AHHHHHHH!!!!

I am such a dumbass. I spend all of this time trying to help people and even counseling people in their marriages. Then, I fall on my face with my wife Teresa, treating her horribly. She was feeling a lot of stuff because of the holidays, because of a great deal of dysfunction and pain from this time of year in her childhood. She was acting out of that, and was complaining. I was tired and crabby, and I was sick of the holiday myself. Rather than listen to her and support her, I got defensive and told her, basically, that she needed to stop her whining. Then I compounded the problem by hiding behind some kind of moral and relational superiority by stating that I was just trying to challenge her, as if it were for her own good. God, who is gracious and merciful, let me know that I am a dumbass.

I have no idea what it will take to retrain myself. I need to reorient my entire thinking process, so that when I am in situations like that, I can make better choices. Afterward, it is easy to see the whole stupid path I took, but in the moment, I do not deal with my wife in some kind of vacuum. She and I are intimately involved in each other's lives, and it is near impossible to break away from that. There has to be a way, though, to be involved emotionally with her, but to still choose to serve my wife lovingly.

The most important thing I can do for her is to help her feel important, safe, and loved. I don't want to do the opposite any longer. I hear people say, Dude, you're just a guy, and that's what guys do. I simply don't accept that. I want to put on the new man and do away with the old. I am tired of settling in my marriage. I want to be an exceptional man and an exceptional husband. Any less would be selling myself short of who God created me to be.

Give It All Up?

Well, tomorrow's my birthday. I am finally turning 21. Okay, I'm a little older than that. Teresa and I went out with Greg and Lora, my mom, and our kids for pizza. It is a tradition for my birthday to go to this one place for pizza every year. I love the place.

I'm getting tired of it all, however. I have done many of the same traditions for many years with my birthday and Christmas, and they are all starting to feel contrived to me. I am going to race to bake cookies, race to buy presents, race to decorate the house, race to work, race to prepare church, and race to find my sanity, as I contemplate going postal. I have some Torah-observant friends who do not do Christmas. I used to think they were nuts, but now I think they are on to something. When I was a kid, this time of year was magical, with my birthday and Christmas all thrown together in a huge cacophony of lights and sounds, hope, magic, and anticipation. Now it feels like something I have to survive.

Tonight was awesome, though, because we were with friends. That was the difference. I really don't care about presents at all, but I love the excuse to connect with friends. I am struggling with balancing all of this stuff with my kids. I want them to have a sense of magic and wonder, without falling into the disillusionment of the darker side of this time of year. I am trying right now to emphasize the people stuff, rather than the stuff...stuff.

I want the awe and wonder back, and I don't want my kids to ever lose it.