Everyday Valentine's Day

 If I’m being honest, it’s hard to pin down an actual date or moment when you just “know” this relationship is different. Truth is, there are usually a number of moments that cause you to take notice and then cumulatively, one day, it all comes together and you know this is “the one.” I can’t speak for Honey and when/where/what those moments were from her perspective, but from mine, there are about ten of those moments. The day we met — I was captivated from the first look. The first date — she showed up with Kool Aid dyed purple hair, ate my ice cream cone and we watched a meteor shower, shooting stars, from the hill overlooking the place we now live. We almost kissed, but we just held hands. Even now, tears fill my eyes when I look up toward that hill and think of how that moment made me feel. The first time we were apart — I took her to breakfast at the Skyline Cafe before school that morning because she was leaving as soon as school got out. Our first New Year’s Eve together — after being apart for weeks and unable to connect with each other for hours due to being lost in Tupelo (remember there was no GPS or cell phones then). We reunited and it felt like the reviving of life in the valley of dry bones from Ezekiel. The next New Year’s Eve we got married. There are half a dozen more, but those belong to us and I’m not going to share them, but I do have one more I want to share.

I knew something had changed when we celebrated our first Valentine’s Day together. That night I cooked her a candlelight dinner, chicken parmesan with garlic bread and fettuccine Alfredo and Welch’s sparkling grape juice. In my eighteen years of life I had never cooked a meal for myself, much less anyone else, which tells you just how serious this relationship had become. In hindsight it should have been obvious, and looking back at choices my parents allowed me to make following that night, I’m pretty sure it was obvious. We weren’t just two kids dating, or children playing house, we were in the genesis of an adult love, not yet ready to bloom, but certainly planted and taking root.

Kierkegaard said life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards. That's certainly true for this story. Everyone close to me knows I love to cook, but only now am I able to see the ingredients that created this culinary fascination. My love of cooking matured over time, but my desire to see that look on her face was born that night. When she saw the table and tasted the food I saw something in her I’d never seen before, in her or anyone else, and thirty years later my appetite for it remains insatiable. I don’t know what to call it or how to describe it, other than to say I think it was love. Not love for me, but feeling loved, if there's even any difference. George Strait said it best, “You look so good in love.” I’d never seen that before and I’d never experienced the way it made me feel, but I’ve been chasing it ever since.

These days I prefer to make my own red sauce and Alfredo sauce from scratch, as opposed to the jar of Ragu and Lipton pack of noodles I used in 1994. Honey is the expert in bread making so I leave that to her, but as recently as yesterday I cooked her one of her favorite dishes. I love to cook for her, placing my creations before her with the reverence and love of a sacrifice on an altar, and then I step back and watch for her reaction. It’s just a moment, a flash as quick, but also as bright, as the shooting stars we sat under that first night together, filling me with that same feeling I had when our fingers first touched and then intertwined. It’s true that a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but that is a two way street. I learned that on our first Valentine’s Day together, and I’ve wanted every day to be Valentine’s Day for her ever since.

Eshet Chayil

 “Who can find a woman of virtue?” This is the question at the heart of the last chapter of the book of wisdom known to us as “Proverbs.” With all credit to Rachel Held Evans for introducing me to this understanding, the words that follow this question are more love poem of adoration than checklist of requirements. The phrase “virtuous woman” is better understood as “woman of valor.” It is a translation of the Hebrew phrase “eshet chayil” and is a sort of homage to the ancient epic war poems about valiant heroes of battle like Odysseus and Achilles from The Odyssey and The Illiad.

Much of the teaching I’ve personally heard on this text imposes an impossible to attain standard, and yet, historically it was the exact opposite. Some Jewish tradition says it was composed by Abraham as a eulogy to Sarah, while others believe it was written by Solomon to honor his mother Bathsheba. RHE introduced me to the idea that in some homes it was sung by the men of the home on the night of the sabbath meal as a means of praising and showing honor and gratitude to the women of the home. It wasn’t “this is how you should be” (prescriptive), but “this is what you are to me” (declarative). A love song, not a job requirement. If Proverbs 31 is to be a model in any way, it is a model provided by an ancient author to modern men, showing them how to notice, praise and appreciate the countless everyday works of the women in their lives, and how blessed they are to have them, be they wives, mothers, aunts, or sisters. The virtuous woman poem is not “hey ladies do all of this” but “hey guys, notice all they do.” In the Hebrew Bible, the arrangement of the books flows naturally from Proverbs 31 and its love poem to the eshet chayil, to the book of Ruth as an illustration of her in story form. Ruth is called an eshet chayil by Boaz, her future husband, in Ruth 3:11. 

Recently, Honey and I and some friends watched the release of season 4 of The Chosen in theaters. One thing that stood out to me in the three episodes we watched, which seem to be an intentional focus of the entire show, is the way the women around Jesus are honored and elevated. The scene that moved me to write this portrayed the wife of a character making it known to her husband in dramatic fashion, that her only desire is for him to follow Jesus, no matter what, no matter where, no matter the cost. Standing in the hallway after the showing, my mind drifted to the woman of valor in my life, and my heart longed to sing my own song of gratitude. I’m not a singer, I’m not a good songwriter, but I am a writer, so here is my best shot.

There are so many things about my Honey that I could say, which are true and worthy of praise, but are also seen and known by countless people, even near strangers. Her preternatural kindness and thoughtfulness, her generous gift giving, her fierce loyalty, her ability to adopt and master new skills, her raw honesty, her strength and resiliency. All of these are worthy of praise, but they are also obvious to most everyone. I wanted to share some insight into some of the amazing things that only I have been audience to.

For nearly 30 years, my Honey has trusted and followed me everywhere I’ve told her God wanted us to go. In thirty years together, I’ve made some pretty big, life changing decisions. In every one of them I was perfectly convinced it was at God’s direction. When I asked her to join me in those steps of faith she never once hesitated.

The first time I asked her to follow me as I follow Him, took her away from her support system — her mother, sister, best friend, church family, co-workers — to move to Memphis so that I could study to be a preacher. To fully appreciate the faith this took I need to round out the details. In July of 1996 she was married to a jerk of a man with a rapidly increasing drinking problem and little regard for anyone but himself. A few days later he was “born again” and “all in” with a faith that she’d never even seen him demonstrate, much less live by. We both had solid jobs, a one year old child, had just purchased our first home. What I was asking was for us to quit our jobs, sell our home, move away from our support system and depend upon the generosity of others for our financial support. Did I mention that when all of this came to fruition we also had a newborn baby? She never hesitated.

The next time I asked her to “Go from your country, your people and your household to the land I will show you” was fifteen years later. Once again, I was asking her to leave everything she had left once before. We both quit good jobs, left our family, friends and church family and sold her house by the creek on our family farm. The destination this time was South Georgia, where once again we would depend upon the generosity of others for our financial support. We lived in South Georgia, but I regularly took my family to Central America, usually in some of the most poverty stricken or dangerous countries and cities in the world. 

In time, I asked her to leave again, and this required her moving from what she considers her dream home. Our time away led to new friends who became family and then I asked her to leave them behind to follow me to North Alabama and closer to the land of my nativity. As always, whether to Memphis or Georgia or Central America or Florida or Alabama, she always took my hand and walked right beside me, trusting that if I told her this is what God wanted us to do, we were doing it, period. We’d figure out the how and the details along the way, or He would simply open the doors and pave the way for us. Don’t misunderstand, every single one of these steps was filled with more blessings than I have time to illustrate, but those came later. What came first was the step of faith where nothing was certain, and it always meant that something of value had to be left behind.

The last time I asked her to follow me at His guidance is perhaps the biggest “ask” of all. We are nearing fifty, the kids are grown, the grandchildren have come, money was good, life was stable and dare I say, easy. Honey has a sixth sense that is astonishing, no matter how many times I’ve witnessed it. She can pick up on things long before they come to light, so she probably saw it coming. I asked her to follow me as I abandoned my career of twenty-five years. Despite a 60% pay cut, even though it meant moving into an 180 square foot converted shed, she said, “Let’s do it.” 

Who can find a woman of virtue? I did, and her value is far greater than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life. Her husband praises her: “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.” A woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Beauty Will Save the World

 

I was thirty-six years old the first time I visited an art museum. The Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. To be brutally honest, I thought art was stupid. It was the kind of thing people did if they couldn’t hit a curveball. You’ll have to forgive me if I had a grudge against art, it almost kept me from graduating high school. Just before the Christmas break of my Senior year, my guidance counselor sat me down and explained to me that I was lacking a half credit in art that was required to graduate. The reason I was lacking this credit was because during my freshman year I was thrown out of art class on the first day for making a sarcastic and disrespectful comment about art. Nearly four years later it came back to bite me.

I wasn’t taught to hate art, it was just kind of a byproduct of the environment I grew up in. No one that I was around on a regular basis though much of art. It was the kind of thing that hippies, druggies and weirdos cared about. You know, people who didn’t do important things, real work. That all changed for me when I stood in front of the painting “Crucifixion: Corpus Hypercubus.” Something about this painting capture my attention. I never understood the purpose of those benches I often saw in movies set in an art gallery, but now I did. Standing in front of this painting, I felt compelled to sit down and just stare, to look closely and examine deeply. I really can’t explain it to you, but that day, in that moment, for the first time, I “got it.” The rest of the day was a dream as I tried to soak up nearly four decades of neglect in one afternoon.

I’m not expert on art and I’m certainly not an artist myself, but in the twelve years since that day, I have come to love, appreciate and value art in all its forms, and it comes in many forms. I’ve witnessed the creation of art in kitchens and concert halls as often as on canvases. I’ve seen it in the cultivation of a garden and the construction of a sacred space. If you are one who is tempted to think of art as a wast of time and resources, I want you to think about this. Imagine a world without movies, tv, games, fashion, novels, music, photography, beautiful cars. If you are interested in any of those things, you should realize they are all the product of an artist.

Art is about expression, about things that can’t necessarily be spoken, but can be felt, often universally. God Himself is an artist, as anyone who has ever watched the sun rise or set knows. One of the most historically renowned artists, Michelangelo, said, “The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.” Art is our feeble and frail attempt to be like God, to create something from nothing more than our imagination or perspective. 

Our world needs art now as much as it ever has. Art is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Think about the last time you witnessed something beautiful that stopped you in your tracks. Remember how it made you feel, how it was transcendent and powerful, something you felt deep inside of you. If you can return to that moment, you can understand why Fyodor Dostoyevsky had his protagonist, Prince Lev Nikolyaevich Myshkin in the novel The Idiot, declare, “I believe the world will be saved by beauty.”

To borrow from Brian Zahnd, who wrote a book titled “Beauty Will Save the World”, “Our task is not to protest the world into a certain moral conformity, but to attract the world to the saving beauty of Christ. We do this best, not by protest or political action, but by enacting a beautiful presence within the world. The Western church has had four centuries of viewing salvation in a mechanistic manner, presenting it as a plan, system or formula. It would be much better if we would return to viewing salvation as a song we sing. The book of Revelation (from which George Frideric Handel found the lyrics for his Hallelujah chorus) doesn’t have any plans or formulas, but it has lots of songs. The task of the church is to creatively and faithfully sing the songs of the Lamb in the midst of a world founded upon the beastly principles of greed, decadence, and violence. What is needed is not an ugly protest, but a beautiful song; not a pragmatic system, but a transcendent symphony. Why? Because God is more like a musician than a manager, more like an composer than a clerk keeping ledgers.”

The opening section of the Sermon on the Mount is a sort of preamble to the kingdom of God. One we call the “Beatitudes.” The word is a sort of contraction of the words beautiful and attitudes, the beautiful attitudes that describe the beauty of a world where people are humble, meek, merciful, pure hearted, and peacemakers. True, there is so much ugly in the world, but there is also beauty, and where beauty is lacking, you can create beauty with nothing more than an attitude or action benevolently directed toward your neighbor. When you see beauty you see God and when you create beauty you are like your Father in Heaven.