Unexpected Presence

I didn't sleep well last night, and currently my children and I are scurrying about, getting the house ready for Thanksgiving guests. My daughter, who can be such a balm to my soul, has been consistently asking for more tasks to do to help everything go smoother.

So this morning I was dealing with my third or fifth load of laundry in the basement. Dryer humming, water emptying into the machine. I was quietly intent on what I was doing. Suddenly I turned and saw a bright blue sweater containing my daughter sitting on the chair in the laundry area. I screamed at my full energy capacity for a good solid three seconds as I held my heart in my chest to make sure it didn't fall out. She and I collapsed into laughter for a few minutes as we both recovered from scaring each other to bits. I did not hear her enter. I did not see her sit down. It was just all of a sudden -- she was there.

An hour later I still felt the physical change from that few seconds of a scare.

And I told the Lord, "You know, this is what you do to me! All of a sudden, when I don't expect it at all, You show up just like that." I'm not saying I see Jesus physically present in a blue sweater (or any sweater, or at all) in my laundry room (or other places. Just being clear.), but yes, spiritually He does have a way of just showing up to me like that. Now I don't feel so bad about it scaring the crap out of me.

Do you suppose that He has that sort of crap scaring-out thing in mind? I firmly believe that part of understanding God's personal love for us is realizing His sense of humor. What greater bonding is there than to share this kind of moment of raw reaction? It may not be the most sophisticated form of prayer, but whoever said prayer always had to be sophisticated?

In Praise of Arranged Marriages

You know, maybe having arranged marriages isn't such a bad idea after all. It worked out OK in this movie:


The way this depicts the concept, it's not exactly Tevye and his daughters in Fiddler on the Roof. People of the same faith tradition are given the opportunity for chemistry to happen while meeting each other with the intentional purpose of seeing if marriage is a possibility between them. Gosh, that just seems to cut through so much crap in our culture where "dating" is concerned. There is firmness of purpose about marriage. There is an actual rootedness of marriage in family life, rather than considering commitment and offspring as possible offshoots of romance or random sexual encounter.

Could this system grossly backfire and leave people unhappy? Sure. Does non-arranged marriage grossly backfire and leave people unhappy? I have to answer that?

I suppose the phenomenon of Christian match websites are close to rhyming with this idea, although there isn't the family involvement. Heck, most young adults don't even have any connection with any faith community, let alone having any sense of vibrant traditional connection within their own living family generations. In reality, Christians at least are too far gone for this to be workable in the West, and we are far too independent to imagine this kind of process being "healthy" or workable. This old married woman sorta thinks that's a shame.

I was thinking today about an incident I can laugh at now, 20 years later. When I was in the process of becoming a Catholic and hanging out at Catholic charismatic events in Milwaukee, I learned that a couple people I had thought of as members of my non-denominational fellowship were actually Catholics with one confused foot in both ecclesial communities. I was at a weekend conference once where one such fellow I knew was also attending. He asked me if I would have lunch with him. The ONLY thought I considered in my reply was that I was among a large group of people I didn't know, and I welcomed the chance to not eat by myself, or squished at some table with a group who all knew each other. We sat down, and the first thing he said, in a way-too-animated voice, was, "Wow, that annulment process sure is grueling! I'm so glad to have it behind me."

I think I sorta stared at him for several seconds as it slowly registered in my brain what he was telling me, and why. Other than, Dude, you're 15 years older than me. I doubt that I said anything beyond "Oh," and I'm sure the conversation went downhill from there.

Maybe it is mostly my introversion that makes socializing tiring in the first place, or maybe it is my naivete that figures I can simply have a nice friendship with a man, or maybe it is how comforting I find it for all expectations to be laid out up front, so there don't have to be surprises. All these aspects make the prospect of knowing "we are testing out our marriage potential, and here are all the objective criteria I wish to consider about you" very reassuring.

Since I'm already married, maybe I should become a matchmaker.