HDIF about our children and our relationship with them? DYFF.

Dear LORD:

Thank you for our children. Help us to be good parents of these wonderful people. They are all very precious to me and to you. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

It's kind of early, so you have yet to do much today. However, you have already racked up a couple of MEQs:

1. You made oatmeal.
2. You loved it when I touched you. (I love touching you.)
3. You wanted to dialog. (It's the first time we have ever dialoged this early!)

Pretty impressive!

The way I feel about our children varies with the child. I will take each in turn:

Samuel:

My strongest feeling about Sam is concern. I am also frustrated, annoyed, and a bit pissed off with Sam. I tend to behave in a passive aggressive manner towards him.

Sam is choosing to live a dysfunctional, self-destructive life. He was not raised that way. He knows better. We were not perfect parents, for sure, but we have done a reasonably good job of setting a better example than that.

I think that Sam needs to get his shit together. My desire to help him is fairly low, since he is not doing much for himself. He has also been a negative influence on the other two children.

Jon:

My strongest feeling about Jon is hopeful. I also am concerned for him, but less so than Sam. He seems to be getting his act together. Jon is a lot of fun. I enjoy being with him much more than Sam at this point.

Jon made a big step by coming home again. He wanted to get away from the destructive, dysfunctional behaviors of his brother. This is a very encouraging step for him.

My desire to help Jon is very strong. I want to support him in getting his life back on track.

Jeanae:


My strongest feeling about Jeanae is love. I enjoy being with her. I am a bit concerned for her as well. She has hit an emotional and spiritual speed bump. However, as I told her recently, teenage angst is simply something we all have to go through. I do not intend to save her from that. She is creating a lot of drama. Sometimes she can be very challenging. Still, she loves you and me, and I love her very much.

I need for her to do well in school, get herself educated, and go on with her life. I am looking forward to her becoming an adult. It will be very nice when it is just you and me again. Eventually, grandchildren would be nice.

On a whole, I enjoy my children but would love to see more of you, and would not mind if they became independent at all. My feelings toward you are very, very strong. I enjoy being with you more than the children, much as I love them. I doubt very seriously that I will have much of an empty nest syndrome when the leave.

With the possible exception of Jeanae. It will be a wrench watching her move out. I doubt that will happen before she gets married, though. So no worries.

In the meantime, I am enjoying being a father of young adults and teenagers (other than Sam), and find this phase of life to be very satisfying.

I will miss you today. I loved sleeping with you last night. You are my poonie!

Love,
Me

HDIF about the way we share daily responsibilities? DYFF.

Dear LORD:

Thank you for Ruth. She is such a blessing to me. Thank you that we are married. Thank you for all that you have brought us through. Amen!

MDDL:

Your MEQ today was the delight you showed in the puppies as they cavorted in the dog park. Your smile and laugh at watching Po-Po tear across the grass was infectious.

The way I feel about the way we share daily responsibilities is open.

Open to you. Open to the LORD. Open to whatever you and the LORD need for me to do around the house.

Today when we were in the kitchen cooking it was really great. The flow between us was awesome. We were relaxed and happy together. The creativity was really flowing. There was such a great smell.

I had a great time.

I was a little sad and lonely when you left me to finish washing up. But that's OK. I understand that you needed to finish your office. I mostly just wanted to keep being with you. Like I have told you this weekend, I am drinking in the time to be with you. I love to just be in your presence. I find it very comforting to sit here right now, typing this, with you close to me.

I need to keep Jeanae on task as well. She tends to leave little piles. Like a rabbit. Little piles of clothes and such. I regard that as mostly my responsibility, but you are welcome to weigh in on that as well. She is pampered, but I would prefer to avoid her becoming spoiled.

All that being said, my strongest feeling about how we share responsibilities is open and receptive to you in that area. Open in that I am trying with all my heart to listen to what you need and respond. Open like I was when I started to listen to you better.

So please tell me what you need from me. I will do my very best to be what you need me to be in the area of practical responsibilities.

You are my heart.

Love,
Me

HDIF about our relationship at this point? DYFF.

Dear LORD:

Thank you so much for Ruth. She is so dear to me. I love her with all my heart. Help me to love her fully and completely, with all of my being, in a way that she feels totally loved. Amen!

MDDL:

Your MEQ tonight was the loving way that you apologized to your daughter and me about the misunderstanding in the car. I loved watching you talk to your daughter on the phone. You were so gentle and loving towards her, so full of grace.

My strongest feeling about you at this point is love. I am also very happy to be in your presence. There is still a little bit of insecurity and tentativeness in certain areas, notably sex. We can dialog on that later if you like.

But by far, my strongest feeling about you is love. I love you. I have that feeling whenever I am with you. I feel happy and bubbly inside. You are so beautiful to me. I find you desirable in every way imaginable. I am utterly fascinated and enchanted by you. I find you more desirable and interesting, if possible, than when we first met.

My love for you at this point is different from my first love. The first love was not based upon knowledge. It had not been tempered by shared pain. It was an idealistic love, a love of an image, not of someone I truly knew.

Now I know you. We have been through the testing fire. You and I have suffered greatly. We have caused each other great pain, as well as having pain from the trials of this life. In both cases, the pain has tempered and strengthened our feelings for each other. Certainly, they have strengthened my love for you.

I think we had a choice of two paths: One in which the pain consumed and destroyed us, in the process destroying our love for each other and converting it into hatred, anger, resentment, pride, bitterness and so forth. That was the unforgiving path.

We chose another path. We forgave one another. This was a gift which was granted to us by the Father. We accepted the pain we caused each other for what it was: A gift. If we had to experience that pain in order to have the joy we now have, it was all worthwhile. We truly brought forth beauty from ashes.

My love for you is very, very strong. It often consumes me. I gaze at you and feel deep, pure, sudden joy at the knowledge that you are my beloved, and that I will spend my entire life with you. I desire no other. You are and will always be my one true love, granted to me by God to be my wife, my helpmate, my closest friend and companion, for this life. And forever.

Love,
Me

HDIF about our experience at Grace last Sunday? DYFF.

Dear LORD:

Thank you for our reconnecting at Grace Church. It was very precious to be there.

MDDL:

Your MEQ today was the wonderful hug you gave me at the dinner table. I felt so close to you being at the dinner table together as a couple. Yes!

The way I felt at Grace Church this Sunday was connected. It was very special to have all of the people we knew when we were there before come up and greet us so warmly. I felt warmed and comforted in my heart.

Also the worship Sunday morning was glorious. Worship does deep heart surgery on me. I can actually feel the darkness lifting. It is a light being pored out in my heart. I need it like I need air, light and water. It fills my heart with joy.

The message that Kendrick preached was also very pertinent to my situation. As you saw from my last dialog, I am deeply distressed concerning my health, and desperately need God to do something about that. The message about hope was exactly right for me at that moment. I had lost hope. I needed to remember that God loves me, and my hope is in Him.

TBPH, I do not think that Vintage 21 is manifestly better than Grace Church. So far, we have not found anything better than Grace. As I told you tonight, there are many things about Grace Church that I disagree with, find annoying, and so forth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is easy to be a critic.

We need to be forces for change in a Godly way.

I still would like to travel to Southern California and visit Mosaic. I am very attracted by the ministry of ERM. He gets it more than anyone else that I have connected with in the past few years. There is a conference there in January. Interested?

For now, though, while we live in NC, until God says otherwise, my vote would be to be connected to Grace Church and the saints there. What do you say?

Love,
Me

How do I feel about the recent activity regarding my health?

Dear LORD:

Please help me with my health. I am sick and I need to get well. Thank you for putting me in touch with Dr. Sharpe. Guide him in the area of my healing. Let this be the one that works. Amen!

MDDL:

Your MEQ today was my kiss when you left the house, and correcting me about how you did give me one. It made my day that you actually did kiss me. I know it seems silly, as it is such a little thing. But it is very important to me and it means so much to me that you pay attention to this.

The way I feel about my health is stressed out, anxiety ridden, frustrated, depressed, and filled with despair. I have been trying to ignore these feelings, as I usually do, but they keep coming to the surface.

I have made the appointment with Dr. Sharpe pretty much my last hope in resolving this issue. I am very hopeful that it will work this time. Once he prescribes a solution, you may be sure that I will be extremely compliant. The feeling that I had when I was in his office was one of being overwhelmed with grief and longing. I was on the verge of tears as I described my condition, as I was required to get in touch with my feelings as I did so. I realized at that moment that I am dying from this disease. If I do not resolve this issue eventually, it will take me down one way or another. I do not want to go there.

It is frustrating in the extreme that we have invested so much of our precious lives and treasure in search for a solution to this problem. It is only skin after all. It is just supposed to sit there on the outside of your body doing its job. Not making your life miserable and insufferable.

Anyway, as I sat there in Dr. Sharpe's office and I described the litany of symptoms that I have, and the trendline of how they are getting worse and worse all the time, I found myself filled with a feeling which is difficult to describe. It's like everything came together in that moment in time. I understood then more clearly what I am dealing with than I have ever done before. I know the stakes. It was truly a moment of clarity.

The worst of it was describing what happened to my father. I do not know if you remember how bad it was towards the end. His entire body was falling to dust. All of his nails were crumbling into a chaotic mass of something like dried, rotten cardboard. When you touched him, massive clouds of dusty particles would fly everywhere.

If the cancer had not killed him, the psoriasis would have eventually.

I really do not want to do that. I must become healthy again. Much of my life, I have been able to ignore my body. It pretty much just clicked along on its own. I could neglect it, feed it crap, drink alcohol and the like. It took all of that abuse with no problem at all.

No longer. My body has become my enemy. It hunts me, stalking me down. I can run, but I cannot hide. Sooner or later, it is going to track me down and make the kill.

And that is perhaps my strongest feeling about my body and its abuse of me: Anger, betrayal, unfairness. A feeling of righteous indignation. Like what did I do to deserve this? Why me? You get the idea.

If this feeling had a color, it would be the bright, burning red of the bull fighter's cape. It is like the feeling that you get when everything is just too much, combine frustration at your job with your kids, with your car acting up, and boom! You overflow into a massive pool of rage. You find yourself out of control. You lash out at the only target you have handy: Yourself or some inanimate object. Screaming impotent cries of rage against an uncaring sky.

All of which accomplishes precisely nothing. All of which I cannot begin to tell you how tired I am of feeling that.

Somehow, I must make peace with my body. I must end the war within my physical being. I must find a way to make my body my friend again.

I beg you for your help, love and support as I go through this. With all of the challenges that I have faced in my life, this may be the greatest.

Love,
Me

We have not dialogued for almost one week. HDIFAT?

Dear LORD:

Help us to remain faithful to dialogging. It is so important. We must remain connected and intimate, and dialogging is such an important part of that. Amen!


MDDL:

Your MEQ today was being sensitive to my body and knowing that I needed to go to the health club. You knew me better than I knew myself! You are so special and considerate of me!

I have missed dialogging. I did not want to be demanding of you while you were sick, so I did not push our continuing to dialog. I waited for you to feel better. I am so glad that you feel better now.

I find dialogging very special. It is a special way for me to connect to you in the area of emotions. I have been a cold, unemotional person for much of my life. This was because my emotions were so profoundly toxic and powerfully negative that if I ever allowed myself to feel them fully, I was afraid I would lose myself in them.

Knowing you has allowed me to become more emotionally. This is because the process of losing our way and then rediscovering it has brought many emotions to the surface. I am feeling now.

I feel like the character in the movie equilibrium. Once he stops taking his "dose", he begins to feel emotions. That's what this feels like. An awakening to a new state.

I always wondered why I so profoundly related to the struggle of Data in the TV series Star Trek TNG. He wanted so badly to have emotions. Yet he saw how humans struggled with them. This is how I felt. In many ways I have been cut off from simply human feelings most of my life. I simply did not give myself the luxury of feeling them. Or if I did they terrified me, with their gruesome, brutal power. I can now face them and deal with them more functionally and fully than I have ever been able to do. This is the result of the growth in life that has occurred in me from the recovery of our love and tenderness.

I feel. I have feelings now. Dialogging gets me in touch with those feelings. They are amazing. I am tired right now. Profoundly and amazingly tired. But that's OK. It is simply a feeling.

I have also been in a lot of pain. Emotions are like physical pain and pleasure in a way. We use the same verb, to feel, for both sensations. I am in a state of constant physical discomfort. I have learned to not feel this. I do not think that is a good thing anymore. I am tired of having to not feel. I want to experience these feelings as well. I want to be well again.

I need your help with that. Maybe we can dialog on that later.

I felt wistful and sad that we were not dialogging, but now we are again, so I feel happy. My feeling of being happy is like a sunflower. It is a joyful feeling. I like to dialog with you soooo much. It is a wonderful way for us to share our feelings. If it were a color, it would be bright sunny yellow.

Your love and our relationship fill me with joy and hope. When we are not talking, spending time together, or such, I feel sad and lonely. When we get to be together and talk, or hang out, I am happy and content. I really want to be with you and to be connected with you sooo much. I love you dearly.

Love,
Me

What do you think about Jon moving home for a while? HDIFAMA?

Dear LORD:

Please help us to help Jon with getting on with his life. Let us be a positive influence on this young man, who has such great potential. Be with us in this time. Let us become a loving and compassionate picture of God's love to him. Amen!

MDDL:

Your MEQ today was getting me avocado rolls from the Cheesecake factory. Those are my favorite! It was very special that you thought of me in this way. They were still hot when I picked you up! How very considerate and touching that you did that!

I believe that the situation with Jon is fraught with risk, but also pregnant with great opportunity. Our relationship is now strong enough, that the LORD obviously trusts us to handle this appropriately.

The way we could blow this is of course to treat him like a child again, and to become hyper controlling, meddling, opinionated, and so forth parents. Let us avoid this fate.

The way we could absolutely be a huge positive influence on Jon is to trust him to make the right choices (subject to evidence to the contrary of course), and to assume quietly (while soaking the situation in prayer) that he will not abuse that trust. I pray to God that he does not. If Jon repeats the mistakes his brother made we could lose him for a long, long time, as we have apparently lost Sam.

I think this is the crucible for Jon. He is disgusted with himself right now. He wants to clean up his act and get on with his life in a more productive manner. We can definitely help him with that. In the process, we can influence him to give God another look, and perhaps hook him up with some Christians who do not suck as much as the others he has know up until now. Who knows what God may do?

The way I feel about this is hopeful and excited. I am happy that Jon is moving home actually. Although I resisted it at first, I think it will be a good time for us. He is a really cute kid in many respect. He is certainly charming and funny. Jeanae loves him dearly and gets along with him very well. They are a lot of fun to watch interact. It may be the best time we have ever spent with our son. And it may be over too soon, before we even know it.

I feel hopeful in the same manner I felt hopeful about you when I spoke to you on the phone from Baton Rouge. It was like that. I even said to Jeanae on that occasion "This may be it. This may be the time she comes around." I feel that way about Jon. He has seen what the wages of sin are. He has witnessed it in his brother and Kate. He is disgusted. That's are really, really hopeful sign.

Let us continue to pray fervently and frequently for our son. He needs us now. Let us remain one in our relationship in the areas of what we will and will not tolerate. (No alcohol or drugs in our house, ever. No smoking in the house either. And no girls in the house without an adult present. I want no illicit activity in this house at all.) For now, I will simply assume that Jon will be smart and use common sense. I think he will. I will be vigilant for signs to the contrary. I would like for us to remain one in this attitude of trust and vigilence.

Aside from that, I am hopeful. Who knows what God may do through us and our daughter in the life of this precious one?

Love,
Me

How do you feel that our new arrangement for handling the children is working out? DYFF?

Dear LORD:

Be with Ruth and me as we forge a new relationship with our children. Help us to remain the example of godly parents and a godly married couple to our children. Keep our testimony to them sincere and unadulterated by the world. Help us to walk the line between being relevant and being worldly. Give us a way to show them the way. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was taking care of the HP printer. You did so very cheerfully, although that item was on my plate, and I had not gotten it done. You were awesome! I appreciate everything you do for me and our family!

The way I feel about our new arrangement for handling the children is great! I am functioning as the children's father for the first time in a long time, maybe ever.

Samuel was amazing tonight. When presented with the opportunity for me to bail him out of his ticket situation he refused. He took responsibility for that ticket although he did not have a handle on how to solve it at that point. He is refusing to rely on my good graces too much. I regard this as a very positive thing for Sam. He could become a dependent child, and I want him to avoid that, and to become fully independent. He is aware that he is exposed in the situation with his license right now, and he is working very hard to become able to handle that on his own.

I am willing to help Sam out but welcome the fact that he wants to do this without me. I pray (please LORD!) that he will be successful in that.

In terms of Jon, he has taken responsibility for looking for his car. He relied up on me heavily last week and earlier this week to do that. When I talked to him about how much his payment was going to be, he seemed to realize that he was going to have to work on this. He came up with a very reasonable car for himself tonight. I was very proud of him as well.

Jeanae is the the current problem child. She has regressed a bit in the area of her dress. When she came home from school on Monday she looked like a call girl. She had on a pair of stacked high-heel boots, a very tight pair of pants, and a very stylish top. I do not know what she looked like today, but she is definitely not being the New Modest Jeanae she was a few months ago. I think a bit of rebellion against the rules of CCS is going on. She wants to push her limits, clearly. She needs to take the yoke, do it as unto the LORD, and stop kicking against the goads. I will talk to her on this issue when I get back tomorrow.

I love all of our children very, very much. I want to be the father, priest, and spiritual leader that they need. I am a broken, sinful man, but I have Y'Shua living inside me. Hallelujah! I can do all things through the Messiah who strengthens me!

So, again, the way I feel about the kids right now is great. I know we face some challenges. But I am ready to handle them, now more fully than ever because I have you with me. I love you and I know that I rest in your love, and the love of Y'Shua through you. I feel equal to the task. I feel adequate in the Messiah. He is my strength. I am filled with confidence, assurance, and peace that He can do it all!

Love,
Me

How do I feel about us being apart for a couple of days? DYFF?

Dear LORD:

Be with Ruth and me as I go on this business trip. Help us to remain as connected and intimate as always. Help me not to be depressed and lonely without her. I have gotten sooooo attached to her! Help Ruth and Jeanae build their relationship further together in my absence.

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was being very fetching in the nude in the bathroom when I came in there from helping Jeanae with her homework. Wonderful!

The way I feel about being in Atlanta is depressed and lonely. Also empty. I really hate traveling without you. Can we arrange that I do not have to do this anymore?

I think having a traveling job would be fun if you could go with me on all, or at least nearly all, of my trips. I would not want to be gone 80% of the time even then. A week or two a month is plenty. I would want it to be heavy on international travel. That way we could join the 1 mile club on lots of international flights. And you would get to see lots of interesting places. I have had the chance to do that, but you have not had as much of a chance as I have. I think it would be fun for us to be together in Europe, Asia, South America and so forth, to see the way other people live and appreciate their culture. It really gives you a unique perspective.

I would love that! Wow! That would be really cool. When I think about you and I traveling together and having that experience together, get really excited.

I just do not want to travel without you though. A couple of days is my limit for sure. I think I told you I pushed back on a trip next month. I did not want to go there. It would have been three more days. In Hopkinton no less. What a desert! Nothing there to do except eat and sit in your hotel room! Blah!

So I am tending to become very scratchy when my manager tells me to get on a plane and go somewhere without you for an extended period. Now Sunil is talking about having the Q1 planning meeting in Bangalore. Fortunately, it will probably not happen for budget reasons. It would cost a fortune for us to get the team over there. Although it probably would be a good idea. However, I would certainly not want to go there without you. It would be for a couple of weeks at least. You can't really travel to India for less than that. It is another 20 hour around-the-world trip. You can literally go home in either direction and it take exactly the same amount of time. Either via Frankfurt going East or via Hong Kong going West. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. I would take 2 days just getting there.

If you wanted to go, I would love to try to do it. It would be somewhat expensive. But we could spend at least one night in each location on the outbound and return trips. I really like to spend 24 hours in Frankfurt. It is a really nice town.

So, my bottom line is that I miss you terribly. I love you dearly. And I want to be with you. When you described your evening to me today, that sounded sooooo good to me! I was jealous! I wanted to do that instead of what I am doing.

Oh well.

I feels hauntingly familiar. Just like it used to feel when I was on a business trip before. I would get out to some anonymous location where no one knows me. Where I get no hugs. And there I would be. Alone and lonely. Missing you. If anything I miss you more now. Then our relationship was way, way more stressful than it is now. I just want to be with you, hold you, kiss you, make sweet, sweet love to you, and hang out with you, cuddle with you. You get the idea. I am crazy about you!

Love,
Me

How do I feel about our involvement in Vintage 21?

Dear LORD:

Thank you for your wisdom and direction to Vintage 21. Build us fully into the body there. Help us to become more connected. Show us how to introduce Retrouvaille to that community. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was being cuddly in the meeting at Vintage 21. It was wonderful being in the meeting with you. I loved it very much.

My feelings about Vintage 21 are various. On the one hand, I am very hopeful and pumped about Vintage 21. There were many things about the meeting today that I thought were very wonderful. I think it is great for example that Jeanae loves it there. I very much enjoyed our home meeting last Monday night and am looking forward to the meeting tomorrow night very much as well. I would also like to pursue the Owners night which is Tuesday, if you are interested. Let me know if you think I am going too fast. I tend to do that sometimes.

On the other hand, I am a bit concerned that we have yet to get to know any of the members outside of the context of a formal meeting. I was trolling for a lunch date today, but that did not happen. The only folks we knew there today were Collin and Holly, and he turned me down flat for lunch. (He said they had a neighbor that they were ministering to.)

I want to be involved in a loving community of Christians who are followers and lovers of Y'Shua. That requires more connection than just a meeting on Sunday and a home meeting once a week. I want to be involved in their lives in a much more tangible and intimate way than just that. Maybe that will begin to happen soon.

I do like the culture though. The music today was superb. I thought Tyler's message was also excellent. It is pretty close to what I am looking for. I got another positive reassurance from the LORD today when I spoke to Tyler and asked him if he knew about ERM. He said yes, he has read several of his books, and has even had lunch with him. While he did say he has some areas of disagreement with ERM, they are trivial, and for the most part he is on board with ERM in the main thrust of his ministry. Also, when I said that what he has come up with was very similar to Mosaic in LA, he smiled broadly, and said he regarded that as high compliment. This means that the LORD has actually led us to a church very similar to Mosaic, which is exactly what I have been praying for.

So, in the main, I am pumped, excited and hopeful. At the same time, I am impatient. The pumped and excited is way, way stronger than the impatient is. It is kind of like the feeling you get when you go to a really great football game, and you watch the last touchdown be scored by your team to win the game. You are totally pumped! That's how I feel. Very excited! It am really looking forward to engaging with God's children again for the first time in many years.

Love,
Me

Is there anything that I could do to make your life easier and more pleasant? HDIFAMA?

Dear LORD:

Help me to know how to love Ruth fully and completely, with my whole being, as she deserves to be loved. Thanks so much for her. She is a precious gift that I treasure. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was listening to me chatter away without ever changing the subject or wavering in your attention to me. It was wonderful just talking to you. I like hanging out with you, just being together and chillin'. Great fun!

You are doing so many things to make my life easier and more pleasant. It is hard for me to know what else to ask for. I guess I would say more of the same: Be responsive to me sexually is a huge factor. You have completely revolutionized my life in the area of sex. I cannot tell you how fundamentally this has changed my heart. You are amazing to me.

Honestly, it is difficult. Let's see. Hmmmm.

OK, I've got one. Go to the gym with me. Yeah, that would be one.

Let's make a date to go check out the new gym. As we figured out today, my body really likes strenuous exercise. And to tell you the truth, it's not a lot of fun. Like I've told you before, my working out on an exercise machine for 30 minutes is slightly more fun than getting my teeth drilled. It's the effect on my body that I am going for. It makes my whole body seem to work better and be happier if I do this fairly regularly. I feel like it is a married single activity though. That's why I want to try to sneak it in at a time when you are working or such things. If I could ever get you to go with me on a regular basis, that would be soooooooo great!

I really don't want to do it by myself honestly. Maybe that's unrealistic, but that would be a secret wish.

I guess ditto on riding the bike. I am happy and contented when I am riding the bike. It is a gentle, non stressful form of exercise, involving minimal pounding. You get to see cool stuff. You have a couple of really great bikes. So if we could get that going it would be great as well.

Basically, I want to combine a couple of things I really like, i.e. biking and working out (not that that is much fun honestly, but it feels really good when I am done) with someone I really love, i.e. you, my beautiful and lovely wife.

I promise to not be demanding about this, though. If you could try to be involved, then great. But I will not make the mistake of becoming a nudge ever again. (Or if I do, just remind me and I will apologize immediately!)

How I feel about this is a bit sheepish to tell you this, because you have made so many huge changes for me in the area of our marriage, communications and sex life. So again, if you do not do these things please understand that I will totally understand and appreciate what you have done. But you asked, so there you have it.

It's kind of like when you are put in a position to receive an award of something like that. You feel a bit sheepish, at least I do. Especially if it is in front of a whole bunch of people.

Or maybe you have been asked to share something painfully personal about yourself to a group of relative strangers. So you feel kind of sheepish.

A little bashful in other words.

Not a huge feeling. Maybe a 3. Hoping you will receive this. Not sure you will. But loving you no matter what.

I love you with an undying love which knows no bounds or limits and is grounded in the love of Y'shua!

Love,
Me

How did you feel about Thanksgiving with our family? HDIFAMA?

Dear LORD:

Thank you so much for the wonderful day with our family. I enjoyed it tremendously.

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was be loving way you accepted my correction regarding the gravy. I can remember a time when that level of conflict would have been a major deal in our relationship. No longer. You took that with grace and poise. You got what you wanted. I got what I wanted. No big hassle involved either. Yay! Do you have any idea how big a difference that is in you?

The way I felt during our Thanksgiving was happy. I was thrilled that our sons showed up. I even loved having Kate around. The food was excellent. There were no big conflicts. Everyone was relaxed and happy. Sam and Kate felt comfortable enough with us to go outside on the deck and smoke a cigarette. It was a major breakthrough in disguise as just another family holiday.

We created a tradition. We have had a Thanksgiving together as a family. That will become what we do every year from now on. You watch.

It was also wonderful to have Emily. I had a great talk with her in the kitchen. I told her that Isaiah does not deserve her. If he is not willing to shout from the rooftops that she is his love, and tell his parents to go jump in a lake if they do not like it, then he does not deserve her. Period. She agreed intellectually, but still has feelings for him. I will work on this some more.

I loved being with you as well. You were very gracious and gentle. You were relaxed and happy. You had a wonderful interaction with your son Jon here on the couch cuddling. Can you believe how relaxed and comfortable he was with us? It was so nice to see that.

I loved the whole day. It was amazing. The turkey came out great. The brine was wonderful. The turkey fryer worked great. It was smooth as silk.

So, happy. Yeah, that's it. I felt happy. Kind of like a wonderful day at the beach. Maybe a beach on the West Coast. I always liked the West Coast better because you can watch the sun go down over the ocean. Sunny and warm with a bit of a breeze. Very relaxing. Watching the waves come in. Just chillin. Happy, and serene. Not a care in the world.

If this feeling was a color it would be bright sunny yellow. The color of sunlight coming through your eyelids as you lie in the sun on the beach on a bright sunny day. Or the color of sunflowers in full bloom full of bees busily gathering nectar and pollen. The soft, silky buzzing of their wings furry in your ears.

Happy to be with you. Happy in our new house. Happy with our daughter and her friend. Happy to be with my boys. Happy to be with their friend as well.

Happy.

Love,
Me

What do you think about being the parent of a sixteen year old girl? HDIFAMA?

Dear LORD:

Thank you for Jeanae. Help me to be the father that she needs. Be with Ruth and I as we finish raising her. Help her to become the woman that I see inside her. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was the loving way that you supported Jeanae when she had her nose pierced. She is really letting you back into her life!

I think that being Jeanae's father is wonderful. It is also stressful, annoying and difficult at times. I am very glad that I have you back to help me share the burden. She needs you at least as much as she needs me.

As she pointed out tonight, she is just like you. When we were separated, everyday I was with Jeanae, I missed you more, because I saw your beauty, grace and charm in her. She was your image. I never stopped loving you because I still loved her. This is one reason why I was so ready to get back together with you. I continued to be with you through her.

She is very complicated. Very, very complicated. I actually think she may even be more complicated than you at this point. If that is possible. Certainly, you have become less difficult and complicated recently. And she has become more so, so I think she does exceed you at this point.

She is also challenging. She can be the classic surly teenager, very disrespectful and impatient with authority. Mine included. She has said more than once that she simply wants to be out of school so she can start life. She thinks she is ready to be launched into the world. But she is wrong. She still needs a couple more years of being our child still.

Of the three children, she is the closest to me, and the one of whom I am the most proud. A comparative statement, but still true. She has many admirable qualities. Not the least of which is her spiritual side. She is very strong in the LORD and I think that will last the rest of her life, unless I misjudge her.

I will miss her when she is gone. I pray that we live close to her and her family so that we can enjoy her as the years go by.

I certainly treasure these years. They will be gone far too quickly. As much fun as having babies was, this is also very dear and very special to me.

The way I feel is privileged. It is a great privilege to be Jeanae's father. As well as to be your husband. This time of my life I would not trade for the world. It is a gift. It feels like I have been given a great honor, a medal or such. Or a high office. Something like that. Something which others aspire to, but seldom achieve. I have become the loving father of a happy, well adjusted sixteen year old girl. In this day and age, that is very, very rare.

Love,
Me

What changes have you noticed in me? HDIFTYT?

Dear LORD:

Thank you for the wonderful meetings we have been to in the past couple of days. It has been great reconnecting with your body! Amen.

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was coming home and saving me. I loved seeing you drive up in the driveway! I was so thrilled. Also, you were very gentle and soft in your response to my gaff. I was so grateful. You said "I told you so", but you did so gently and with compassion. Thank you for your kindness!

Wow. What changes have I noticed in you? That would be a long list indeed. I'll give you the short version:

1. You are way less edgy than you used to be. You have really, really mellowed out. Things just don't bother you as much.
   
2. You are far hornier than I have ever known you to be. You weren't even close to this sexual active when we first got married! Your floodgates have opened!
3. You seem more together. You were kind of flaky before, and you are less so now, by far. You seem to have your stuff together more.
4. You seem more emotionally healthy and centered. I was always concerned for you before. You seemed so fragile. You seem to have an inner strength now that you did not have before at all.
5. You are much more what I would call "naturally supernatural". That is, you are more comfortable in your relationship with God and functioning in the area of the spiritual. You used to be much more forced and tight in this area. You are letting it flow much more than you used to, and in the process it is far more effective.
6. While you like a neat and tidy house, you are not as neat as you used to be. Or maybe that's just a part of #1. Anyway, it frees me up to be much more helpful around the house, because I don't feel like it is something that is done under a spotlight. I used to feel very defensive about this, and I don't anymore. Maybe that's something that changed in me, too.
7. You are getting along with the kids much better. It's like you let them go to be who they want to be. Which they were always going to be anyway, by the way. But in the process, you have made peace with them. This frees you to have far more impact in their lives.

That's an even 7 things, enough for tonight.

How I feel about this is connected. Connected to you, connected to our family, connected to our life together. I feel more in tune with you, and able to understand you than I ever have. Partly because you make more sense to me now. Partly I guess because I have learned how to communicate with you better. But mostly because you have profoundly changed.

It's like the feeling of connection that you feel with a child when he looks up at you and you realize that this child is a part of you, that you will always be a part of you, and that is a really great thing. When you see yourself in that person, and realize God has joined you to this person forever. I feel that way with you tonight. You are a part of me, and that will always be so.

Love,
Me

Where do I believe that God is leading us in terms of fellowshipping with a community of believers? HDIFAMA?

Dear LORD:

Please help us to find a community of believers who represents your Spirit in the current age. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was the loving kiss when we said goodbye at the gate. I miss you!

In my readings of ERM, I have made some new discoveries. One of the things he talks about in terms of friction/traction is the issue of postmodernism. In a postmodern society, there is much greater diversity in terms of spiritual values and beliefs. This changes everything.

Take leading someone to Christ. I have had a lingering, undercurrent of dissatisfaction with respect to this whole concept and the way it is carried out in the modern (i.e. prior to postmodern) church. ERM points out why it sucks so much.

We basically say:

“If you died tonight, do you know for sure you would be in heaven with God?”

Which carries with it the following assumptions:

1. This person believes in heaven
2. This person believes there is a God.

These things cannot any longer be assumed. We previously dealt with people very, very similar to ourselves. Maybe they were “away from God”, “sowing some wild oats,” or the like. But this person, whoever he or she might be, was raised in a similar context as we were. This assumption no longer applies.

Another very basic assumption. As soon as you get the person to say “no” to your previous question (assuming you do not get bogged down by the basic issues I identified above) you then proceed to argue based upon the following reasoning:

“The word of God says ‘blah, blah, blah.’”

Again, the assumption is clear: The bible (which we tend to call the word of God -- another assumption) is authoritative. It can be relied upon because it is infallible and true. This could previously be assumed by someone who was raised in the church, lived their lives in a rural or suburban white, middle class environment, and was simply taking a break from Jesus for a while to go off and enjoy a season of sin. What if your neighbor is an Iranian moslem? Or a Chinese Buddhist. How about a Hindu? Bahai Faith? No such assumption can be made.

We ran into this early in our relationship with the couple who were worship of Baguan Sri Rashneesh. That experience was very frustrating, although it was stimulating and challenging as well. That was a small taste of what the postmodern process of evangelism is like. We are competing with other faiths and ways to God. None of the other ways are true, and we know that, but they don't. Effectively, they are trying to convert us too.

Thus, you must make your appeal for Christ from the context of their culture, including their religion. I am completely unprepared and unequipped to do this. You are as well. I have heard you talk to many folks and you make the same assumptions I do. We are powerless as believers to share our faith in a postmodern context to our friends or neighbors from foreign countries, cultures and religions. This is the vast, vast majority of the people around us at this point, and will become more so as time goes on. Including, by the way, our own children who are from a postmodern culture radically different from our own.

Some of what I was discussing with you yesterday morning at Max’s applies to these issues. We are the most segregated country in the world, and the most segregated hour of the week is around 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. I am sick of this. It is no longer realistic to think in this way.

Even in TLC, this was common. While trainings were integrated, the meetings on Sunday were not. We segregated ourselves into distinct cultures. One meeting for the Caucasians. Another for the Spanish speaking. Another for the Koreans. Another for the Chinese. This had more to do with culture than language. The language barrier can be overcome by technology. The trainings proved that. We simply could not coexist because we could not stand each other. We wanted to be with our own kind.

Again, I am sick of this.

ERM is having this effect on me. He is revealing to me why I have been pissed off, disaffected, dissatisfied, and generally speaking passively aggressively apathetic about church. We suck, pure and simple.

He has yet to get to the solution to these issues, although he identifies a few. Mosaic is a cultural melting pot supreme. One third Asian, one third Latino, and the remaining third a motley mix of Caucasian, African American, and so forth. It is a weekly miracle that it works at all. Their growth rate has probably been slower as a result of the diversity. But what a rich experience! Not only do they have music that appeals to the R&B, classic rock stuff you and I like. They have Tuvan throat singers. African drums. Flamenco music. All presenting the Lord Y’Shua in a unique way. They use art, sculpture, dance, music and even fragrances to express worship.

This is definitely pushing my buttons.

It seems clear that we went profoundly wrong in TLC. As you pointed out, putting the emphasis on your children, and attempting to “grow the church by enjoying your wife” is supremely self centered and self absorbed. Effectively, you do not have to become uncomfortable at all. You can maintain your traditional culture, no problem.

I talked to you about the hymnal. The hymnal in TLC is a big symptom of what was wrong there. I see the same thing in a different context in other church groups, including Journey and even Grace. Folks in TLC would speak in hushed worshipful tones about the hymnal. What great theology! What incredible spirit!

Any attempt to introduce diversity in the music of TLC was met with quiet but firm disapproval, as we saw with Diane Bedwell in Anchorage. There is no flexibility or freedom in this area. Minds completely closed and made up. Conform or leave.

In the process TLC lost an entire generation, including our own children. For whom music is incredibly important and a huge part of their lives. And they roundly despised the music from TLC, especially the hymnal. This is one of many reasons why I believe TLC is doomed and will disappear within a few decades. Another generation at most. Unless they radically adapt. Which I see no sign of happening.

Putting the focus back on myself, unfortunately, our children also hate the music that you and I love. So we also have some dying to do. They love Green Day, Tool, and the like. There needs to be some music that appeals to them, which they can grab onto. This is critically important. It appeals to their culture which is radically different from ours, like it or not.

And that is not a bad thing. The fact that our kids absorbed and embraced their culture in completely normal. We did the same thing. In the process, we were able to reach people when they were outside of the traditional Christian culture, which happened to me in spades during the 80s. I did not push Amazing Grace down their throats. At that time, I was ready with Mylan Lefavre, Petra, and so forth as an alternative to Guns N Roses and the like.

I am not so ready now with my own children. I don’t know who the alternative is to Tool. I have no understanding or familiarity with the current wave of Christian music. I am stuck in a classic rock context. I want to continue to listen to Phil Keaggy, Russ Taff and so forth. Because that is my culture.

Art and film are similar. The Christian video and film I have seen is incredibly lame. There is only one Hollywood produced commercial film (Amazing Grace) which I have seen in the past few years which expresses the gospel in a way that would appeal to someone who was affected by the Hollywood culture. Other than that, things are pretty grim.

Why is this? I see massive amounts of money spent on film by Christian groups like the Billy Graham Association. Their stuff is simply terrible. It is locked into a churchist cultural context. Lots and lots of white middle class faces in a suburban setting. All the assumptions I spoke of above are firmly in place. No one deals with the issues of whether there is a God. Whether the bible is in fact true. Whether heaven is a real place. And so forth.

Ron Bell is a stark exception. Why not more stuff like his? He is amazing.

So, getting to the point of this rant, what I am looking and praying for in our lives is a community of believers like what I discussed with you this morning:

1. A movement, not an institution. Movements impact culture. They even create new culture. They are exciting, energizing and motivating. Institutions perpetuate the traditional culture. They seek to survive. Movements do not try to survive. They may live, or they may die. Whatever. The Cause is the point, not the institution.
2. Directly involved with and impacting the community that surrounds us. Stop the hiding. I am not talking about knocking on doors. As JD pointed out at Summit last weekend, that really, really sucks as well. There must be a better way. I am trying to find that way.
3. Diversity in culture, religious background, ethnicity, country of origin, etc. expressed in a daily way. No agist segregation either. Everyone mixed. Let’s figure out how to get along without dividing ourselves.
4. Freedom. No restrictions. I saw this at Journey the night that Jeanae tried to lead worship. A bunch of closed, bigoted, traditional Christians who thought what Jeanae was doing was interesting but completely did not get that they were called and expected to participate in it fully. I want a church that expects a weekly miracle. That does not attempt to program things. Let God show up.
5. Aggressively non-professional. No church bosses.
6. Wildly creative. A vibrant culture that expresses art in many media, including music, the Web, print, and so forth.
7. If these things are in place, we should see explosive growth. I am talking about a subversive, radical movement that seeks to destroy the established order of the World Religious System. A revolutionary movement in other words. That is what the Church was in the first century. Why not now?

The way I feel about this is a sense of longing. I am in a state of desiring to find this movement in my community, or to create it if I have to. I do not want to go on any longer without this.

It is like the sense I felt when I was alone before I met you. I had a longing for someone like you with whom I could share my life. I wanted to be married to a very special person. I have found that person, ant that person is you. I want to find this church. If I cannot find it, I want to create it.

Love,
Me

How do I feel about our upcoming trip to San Francisco?

Dear LORD:

Be with us as we travel to San Francisco this week. Give us your angels of protection. Help us to make it there safely. Help Ruth to get her seat on her second flight. Be with her all the way to San Francisco. I want everything to go perfectly for her.

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was being a great cook. I loved the dinner you made!

I feel very excited about our trip. My level of excitement is definitely a 10! This is the first trip we have taken together since we got back together, other than our Retrouvaille weekend. It is a huge milestone! We are going on another honeymoon! To my favorite American city! I love San Francisco. And I love you! Two of my favorite things at the same time! Wow!

I wish I felt better. But I suspect that I will start feeling much better as soon as we get to the City. I love the air in California. Loaded with negative ions. I suspect that most of what is going on is allergies. I am feeling fine in all of the other areas of my body. So once I am away from the bad air that we have right now, I will be tip top. Which is great because we are going to have a ball.

The way I feel about our trip is kind of the way I felt when I was 6 and we traveled to Disneyland. That was a great trip. It was long before they built Disney World, so Disneyland was the best theme park in the whole world. I was so excited! That's how I feel now too. Really, really looking forward to getting away from it all, just the two of us. Staying together in a hotel, Not having to worry about kids or chores. Just chilling. Yay!

Sooooooo, let's do it! Let's go and have a really great time. I love you.

Love,
Me

How do you feel about the way that we make a living and our respective jobs?

Dear LORD:

Give us perspective in the area of our income. Help us to know how we should behave with respect to money. Give us control over the area of our finances. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was that you were really glad to see me, and you missed me while you were working today. I love it that you want to be with me. I was very glad to see you too!

I am very comfortable with the way that you are helping out in the area of making an income. You are doing fine. I think it is wonderful that you have a place to go to get some outside activity without being too tied to our home. I want your identity to be derived from something other than our house. That is too limiting for you.

I would love to see you branch out into other areas when you are ready. But this is entirely your decision. My position and attitude towards you in the area of your work is that I want to support you as much as possible with whatever you want to do in life.

On the other hand, I am fried in the area of my job, and would love to find an easier and less stressful way of making a living. I have been working on this somewhat. I am in touch with several headhunters. I keep getting nibbles off of LinkedIn. I follow up on those. I have no firm prospects yet, but I feel that this is only a matter of time.

In the meantime, my plan is to soak EMC for all we can get: To do my job well enough to keep them happy and stay employed there, and no more. I probably will not get promoted or much increase in salary, but whatever. I just want to stay there long enough to figure out something else.

Possibilities include:

1. Working for something like Electronic Arts.
2. Working for another storage firm, like Pillar, 3Par or such.
3. Working for Oracle.
4. Something I have not thought of yet.

I have been trading calls with my headhunter. I will let you know what develops.

Bottom line: I need to find another job eventually, but there is no rush on that.

The way I feel about my answer is slightly stressed, but basically OK. It's kind of like how you feel when you have to go to the dentist, but not for a root canal. Just for like a filling. A bit nervous and stressed out in other words.

In general, on your job and career I feel supportive and concerned, but not overly so. Again, I want to set you free to do whatever you want. That is my heart for you. I regard our basic living cost as being my responsibility. Whatever you can do to help out is great, and especially if you can get out of the house and not be too isolated. I mostly just want you to be happy.

I love you!

Love,
Me

In what ways to you think that our communication could be improved? HDIFAT?

Dear LORD:

Help Ruth and I further improve our communication so that we can stand the storms that life brings into our lives forever. Give us the intimacy and transparency that we need to be strong together, much stronger than we are alone. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was being willing to love and care for me in my medical procedure and the patient and loving way that you were involved with that in my life. I love you for that!

There are a few ways that I feel that our communication could be improved all of which pretty much have to with me (as usual):

1. I need to continue to make a concerted effort to listen to you.
2. I need to be very patient with you , always.
3. I need to be able to push through. I need to always be willing to not give up. Determined in other words.
4. I need to look past the times when you are challenging, and go to the root. I need to see below the surface in other words.
5. I need to be more mature than you are. Given that I can very infantile and childlike at times, this can be a real challenge. I am talking about true maturity, though. I need to always strive to be the one who is willing to flex.
6. I need to be willing to admit that you are right. If I love you enough, I will always be willing to do that.
7. I need to remember what is truly important. Only one thing is truly necessary: That you and I are together. But that is more than just physically together. We must be together in spirit and truth. We must be intimate spiritually.
8. And that gets to some pretty tough territory: I need to be faithful and steadfast to pray for you. You cannot have bad communication with someone who you pray for on a daily basis. I will readily admit that I fall short in this area (although I have been doing far better than I have ever done).

The way I feel about that is loving and care towards you. I know that I love and cherish you by taking care of our communication. I really want to be there for you in this area. I love you dearly. It is extremely important to me. I am willing to be the husband you need to be a joyful, content wife. I want to do that for you, and for God, and for myself. You are all that is truly important to me, above all else. (Yes, our children are very dear to me. But you are my top priority.)

Remember always that you are my one true love.

The love and care I feel to you is a 10 for sure. I would compare it to the love Ye'shua felt when he died for the world. It feels that way. A sacrificial, giving love that frees your soul to be truly happy and blessed. To be willing to die for another frees yourself. To know that you are already dead, that you have nothing left to lose (for you have lost it all already), makes one the most formidable force on the planet.

The force of God's love bursting through in my heart has been unleashed to you, my dear. I will remain committed and dedicated to our communication, and your happiness and joy in life. I will endure. I will remain faithful.

It is what I want. It meets my need too, after all. It overcomes the selfishness of my heart, and deals with the sin in my soul. It gives me what I need to be truly alive: A person who needs my love.

And such a dear person!

Love,
Me

How does conflict between us make me feel?

Dear LORD:

Help our marriage become resilient to all conflict. Let us be able to relate to each other so well that the conflicts that are the inevitable result of the pressures of daily life do not sway us in any way from the true course of oneness within marriage: Your Son and Spirit.

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was being willing to share me with our daughter. I was amazed at how easily you let me go with her to our Daddy/Daughter date, and how supportive you were of the relationship that exists between Jeanae and I. Thank you so much for your understanding and patient heart as I love Jeanae into a state of acceptance of the new relationship that you and I share.

I feel nervous when we have conflict. That is my strongest feeling. I think I have told you this before. It is not that strong, about a 3. It feels something like the butterflies that you have when you are going to give a speech in front of a large group. A little pit in the stomach feeling. I am a bit apprehensive. I keep thinking that we are going to snap back into the old patterns of behavior in which you were aggressive and I was passive/aggressive. I do not want to do that soooooo much! I want us to keep the newness of our relationship alive, which is why I am so supportive and consistent about our dialogging and maintaining our closeness in our communication.

Yeah, nervous. That's it.

I have that feeling fairly regularly. It happened when I said that question "What I need from you is very simple...." and you flashed up at me. Nervous. Similarly, I felt it when you reacted to my statement this morning: "There's nothing I can do about that..." Nervous.

There seem to be a few statements or phrases that I am using fairly innocently that you react to. I am not sure that I understand these reactions. Maybe I never will. I can certainly stop saying them if that is the issue.

I wonder if there is more to it. But I don't want to pick this apart. The bottom line is that I love you, and I want to be married to you. I want to minimize the friction between us (which is inevitable, as I pointed out in my prayer), and I want for us to get along as well as we have in the past few months for the rest of our lives.

I am willing to change just about anything about my communication in order to accomplish this that does not involve my becoming fat, doing anything illegal or otherwise immoral. :-)

If there is an underlying issue, please tell me. Otherwise, I will not know. If it is just me doing things that are plain-vanilla annoying, let me know that too. I can certainly change the way I communicate with you, including omitting flash-point phrases that annoy you. Whatever you need, in other words, in order to put up with me. I know I am an annoying, quirky guy. Heck, I am amazed that you successfully put up with me for so long! I certainly annoy myself. As Erwin Raphael McManus points out, we are all prisoners in our own skin. Finding peace with God is partly a process of coming to terms with that and realizing that we need to forgive ourselves, as well as those close to us, continuously.

Love,
Me

What was my strongest feeling of the day?

Dear LORD:

Help us to remain committed and dedicated to dialog. Keep our relationship strong and honest. Be with us as we go through the next few months. Let us remain as loving and intimate as we are today, if not more so! Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was your apology - with a kiss. It was so sweet to have you apologize to me in such a loving way.

My strongest feeling of today was exhilaration that we are being unloaded from the burden of the house. I was a bit stressed until I got to see the closing statement. I never know how things are going to turn out until I see them. But I followed through with the lawyer and got my hands on that statement when everyone else did.

As I was reading the email, Susan called me. We pulled it up together and explained to me the way it would all work out.

At that point, I was exhilarated. This feeling was a 10. I wanted to dance and sing (and play air guitar, as you see I have been doing). I am so happy! Exhilarated!

It is like the feeling you get when you are sledding in the winter and you go down a long snowy slope with the wind in your hair. The cold of the snow on your face! Very exhilarating!

Yes!

I am so happy to be rid of that house. You were right all along, as you usually are. I resisted that decision for so long.

Like I said, it will be a while before I agree to build or own again. I am enjoying the freedom too much. I like our rent house. It is a little bit ghetto, but very, very comfortable. Like you said, I would not want to own it, but it is a great place for us to live for now. And it's very cheap!

Love,
Me

How do I feel about selling the house in Chapel Hill

Dear LORD:

Thank you for selling the house in Chapel Hill. Be with us through the process of the closing. Help us to realize as much in revenues as possible from the sale. Let each detail be divinely appointed, like my getting a blower from the repair dudes today. That was great!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was being a good handyman. You are great at fixing stuff. I loved working with you.

The way I feel about selling the Chapel Hill is a little sad, but most relieved. I want to get the CA tax burden off of our shoulders. I want to be free of the big financial burden of that mortgage. That was always a weight on my shoulders. I want to get our lives simplified, and the financial obligations reduced. I like the fact that we have cut our housing expense. We will still have plenty of deductions for 2007. We can worry about 2008 when it happens.

So all in all I feel pretty good about selling the house in Chapel Hill. It was a nice house in many ways, but as I pointed out today, it had many negatives as well. It was noisy. The master bedroom was too small. We had contention at many points in our lives because of the way that house was laid out. The yard was a huge money pit. Wow! The money that we spent on that yard! And it never lived up to the potential that we imagined.

Yes, it was in a beautiful place. But our neighbors, with a few exceptions, were eccentric snobs. No one with the exception of Ken and Annie and the Barados ever gave us the time of day there. We will be happier here I suspect. This is a much less upscale, snobbish neighborhood. Yes, we have a doctor living next door. Fine. But she is not a doctor who has pretensions of artistic grandeur and likes to make American Indian war robes out of fast food containers. weird!

That's my best single word for how I feel about Chapel Hill. The place is simply weird. And it makes me feel weirded out. The huge pagan love feast going on in downtown Chapel Hill tonight is a good example. Some weird, non-friendly snobbish people sitting around smoking dope and talking about weird stuff. I am through with that!

I just want to be a regular guy. No pretensions. No weirdness. For a change.

So, I feel pretty good about selling that beast of a house. A little sad. Maybe a little nostalgic at times. But overall, relieved and happy to be free of the burden. It is kind of like the feeling you have when you have graduated from a school that you kind of liked, but which also cost you alot in terms of work and stress, and now you are through. Another chapter in your life in other words. An opportunity to take the next step.

The other thing, like I said tonight, owning a home ties you to the land. It creates a connection to a particular geographic area. When Jeanae graduates from high school, I want to be through with that. I want us to be mobile. We need to be able to make whatever decision we want with respect to where we live, including an country other than the US. And certainly other than the State of North Carolina.

So, overall, I feel relieved. That is my strongest feeling today, especially with respect to the sale of the Chapel Hill house.

Love,
Me

What happens when you remember events surrounding our separation? HDIFTYT?

Dear LORD:

Give us grace to continue to dialog. We need this communication tool to remain connected and keep our relationship vital. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was being incredibly good in bed. I have told you this before, but I never get tired of saying it. You are incredibly sexy! Yay!

I feel OK about remembering the events of our separation. I did that in conversations with you several times today. I feel completely comfortable telling you that.

Like I said, I do not allow myself to question the why in many of the things you did when we were going through that time. You did many things then that did not make sense to me. But whatever. Divorce and separation is a form of insanity. It is unreasonable and stupid to expect any kind of logic or rational thinking out of a person at that time in their life.

I was in a very emotional state as well. I did the best I could but undoubtedly made a lot of mistakes. I just want to go on.

I think of our separation as something that had to happen for us to get to the point we are now. We were terrible then, but as bad as that was, that is how good it is now. I treasure everyday with you. I love being with you and the relaxed, comfortable, but incredibly sexy and exciting, relationship that we share at this point.

So, in the matter of sharing about how either of us felt during our separation, I am pretty much OK with that, no matter what. It happened. I am not interested in wallowing in that time. On the other hand, I am not going to avoid it either. We have a lot to live for and look forward to at this point. I love you and treasure you tremendously. I want to spend the rest of my days pampering and spoiling you and our daughter. (Eventually, she will leave home and it will just be you and me. Yay!) I find you soooooo very fun to be with.

It was a tough time, that's all. We went through it, and now it's over. We are together now. We never have to do that again. We just need to keep working on our relationship the way we are now, and that will never happen again.

Like Charlie said, it is a process of working daily around the edges of our differences. We are not the same, and conflict and differences are inevitable. But by fully understanding each other, we become capable of changing and accommodating each other in our marriage. We can do that. We are doing it.

Love,
Me

How do I feel about moving this weekend?

Dear LORD:

Please help us to successfully move our household this weekend and take care of all of the things that need to be accomplished in our lives, including the closing, insurance, credit cards, my job, and everything else which is on our shoulders right now. We rest in your grace and trust you with it. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was being willing to pack the house and help us get moved into our new home. You are a trooper!

The way I feel about moving this weekend is stressed and pressured. I feel like we are not prepared. I also feel like I failed you this week by having to be in a two day meeting and not being able to take time off to help you pack.

I don't know how to make this up to you. I feel really badly about this.

I am under such tremendous pressure and stress at work that I do not have the time or energy to devote to moving that I should. This is really bad. I do not want to be failing to support you in this way.

Moving is very stessful, no question. Our home being disrupted. Our lives being shifted to a new location and a new mode. Many changes in everyday lives. Routines becoming unstable.

It just makes me feel crazy. That's kind of how I feel. Edgy and off balance. Like I am not in control as much as I want to be. I also feel bothered and unhappy. Unhappy with myself and unhappy that the timing is coming down the way it is.

We have to move. There you have it. I am responsible for a big part of that. I need to help you. We are in this together. I want to help you in the worst way. I am just strapped out.

I feel like I am making excuses and I hate that. No excuses. We will move and somehow it will happen. Failure is not an option. We have a moving truck coming on Sunday. Come Hell or high water, the Browning family is moving to 811 Kimball Drive in Durham, North Carolina, on Sunday October 21, 2007. Amen!

Part of the problem is that I desperately need exercise. Thank God I made love to you this morning. You were incredible! I got to feel something positive in that moment. The closeness I felt with you as we held each other afterwards was amazing.

Of course, the demands came so quickly. How I wish I could have just lain there in your arms and gone back to sleep. And stayed there in that bed with you for the rest of the day. Or just worked with you on the house. That would have been heaven! I love being with you and spending time with you sooooooo much!

You are my treasure.

I guess my bottom line on how I feel about moving is pressure. That's the strongest feeling by far. It feels like a looming deadline in my job or in school. Some big project that has to be done by a certain time. And I am not ready. Not even close. I don't see how I am possibly going to pull it off. Pressure to perform and be brilliant on demand and on a schedule.

I somehow tend to pull that off. I guess I will this time too. I won't enjoy it though unless God shows up and makes a miracle happen. That was the case when we moved into this house. I was awestruck by the way that went down. God did that before. He can do it again.

Love,
Me

How do I feel about starting a new career?

Dear LORD:

Please help me find a less stressful way to make a living. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was being willing to defer to me in the area of our children. I need to be the parent / head of the family as badly as you need for me to do that. You are meeting my need in that area of my life beautifully!

I desperately want to find a way to make a living that is less stressful and demanding on my time. The EMC job is killing me. I am getting sicker and sicker the longer I am there.

Admittedly, I have a great level of freedom during the non-crunch time. But the crunch time is very tough. This will last until after OOW. That seems like forever to me right now. After that, things will get better.

I guess part of the problem is that things all came down on me at the same time. I feel funny leaving you holding the bag on packing up our home this last 2 days. I really want to be here with you. I will be here as much as possible tomorrow. I need to accomplish 3 things: 1. file my expense reports; 2. Finish the CLARiiON resiliency testing; 3. Buy my offshore team some gifts to reward them for their incredible level of output over the past few months. Once I take care of that, I will get here as soon as possible.

How I feel about my career choice at this point is complex. I am tired. I am a bit stressed out. I am kind of desperate. When I consider leaving IT and doing something simpler and easier, I feel these feelings subside a bit. I feel relief. I feel peaceful. I feel relaxed.

My strongest feeling is relief. It is a 10, especially if I can fully imagine being out of IT and on to a new less stressful occupation. Kind of like the Rolaids commercial: How do you spell Rolaids? R-E-L-I-E-F.

The best example I can think of to describe this feeling is like taking a really good dump. That's a gross and crude example, but very descriptive and accurate. You feel the need to go. You go. Relief, pure and simple. Very nice!

I don't yet understand or know fully what form this new occupation will take. I want to do that. I need to spend some time figuring this out. I am addicted to my job right now, in that it is giving us a way to live, and that requires so much of my time. Once I am out of crunch mode, I am going to spend a lot of time making a concerted effort to figure out another way to earn a living.

I am also going to continue to pray earnestly, long and hard for a solution to this issue. I want this more than you know. I have become very tired and unhappy at EMC. It is grinding me down, and that is not good at all.

Please continue to pray for me in this area. I desperately need and want your prayers for this. You are more important to me in that area than you can possibly imagine.

I love the process of dialoging with you, and I think it is really cool how we are doing this now. I like to read our dialogs later and digest them. Plus, we will have a permanent record of this for a long time to come! And other couples can read our dialogs (assuming we tell them how to do so) and benefit from our experience. Exciting, don't you think?

Love,
Me

How do I want to live my life? HDIFAMA?

Dear LORD:

Thank you for my beautiful and loving wife and daughter. Let us become entranced by your transforming life. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was that you were glad to see me when I came home. Your smile was warm and inviting. I love you!

The way that I want to live my life is as a part of a loving community that includes you and our daughter. I am terribly lonely and longing for community and a sense of belonging. I feel very isolated and cut off from the rest of humanity.

I also want to live in a state of continuous transparency and intimacy with you as my wife, and with Jeanae as our daughter, as well as with other members of this community.

I want there to be total freedom in the community, though. I do not want to be controlled or dictated to in any way. I want us to submit to one another in love, and to esteem each other higher than ourselves.

I am so ready for this kind of humbling, simple life.

I want to move away from a life filled with complexity and demands. I want less stress, and fewer demands. Less income in exchange is fine with me. I am no longer impressed by money. I have been wealthy and that mostly just stressed me out. I would not turn away great wealth at this point, but I would pray to God earnestly for wisdom to handle it better than I did the last time. I was sooooo foolish. I want to be like the millionaire next door who lives a simple life in a simple house with an old beat up car and a yard that needs to be mowed. In other words, not a big deal rich guy who drives a fancy car and has fancy stuff. I want to be more of a normal sort of guy than I am now.

I want to be loved and respected for more humble, simple qualities than I am now esteemed for. I am tired of being a big deal IT guy. I just want to be someone simple and normal. I do not want to be seen as being brilliant or special. Why can't people just see me as being like them? I have been cut off from so many relationships by the masks that I wear in that way.

I guess the single word that I would use for this is simple. I want to live a simple life. Another word is community. I want to know people and be involved with them in their daily lives in a way that affects them deeply. And I want to be in a side-by-side equal relationship with them, not one in which I am somehow perceived by them as being superior to them either by making a lot of money, or having a lot of brains.

Simple. Community. Yeah. Like that.

The way I feel about this is relieved. I am glad that I have come to this point. It feels like you feel after eating a big heavy meal which leaves you very uncomfortable, and you finally burp. Then you feel much better! I feel that my life has taken the form of that big heavy meal. I want to be lighter and less filling from now on.

Another way would be like having a big tax bill or other obligation off your shoulders. My life has been kind of like that. A big heavy burden I have had to bear. Not you or Jeanae, I would never regard you or Jeanae as a burden at all. Please do not misunderstand me. I mean the notion that I am some kind of big deal IT guy with lots of money and a nice car. I am so tired of that. It just feels like a burden to me now. I want to be lighter and less heavy in that area as well as what I eat.

Maybe there is a way that we can be OK together with me as a simple, regular guy, not some body special. What do you think?

My feeling of relief is kind of tentative, since I don't really know what this will end up looking like yet. But it's growing. Right now, it's about as 2 or 3. I think it could become a 10 if I could get unhooked from IT, find another way to make a living, cut our living costs, and so forth. And then just live with you and Jeanae (or if she wanted to leave and start a family of her own I would be OK with that), and we could spend more time together, with less stress and demands on my time.

I would like to be free to travel with you and for us to have fun together. When you and I are together, that's the most fun I have in my whole life. As well as being together with our daughter, which is just as special too. The best, I guess, is when all three of us are together, like last night when we had dinner as a family. That was such a simple, relaxed time.

You are waiting for me, and you just made this very plaintiff sigh, so I guess I had better stop now.

Love,
Me

Question: How do I feel about starting our new life together

Dear LORD: Help Ruth and I start a beautiful new life together, and continue to walk in love and forgiveness for each other. Amen!

Dearest Ruth:

Your MEQ today was that you wanted to have dinner as a family, and you appreciated what I made for dinner. I loved being with you and sharing the time with you and Jeanae. You are incredibly precious to me!

My feelings about starting our new life together includes hopeful, joyous, caring, loving, cherishing, and excited. My strongest feeling is that I am excited.

We need a new beginning together. We have walked through so much Hell in this world, and we deserve a breath of fresh air. We need to simplify our lives and drop much of the unneeded baggage of belongings and lifestyle. I really want us to do this.

I feel light-hearted as well. It's kind of playful. It feels like I am young again. Like we are starting fresh and new, without the heaviness of the past. It is a light feeling, like a weight has been removed.

In terms of being excited, it is like the feeling that I have when I drive a really fast car, or maybe go down a steep hill on my bike. With the wind whipping through my hair, and stuff flying by. Really exciting! It feels a little scary, but in a nice way.

Or maybe it's like when I climbed the Sky Tower in Auckland and I stood on a narrow platform with a grate floor about 500 meters (1500 feet) above the ground. I could see for miles! Also, the wind was blowing hard, and it was cold. But the view was incredible! You felt like you could just fly off the thing, you were so high up. Wonderful!

In terms of playfulness, remember when I used to reach down with the kids when they were small. I would grab them by the waist, and rotate them up onto my shoulder so that their hips were sitting on top of my shoulder, and they were upside down with their arms hanging down in front of me. Then I would tickle their tummy, and play with them up there like that. They got to where they would stay up there forever. They loved it! It was very playful. This feels like this. Just lighthearted playfulness. It feels wonderful!

I am also filled with wonder and awe that we have come this far and that we are continuing to do this together. You are amazing to me. As I told you recently, if we had to go through the really bad time to get to this point where we are so close, it was worth. I would not choose to do it again, of course, but I am very glad that we have gotten to the point where we communicate as well as we do. I really love and cherish the amazing communication we have together.

You are and will always be the love of my life. I don't know what I would do without you. I really love you and cherish you always. I need to be with you and to hold you close. You are not only my wife and my lover, you are also my best friend. I feel like I could talk to you about anything. You are so caring and loving to me now. I want to be the best husband I can be for you!

Let me know what you think of this way of dialogue. It is really fun, I think. Anyway, you don't have to worry about my handwriting.

With great love, and hope for all our tomorrows,
Jeff