The right answer? Her tights itched. Jessica offered to buy her new tights and ballet was back on :)

That weird thing by my ear is a pop stopper on a mic stand

In a continuation on the series about things I’m learning about maturity (as I originally posted here) I’d like to talk about what matters the most.  You see I hadn’t figure this out in application until recently.  What matters most hasn’t changed, but the application of that has become much, much more important to me.  What matters most to me is my relationship with my Lord and Savior and that relationship being reflected in my day-to-day life.  My friend Craig told me recently in a conversation that he could tell a difference between Randy 2 years ago and present day Randy.

I used to run my mouth a lot (OK, I probably still do).  Maybe it was pride, maybe it was because I’m an extroverted influencer, but I’ve started listening more.  That only took 30+ years to figure out.  Listen more.  It isn’t as if James hadn’t told us in his letter to the diaspora of the church at Jerusalem that they should listen more.  It isn’t that I hadn’t read that letter tens of times.  It is that I didn’t realize I wasn’t listening.  Do you ever think that you are listening but you’re not?  I am learning to listen more.  The problem is that it takes discipline to listen.  It takes discipline to shut your jaw muscles down and just listen.  I’ve met good listeners and when they listen to me I feel loved.  I need to love by listening more.  Craig told me that during a series of tasks with him that I wasn’t talking as much.  I was working more, but I was also listening more.

A week or so before that I had another friend, Jim, suggest I listen (there’s that word again!) to some lessons by a mutual friend, Jeremy Thomas, who is the pastor at Fredericksburg Bible Church.  As I listened a yearning for a deeper understanding of God’s word just dominated my thoughts.  I have been insatiable in my appetite for what matters most: knowing my God more.  Jim also suggested I re-listen (and finish listening to) the Bible Framework series by Charlie Clough.  There is so much good material in that series.  The series is about thinking.  I know, that’s goofy, but its over 200 lessons on thinking as a Christian rather than just being a thoughtless Christian (that’s kinda blunt, but I don’t know how else to put it).  Craig is a good thinker and when he mentions that he thinks I’m changing it means a great deal to me.

What matters most (my relationship with the Godhead) impacts my work, my family, my friends, and my church.  At work I want to do an amazing job, but this change in my focus means that I actually pay more attention to details (which probably thrills some of my co-workers to no end).  My family has been getting a lot more of me praying and looking for teaching opportunities [and hopefully more listening].  My friends will hopefully find me a better listener – I’m sure praying a lot more for them (even if they’re agnostic or atheist).   At church I’ve been trying harder to pour myself into preparation for my lessons (not that I spent only a few minutes before).  I want my brothers and sisters there to hunger more despite being fed more, to listen more, and to grow more.  I want them to know I love them.  Not to be a creeper, but I want you to know I love you.  When Craig tells me he’s seeing changes he’s telling me he loves me and he’s been listening and watching.  I’d hate for that message (of love) to stop with me.  Listen to someone else today; love them through listening.  It is amazing what you’ll hear.  It is amazing what you’ll learn.  It is amazing how you will grow.

I want to challenge my dyed in the wool Republican friends and my dyed in the wool Democrat friends to please explain to me why it is OK for either party to try to justify the use of the word ‘retard’ or ‘retarded’ (with or without the f-bomb) to describe the other party or parties members?  I sometimes slip the word retarded into my sentences and once its out I think, “shoot, that’s not a good word to use.”  I have a personal story that ties in with the potential of possibly having ended up mentally retarded because of meningitis at 13 months old.  God spared me that consequence, but I don’t take it lightly.  Life is a blessing – handicapped or otherwise – and so I’m going to own my own foolishness – I don’t say it often and will attempt to not use it ever again [out of proper context].

Why is it OK for humans to talk of one another that way?  Because we have freedom of speech.  Yeah, that’s it.  They do have the freedom to say all sorts of things.  But it doesn’t make the politicians look like competent representatives of the people.  Are you a hired or appointed official?  You represent the people: don’t use the words of offense to describe others without serious contemplation.  If you don’t you’re just a loud mouthed individual without self control.  Are you leaking national secrets?  Maybe not, but if you lack self control over your mouth in public I’m far more afraid of your private mistakes.  Are you a nationally syndicated talk-show host?  I know you get ratings, but if you refuse to censor yourself to the point of describing a wide swath of your co-citizens, you’re probably not doing a good job communicating real content.

I have friends and acquaintances all over the globe, and some of them look at the US’s citizens’ flippent, sarcastic, affluent, offensive, and selfish attitudes and think, “this is why they are fading out of prominence.”  How can we expect to prod this generation and other generations onto acts of courage, bravery, selflessness, leadership and humanitarianism if what we’re saying, doing and promoting is selfish or insulting?  Why should governments we are at odds with accept our offers of peace if we look like double-standard oriented fools?  This isn’t a nation that was just founded on liberty and freedom of speech, but also an attempt to provide a safe place for citizens to live their lives without oppression.  We had a system in place with public servants.  Servants?  Yes, servants.  Folks who served the people rather than insulting the people.  I don’t want to go back to the good old days – we can only move forward from this sad state of affairs.  However, I do want to challenge anyone reading this: what makes it worth aligning with these two major parties if they have major representatives acting as though their words can’t and don’t have an effect if they’re not on the campaign trail?

Answers I won’t accept:

Because.

Everything evil that has happened to the country has come from party X.

Come on, its not that big a deal.

Internationalism-sminternationalism.

Last night my in-law’s dog Kicker died on the way home from the vet. As much as my sour attitude lent itself to the name Kicker, he was a great dog and it will be weird to go to their place and not have him running around and barking at pretty much anything that moved outside.

One of my all time favorite memories with Kicker was when I used to tickle Jessica when we were dating and her laughter would lead him to bark at me and try to jump up to get me to stop. He was a loving dog and he was much loved. We will miss him.

Sharks are fish.  So you could call all fish sharks.

I’m going to pass on doing that.  I’m also not going to bother her with the explanation of why that is not logically consistent.

Who: Me

When: 1991-ish

Where: Philo, CA

What: Tooth brushing insanity

Why: There’s this story.

About the time I estimated above I was in California for a long summer stay at my grandparent’s and aunt and uncle’s place.  There was this odd feeling on one of my teeth that I was sure was the cavity of all cavities.  It sat there on the top of one of my molars calling out to me that I was a moron and didn’t brush enough.  My tongue would brush it over and over again in a nervous tick that wanted to see if it had gone away over night while sleep fixed my tooth.  Why does sleep fix teeth?  It doesn’t, but I was hopeful.

There was a long, thin crack running across the top of the molar that might as well have been the grand canyon in miniature.  My parents were going to be ticked because of the $5,000 in dental work this crack was going to cost them.  So to help prevent other multi-billion dollar molar repairs I began brushing.  Regularly.  For 5 minutes or so.  Several times a day.  Between meals.  Between my teeth.  Flossing irregularly compared to brushing but obsessing on the massive gap, wider than David Letterman’s front tooth gap, in my rear right molar.  I was prepared for some motorcycling stuntman to want to jump the massive span.  Must brush.

And so for weeks I brushed my teeth with a religious zealotry that could only be matched by fervent televangelists who just needed a few more million dollars to complete that mansion that “god wanted them to have.”  I was pretty sure God wanted me to have my teeth.  So I brushed them more.  All while being in California with my relatives.

A while later I went to the dentist with GREAT fear.  Worried that the cavity was going to be much worse than my estimated $5,000.00.  The hygienist looked at my teeth, cleaned them, made me swish fluoride around in my mouth – and then went to get the dentist.  I had an empty stomach, but had I not I think that my Jr. High bowels would have evacuated with fear of the impending doom.  Bring on the judge and jury to sentence my mouth to needles, Novocain, and numbness.

Alas, I had a plastic composite that had been used as a temporary stop-gap because I had a low spot in my molar.  By a dentist some time before.  It had warn out and was just ready to be replaced.  I had no cavity.  Zero dollars in repairs.

I didn’t brush my teeth for a week.

Just kidding, I brush my teeth daily whether they need it or not.

My wife tells doctor that she’s been married 11+ years.

Doctor looks shocked that my wife would marry at 13.

Doctor calms down when she looks at the chart that shows my wife is actually 31 and not 24.

I married young, but not that young.

What’s a rabbi?  Here is a short bit of text I wrote for my handout (it is by no means thorough):

Rabbis would have been teachers of the Old Testament, but primarily the Law or Pentateuch. Typically a student would approach a rabbi and ask if he may follow the rabbi, if the rabbi rejected him, he would then go off to a trade. The student of the rabbi was called a talmidim. If you’ve ever heard of the talmud, it is the a Judaic book that outlines traditional rabbinical teachings. Christ operated contrary to this and sought out His disciples and told them to follow Him. Furthermore the disciples were at least in part already involved in trades – so they would have to walk away from their careers and lives as they had expected them to be and instead joined themselves to Christ.

A rabbi was expected to have a physically following disciple or disciples, and Elijah and Elisha were an important example of this concept in the Old Testament [I Kings 19:19-21]. Time was to be spent together and a lifestyle that represented the teacher was to be lived in front of the following disciple. Discipleship meant being seen with the rabbi so that others would begin to see what the rabbi taught as see the fruit of the teachings worked out in the lives of the disciples.

What I have been thinking about is this question: Who are today’s rabbis?  Who do people follow and identify themselves with?  Historically it was a life devoted to a teacher and their teachings.  In modern first world America, do we have time for this rabbi/disciple concept?  Today we follow people on twitter, television, the Internet, and of course in our cars to the store, but do we really follow teachers and devote ourselves to their teachings?

Are rabbis Richard Dawkins, Rush Limbaugh, or Barry Obama?  Of those three one is anti-religion but religious about his anti-religion, one is a right-wing-loud mouth, and one is a president with big words and many promises but single handedly incapable of delivering on what he wants to promise.  Do we follow them?  I personally wouldn’t follow them.  I wouldn’t follow Oral Roberts, Bill Gates, or Joel Osteen.

Who is your rabbi?

What I want to know from you is this: when someone writes you a letter, by hand, stamps it, mails it, and sends you a message, is it personally more significant than an email, even if it isn’t different in content?  Is it like a song where it strikes you as personal and powerful compared to a simpler happy birthday wish?

If you’re not familiar with the five love languages let me give you this simple list of the five:

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch

The gist of the book is that each person has a primary way that they perceive  and express love with their spouse.  Furthermore each spouse is strongly encouraged to explore their partner’s love language and keep that in mind when expressing love for him or her.  I spent quite a bit of time liking the idea of focusing on exploring my bride’s love language and even figured out that this could be used, in a modified way, with my friends to express care for them.  Ta-da!  So did the book’s authors and other books in the series of love languages and their application were born and money was had through conferences, tests, merchandising and copyright infringement lawsuits from unlicensed tattoos [I made that last one up].  This is psychology stuff, so I’m sure that someone also discovered a sixth, seventh and eighth love language and has been trying to write papers proving the adequacy of those numbers of love languages for thesis papers and making a good practice out of helping marriages and relationships discover their tertiary love language.

Here’s the rub: this is overly complex despite the simplicity and it gets used as a poor excuse for husbands and wives to not love one another.  At least not to their fullest.  I want to explain that moving forward from here I’m going to be focused on a few Bible verses that I think make the five love languages childs play, and probably unnecessary.  The first place we should take a look is Ephesians 5:22-27:

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.

What I see as I meditate on the above passage is something beyond the five love languages and something that should drive a wife absolutely coo-coo-bananas in love with her husband.  A self-sacrificing husband.  A guy who takes the five love languages in, sees their inadequacy, and says, “I’m going to love you in a million ways, and these five are merely a tiny, tiny tip of the iceberg.”  I recently saw on Twitter a guy who said that he was sorry to his wife (publicly on Twitter?) that his primary love language was acts of service.  Lameness.  If her love language is knitting pot holders it doesn’t matter.  If his language was bringing stray cats home to be fed, bathed, and neutered it doesn’t matter.  Sacrificial love trumps all of the given concepts of love languages because it looks for opportunities to love in every aspect, every place, and it is not strapped to a single, primary concept of perceived or expressed love.

As a secondary point against not stopping with this love language concept is that one of the joys of my marriage with my wife has been exploring each of the facets of expression of love and trying to see how they can be expressed in deeper, more meaningful ways.  Just as humans mature (or at least should mature) we look for ways to express love in a sacrificial, yet exploratory way.  To make a food analogy just because I like vanilla ice cream doesn’t mean I don’t explore toppings, other flavors and other combinations within the world of ice cream (or frozen desserts).  The same analogy applied to music means I don’t stop at the Beatles just because I like rock and roll quartets.  Bring on trios [Cream], duos [Simon & Garfunkel], classical, dance, beat boxing, and opera*.

I’ve discovered that my wife pretty much likes all five love languages [in different quantities at different times] because she knows that they’re expressing love to her.  I would probably not be wrong in saying that 99.999% of guys love physical touch [which often gets interpreted as physical intimacy, and for the sake of argument I'm going there now], but if let us face the facts: not all gals are wired for 24/7 physical touching and there may come a time when they’re bleeding, PMS-ing, medically unavailable, or holding a kitchen knife.  It might be a good time, Mr. physical touch, to explore the finer nuances of quality time, words of affirmation, gifts [read: chocolate], or acupressure to relieve headaches.  Sacrificially speaking get a grip, turn off your hormones for a moment and love your wife some other way so she doesn’t feel the need to lock herself in the bathroom, wear chain armor, or buy a slice-wire-bikini from Victoria’s Secret Weapon.

I want to close by saying I don’t hate the general principles behind the five love languages.  They were a good starting point for me and helped me grasp why I might be miss-communicating with my bride-to-be.  They’re not an excuse to be short sighted, justify weaknesses, or get in a rut.  Make it a point to look for ways to create a richer, more complex relationship with your spouse by abandoning your love language and loving with your exploratory, revolutionary hats on.

*Stay away from country music which is an infectious disease [Just kidding (Not really)]

I haven’t seen five movies in the theater in one year in over a decade [newly wed in TX].