You’re a Good Wife!

My blog was having trouble with my site today, so I just want to remind everybody about FREEBIE FRIDAY! Enter now!

Lisa and I have been very busy lately. I’m still settling into a new job, as well as keeping nakedpastor going, my art, my cartoon book, my personal life. Then Lisa is a full-time nursing student in the thick of an unbelievable amount of work, as well as keeping her personal home health-care business going. So before we went to bed we were just catching up with each others’ day.

At one point I said, “Honey, you’re a really good wife!” To which she sarcastically replied, “Ya, right!”

I realized how silly my proclamation was. Because that’s not what I meant at all.

What I meant was, “I love you with all my heart. I admire and respect you for what you are doing. I am so happy to be your lover. Even though we are going through a stressful time right now, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Because we are in love and we are together. You are an amazing woman that fills me with wonder, excitement and happiness.” Something like that.

I didn’t mean she is a good wife. “Wife” conjures up ideas of a role with a job-description. It refers to an institution called “wife” and another one called “marriage“. What if I had a fantasy of what a good wife was: someone who cooks me three meals a day, provides sex 3.5 times a week, keeps the house spotless and respects everything I say without question? Only if she measured up to that would I be able to say, “You’re a really good wife!” If I had that fantasy. I don’t.

It is the same with the church. Why would I say of a church, “You’re a really good church!“? What I am saying is that it is measuring up to my fantasies of what it should be. If I just loved the church with all its blemishes and wrinkles, then saying, “You are a really good church!” would seem silly, superficial and selfish.

Love covers a multitude of sins. That doesn’t mean love hides, overlooks or ignores the sins. It means that love discards our fantasies of the objects of our affection and embraces it all.

Enter my FREEBIE FRIDAY contest now!