God’s Guest List

Seeking to use our Nintendo Wii for God’s glory, we decided to throw a Wii party and invited a large group of people to join us in an evening of video game revelry and pizza.  We issued an E-vite and got a tepid response, with only a few commitments.  Mostly, people told us that they might come, but they hesitated to confirm whether or not they would attend.  A lot of them made excuses why they might not be able to make it.On the night of the event, we cleared out our living room to make space for plenty of Wii action, and I cooked a couple of pizzas for our guests.  After an hour of waiting for people to arrive, we decided to start eating by ourselves.  Nobody was arriving, and we wanted had plenty of food and activities for a real party.  Instead of sitting around and feeling sorry for ourselves, we decided to make the best of the situation.  It was time to find ourselves some guests.

Dan went to our neighbors in our apartment complex, seeing if anybody wanted to hang out, have pizza, and play Wii with us.  Some of our newest neighbors, two young men that we’d never met before, came right over.  They were enthusiastic about getting to meet us, their new neighbors, and we were glad to have some other people at our party! 

While Dan was out finding guests, I found the whole situation vaguely familiar, like I had experienced it before.  It was sort of like Déjà vu, but not quite.  It wasn’t until we were all jumping around the living room, eating pizza, playing the Wii, and laughing our heads off, that I remembered why this seemed so familiar. 

Jesus told a story, a parable, about a man who prepared a “great banquet” and invited a ton of guests (Luke 14:16-24).  When the banquet was ready, he sent his servant to tell everyone.  People started making all sorts of lame excuses.  One had to examine his oxen.  Another just bought a field and wanted to check it out.  Another person recently got married, and somehow that kept him from being social.  The man hosting the banquet got really ticked off and told his servant to pack his house with new guests.  He said, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.”  Pretty soon, he had a full house and a major party going on.

At our own party, a few of our invited guests eventually showed up, but it was our newfound friends that made the evening special.  We were glad to have the opportunity to meet some new neighbors and bless them with an unexpected evening of food and fun. 

Jesus’ parable was meant to demonstrate how Heaven is like a big party.  Self-righteous religious folk get the invites, but they turn down God’s offer when it suits their own pride and sense of worth.  Instead, those who are needy and downtrodden recognize the immense value of the gift.  I think most people would be surprised to learn that heaven is populated by a motley crew of repentant sinners, not the pretty pious sorts. 

Does this mean that humble people make the best party goers?  Maybe.  I think that if anything, our party taught us that God is the one that ultimately makes the guest lists.  We might have grand ideas about how to have a good time, but He’s the one who really knows how to party. 

The Prayer of Jephthah

Get ready for the next Christian best-seller!  The final Harry Potter book will have a serious challenger from this little powerhouse.   Bruce Wilkinson has a new book out, a sequel to his best-selling Prayer of Jabez.

The Prayer of Jephthah focuses on one of Israel’s judges from around 1100 B.C.  His story is found in the Book of Judges, chapters 10-12.  In summary, Jephthah was a “mighty warrior,” the son of Gilead and a prostitute.  He was commander over Israel’s army, and before making war against their enemy, the Ammonites, he prayed this prayer to God: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering” (11:30-31).  Jephthah and the Israelites won the battle, and when he returned home, Jephthah was met by his daughter, “dancing to the sound of the tambourines.”  This was his only child.  Understandably, Jephthah was upset:  “When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, “Oh! My daughter! You have made me miserable and wretched, because I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break!” (35).  Jephthah let his daughter run wild in the hills for awhile, lamenting her inability to ever marry, and then he “did to her as he had vowed” (39).  Most experts don’t think he killed her but simply set her apart for service to God, sort of like putting her in a monastery.  Either way, the story is creepy.

By now, you might have guessed that Dr. Wilkinson never wrote this book.  I made it up to demonstrate the dangers of picking and choosing random pieces of scripture to support our own agendas and philosophies. 

I know that many of you probably have read his book, The Prayer of Jabez.  I read it, and I admit that it made some good points.  However, much of the book was devoted to the prosperity gospel, that dangerous mindset that heavily focuses on God’s ability to provide worldly goods for his people.  People who adhere to this health and wealth doctrine see God as a means to an end, a way to get what they want out of life, whether it’s good health, financial assistance, friends, or other temporal benefits.  My pastor, Mark Driscoll, humorously describes these kinds of people in this way:  “For them, Jesus was a piñata, Christianity was a whacking stick, and their mission was to teach people how to get goodies to fall out of heaven” (Confessions of a Reformission Rev. 49). 

Jabez is mentioned in only two lines of scripture:  “Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, ‘I gave birth to him in pain.’ Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, ‘Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.’ And God granted his request” (1 Chronicles 4:9-10).  Wilkinson bases his entire book on this one prayer, which he urges believers to pray daily.  He could have chosen one of the many thousand prayers in the bible, but he chose one that most closely fit his health, wealth, and prosperity philosophy. 

If one wanted to pick a prayer with more scriptural backing, Jephthah would be a better choice.  Instead of only 2 verses, Jephthah gets several chapters devoted to him.  But, Wilkinson didn’t pick Jephthah’s prayer.

I wonder why?

Please Wait

I was standing in my kitchen, preparing my afternoon cup of tea, when I heard a woman’s voice speaking to me.  No, it wasn’t a voice from heaven. It was my answering machine, which I’m convinced is possessed. It beeped at me and said, “Please wait.”  Then it beeped again.  That was it.  I stood over it, and told it, impatiently, “Okay, I’m waiting. What do you want?”  It never replied. 

Sometimes, technology is my friend.  Without it, I couldn’t blog and get to know all you lovely people.  Other times, I want to follow my mother’s example and throw the offending piece of machinery onto the driveway.  Many nights my dad came home from work to find a can opener or a toaster splayed out on the pavement.

No amount of prodding could make my answering machine reproduce its command.  It regularly announces “low battery,” but commands are a new skill set.  It’s getting impertinent in its old age (aren’t we all?). 

I think it’s ironic that everything in my life, including my possessed answering machine, is telling me to wait. And I hate to hear it.  I’m the most impatient person that I know. 

The other day, I knuckled down and memorized the fruits of the spirit, and I was dismayed to learn that “patience” made the list (Galatians 5:22-23).  No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to become the patient Christian that I want to be.  To make matters worse, I’m quite impatient to become patient! 

Thankfully, this task isn’t fully on my shoulders.  God’s power will accomplish this transformation, if I let him. 

Paul wanted the Christians at Colosse to grow more like Christ, and he prayed that God would accomplish this remarkable feat: “And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light” (Colossians 1:10-12).  It’s because of God’s “glorious might” that the Colossians will become more patient and thankful, not because they have the power to do it themselves. 

God’s got a lot of work to accomplish in me before I’m patient.  I suppose that in the meantime, I’ll have to wait and listen, even if it means paying attention to my annoying answering machine.

Serve Milk?

It’s time for me to tackle another one of your testimony questions.  This one comes from Heidi.  She asks, “What is too much for a testimony? Should it be tailored for a certain audience? Is it a release time to be more dramatic or draw someone to you to help? “How “real” or deep should we be?”

Heidi is addressing an important issue.  Many of us have testimonies that are filled with some spiritually and emotionally heavy material.  For unbelieving audiences, it might be a lot to handle.  Do we tone it down for unbelievers?

Awhile ago, I wrote a post on the topic of custom tailoring your testimony.  Click here to read it.  In short, I think it’s important to recognize that each audience has different needs, and we should be prepared to choose our words carefully for each specific group.  Paul ministered with this mindset, and he was willing to transform himself and his way of speaking to best reach those in need:  “To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22).  In no way was Paul being dishonest or sinful.  He was simply being sensitive to the needs of his audience.

One way we can best meet the needs of our unbelieving audience is to be aware that they don’t always speak our language.  No, I’m not talking about English. I’m talking about “Churchese.”  Sometimes, we Christians talk about spiritual things in a way that is nonsensical to unbelievers.  Here are some words and phrases that might baffle our non-believing friends:  saved, born again, redeemed, washed in the blood of the lamb, baptized, anointed, testimony, salvation, sin, and messiah.  There are plenty more, but you get the point.  Choose words that are “real” but make sense to your audience.  When talking about salvation, why not talk about how you gave Jesus control of your life or how you believe in him and want to be close to him.   

Another consideration is that non-Christians might not be ready to hear some of the “deeper” more intense spiritual topics.  Paul addresses this issue in 1 Corinthians, when he’s writing to new believers, who are acting very immaturely.  He calls them “mere infants in Christ.”  He tells them that he can’t give them the hard spiritual material yet because they can’t handle it: “I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready” (1 Corinthians 3:1-4).  The author of Hebrews expands this analogy further and explains how Christians can move to more solid food (the more intense and deep spiritual things):  “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (5:14).  Paul doesn’t alter the truth, but he does decide that his audience isn’t ready to hear some of it yet.  Think of it like a movie.  For a more mature audience, you might not mind having some battle scenes with some gore, but if the movie is targeting kids, you might want to skip that stuff.  They’re not ready to see it, and they wouldn’t understand it anyway.

Our testimonies can be powerful and emotional, but we need to be sensitive to our audiences and their unique needs and abilities to understand and interpret the information that we present.  Faithfully present the truth and be “real,” but serve milk when necessary.

(For more on this subject, check out my new page: “Testimony Tips“)

I Can’t Tell My Right From My Left

I seem to get a lot of writing inspirations while doing laundry.  (I think this is God’s way of telling me that chores aren’t inherently evil.)  While hanging my husband’s dress shirts today, I went through my typical mental anguish:  In which direction do they go?  Does the hanger point to the left or the right?  Do the shirts face to the right or to the left? 

Okay, nobody else has this problem.  But it’s a big issue for me.  You see, my brain is backwards, or at least, that’s what a majority of the population seems to think. I’m a lefty, a southpaw, sinister (whoever made that up needs to be smacked).  Although we lefties are the only ones in our right minds, we have a difficult time telling our left from our right.  This makes seemingly mundane tasks, such as hanging laundry in the appropriate direction, dang near impossible. 

Maybe Jesus was just being sympathetic when he said, “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” (Matthew 6:3), but somehow, I doubt it.  I think he was talking about charity and anonymity, or something like that.

After a few years of marriage, I thought I finally had the whole shirt direction thing down, and I asked my husband for confirmation.  He smiled bashfully and admitted that he often switches the shirts back around when I’m not looking.

Dang!  I’ll never get it right!

Just as my husband is patient with my poor, confused brain, God has mercy on poor me, who cannot tell my right from my left.

In the story of Jonah (you know, the guy who was vomited by a whale), God tells Jonah to preach to the Ninevites, a group of people who are senseless with wickedness.  The Ninevites repent of their evil ways, and God is merciful to them.  God says, “But Ninevah has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well.  Should I not be concerned about that great city?”  (Jonah 4:11).  Even though the Ninevites were as sinful and confused as I am, God was merciful and had infinite patience for them. 

We who can’t tell our right from our left, whether it is in the laundry or in our daily decisions, can be grateful that we’ve got a patient God who loves us, despite our confusion.

Somebody Heard me Singing

Last night, I came home after a nice long run, to find my hard working husband, slaving away over a pile of dirty dishes.  What did I do to deserve this wonderful man?

Standing in the doorway, taking in the peaceful domestic scene before me, I noticed my husband was humming a song.  It sounded vaguely familiar.  “She’s got me spending…spendin’ all your money on me…What you gonna do with all that junk? All that junk inside that trunk? I’ma get, get, get, get, you drunk, Get you love drunk off my hump…my hump…my lovely lady lumps”

“Oh dear,” I thought to myself.  “He found my Mp3 player.”

Without realizing it, I’d introduced my husband to the Black Eyed Peas, and probably one of their least redemptive songs. The previous night, I’d been doing some chores while he was doing some paperwork.  I had on my Mp3 player, as usual, and I was apparently singing out loud along with the music. 

At work yesterday, as he met with patients, as he worked on charts, Dan found himself humming a wide range of songs that he’d overheard me singing.  He’d decided to listen to the songs for himself, so he at least knew more than the one or two lines that were incessantly running through his head.

Dan looked like a little kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar.  He smiled sheepishly and confessed what he’d been doing.  We laughed awhile about our differing tastes in music.  At least, he was glad to know why he’d been singing about his “lovely lady lumps” all day.

Until I married Dan, I never realized how often I sing to myself when I’m wandering about the house.  Apparently, I break out into song all the time, and I rarely have a memory of it.  With all this singing going on, I suppose I should be thinking about what messages I’m sending.  I can’t very well go about broadcasting about the “junk inside my trunk” all the time.

When we go about our lives, singing along our merry way, what do people hear when they’re around us?  What messages do we send?  Like it or not, people are listening.  Our words and the songs we sing can get stuck in their heads (kind of like those annoying Kit-Kat commercials). 

You never know who is listening.

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).

Amy’s Reading Philosophy

Some of you might have noticed that I recently added a new page to my site.  Amy’s Bookshelf lists the books that I’m currently reading.  People often wonder why I read so many books at one time.  Let me take this opportunity to explain my book reading philosophy.

A long time ago, one of my favorite professors, Dr. Gregory Spencer of Westmont College, told me that he regularly reads 4 books at once.  I can’t recall the categories that he uses, but it was something like 1 book for self or spiritual improvement, 1 book for fun reading, 1 book was for professional development, and the Bible.  He always had one book in each of these categories, so he could be a more a more well rounded person and reader. 

This strategy appealed to me because I often have a pile of books that I’m working on at any given time.  For some reason, I am highly frustrated to focus on just one book at a time.  Although I don’t agree with philosopher Slavoj Zijek on a lot of things, I do share this one principle with him.  He spoke once at my graduate college, the University of Vermont, and told us that he is constantly reading.  He takes a break from his reading by reading something different.  I could fill a whole day that way.  Yes, I realize that not everyone is wired like this.

I modified Dr. Spencer’s strategy to suit my own reading tastes.  I’m not so methodical in my categories, but they generally work this way.  I’m always plowing through the Bible each morning, that’s a given.  Dan and I have a devotional that we’re reading every night, so that’s another book.  I subscribe to several magazines that occupy my breakfast and lunchtime reading (books are too difficult to prop open while eating).  These other categories are far more flexible, but this is how they typically look: a challenging piece of literature, a fluffy and fast paced fiction, a marriage or relationship building book, at least one but usually around 10 career related books (depending on how big my current writing project is), and a book on Christian growth or general Christian topics. 

I don’t know how many books these add up to, but it’s typically a lot.  I’ve shared my method with many other people, some of whom have tried to follow it.  My students just smile politely and chuckle to themselves.  Dan is one of the most recent to attempt it, but he gave it up after a couple weeks (bless his heart).  He said that he just prefers to focus on one book at a time.  He’s dutiful that way.  He plows through each book faithfully, one after another.  That would drive me insane.  To each his own.

Maybe it’s just my multitasking nature or my high degree of impatience, but the multi-book method works best for me.  I also appreciate how when reading many books at once, the books begin to blend a little, talking to each other.  I’ll get some great ideas when I’m reading seemingly unconnected books, and they merge into one creative topic.  From reading my posts on this blog, you can probably get a sense of the wide range of inspirations that lead to each blog entry. For example, I’m still plowing through the book of John, and I don’t expect to finish it anytime soon, since I’m making a point of going extremely slowly through it, verse by verse, word by word.  As I read John, I’m reading all these other books on my list.  They are all brewing together, mixing and fermenting and frothing around.  Suddenly, I’ll find myself thinking about pruning my basil plant, and how that’s like the pruning that God’s doing in my life (John 15), which is tied with some of the spiritual growth books that I’m reading right now and the fiction book called Winter Wheat, which is all about agriculture and the harvest.  You never know what connections you’ll make, or what connections God will make for you.

I’d love to hear about your reading habits.  What do you read?  What’s your strategy?  Have you ever tried a multi-book reading plan? 

Pruning

Wheras most people in my family have green thumbs, I somehow managed to get a black one. People marvel that I’ve managed to kill a Ficus plant, which is apparently quite a feat. Everything I grow dies within short order. Well meaning friends give me plants as gifts, and in order to keep them alive, I entrust Dan with their safekeeping. He faithfully waters and nurtures them. While he can keep thing growing for longer than I can, neither of us can make plants thrive and prosper.

In our first year of marriage, someone gave us a mint plant. I liked how it smelled, and I was afraid of killing it. So I didn’t touch the thing. I left it to Dan. He faithfully watered it daily, and we watched it grow into a tall vine that we draped around our window sill. When my mom, the avid gardener, saw our mint plant, she laughed. Although we were proud to have kept it alive for several months, we didn’t realize that herb plants needed to be pruned, so they would bush out and become fuller, not just taller. She set to work on our pathetic little vine and five years later, our little mint plant has taken over several containers in her garden. It’s also moved to several homes in the neighborhood and is living a new life at my grandparents’ house as well.

A few weeks ago, I won 3 basil plants at a baby shower. My mint experiences flashed before my eyes, but I was determined to try again and figure out the art of pruning. I’ve been reading a little bit about pinching back the leaves at the intersections, to encourage more growth. I was a little worried about pruning my plant back to a pathetic little form, but sure enough, once I did it, it came back, fuller and more robust than before. Our mistake with the mint plant was our fear of trimming it back. We never gave it the chance to fill out. It could only move in one direction and never reach its full potential.

I’m still reading the book of John. And in chapter 15, Jesus is talking about being the “true vine.” He tells us that God is a gardner, something that we should recall from the garden of Eden. However, he also gardens people: “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful” (15:2). Sometimes, God’s pruning can be painful. He can discipline us or simply give us difficult challenges. If we look to the Master Gardner and look for opportunities to mature and grow in new directions, the experience doesn’t have to be as painful.

As I prune back my little basil plant, I’ll be thinking about the God who’s pruning me. Although the process can be a bit messy and doesn’t always look pretty, the end result is always worth it. I trust my sovereign gardener. But please Lord, prune gently.

(To all you gardeners, I’d love to hear your tips for caring for my basil plants. I’m determined to make them last, and I’d love to make some homemade pesto from my very own crop!)

Maranatha Fireworks

Late last night, the neighborhood was still rumbling from the pyrotechnics of the juvenile delinquents in our apartment complex.  While I sat awake, I thought back on the evening’s events.

Dan and I went to our local fireworks show, avoiding the huge downtown Seattle extravaganzas.  We listened to the Rainer symphony play John William’s movie themes on the Lake Meridian waterfront.  Right at dusk, the symphony let loose with rousing John Philips Sousa marches, and fireworks lit up the night sky over the water. 

It’s amazing to watch the beauty that comes from such a potentially dangerous force.  Gunpowder has been used to kill millions, but we’ve found ways to redeem it for beautiful purposes.  Beautiful and deadly, sounds like something C.S. Lewis said about Aslan, who represents Jesus (or God).  Aslan is “not a tame lion.”  He’s beautiful and strong, but he’s also ferocious and deadly. 

At the park, people from all different walks of life, religions, skin tones, ages, sizes, were all watching the sky, ooohing and ahhing at the spectacle.  For the first time, I made the connection between watching fireworks in the night sky and watching for Christ’s return.  Jesus told us that he’s coming back, just the same way that he left, but with a lot more sound affects and lighting:  “At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Luke 21:27).  Somehow, miraculously, everybody on earth is going to see him at once: “For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Matthew 24:27) and “Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen” (Revelation 1:7).  That’s some fireworks show!

Part of the reason we love fireworks so much is because deeply imbedded in us is this expectation of Christ’s return.  Buried in our hearts is the knowledge that our Savior is coming back, the same way he left, in the clouds, with thunder claps and probably lots of colorful fireworks, like the world has never seen.

So when the pyros in my back yard are getting out their late night ya yas, I’ll praise my Lord for planting his Word in their heart, even if they don’t know it yet.  Until then, Maranatha:  “Come Lord Jesus.”

Unidentified Flying Wife

Daniel has a new name for me:  Missile Wifey. 

Today, we spent the afternoon at Wild Waves Water Park.  It was a perfect day for the event: midweek, hot as heck, and not a cloud in the sky. 

In our 10 years of knowing each other, we’ve never once visited a water park together.  Perhaps that was a good thing, since I’m not sure our marriage was ready for the event until this point.  We discovered that water parks bring out our typical competitiveness, but with a scary thrill seeking element. 

I guess our first slide should have been an indication of what was to come for the rest of the day.  We didn’t bother to research the slides; we just climbed the first platform we saw and went down the one with the shortest line.  Now, everybody knows that this is a dumb idea.  There’s a reason that the line is short.  That’s because all the smart people are in the other lines. 

Dan, ever the gentleman, went down first.  I dutifully followed the life guard’s instructions to lie on my back and cross my legs and my arms.  I thought they were being a bit over cautious, but I figured that this water park must be sticklers for rules.  But no, that wasn’t the reason.  I needed to protect all my extremities by holding them against my core. 

The tube was solid, and I could see no light.  I took a deep breath and plunged into the darkness.  Soon, I felt like I was a piece of lettuce in my salad spinner.  My body sloshed up and down each of the sides of the tube as I hurled down to my eventual demise, or so I hoped.  “Please God, make it stop!” I gurgled as water poured into various orifices. After what seemed like 2 hours in the washer on the spin cycle, I was eventually spit out of the torture tube into a deep pool of water.  Hacking, I climbed out of the water and glared at my husband, who was also looking a little shaken, not stirred.  We both agreed that it might not have been our best choice for the first ride of the day.

Next, I suggested we visit the river raft ride, which proved to be much tamer, but it did give us an occasion to play bumper tubes and race each other down to the bottom.  Hours later, we’d tackled most of the park.  However, there was one section that we’d somehow managed to miss.

The “Activity Pool” was designated for only “strong swimmers.”  I decided that was synonymous with “fun.”  So, we swam to check it out.   We flew through the air on two zip lines and landed in the water with big splashes.  Dan won that race by a long shot. 

Next, we spotted two highly insidious looking holes in the wall, located about 6 feet above the water line.  Shortly thereafter, people shot out of the holes with a loud “pop” and landed like cannonballs in the water.  Dan and I both groaned, and our jaws dropped.    A little girl standing next to me, barely reaching my kneecaps, assured me that “it was easy,” and we shouldn’t be afraid.  Dan looked down at the little girl and back at me.  “That little girl did it.”  I knew another challenge when I saw one.

Timothy Egan of the New York Times described the ride in this way:  “The Cannonball is a short, steep tube that spits out swimmers like peas from a straw shooter.”

It was only accessible by swimming across a 12 foot deep pool into a cavern and climbing steps to the backside of a rocky hill.  At the top, a teenage lifeguard instructed us to lie on our backs, cross our legs, and support our necks with our hands (ever hear of breakneck speed?).  I peered down into the narrow hole into which I was supposed to drop myself.  From where I stood, I couldn’t see the bottom, nor could I see the other side of the hill, where I was supposed to shoot out, a few seconds later.

Dan volunteered to go first.  I watched him throw himself into the rocky hill, and then I waited until the lifeguard told me to follow him in the same fashion. 

Apparently, I’m quite aerodynamic.  In something that was supposed to induce a lobbed “cannonball,” I acted more like a patriot missile and soared across the water, about 20 feet, according to our best estimates.  Dan claims that I “hovered” over the water until I realized that gravity needed to be accounted for.  Then, I sank like a rock.  

Once I found my way back to the surface, I saw Dan at the edge of the pool, grinning from ear to ear and laughing his head off.  “That was awesome! You flew! You were a missile!” 

Here’s Dan’s artistic rendering of the event (he gave me permission to share it with you): 

(  )  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -    O–<—-<

wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

We watched for quite awhile after that, and nobody managed to get the same amount of airtime.  Most people plopped out of the hole and sank a few feet from the opening.

I don’t remember the last time Dan was so proud of his wifey.  He’s been positively beaming all night.  You’d think I broke the sound barrier or something. But this example illustrates some important ways we wives can please our husbands:

1.  I’ve come to realize that husbands love it when we invest our time in doing something that they love to do, right along side them.  Whether it’s going to an occasional baseball game or zooming down waterslides, men appreciate it when we put aside our preferences to spend time with them, in their own special way.

2.  Husbands love to see us conquer our fears and grow in courage.  Dan knew that the “scary hole in the wall tube slide” freaked me out, but I did it anyway.  He congratulated me on overcoming my fear and doing it anyway.

3.  Husbands love it when we challenge each other.  Our little competitions demonstrate something that Solomon in his wisdom pointed out a long time ago: As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).  We have a choice.  We can drag each other down, and bring out each other’s worst, or we can rise to the occasion, and try to call out the best in each other.