When I talk to Chris, my wife, I am doing more than transmitting information from my lips to her ears. Little ears perk up from behind the couch and catch every word. My words carry weight. One day, my daughters will find them acceptable or unacceptable from the boys they date and the men they marry. “My dad never talked like that to me,” they will say. At least that’s what I want them to say.
When I talk to Chris, I model for them what a husband sounds like. But sometimes the sound stings.
When I think about the diminishing of God’s intended brilliance in men — as fathers, husbands, workers, adventurers, lovers, life-poets, and the sacrificial lambs for their wives — I cannot hold back the shame. How I’ve blown it again and again.
I remember being alone in the truck one day during my second year of marriage and wondering out loud, “What am I doing?” I doubted my decision to marry. I doubted my ability to be what I already thought I was: a good man. I was arrogant and delusional. If beauty existed in marriage, I couldn’t find it.
When things were good, early on, they were great. When they were bad, they were ugly.
But now, Chris and I have waded into new waters — knee deep in our sixteenth year. We continue to chase dreams and through it all, Chris and I must continue to communicate. It’s the glue to our marriage.
How To Talk To A Woman
I’m a talker. My words, however, do not always bring joy. Often, because I can wield them with pith and thrift, I bash and claw over those I love most.
The church we attended a few years ago offered the Eucharist each Sunday. The elders set the Communion table and offered the wafer and the wine. They instructed us, before we partook, to reflect on the message and encouraged to search our souls for unconfessed wrongs.
God taught me the power of confession through that time of Communion and reflection. I may bash and claw, but I know that I do it. I’m aware. After awareness, however, I must climb my steepest relational hill: confession. It must move from my lips first. It must pull in my love and whisper to her. This is the hardest thing a man can do.
When I’d hear the music play, soft and ethereal in the background, I’d run to God. I no longer sat in my church chair but was transported to the foot of the cross. And there he hung, mangled and disfigured; gasping for breath. The sky, a dark vise, pressing the life out of him.
Beside him, the thief. I hear him confess.