Grace

I guess I will go ahead and congratulate my father and Terri on getting engaged, especially since I'm pretty sure they are the only ones who read my blog. Haha.  Anyway, congratulations. I think we should write a movie kind of playing off of the "Father of the Bride" and "Father of the Bride II" movie plots where the father of the bride is engaged at the same time as the daughter.  It's great.  Romantic comedy.  It will reach out to all of the "second-marriage" crowd as well as the newbies.  Plus, for the father of the bride role, you could have some man that is easily( and comically)  overwhelmed in juggling his career, his younger son, his own love life, and his daughter's wedding.  It's classic American.  This is not to say that it would be an accurate pic of my father.  However, it would be very modern media to de-emphasize the role of the man and caricature the inability of the man to lead and love his family properly while not getting too stressed.  Not to mention how all this is going on while depicting the women as perfectly beautiful yet demeaning, steamrolling organizing slave-drivers who have it all under control.  It's classic mixed messages.  

It is almost like the battle of the sexes lies in that God intended women to be the head and them men to be followers, but somewhere along the way it got switched up and that is why many women want to take control of everything and many men want to retreat from duty.  I do NOT actually postulate that that is what God intended, but sometimes that is how it feels.  Isn't that how it always goes though? Sin usually does feel like the easier option.

But no one taught us that being a controlling woman is sin.

But no one taught them that the men are to take care of the women and be gentle leaders.

Except the legalistic dating books.

But what if I can't always live up to that?  What will love look like for me then?  How will we find God then?  Is it still a good Christian marriage?

this is usually where we forget about GRACE.  God's blue-green ever-strong, pouring, flowing, freely given, redeeming grace.  Or rather red.  BLOOD red.

it is where we forget about HUMILITY. our weakness. His Power.

I think walking freely in Christ has less to do with whether or not you say the right prayers, have morning quiet time daily, and have "happiness" or "peace."  Maybe it has more to do with realizing how much grace you have been given and that you have don't have to have boundaries or limits in the ways that you care, the depths that you love, the times you forgive, or the quantity you give to people, because it will never be more than what's given to you.  It is funny how that word grace seems to sort of encompass this radical love and forgiveness and power, isn't it?  GRACE.  Maybe thats what they mean when they say you are alive in Christ and have no fear.  Maybe that's what that verse meant when it says you will walk and not grow weary, run and not faint.

And when you give others the space and the GRACE to live and to be, maybe you learn how to do the same for yourself.  Maybe that would be better than "finding myself," whatever that means anyway.  Maybe that would be what it would be like to be free.  Maybe that negates the concepts of limits, self-preservation, boundaries, defense.

Because is it really freedom, if you constantly have to defend it?

And yes that was a political statement.  And, yes, this post went from nuptial engagements to political statements about war.