Monday, January 16, 2006
Grace Triumphant 001
February 28, 2005
I can't remember if I cried,
When I read about his widowed bride.
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.
Oh there's that song again. It plays every February. Everybody says it's about the death of JFK or the death of Richy Valens. It's about a young man's loss of his faith. And it's set against the Fundamentalist myths of the 1970's, including the rapture myth of the time, when we believed that the Soviet Union would invade the rest of the world as "Gog and magog reconstructed." How quickly the Fundamentalists forget their own myths. Well, Don Maclean may have lost his faith while listening to preachers vent on the Red Menace and Rock music, but I escaped with mine, just barely.
Greg just called to say he's working late tonight. This has happened a lot lately. I don't like it, and it's not what we agreed upon when he went with this company last year. But he says the slot for Associate V.P. will open soon, and he is positioned to get it. If he's passed over, he'll lose ground and lose opportunity.
I understand that. There's still a lot of macho in these small engineering firms, and men hold their ground by the impression they make. He has to be a "heavy hitter" to stay with the firm and stay on the rise.
So I will write tonight. I have at least one perk: Greg gave me my own laptop computer for my birthday a few months ago. It's one of those minis, with a plug-in case that has a swappable DVD player and swappable floppy drive. It's so small and light that I can take it anywhere.
Ten-year old Benjamin just came in to let me know he's praying that God will send us a dog. As always, he's recruited his little sister Rachel to join him. Ben has worked out how to make Christianity get him everything he wants. In January he theorized that if he never did his homework but had faith, he would pass all his tests. He kept this theory to himself in order to astound us with his theological acumen when report cards came out. It bitterly disappointed him when things didn't work out that way, and we made him catch up.
However, as far as the dog goes, I want one too. There's a woman down the street, Terri, who has an Anatolian Shepherd named Tahlia. Tahlia looks like a German Shepherd except she is cream and black instead of brown and black. She's gentle and protective. We had thunder on a warm day a few weeks ago as Terri and I were visiting in my front yard, and Tahlia kept nudging Benjamin and Rachel towards the house with her nose. When the thunder cracked unexpectedly, she ran towards it across the yard, barking. Then she came up to me and leaned against my legs until her sheer weight forced me back a step, closer to my door. Terri scolded her. "Tahlia, stop that!"
"Is she afraid?" I asked.
"She's trying to get you to go into the house," Terri said. "To protect you."
Benjamin and Rachel were charmed by this remarkable dog, and so was I. I never had a dog while growing up because we moved around too much, and my evangelist father thought they were too much trouble. A big dog in a little house only made it look smaller, he said. And little dogs were a nuisance to him. "Dogs for fags," he called them.
Greg grew up with a house full of sisters and lots of pets. But he thinks dogs are too dirty and too smelly; and, he told me, the husband always ends up doing all the "dirty work."
"And by dirty work, I'm thinking of a word that begins with P, Poopsy," he told me.
Greg does like a clean, orderly, and quiet home. And he asks so little that I've never nagged about getting a dog. But the children have their hearts set on having one exactly like Tahlia. And Terri, who is a vet, accidentally offended Greg a couple weeks ago when she told him she could get us an Anatolian Shepherd at a very low price.
My good natured husband is so rarely offended that he surprised me later when he said he wished our neighbor down the street would just mind her own business. He never talks like that, and he never is offended. In fact, in the past when we've had arguments and I've really wanted to needle him, I always found him too good natured to offend. If Greg has taught me anything, it's how to laugh off what others say.
I think the pressure of the job is getting to him. He does seem very different lately.
Anyway, speaking of not letting others bother me, I've received e-mails about my last two stories! I was thrilled when people I'd gone to school with at GIBC (Greater Indiana Baptist College-God's School for You) wrote to compare notes with my experiences and remind me of things I had left out of my first narrative. And former students (I should say inmates) of the Sonrise homes have written as well.
But not everything has been praise. Here's a real gem from a man who knew my adulterous father, Evangelist George Jovian:
"Trow not?" Greg asked when he saw it. "Did he get lost on the stage of a Shakespeare play?
"I trow not," I told him slyly and ducked when he threw a pillow at me.
I do get emails like these and find them in the comment sections of my blogs, most often from Fundamentalist pastors, but they are a minority. Greg laughed at them at first and then installed an extensive e-mail filter on my system. It deletes e-mail from any sender I specify, or it forces unknown senders to ask my permission to get a letter through the cue. Men who are accusing me up and down of being a harlot, a feminist, a lesbian, a man-hater, etc., either get deleted unseen or slink off rather than ask my permission to be read.
One request I often get from readers is to share how Greg and I fell in love. I will tell the story, but it's doomed to disappoint. Greg had one bad marriage to an adulterous wife behind him when we met. And I was shell-shocked from all the abuses I had suffered in Independent Fundamental Baptist churches (and then a Pentecostal church that started well and went bad). We were both in our very late twenties and neither of us wanted to hurt another person or be hurt.
By then I had given up on church. Attending church was a necessity for Greg, who has always been the better Christian of the two of us. We were honest with each other, and he was patient. Greg has told me since then that he knew from the start I would always be faithful to my husband. So even when he was discouraged about how much I disliked and feared church, he wanted to demonstrate to me that church wasn't necessarily bad and cultish.
But our "romance" was more like a re-education for the both of us as we tried to measure if marriage would work for us. I loved how steady and dependable and patient he was. Greg was the first man who wanted to hear everything I was thinking. I always treated him with great care and respect because I knew he wanted me to communicate with him.
Over time, I started attending church with him, and he learned to cope with my late father, who always lorded it over him that he'd been married before.
But all the stars and candlelight and romance came after marriage for me. How I loved Greg before we married and how I came to love him after are almost two different things. I remember waking up one morning a few weeks after our first anniversary and realizing I truly had married the best man in the entire world. He had given me an incredible stability; he had made me happy; he had saved my faith in God.
I wish he was home now.
But I'm babbling too much. I'll write more tomorrow.
|
I can't remember if I cried,
When I read about his widowed bride.
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.
Oh there's that song again. It plays every February. Everybody says it's about the death of JFK or the death of Richy Valens. It's about a young man's loss of his faith. And it's set against the Fundamentalist myths of the 1970's, including the rapture myth of the time, when we believed that the Soviet Union would invade the rest of the world as "Gog and magog reconstructed." How quickly the Fundamentalists forget their own myths. Well, Don Maclean may have lost his faith while listening to preachers vent on the Red Menace and Rock music, but I escaped with mine, just barely.
Greg just called to say he's working late tonight. This has happened a lot lately. I don't like it, and it's not what we agreed upon when he went with this company last year. But he says the slot for Associate V.P. will open soon, and he is positioned to get it. If he's passed over, he'll lose ground and lose opportunity.
I understand that. There's still a lot of macho in these small engineering firms, and men hold their ground by the impression they make. He has to be a "heavy hitter" to stay with the firm and stay on the rise.
So I will write tonight. I have at least one perk: Greg gave me my own laptop computer for my birthday a few months ago. It's one of those minis, with a plug-in case that has a swappable DVD player and swappable floppy drive. It's so small and light that I can take it anywhere.
Ten-year old Benjamin just came in to let me know he's praying that God will send us a dog. As always, he's recruited his little sister Rachel to join him. Ben has worked out how to make Christianity get him everything he wants. In January he theorized that if he never did his homework but had faith, he would pass all his tests. He kept this theory to himself in order to astound us with his theological acumen when report cards came out. It bitterly disappointed him when things didn't work out that way, and we made him catch up.
However, as far as the dog goes, I want one too. There's a woman down the street, Terri, who has an Anatolian Shepherd named Tahlia. Tahlia looks like a German Shepherd except she is cream and black instead of brown and black. She's gentle and protective. We had thunder on a warm day a few weeks ago as Terri and I were visiting in my front yard, and Tahlia kept nudging Benjamin and Rachel towards the house with her nose. When the thunder cracked unexpectedly, she ran towards it across the yard, barking. Then she came up to me and leaned against my legs until her sheer weight forced me back a step, closer to my door. Terri scolded her. "Tahlia, stop that!"
"Is she afraid?" I asked.
"She's trying to get you to go into the house," Terri said. "To protect you."
Benjamin and Rachel were charmed by this remarkable dog, and so was I. I never had a dog while growing up because we moved around too much, and my evangelist father thought they were too much trouble. A big dog in a little house only made it look smaller, he said. And little dogs were a nuisance to him. "Dogs for fags," he called them.
Greg grew up with a house full of sisters and lots of pets. But he thinks dogs are too dirty and too smelly; and, he told me, the husband always ends up doing all the "dirty work."
"And by dirty work, I'm thinking of a word that begins with P, Poopsy," he told me.
Greg does like a clean, orderly, and quiet home. And he asks so little that I've never nagged about getting a dog. But the children have their hearts set on having one exactly like Tahlia. And Terri, who is a vet, accidentally offended Greg a couple weeks ago when she told him she could get us an Anatolian Shepherd at a very low price.
My good natured husband is so rarely offended that he surprised me later when he said he wished our neighbor down the street would just mind her own business. He never talks like that, and he never is offended. In fact, in the past when we've had arguments and I've really wanted to needle him, I always found him too good natured to offend. If Greg has taught me anything, it's how to laugh off what others say.
I think the pressure of the job is getting to him. He does seem very different lately.
Anyway, speaking of not letting others bother me, I've received e-mails about my last two stories! I was thrilled when people I'd gone to school with at GIBC (Greater Indiana Baptist College-God's School for You) wrote to compare notes with my experiences and remind me of things I had left out of my first narrative. And former students (I should say inmates) of the Sonrise homes have written as well.
But not everything has been praise. Here's a real gem from a man who knew my adulterous father, Evangelist George Jovian:
You may be saved, but you are no Christian. There is a difference between the two. You are as phony as you claim those great men of God are. There are qualities that the scriptures teach for godly womanhood and you lack everyone! You are a vindictive, bitter, petty, little soul. To be quite frank, I find you to be mentally unstable, and it is most likely that you are troubled with lesbian temptations. In fact, femi-nazi women like you mostly are lesbians.
Do you think any man would approve of his daughters saying things in the manner and spirit of Grace Jovian? I trow not.
"Trow not?" Greg asked when he saw it. "Did he get lost on the stage of a Shakespeare play?
"I trow not," I told him slyly and ducked when he threw a pillow at me.
I do get emails like these and find them in the comment sections of my blogs, most often from Fundamentalist pastors, but they are a minority. Greg laughed at them at first and then installed an extensive e-mail filter on my system. It deletes e-mail from any sender I specify, or it forces unknown senders to ask my permission to get a letter through the cue. Men who are accusing me up and down of being a harlot, a feminist, a lesbian, a man-hater, etc., either get deleted unseen or slink off rather than ask my permission to be read.
One request I often get from readers is to share how Greg and I fell in love. I will tell the story, but it's doomed to disappoint. Greg had one bad marriage to an adulterous wife behind him when we met. And I was shell-shocked from all the abuses I had suffered in Independent Fundamental Baptist churches (and then a Pentecostal church that started well and went bad). We were both in our very late twenties and neither of us wanted to hurt another person or be hurt.
By then I had given up on church. Attending church was a necessity for Greg, who has always been the better Christian of the two of us. We were honest with each other, and he was patient. Greg has told me since then that he knew from the start I would always be faithful to my husband. So even when he was discouraged about how much I disliked and feared church, he wanted to demonstrate to me that church wasn't necessarily bad and cultish.
But our "romance" was more like a re-education for the both of us as we tried to measure if marriage would work for us. I loved how steady and dependable and patient he was. Greg was the first man who wanted to hear everything I was thinking. I always treated him with great care and respect because I knew he wanted me to communicate with him.
Over time, I started attending church with him, and he learned to cope with my late father, who always lorded it over him that he'd been married before.
But all the stars and candlelight and romance came after marriage for me. How I loved Greg before we married and how I came to love him after are almost two different things. I remember waking up one morning a few weeks after our first anniversary and realizing I truly had married the best man in the entire world. He had given me an incredible stability; he had made me happy; he had saved my faith in God.
I wish he was home now.
But I'm babbling too much. I'll write more tomorrow.
