Where's my dinner, woman!

Is it true that the expectation of something does not negate the joy in its fulfillment?

Jared & I have been reading the infamous love languages book. His primary language is "acts of service," and no matter how many times I press him, he still says he feels loved when I do things like... oh, say... do the dishes, clean up the house, take out the garbage, make him dinner, vaccuum the living room..."

Are you serious? This is so unromantic. I mean, those are things I have to do all the time ANYway. So how does he get "I do this cuz I love him" from what may very well just be "this kitchen is gross. I've gotta do something about it."

Anyway, my biggest fear with "learning his dialect" is that if I make him dinner every night, that he'll come to expect dinner every night, and then it will be a requirement of our relationship, rather than an expression of heartfelt love. If he comes home and I haven't made him dinner, maybe he'll start calling me "woman" and take off his shirt to reveal a wife-beater underneath. Then he'll grab a beer and watch some tv.

No, seriously. I could lovingly make dinner every night, but I can't fathom that the warm fuzzies wouldn't eventually wear off for him. What happens when expectations become entrenched in our every day lives? Wouldn't we have to run faster and faster to keep up? Like developing a tolerance for our favorite drug?

Jared begs to differ.

Okay, and I have to admit... even though I expect flowers and chocolate on Valentine's Day, I don't like them any less from year to year (although I'm only on year #2. Ask me in 2057 and see what I say then.) (j/k). And even though I expect a kiss goodbye each morning, I only look forward to it more and more and revel in the moment more and more as time goes by. It's like expecting presents on Christmas. Who gets tired of presents? Not me! Hmmmm. Could he be right about wifely, domestic service too?

Trying to grasp someone else's love language is a challenge (if it doesn't involve presents, candlelight, or snowboarding anyway). But I guess no matter what floats your boat, there's something to being able to expect it to happen. I mean, not just that expecting isn't bad, but that it's actually good.

Expectation is part of the foundation of trust - a crucial element in a loving relationship. Why would we hook up with people if we didn't come to expect that they would provide the things we need to feel loved?

...From All My Labours

“People shouldn’t work on days like this,” I told my Dad/Boss.

I had walked out the door that morning to beautiful streaming sunshine. Not a cloud in the sky!

In Portland? In February?!

We had just ended a record-long streak of straight rain and gray. I don’t think I’d seen the sun since November. My heart instantly grew three sizes.

I took in the sunshine for a moment. My very first flowers were blooming (there was actually a bumble bee in one of them), I could hear a mess of birds chirping in the tree nearby, the breeze blew slightly. Aaaaah! I rejoiced for a moment. Then I sighed, walked to my car, and drove to work.

“The city should totally shut down, really," I continued. "We have Snow-days... we should have SUN-days!”

oh. wait.

“...and on the seventh day thou shalt rest...” (Exodus 23:12, King James Translation)

There is actually a commandment that we stop working and enjoy life once in a while. Crazy.

Crazier still, is that pretty much everything God has told us is designed to help us enjoy life and have joy. Immature, adolescent, defiant godlings that we are, we’ve twisted most of our Creator’s direction into guilt-provoking prohibitions. Pity.

Well, I for one am going to have joy. I’m taking the whole day off in two days!! Oh, wait. That’s Sunday. Well, I take every Sunday off! Ha!

Praise God!

7-Grain Soul

When I was little, my mommy didn't love me. How did I know? My Adam's all-natural, no-sugar-added peanut butter told me so. While other kids were eating gloriously white Wonderbread, Skippy, and Smuckers sandwiches for lunch, followed by fruit snacks, Capri Sun, and Oreo Cookies, I was muscling down my homemade-whole-wheat bread sandwiches with that Adam’s no-sugar peanut butter and homemade jam, followed by an apple, water from the fountain, and – if I was lucky – an orange-rind-pumpkin-whole-wheat dessert thing that my Mom thought she could pass off as a cookie.

My fellow geek-friends soon discovered that they could bribe me to do humiliating things in exchange for a morsel of their marvelously saccharine fruit rollup. Half the time they didn’t want it anyway (I never understood this), and would just have a little fun watching me bark like a dog, or whatever cruel prank they dreamed up this time. Luckily, they were not very creative, and I don’t think the other kids ever noticed my desperate antics. Not that it helped my popularity any.

Nevertheless... childhood scarred me. And as an adult, I defiantly and enthusiastically buy Skippy peanut butter now. It’s one of the beautiful things about adulthood. We responsible people working the daily grind often lament the loss of the old days, when we had no responsibilities and knew nothing of the pain and suffering in the world. In this moment, though, I choose to rejoice in my adulthood! Finally! I can eat what I want! I can go where I want! I can do what I want! Remember how we used to think we couldn’t wait to grow up and not have parents telling us what to do all the time? Remember that cruelty really did exist in the world, among our own name-calling peers? Remember that summers were actually boring as often as they were fun? I do. Childhood was great. But adulthood is also Great. I mean, hey! I get to eat Skippy now.
I just at a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich, and oh, the bliss!

Truthfully, most of my tastes were eventually brow-beaten to match my mother’s in the end. Or else I’ve returned to them after briefly experimenting with the dark side of refined foods and transfats (so unfair, to call foods “refined” which are actually evil, menacing fragments of real food which coat your intestines, stay beyond their welcome, and make you fat). Nowadays I buy the wholest-wheatest bread I can find. I prefer all-natural ingredients. I am actually grossed out by fatty, ready-made, boxed or frozen entrees. I love fresh fruit and vegetables. I’m a huge fan of broccoli. And I make almost everything from scratch if I possibly can. Very like my mother. It’s only on a few points that I’ve diverted, like the peanut butter.

It is our privilege as adults to decide which of our parents’ values to adopt, whether it be religion, child-rearing, marriage, moral values, habits, etc. I would say my food preferences somewhat follow my more important life choices so far. In the areas of morals and values, mostly I’ve come to agree with what my parents taught me. I diverge here and there (but then, as an adult I also know now that they don’t even agree on everything. Go figure). But I generally subscribe to the same whole-grain-whole-life religion they do. In the end I married a man my mother actually approved of. My political and social opinions are, well, sort of the same as my folks’. Overall, I can’t complain. I’m really grateful to my parents for teaching me good values and helping me develop an early taste for goodness, honesty, joy, God, love, gratitude, the outdoors, personal accomplishment, and natural foods.