Sing Woman Sing!
Xman used to tell the best jokes! He kept people laughing for hours. But there are two I remember about married people. The first one is about a preacher who did his job and preached for 15 minutes. The people loved him and hired him. The next week he did the same thing. All was right with the WORLD. However a couple of Sundays later he preached for an hour and a half! The Deacons took him aside and said, "What happened?" To which the preacher replied, "I got my wife's dentures mixed up with mine this morning." Oh come on that's funny preacher humor.
Then there's the one he told every year. "We've been married X number of years, but it only feel like X number of minutes...under water." People really laughed at that one. I laughed too.
One final joke he loved to tell. A young preacher marries this beautiful woman that can sing and play the piano for church. They are the perfect couple. Years pass... one day he turns to his wife and says, "Sing, Woman Sing". Yep I probably didn't tell it right. The point was, he needed to remember why he married her.
There are many reasons why people get divorced. I think one of them is they just lose sight of who they used to be and what they used to mean to each other. It happens. When there are extreme life circumstances, like several near death experiences and a great deal of loss...sometimes the two people get lost too.
I don't blame anyone for my divorce. It happened. I would like to give some advice to young people thinking about marriage though. First: Know who you are. I did not. I was a paper doll. I was cut perfectly into one shape and that's all I knew how to be. I could sing to the world, but I couldn't cope with it. It's hard to be married to that. I'm not apologizing, just stating facts. I had just turned 19 and he had just turned 20. We had just graduated from Bible School and honestly we didn't know any better, so we got married. I mean, he was a preacher, I played the piano.. what could be wrong with that?
The problem came when we realized that we didn't speak the same language. We had culture shock, so to speak. He was from the South and I was from the West. He grew up in the same house most of his life. I never lived in the same place longer than 5 years. His mother worked outside the home and he learned to cook to help with the home. My mother was a minister and was at work all the time. If you're a preachers kid you know what I mean. When the phone rang, she worked, when the door bell was rung, she worked, when somebody needed a place to stay...we all worked. It was different.
Xman didn't have any of those issues. His grandmother lived across the street, he knew what cousins were. To this day I still don't know who or what most of my relatives are. I know I have a couple of cousins. One of them stays in contact with me. But most of them have either passed away or we never met.
So, he had one way of thinking and I had another. He had stability, predictability and I had everything but. PLEASE do not take this as a slam on anyone. It is not! It's just the way it was. We all grow and we learn. My point is that neither of us knew what we were getting into.
So, back to my advice. Please take time to know who you are before you commit that person to someone else. Secondly, make sure that person knows who they are before you commit yourself to that person. We weren't made in our own images yet. We were still living in the images of our parents and they were basically from two different planets.
I had no idea what it was like to live with a "party line" phone. I didn't know what it was like to live in a house without plumbing. Those aren't bad things, they are just facts that show that our cultures and expectations were very different.
My biggest issue was simply being too young and
Then there's the one he told every year. "We've been married X number of years, but it only feel like X number of minutes...under water." People really laughed at that one. I laughed too.
One final joke he loved to tell. A young preacher marries this beautiful woman that can sing and play the piano for church. They are the perfect couple. Years pass... one day he turns to his wife and says, "Sing, Woman Sing". Yep I probably didn't tell it right. The point was, he needed to remember why he married her.
There are many reasons why people get divorced. I think one of them is they just lose sight of who they used to be and what they used to mean to each other. It happens. When there are extreme life circumstances, like several near death experiences and a great deal of loss...sometimes the two people get lost too.
I don't blame anyone for my divorce. It happened. I would like to give some advice to young people thinking about marriage though. First: Know who you are. I did not. I was a paper doll. I was cut perfectly into one shape and that's all I knew how to be. I could sing to the world, but I couldn't cope with it. It's hard to be married to that. I'm not apologizing, just stating facts. I had just turned 19 and he had just turned 20. We had just graduated from Bible School and honestly we didn't know any better, so we got married. I mean, he was a preacher, I played the piano.. what could be wrong with that?
The problem came when we realized that we didn't speak the same language. We had culture shock, so to speak. He was from the South and I was from the West. He grew up in the same house most of his life. I never lived in the same place longer than 5 years. His mother worked outside the home and he learned to cook to help with the home. My mother was a minister and was at work all the time. If you're a preachers kid you know what I mean. When the phone rang, she worked, when the door bell was rung, she worked, when somebody needed a place to stay...we all worked. It was different.
Xman didn't have any of those issues. His grandmother lived across the street, he knew what cousins were. To this day I still don't know who or what most of my relatives are. I know I have a couple of cousins. One of them stays in contact with me. But most of them have either passed away or we never met.
So, he had one way of thinking and I had another. He had stability, predictability and I had everything but. PLEASE do not take this as a slam on anyone. It is not! It's just the way it was. We all grow and we learn. My point is that neither of us knew what we were getting into.
So, back to my advice. Please take time to know who you are before you commit that person to someone else. Secondly, make sure that person knows who they are before you commit yourself to that person. We weren't made in our own images yet. We were still living in the images of our parents and they were basically from two different planets.
I had no idea what it was like to live with a "party line" phone. I didn't know what it was like to live in a house without plumbing. Those aren't bad things, they are just facts that show that our cultures and expectations were very different.
My biggest issue was simply being too young and
Comments