I saw this article the other and found it to be fascinating. Not from the usual perspective of "enduring love and marriage is awesome" blah blah blah. No, rather this was interesting to me because it was an opportunity to see things from the perspective of someone who was married to someone who was going through a mid-life crisis. The mid-life crisis, of course, is similar to the quarter life crisis or any kind of identity crisis that most people eventually go through. Identity crises are usually accompanied by a death of a dream. And being that the death of dreams is something near and dear to my heart (more to come on this), and I saw that Cate Song had posted it with positive responses, I decided to post this up as well.

Those aren't fighting words, dear


Read the article first, and then come back. Here are a few items I would like to point out:

1) The husband who goes through the crisis immediately points to the wife as being the problem. "My life is not going the way I wanted it to go, therefore, these people around me are the problem. They are holding me back." Or in this case, he is blaming the wife. Instead of blaming others for the failure of his dream, he needed to realize that his dream wasn't going to happen the way he expected it to. He didn't become the person he had hoped to be. He was watching his mythological self die before his eyes.

2) Being the "victim" of his dying dream and the people around him, he felt like he had to take control of the situation. Since we have no indication whatsoever that either husband or wife is a Christian, nor any allusion to trust in a higher power, it makes sense that both parties felt that they needed to be strong and take control in one way or another. This is significantly different from the theoretical Christian response, which is to let go of control and fall on your face and petition God to intercede. Of course, I say theoretical because most Christians avoid this route and go straight to taking control of the situation and wrestling it out of God's "untrustworthy" hands. So much for letting God be "Lord of my life."

3) There are some who say that marriage is to serve as an example of the relationship we, as Christians, have with Christ, our bridegroom. With that paradigm in place, the wife is the Christ figure in this particular example. There are times when we are angry with God and blame him for the things happening in our lives. The wife wisely realizes that she isn't the problem, nor is she the cause of the problem. Furthermore, she offers to help him gain the space he needs. At the same time, she keeps the invitation open - he was welcome to come back at any time. His place at the table was always set. There was always room for the prodigal son to come home.

4) She wisely recognized that she couldn't solve his problem. In most relationships, people vacillate between two extremes in a time of crisis: Try to fix the problem and force a happy face on it or abandon and leave. Her friends demanded that she get a lawyer and end it. Her internal struggle was to persuade him to not give up and make it work. But she chose neither. She recognized that this was his problem to solve, and she gave him the room to do it.

5) The fourth paragraph from the end reads:

"When life’s knocked us around. And our childhood myths reveal themselves to be just that. The truth feels like the biggest sucker-punch of them all: it’s not a spouse or land or a job or money that brings us happiness. Those achievements, those relationships, can enhance our happiness, yes, but happiness has to start from within. Relying on any other equation can be lethal."

There it is. Childhood myths. Our mythological selves. Our destiny. Our American dream. Whatever it is you want to call it, they all mean the same thing. A false, alternate reality that is unachievable and unattainable. At some point in everyone's lives, our dreams fail us. Our happiness is lost. And somehow, we have to pick up the pieces and move on. We have to redetermine the root of our happiness and satisfaction. Is it performance based? Is is based on how other people feel about us? Is it from within, as the author states? Or is it based on the satisfaction of being wholly and completely loved by God? And this love will not change, no matter what we do right or what we do wrong.


All in all, I thought that this was a great story with some great points. A lot of things to think on. Sadly, most people don't think about such things until they're facing a death of their own. Hopefully, this will provide some food for thought.

On another level, I felt that it was eye opening to be able to see things from a different perspective. I definitely appreciated being able to see her perspective as if it were through the eyes of Jesus. I hope that you might appreciate it too.

I have long described how watching the movie "Men in Black" destroyed my faith in the inerrancy of science. It didn't invalidate science as a process and a way of studying things. But it certainly caused me to think twice about what we as people hold onto as inerrant truth and "written in stone."

Truthfully, the nature of science is that we are ever learning. The things that we "knew to be true" 1000 years ago are no longer true today. Imagine what we will know to be true tomorrow.

It can be somewhat terrifying when I sit down in those quiet moments and spend any amount of time thinking about it.

Today, I ran across a really interesting article detailing a new discovery. It's an exciting and amazing find that will change the way science interprets history; there is a giant single celled organisim that is large enough to leave a trail in the dirt where ever it goes. They say that it may be the oldest living fossil on record. But don't let the excitement of the discovery overshadow the significance of this finding - it will *change the way science interprets history.*

And that's the issue at hand here. Incorrectly interpreted history has been passed of as fact and law since the beginning of time. Whether it's the recounting of an event by multiple witnesses from different perspectives with different stories or it's a detective trying to put together the pieces of a crime scene, there is a ceiling to what we can actually know. There is a limit to how much we can conclude and profess as fact.

Take a look at the link to the article. Read some of the comments by the readers who hate creationists. There are people there bemoaning a magic box quote from one of the principle scientists, but they completely miss the fact that everything they believed in before has just been "corrected," and stands to be corrected for the rest of eternity.

Take an opportunity to think outside of the box here and leave a comment.



http://www.richarddawkins.net/article,3361,Single-Celled-Giant-Upends-Early-Evolution,Discovery

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/20/gromia-cambrian.html