A. Because married life isn’t supposed to be easy: when Tom Hanks (as Jimmy Dugan) said “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.”, he must have been recalling Ecclesiastes’ writings.  Trying to live a trouble-free life is futile; the real joy comes not from absence of pain, but from knowledge that you’re facing whatever is coming your way as a team.

B. Because pain is weakness leaving the body, as the Marines say.  Struggles in a relationship make is stronger, if you’re committed to it.  Every misunderstanding or miscommunication is an opportunity to choose love instead of anger, self-denial instead of selfishness, forgiveness instead of bitterness.  Oftentimes, the only thing you have to go on is a promise you made to the other person.  Almost always, you can only see how much you have grown and improved as a person in the rear-view mirror.

C. Last, but most important – because of who my wife is: a wonderful woman whose admirable traits and characteristics I don’t mention nearly often enough.  A warm, charming, bubbly girl.  A dedicated friend.  A concerned, caring sister.  An intellect and a scholar.  A delicate, yet strong woman.  A daughter of God.  A loving person who will one day be an amazing mother.  Someone who has transformed me, but says that I’m still a ‘rough draft’ and that she needs a few more decades to complete the project.  She praises me, helps me, pushes me, encourages me, respects me, makes me laugh, and kicks my butt in any and all board games.  As we do this complicated 12-round cage-match tango routine through the sometime stormy, sometime calm seas of life, we’re becoming closer friends, confidants and soul-mates.  I look forward to spending every day of the rest of my life with you, honey.  I love you.

Ran across an interesting post on the Surf Report: a compare and contrast of fast food advertisements and how the actual food looks like. While an interesting peek into the world of advertising, capitalism, or even the American culture in general, it made me think of some other areas of life where advertising/expectations are quite different that the real thing.

• Politics: politicians during campaign season vs. politicians in office
• Marriage/relationships: courtship/engagement vs. actual married life

What are some others? Leave comments.

When you’re in a circle of people (dinner table, around the bar, corner of the function room), and you’re the only one talking, you might be making a fool out of yourself.

Talking too much is never a good idea. No matter how good what you have to say is, other people probably don’t share your enthusiasm. Instead of carrying on, ask leading questions.

When you’re complaining about an inconvenience or a set of circumstances that you’re not too happy with to somebody who isn’t a close friend, you’re probably making a fool out of yourself.

Your house burning down or loosing a limb is not what I’m talking about. Those are tragedies. What I’m talking about is the post office closing 2 minutes before you got there, or not having enough aprons at the kitchen where you’re volunteering. A bystander has much better things to do than listen to you describe how awful it is that the ATM doesn’t work or that the waiter hasn’t cleaned off the table yet. “A close friend” exception is there because, presumably, a) s/he probably knows enough about you to let this one slide and b) s/he will tell you when you’re being a whiner or acting like a spoiled brat.

When you rev your engine and try to do something showy with your car – take a sharp corner, drift through a curve, take somebody off the line – in front of on-lookers or other drivers, there’s a very high chance that you’re making a fool out of yourself.

Speeding tickets are expensive and concrete curbs hurt a lot. Save stunt driving for empty parking lots or race tracks. Seriously.

Whenever you write an angry email, leave a ranting voicemail, or complain vociferously about someone’s words, actions or personality, you’re very likely making a fool out of yourself.

No matter how good you think your intel is, you probably don’t know the whole story. You just don’t. Trust me. When something that seemed like a sure bet, something that you had completely figured out proves to be completely untrue, and the person ‘at fault’ turns out to have been right all along, you will be one red-faced fool.

Say it with me: am I talking too much? Am I acting like a spoiled brat? I better not. I probably don’t know the whole story. Repeat these to yourself when your spider-sense starts tingling, and you might just save yourself some serious embarrassment.

And lastly, in the interest of full disclosure, if you still haven’t guessed, most of these examples are personal ones. Hopefully, having others learn from my mistakes makes up for me being a buffoon oh, so many, many times.

Nevertheless, the American society is at a cross-roads today, as Carl points out in The Great Reset. The way we have been living (spending more than we earn, ever-increasing demand for luxury items, skyrocketing standards of living, increasing house sizes, etc., etc.) is simply not sustainable. People have been warning us about this, but the sound of the alarm was drowned out by TV/radio/Internet/billboard/print commercials. Then, 2008 happened. And now, in 2009, everyone, including the President, is telling us that this year will be just as bad, if not worse, as 2008.

The silver lining in all of this is that frugality, spending less than you earn, actually SAVING money are making a comeback. But the marketing departments have done such a good job in the last 2 decades that coming back to a sustainable way of life is not a sure bet. That’s why our society is at a cross-roads. Will we stop paying attention to ads, and stop filling our houses with stuff we don’t need? Will we start putting aside a significant amount of money for rainy days or retirement? Will we stop buying what we cannot afford (i.e. putting it on the credit card)?

It’s hard for me to say “I hope so, and I hope 2009 is so hard for the people of America, that the ridiculous lifestyle inflation is dealt a fatal blow,” because I’m not suffering the consequences of the economic downturn. I have a fairly secure job, and I can make the house payment. The thousands who have been laid off in the past weeks don’t have the same luxury. But, hard as it may be, I really do hope so.

I hope 2009 is a huge wake up call to everyone who thought that you can keep buying bigger and better things, and you can do it NOW, without waiting, without having to work hard for it. I hope that in 10 or 20 years, the end of the first decade of the 21 century is seen as a turning point for America, where wrong decisions are admitted to, and corrective steps are taken. When a new era of common-sense and ‘pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps’ attitude is ushered in. When entitlement finally gets flushed out of our systems.

It will be excruciatingly hard, though. As people who work with kids know, it’s one thing to train up a child, and it’s another thing to train up a child who has been spoiled rotten.

First, a passage quoted in Scripture Union‘s Encounter With God included this verse:

Isaiah 9:20
On the right they will devour,
but still be hungry;
on the left they will eat,
but not be satisfied.

I made a joke to a friend about how Isaiah was up to date on the 21st century American politics, and left it at that. However, several days later, another Encounter With God arrived, discussing Isaiah 25:1-12. The Meditate part of the email included this paragraph:

Israel in the eight century BC needed a “refuge from the storm” of Assyria, and would need even more a refuge from the storm of Babylon in the sixth century. Throughout her history, this small country was caught up in the rivalry of the superpowers of her day, Egypt and Mesopotamia, at the mercy of whoever controlled the trade routes along the fertile crescent and inland from the Mediterranean coastline. When she trusted in God, she was protected, but when she played a political game of alliances and military strategy, she was swallowed up in the defeat of the weaker side. Losing sight of the covenant relationship with God as King of Israel, and trusting in human kings to fight battles, form alliances and unite the people, led inevitably to defeat, humiliation, exile and, worst of all, apostasy. Abandoning faith in God led to ruin.

Doesn’t this speak to the faith we tend to put in our political parties or the allegiances we declare to individual politicians? Or, inversely, the concerns and worries we entertain when the people from the other side of the aisle win on Election Tuesday? I think it’s pretty safe to say that we take some of the attention that belongs to God and give it to the government, instead.

That’s not to say that involvement in the political process is a waste of time – more on that later. But when it comes to celebrating your candidate’s victory or mourning his/her loss, it’s good to step back and remember that the politicians’ impact on your life is incredibly infintesimal, compared to that of God. So, with the historic 2008 elections behind us, let’s remember that while some posts have been decided for the next 2, 4 or 6 years, our eternal souls will outlast any political term, and what happens with them is a lot more important than what happens in Washington, D.C.