Wisdom From Kammbia 2.21: A Great Answer to Why Men Don’t Want to Get Married

Every now and then a blog post writes itself:

“Your commitment to be monogamous is a statement of values, but it is not a statement of nature. Your nature is not monogamous. Your values are monogamous. And that is why values are what we hold to be more important than our feelings.

So it’s not going to happen to you. But I know what you’re asking. But Dennis, how do I know I’m ready to marry when I still find, you know, half the women in the street, and all of the ones in the ads, and on TV, and in movies, so enticing. And the answer is, they will never stop being enticing. So you will never get married if you’re waiting for that magic bullet. The magic bullet doesn’t exist for a man.”

(Dennis Prager said to a male caller in his 20’s on his radio show.  He asked Dennis the question why men don’t want to get married.)

A lot of men are waiting for that magic bullet.  Well said, Dennis!

Wisdom of Marion 2.14: Love Is……

“When someone loves you,

truly loves you,

It is not because they don’t know who you are.

It is because they do know who you are,

and what you are like,

and they still love you.

That makes love meaningful.

Also, love doesn’t exists in the absence of judgment.

and that is how God loves us.” 

(Michael Ramsden)

Music Review 3: Fred Hammond’s God, Love, and Romance

I read from an interview prior to Fred Hammond’s latest release, God, Love, and Romance that he was unsure how his fans would receive it.

Well, I believe his fans should not worry about that at all and he will pick up some new fans from this excellent CD.

Hammond covers the topic of love and relationships with a Godly perspective in a variety of genres from jazz, funk, r & b, gospel and rock.

What I can appreciate from Hammond is that he doesn’t covers the subject in a manufactured “Christianese” way.  He sings about dating, marriage, and divorce in a way that everyone can relate to, Christian or not.

BTW, he refers to the Song of Solomon throughout both CDs and that refreshing to hear.  (When was the last time a pastor taught from that book to their congregation?)

I played both CDs through in one setting and the stand-out cuts for me are: When I Come Home to You, I’m In Love With You, The Proposal, My Love Is Real, I See the Sunshine’n, and I Got A Good Woman. 

The last song I mentioned has an interlude where two men are talking and one of them asked the other how has been able to stay married for 20 years.  The man replied that their marriage had not be easy and they almost reached the breaking point several times during their marriage.  But, he saw his wife praying for him and he had never seen anything like that before. (Prayer works!) He was touched by and realized how much his wife loved him and would do anything to keep their marriage together.  Powerful and Touching!

Hammond’s latest shows how Christian music can expand and go beyond the status quo to reveal how God can work in one of the most important areas in our lives.

I will that write God, Love, and Romance deserves 4 out of 5 stars and is a must have in your CD collection.

Wisdom of Marion Vol 1.40 (What is Love? Pt.4)

We have to come to Part 4 and the final part of this series, What is Love?

And we have travelled from the Out of the Blue stage (Part 1) and rushed into Love and Marriage stage (Part 2) and ended up in the I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying stage (Part 3) due to divorce and now are wondering what happened and how can love truly last.

Let’s Stay Together

Lovin’ you whether

Times are good or bad

Or happy or sad

I wanted to use these lyrics from Al Green’s incredible classic, Let’s Stay Together, to ask can really love last whether times are good or bad or happy or sad.  The evidence in our culture shows we can love when everything is good, new or exciting but not at all when it’s bad, sad, or old.

So the question is how can love last for a lifetime? Here are some items I found out over the years and learned from other people who have been married a long time.

My brother-in-law told me one of the biggest enemies to a marriage or relationship is boredom.  How you handle boredom after the excitement of the wedding is important to making love last.

Let’s be frank, here. No matter how good of a marriage or relationship you have…there will be times of boredom.  There’s no way around it. No person can make a relationship exciting or adventurous 100, 90, or even 80 percent of the time.

Unfortunately, our culture wants to be entertained and stimulated constantly and technology has made our demand for that greater.  But, everyday life moves at its own pace and we have to deal with life on a day-to-day basis.

The best advice I’ve ever gotten on how to live life was dealing with boredom. If you can make boredom your friend instead of your enemy, you will live a successful life.

As I turn 40 next week, I can write that has been the most impactful thing I’ve ever heard in becoming an adult.  Because, if you don’t deal with boredom, it will make you leave a marriage when things do go bad or search for another person looking for something new or cause you to have a mid-life crisis and so on.

To me, boredom is the silent killer of marriage and making love that lasts a lifetime.

The next thing is that your marriage or relationship has to be bigger than you. I believe that Christ has to be in the center of your marriage at all times. Here is this from someone who has been married for 26 years:

“It sometimes surprises me just how easy some people can turn on and off the love. They treat love like a water spigot. Their love is conditional, and when conditions are not met, they turn off the love. Or they somehow cannot conceptualize the reality that you can be really angry, disappointed, disgusted, irritated, or just put-off by someone and still love them.”

We do make our love conditional. And soon as our conditions aren’t met, we want to leave.  People will hurt people.  And you will hurt someone especially in a marriage.  There’s no way around it.

But, by having Christ at the center or your marriage or relationship, you will learn the importance of grace, forgiveness, and unconditional love.  We are selfish by nature. So those three concepts can’t be learned by another human being.  It has to come from a source bigger than ourselves.

And keeping Christ at the center of your marriage can give you the strength needed to get through the rough, bad or even tragic spots of a marriage.

The next thing for making love last is each person has to make the marriage or relationship a priority.  This means that marriage must come before the children.

Yes, this will be controversial for someone you.  Especially for those of you who have blended families. But, I have to stand behind this concept.

If you put your children ahead of your marriage and the only thing you and your spouse have in common in raising children…then that marriage will not last. The fastest rate of divorce in America is marriages of 20 years or more and the main thing causing it is the empty nest stage.

The couple has raised their children and the person they have been married to has now become a stranger. You must realize that you are married to your spouse.  And the children are important but they have to be behind your spouse.

I know it’s difficult to find time to be with your spouse when raising children.  However, I believe once a month at least for a couple of hours it should be mommy and daddy time and other couple friends should help each other out with this.

Being connected to your spouse throughout your marriage will be one of the most beneficial things you can do to make love last.

Those are some ideas about What is Love?  I hope you enjoyed reading this series.

God Bless.

Wisdom of Marion Vol 1.39 (What is Love? Pt. 3)

“Seven weeks have passed now since she left me

She shows her face to ask me how I am

She says the kids are fine and that they miss me

Maybe I could come and babysit sometime

She says ‘Are you Ok?’, I was worried about you

Can you forgive me? I hope that you’ll be happy

I’m so happy that I can’t stop crying

I’m so happy I’m laughing through my tears.”

That’s the first verse from Sting’s I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying off of his Mercury Falling CD. And I have listened to this song about 10 to 15 times in preparing to write this column.  Actually, this song is the main reason I decided to write the entire What is Love series.

The song is about man losing his wife to another man and their marriage ending in divorce. What struck me the most is when Sting sings that he’s so happy he can’t stop crying.

I’ve wondered is he happy that he’s a free man or crying about the divorce.  Those lyrics could have multiple meanings to them.  Hmm…

Divorce is a touchy subject to write about, but, it is so commonplace in our culture that everyone has been affected by it. Most people can speak about the statistics of divorce in normal conversation that I don’t want to even go there with this column.

But I’m wondering what happened to that person who said they found someone, Out of the Blue {Part 1} and decided that Love and Marriage {Part 2} do go together to now wanting to end the marriage.

Everyone says that marriage is hard work.  Which is true. But it seems we’ve shifted from marriage as a fantasy of happily ever after to this belief of marriage being hard work that the balance between the two has been lost.

I believe marriage is a combination of the two.  There is an element of fantasy to it as well as an element of hard work.  However, the pendulum has shifted from one end of the spectrum to the other end of so drastically that the divorce rate has been the casuality of that shift.

Also, I believe that marriage puts too much weight on each partner to be their everything in that relationship.  For the wife to be a chef, a maid, and sexually available to her husband when he wants it and for the husband to be a protector, provider, and emotionally available to whenever she needs him to be…is just too much for any human being to fulfill consistently over the course of a marriage.

I recently heard my pastor talk about the last paragraph regarding anyone going into marriage with those expectations will not have a marriage lasting no more than five to seven years at best.  Well, the divorce rate makes his assessment a reality.

Because of those expectations not being fulfilled…I can see why people are divorcing and looking for the next husband or wife (or even co-habitating) in order to be fulfilled and find happiness.

So what do you do…if you don’t want to divorce?  Well, I would love to write that I  have a seven-step plan for no more divorces in America. I don’t. But, let me write this.

I believe there should be only three reasons for ever divorcing: 1) Physical Abuse, 2) Serial Adultery, 3) Criminal Behavior from one of the spouses

Anything else from Boredom (the silent killer in a marriage), to irreconcilable differences (I believe those differences should have been paid attention in the Out of the Blue dating stage), to desiring someone else because you believe they will treat you better, and so on is not grounds for divorce.

I know some of you will disagree with the last paragraph. I get that.  But I have to stand firmly for marriage and getting divorce should be the last option…no, the very last option a couple takes when all other avenues have been truly and fully exhausted.

I believe we do forget that there is a spiritual component to marriage (whether you are religious or not) and when you sever that relationship it creates a void that can not only affect you but your children and their children as well.

Here is this: “When grunge-rock star Kurt Cobain committed suicide, reporters digging into his private life discovered that when he was eight years old, his parents divorced, sending him into a sharp downward spiral. ‘It destroyed him,’ admits his mother, Wendy Cobain. ‘He changed completely.’ The experience was so painful that when Cobain made an earlier suicide attempt in 1994, he had a note in his pocket that said, ‘I’d rather die than go through a divorce.'” {From How Now Shall We Live: Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey}

I will finish with this…if there anybody reading this and is going through a divorce or contemplating a divorce, I would ask with my last breath that you truly reconsider.  Please exhaust all options before ending that marriage.  I didn’t write these columns to make pleas…but in this case I truly hope that one marriage can be saved then this plea will be worth more than the words I have written.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.  {Matthew 19:5-6}

See you for Part 4.

Wisdom of Marion Vol. 1.38 (What is Love Pt.2)

“Love and Marriage,

they go together like a horse and carriage.

This I tell you brother,

you can’t have one without the other.

Love and Marriage,

it’s an institution you can’t disparage.

Ask the local gentry,

and they will say it’s elementary.

Try to separate them,

it’s an illusion.

Well, those lyrics are from Frank Sinatra’s song, Love and Marriage and most people heard of this song from the opening to the Married with Children TV show with Alex and Peg Bundy and their two kids.

Those lyrics have created some interesting questions?

Do Love and Marriage go together like a horse and carriage?

Society says no. You can love without marriage and even marry without love.  That actually doesn’t surprise me.  But, the shocker is that even the Church has follow along with the rest of society.

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/18064?CFID=744166&CFTOKEN=17155866

There’s a link to an article from World Magazine titled, “Boy Meets Girl” and shows that reality in dating amongst Christians.

Love and Marriage is an institution you can’t disparage? Really….hmmm!

Both Love and Marriage have taken some serious punches to the gut in the last 20 years. It’s not hard to look at love and marriage in our society and say why bother?  I don’t need the hurt, headache, and putting up with another’s person baggage.

Well, I’m beginning to realize that the only love and marriage can truly go together is that you have make them both bigger than you and your wife or husband. I believe that is where the problem lies in both them being tied together.

Remember in Part 1, I wrote about finding love and a song I quoted believed that love could be found Out of the Blue and suddenly everything in their world will be alright now that they found that person magically or that universe finally answered their prayer.

Nothing couldn’t be farther from the true.

The entire foundation of that relationship was built of lust and desire, not love and sacrifice for the sake of marriage. There is nothing wrong with lust and desire (in it’s proper context) but to create a relationship from that and I can see why for many people believe that love and marriage don’t go together at all.

So I put this question to my readers, Do you think love and marriage go together? Or is it an illusion (that was indirectly suggested by the song)?

See you for Part 3.

Wisdom of Marion Vol 1.37 (What is Love? Pt.1)

Well, the topic of love has been on my mind recently.

So I have decided to put a Wisdom of Marion perspective on probably the most fascinating topic for all of humanity.

This will be a four-part series dealing with the various aspects of love.  Hopefully, we all will learn something from it or see this eternal topic from a slightly different perspective.

I was listening to this song recently (and this will be a theme of this series) titled,  Out of Blue by Maysa.

Here are some of the lyrics:

“You were the answer to my prayers

Like a bolt of lightning

I wasn’t expecting you so soon

but Out of the Blue straight into my heart

Unselfish love is what you bring

Boy I’m so glad you’re here in my life

and everything is going to be alright.

She has another verse where she mentions the universe answered her prayer.

Hmmm….

Is that how we should meet someone? I know it’s a song and she is using metaphors to flow with the music.

But think about how we met people either for dating potential or a relationship and even marriage.

Is it through friends or family?  Or is it through church or work?

Or should it be….Out of the Blue as the song suggests?

Also, she infers that now she has met her prince, Out of the Blue, everything will be alright.

Or will it?

What does it take for a first meeting (however it came about) into something deeper and lasting like real love?

See you for Part 2.