Jonathan: The New Model

Many of us, when we first marry, wrongly think we will be able to "fix" personality "flaws" in another. Some of us wrongly assume things will never change. Reality is often very different.

When my husband and I first married, I thought his introverted personality and my extroverted personality would cause some moments of friction. After all, he wasn't going to desire socializing as much as me, and I was going to want him to communicate a lot with me. As it turned out, we did have friction over this area in our first year of marriage, but not the way I anticipated. Whenever I wanted to sit and read a book (and by read, I mean leave me alone for several hours please because I am completely absorbed in this), giving him what I thought would be quality alone time to recharge his batteries, he wanted to be right by my side and talk. Over time, this issue became a non-issue, but it created some disharmony early on in our marriage.

What happens, though, when your spouse really changes? When we first married, Jonathan liked to watch football and basketball, and occasionally would read, but didn't really like to, because, in his words, he's "a slow reader." He wore jeans, didn't really like to dress up (slacks would be dressing up), and enjoyed watching T.V. with me. He was a peacemaker at almost any cost. He believed in the doctrine he was raised on, but didn't really think it was a matter of great importance. He loved bread and was afraid of babies.

Now he wants rice (actually, that changed about six months into marriage. When you're raised on it as a staple at every meal, you want it a lot.) and loves the babies that come into our family (he's still afraid to hold the others--they might break). After careful thought and study, his doctrine has changed and he believes it is of vital importance. He still prefers peace, but will speak/disagree forthrightly when necessary. He doesn't like to watch T.V. much, unless it is UGA football--he's even given up a lifelong love for the Wildcats in basketball. He never wears jeans--thinks they are too uncomfortable (huh?).

The biggest change, however, has occurred in his reading habits. He loves to read, and does it almost all the time. I am not talking about some light summer reading here. Even while at the beach with his family during spring break this year, he could be found on the sand reading Mark Dever's 9 Marks of a Healthy Church. He reads at lunch, during the evening, whenever he has extra time at church or during a kid's sports practice. He has a voracious appetite for it.

But so far, I can still beat him at Scrabble!

Water on Their Wings

Yesterday, my husband and I were sitting around the dinner table with our three children and our niece, all between 5 and 9 years old. My 9 year old has just begun studying dinosaurs at school and my other two just finished studying them. My niece is a self-proclaimed expert (age 6) who "just knows" because she reads about them.

I made the mistake of asking about the name of the ones who fly (come on, mom, don't you know that?). My 5 year old immediately said "Pterodactyl". Then they started talking about a movie they have been watching at school where some Pterodactyl tries to fly from one ocean to another but gets really tired and barely makes it. At this point, my 5 year old again speaks up. "Mama, Pterodactyls ate fish, but they didn't like water on their wings. They could dive down and eat fish and never get water on themselves!" "Really," I say. "And just how do we know these creatures did this?"

Before she can answer, my second-grader starts telling his father all the various class opinions on how dinosaurs came to be extinct. "My teacher's opinion is that they all died when Noah's flood happened, Daddy. But Mama and I had the same question. We thought Noah was commanded to get two of every mammal and bird (his classifications) on board the ark. But my teacher say the ark was big, but not that big." He follows this announcement by saying he thinks "it got too hot" and "they died."

My daughter pipes up again: "The reason the dinosaurs are 'tinct is the sun was too close to the earth and they couldn't live." I ask the kids why the dinosaurs died because it was too hot, but people didn't. Our self-appointed expert, aka my six year old niece, completely ignores her uncool aunt and says, "Listen, I know this. I read about this. The sun was too close to the earth and all the plants died. The plant-eaters didn't have anything left to eat, so they died. Then the meat-eaters had nothing left to eat, so they died too." I ask her if she was taught this in school. "No, I just know. I read about this stuff." I ask again why humans didn't die if it was so hot. With a look of exasperation, she says, "Nooooo...like a hundred million years ago!" My second grader says, "My teacher thinks the earth is 200 million years old."

I ask the kids what God says about how long it took to create land, light, plants, animals, people, water...after an answer of "a couple of weeks" (really, we have studied the creation account many times), I remind them that God said he created the earth in 6 days and rested on the seventh, so there were not millions of years between the dinosaurs and people. I ask the kids who we should believe, God or their teachers. With a look of confusion, they say that believing God is right.

At this point, my husband tries again to emphasize what he has been saying intermittently throughout the conversation--we can't know if the pterodactyls disliked water on their wings or not, because we don't know anyone who has seen a dinosaur, and we don't know anyone who knows anyone who has seen dinosaurs, and their teachers are not even scientists. He points out that some large animals were mentioned in the Bible that we do not know much about, but we cannot make as many assumptions as are currently being made over finding some bones that are old.

With a reminder that we need to respect our teachers--they are trying their best to teach us what others have learned, and they are in authority over the children during the day--I remind the children that everything that teachers say is not fact. In fact, *gasp* everything we see in movies is not a fact. I find all too often that if my children see something in a movie, particularly if it is not animated or is supposed to be educational, they accept it as fact without thinking through it.

I have to ask myself, was my worldview shaped much like theirs? Am I a thinker, or do I just accept whatever a person I respect says with no questions asked?

There are many theories about many things out there...I just hope we can teach our children to reason and believe things based on the filter of God's word.

How many trash bags are you on?

Today, as I was having lunch with a friend, we met ran into some old friends of hers. The wife had been a grade school friend and she and her husband just happened to be eating in the same restaurant. As they were leaving, we spent a few moments talking about how many children we had, how old they were, etc....just the kind of things that you try to catch up on when you haven't seen someone in a long time.

The couple was (for the first time) experiencing the joy of recruiting a babysitter to watch their infant daughter while they celebrated their anniversary over the weekend. My friend and her husband are hitting 10 years this year, and the couple I met were celebrating nine years this weekend. They were very happy to have been together in a relationship this long, and began to tell us how excited they were to open the third case of trash bags from Sam's Club (400 a case?). Apparently, all the people they know have only made it to the second box thus far.

Now, my husband and I celebrated 11 years this January and have passed through several milestones--finishing grad school, having our first child, buying a house, then having our second and third children, no longer spending our anniversary dates discussing the top 5 places we want to visit (but talking instead about the future of our children's education), and going to bed at 9:30 or 10:00 instead of midnight or 1:00 a.m. However, I have to say that it was a first to hear someone measure the length of their relationship by how many trash bags they have gone through over the years.

How about you? How do you measure the longevity of your relationships? Is there a milestone in your marriage that really made you sit back and say, "Wow"?

Inaccurate, but it's fun...

Check out my visual DNA--they say I am physically fit based on my choices (ha), but it is fun. I stole this idea from Em...

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

I Do Not Like Them, Sam I Am

Recently, my two youngest children celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday by going to school dressed as their favorite book character (from any author) and listening to Dr. Seuss all day. My daughter was Laura Ingalls Wilder from Little House on the Prairie. My son chose to dress up as Sam I Am from Green Eggs and Ham.

This brought to mind a recent conversation with one of my sisters. I told her about my children's rules for spending money at the book fair--no Disney Princess books, no Nemo or Cars books, no toys, no junk. My husband actually took my daughter to the book fair so she did not shop on her own, but she did come home with a My Little Pony book (in other words, junk).

My sister stated that it really didn't matter what the kids read, as long as they were reading. On the surface, this sounds good. In actuality, however, this rings false. Children learn the art of telling and writing stories from hearing and reading stories. They learn syntax, rules of the genre, and creativity from the books they read. In reality, we don't live in a Disney Princess world, and while it might be okay to watch a movie or read an occasional story about a Disney Princess, I would rather have them spend their time on worthwhile literature--biographies on people who have impacted the world for better or worse, stories that promote creativity, perseverance or problem-solving, not fluff written without a story in mind because the book is all about a movie.

Here are thoughts from others on the matter:

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
Mark Twain

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
Charles Caleb Colton

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Let me know what you think.