fathers. I know they will be good dads and husbands because of the example they had in their father, and the way he taught them about their Heavenly Father.

And I have no doubt that his commitment to me is an absolute one until one of us dies. I watch him serve me daily, and am shamed by the little things that irritate me about him. I know that if we were in the situation of the couple in the above article, Dave would serve me in the same way, because his serving of me is a reflection of his commitment to his God. And God has been so very good to give me such a man!

Thank you, Dave, for your steadfast love and bravery in serving your Lord by serving your family. I love you!

More about marriage

Weddings are on my mind a lot currently. This is, of course, partly because my family is busy with weddings-- my eldest son was married in December, and will be followed by my youngest next September, Lord willing. Additionally, many of their friends are getting married. It seems we barely got over the graduation rush, when we couldn't physically get to all the celebrations of graduates, and now we are in a wedding rush as our children, and friends' children, and children's friends are, many of them, marrying. And with weddings come showers, and with showers come devotionals. Below is another wedding devotional I gave: this one on the topic of faithfulness. May God make us faithful to Himself, and to our spouses!

Faithfulness

I thought we would open up our time with God’s Word to us in Proverbs Chapter 3, verse 3. This short verse is in a familiar passage that many of us have known since childhood, or have taught to our children as they have grown.
³Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;

bind them around your neck;

write them on the tablet of your heart.

This verse starts with a command: let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. So let’s look briefly at this command with special emphasis on how we can be faithful and steadfast to our husbands as a reflection of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness to us.

This Scripture isn’t just talking about some random idea of steadfast love or faithfulness. These refer to God’s attributes: His character of steadfast love and His faithfulness.

His steadfast love is His deciding to place His affection on something and causing His affection to remain for eternity. It is His mercy to us in promising to love us, though we don’t deserve it. There will likely be times, as hard as it is to imagine before we marry, when we will feel like our husband doesn’t deserve our love and service. In those times, you must remember God’s love to you, and your lack of deserving it, and then you can make the decision to love that man for God’s sake, and for the sake of God’s steadfast love for you.

And God’s faithfulness reflects the changeableness of that steadfast love. It is God’s truthful performing of what He has promised. God’s faithfulness doesn’t have to do with feelings: it has to do with commitment. There will likely be times when you are weary or hurt, and your emotions will tell you to give up or flee the situation. That is when you are called on to reflect God’s faithfulness to your husband, and remain faithful to your promises as God has been faithful to you.

Our job as wives, then, is not to “invent” love and faithfulness, but to reflect God’s love and faithfulness to us into our relationships with Him and with our husbands. As the moon reflects the light of the sun, we need to reflect the steadfastness and faithfulness that God shines upon us.

But how do we, mere creatures that are sinful and fallen, reflect the Creator’s attributes of steadfast love and faithfulness? How do we practically do this? We begin by having integrity in our promises regarding where we place our affections: primarily we have integrity in our love for God, always keeping our relationship to Him our top priority. And our love for our husbands comes next in God’s hierarchy. But how are we supposed to keep love and faithfulness from leaving us? Proverbs 3:3 tells us how.

• First, we are to “bind them on our neck”: that means to adorn ourselves outwardly with them. This refers to the realm of our actions and our words. It means looking for ways as wives to affirm and respect and serve our husbands, instead of criticizing and tearing them down. It means guarding him in our words to others, and supporting him.
• Secondly, we are to “write them on the tablet of our hearts”: this is talking about inwardly guarding our motives, thoughts and emotions. Being faithful inwardly to our husband means always giving him the benefit of the doubt rather than jumping to the worst possible conclusions, or even sometimes the most likely conclusion! Inward faithfulness requires us to guard the way we think about our husbands, always remembering that God thinks on us with love and kindness even when we least deserve it. It means telling ourselves the truth when our emotions would run away with us and indulge us in self-pity.

I know that as a young couple you have already seen abundant evidence of God’s faithfulness in your life, and in your relationship. And now I pray for you, that God’s steadfast love and faithfulness would be reflected in your relationship first with the Lord, who is both the author of steadfast love and faithfulness, and the author of the good work He has begun in you. And secondly, that His steadfast love and faithfulness would be reflected from your heart, where it was received from our Great God, into your relationship, that you may bless Caleb as the Lord has blessed you, and reflect in your marriage that integrity of steadfast love and faithfulness that has been God’s gift to you.

Some thoughts about the blessings of marriage

The following was a devotional I gave last weekend at a bridal shower. I have changed a few things to protect the identity of the bride-to-be: she was not engaged to anyone in my family. I removed the personal references, and put it here as a reminder to us all.

A Quiet and Gentle Spirit

It is always a pleasure to watch as a young lady comes under the influence of the Lord who made and claimed her. I find myself praising God for the quiet and gentle spirit He who began a good work in us is being faithful to complete. That, of course, reminded me of the first few verses of 1 Peter Chapter 3.

1 Peter 3:1-4

¹Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, ²when they see your respectful and pure conduct. ³Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— ⁴but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.

Every family needs a leader, and our husbands need to be the leaders of our families. When Peter tells us here that a wife should be subject to her own husband, he is not talking about inferiority, but about a characteristic of ready compliance with the husband's reasonable decisions. Not that all of a husband's decisions will be reasonable, but here Peter tells us that when they are not, we are not to argue. Instead, let our husbands see for themselves by the purity of our conduct, and be won over to the truth. What a blessing it is for us as wives to have God lay out for us the proper response to our husbands!

The problem is, of course, that submitting to our husbands implies a certain death to ourselves. And death is always painful. Just remember that as you submit to your husband, he is going to be dying to himself in his own way as he is called to live with you in understanding and accord you respect, as Peter tells him later in this same passage.

Verse 4 again says, “let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.”

A Christian wife, then, as we are called to be, seeks to both please God and be a witness to God by a distinctive cultivation of that type of an inner spirit that is calm and imperturbable in relation to people and circumstances. This shows that our behavior is governed by a new set of values, different from those that may come naturally to us. It shows our choice to cultivate those characteristics that are highly valued by God: the inner dispositions of the heart.

The outward things, after all, are passing away. But those inward things—that gentle and quiet spirit-- are growing by God‘s grace day by day. The “gentleness” here means the way in which a wife can choose to respond to her husband’s demands and intrusions in her life in a docile, compliant way. And “quiet” here refers to the character of her action or reaction towards her husband and the world. She should be complementary to her husband (with and “e” not an “i”, meaning to complete, not to flatter!), and constant in her love for him, without rebellion, or fuss, or the fury for which women are so generally well known.

Peter goes on to tell us that this is how the holy women of the past adorned themselves, and how they brought honor to both God and their husbands. So, when you marry, you are embarking on not only a great adventure, but a great legacy. You have the opportunity to stand with the great and holy women of the past, and choose to adorn yourself with that quiet and gentle spirit that will be a great witness to your God and a great blessing to your husband and future family. May God give you the grace and power of His Spirit to be such

a blessing!

Some thoughts on marriage and courtship-- mostly not mine...

As a mom of two sons, both of whom will be getting married, D.V., in the next year, I have been thinking a lot about this subject lately. I have been thinking about it for a long time as the dh and I tried over the past 23 years or so to raise boys to be godly men in this culture. For a time we followed down the expected courtship route of every "good" homeschooling family, but as our young men entered this phase of life, reality hit the fan, so to speak, and got splattered all over all of us!

Now, as my dear friend Cindy has said in her wise and clever way, she hesitates to post about courtship because people have such strong ideas about courtship, and the younger your children are, the stronger your opinions tend to be. So, instead of saying much, I just thought I would share the first part of what should be a series of articles. I read the first part this morning, written by David Bayly. I think he is hitting on something important when he says,

"Scripture tells us that a king should count the cost before sending his army into battle. In the same way a young man should count the cost and weigh the odds before entering the lists of romantic battle. It’s not an easy course. Rewarding, pleasurable, wonderful, yes, but pitched conflict fraught with danger as well...."

And in speaking of the modern "courtship" movement, he makes this point:

"The obvious problem with such an approach is that it doesn’t eradicate danger, it merely delays the necessary battles of courtship and wooing until after marriage—when the stakes are even higher and the costs of failure even greater."


I think there is a lot of wisdom there, and look forward to reading future installments. I hope you'll take the time to read his entire presentation. It is well worth your effort.

He shares his blog space with his brother, Tim (who pastors the church of one of my ds), and I grow in appreciation of them both as I read their writings.