Steve and Stuff

I just found this letter that Ronald Reagan wrote to his son just before Michael Reagan got married.  I wish Mr Reagan were still here.
Manhattan Beach, California
June 1971

Dear Mike:

Enclosed is the item I mentioned (with which goes a torn up IOU). I could stop here but I won’t.

You’ve heard all the jokes that have been rousted around by all the “unhappy marrieds” and cynics. Now, in case no one has suggested it, there is another viewpoint. You have entered into the most meaningful relationship there is in all human life. It can be whatever you decide to make it.

Some men feel their masculinity can only be proven if they play out in their own life all the locker-room stories, smugly confident that what a wife doesn’t know won’t hurt her. The truth is, somehow, way down inside, without her ever finding lipstick on the collar or catching a man in the flimsy excuse of where he was till three A.M., a wife does know, and with that knowing, some of the magic of this relationship disappears. There are more men griping about marriage who kicked the whole thing away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame. There is an old law of physics that you can only get out of a thing as much as you put in it. The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will get that out. Sure, there will be moments when you will see someone or think back to an earlier time and you will be challenged to see if you can still make the grade, but let me tell you how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn’t take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music. If you truly love a girl, you shouldn’t ever want her to feel, when she sees you greet a secretary or a girl you both know, that humiliation of wondering if she was someone who caused you to be late coming home, nor should you want any other woman to be able to meet your wife and know she was smiling behind her eyes as she looked at her, the woman you love, remembering this was the woman you rejected even momentarily for her favors.

Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others. Now you have a chance to make it come out the way it should. There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.

Love,

Dad

P.S. You’ll never get in trouble if you say “I love you” at least once a day.

Have you ever said to yourself, “If I only knew then what I know now, I’d do things differently.”?  I know I have.   It’s amazing how clear our vision is when we can look back on the situation and see all the facts clearly.

Consider two examples. If, at the beginning of a board game you knew the moves your opponent would make, how much easier would it be to plan your own moves in order to ensure the best outcome for your side?  If you were a football coach, and you had a videorecording of the exact plays the other team was going to run, how much easier would it be to defeat them?

Now consider this: God is omniscient. That means He knows everything. History is an open book to him.  He knew Joseph’s brothers would sell Joseph into slavery to Egypt. He knew David would commit adultery with Bathsheba. He knew the choices you would make in your life before you made them, and allowed for them in His plan.  Does this excuse our responsibility for our sin? Absolutely it does not.  What it does do, is allow us to trust in God, because He knows what is best.

Is there a famine in the land? Well God used the sinful choices of Joseph’s brothers to save their lives from starvation. Would Bathsheba choose to bathe on the roof of her house and commit adultery with the king? God used this situation as well. Bathsheba is a direct ancestor of Jesus Christ.  Speaking of which, I have always liked the fact that the gospel of Matthew lists four women in Christ’s genealogy: Rahab the non-Jewish prostitute, Tamar, the woman who acted like a prostitute and slept with her father-in-law, Ruth the non-Jewish woman, and Bathsheba, the adultress. Three of the four lived openly sinful lives for a time, and two were not Israelites.

God is never surprised, so the next time you start to worry when things don’t seem to be going your way, remember: if you know Christ as Savior, God knows what he’s doing.  God does not regret His choices, He knows that they are the exact right choices to make.  Is your house getting repossessed? God has someplace else for you to live. You lost your job? Perhaps God has a better one. NO matter what your problem may be.

When I signed up for Facebook, I had a rule that I would not accept a friend request from someone I didn’t know in real life. Family got an automatic pass. In other words, if you’re family, you’re accepted on my friend list, no matter what.  Over time my policy has changed so that now I only accept friend requests from people whom I feel I can trust. In other words, I’m not going to accept your friend request just because we’ve met or spent some time together, I would need to feel that we are actually friends to some extent.

In January of this year my sister called me and told me that she was having problems with her husband. They have been married for somewhere around 20 years (it’s complicated). She gave a few specifics regarding poor choices he had been making, and then she told me that the word “divorce” had come up.  I told her that they both needed to go to counseling, and they needed it yesterday.  She told me that they had an appointment with a counselor.  I continued to pray for her, as they have had problems off and on over the years.

Fast forward to April. My sister sent me a message stating that her husband had moved out. I thought this was just a continuation of the problems they had been having.  Then she informed me that he had moved in with a married woman with whom he has been committing adultery for the past several months. He has not just taken off his wedding ring, he has removed it from his finger, melted it, and thrown it into the fires of Mount Doom. It appears that he has irrevocably destroyed his marriage and his relationships with his kids.

More to the point of this post, he has destroyed his relationship with me.  Don’t get me wrong: the importance of my relationship with him is insignificant when compared with the relationships that he should have preserved with his wife and children. I’m not his spouse or child, and yet his choices have still hurt me.  I used to exchange texts with him about Cubs games. The first time I went to Wrigley Field, he was there with me. I used to talk to him about computers and sports and stuff. We used to joke around at family gatherings.  All of that is gone forever.

I am not sure if he has truly trusted in Christ or not.  While I understand that it is possible for believers to sin this badly, I still find it hard to believe that he would continually choose to sin against God in this way and destroy His family without any guilt or conviction from the indwelling Holy Spirit.  And so I have been praying that he would either trust Christ or come back to Christ (whichever applies: only God knows). I have been praying that he would repent of his choices and do what is right.

While nothing is too hard for the Lord, I have advised my sister to protect herself in case he does not repent. Because of his choices, he is about to be divorced from his wife, he has hurt his family, and he continues to hurt them every day.  Has my sister made mistakes? Sure she has. Everybody does.  But nothing excuses abandoning your family. That’s why they say, “til death do us part.” Here is what they DON’T say:

“til one of us feels like he isn’t getting his needs met.”
“til one of us isn’t happy.”
“til we get tired of each other.”
“til one of us does something so bad it’s unforgivable.”

A variation of this vow is “…as long as we both shall live.”  Certain people today have changed this to read, “…as long as we both shall love.” That invalidates the entire marriage and makes it the equivalent of a car lease (use each other for a while until something shinier comes along).

I hope my brother-in-law realizes what he has done, repents, and asks my sister for forgiveness. I hope that God convicts his heart so that he will either turn to God or return to God. No choice in his life is more important than his own personal salvation.

He has been living with this woman for over a month now. He has expressed no guilt, no remorse, and no desire to do what is right.  Yesterday he posted something on Facebook that ripped open the wound he created a month ago. Here are three things he said:

1. Some people are mad at him.   Why is he surprised by this? If you willingly set my house on fire, destroying the foundation of my family’s living space, I would be mad at you. Certainly if you chose to destroy my family, anger is a natural reaction.
2. He wonders if certain people were ever really his friends.  Seriously? He is questioning people’s personal commitment to him while he is, by his daily choice to remain as he is, spitting on his own personal commitment to his wife and children? This is the definition of chutzpah.
3. He has sacrificed a lot with the choice he made. Yes. He sacrificed his wife, his children, his future, his security, his relationship with God…. The list goes on. And what has he received for his “sacrifice”? Fulfillment of lust. The “happiness” gained from temporary attraction.  was this sacrifice worth it? I hope he realizes soon that it isn’t worth it.

I know, some of you said “tl;dr” a long time ago, but I feel these are things that needed to be said. Since only five people read my blog anyway, I guess that’s ok.  I didn’t write this post to offend anyone. This post is an open letter to my brother-in-law.  He has stated in the past that he is a Christian If this is true, then I Corinthians 5:9-11 says that, because of his choices, I should not keep company with him.  The goal here is that he repents and returns.

But until he does, we are no longer related in my eyes.  This moves him from the “family” category to the “people I know” category.  The question I now ask myself is, “Is he my friend?” When I consider his actions, I have to think, “no, he’s not. He has attacked my sister, my niece and nephews, and has caused pain to many others in my family. By this he has proven he is not my friend.  And therefore I am removing him from my Facebook profile. I pray he repents and returns to his wife. However, that is up to him and God.

Why is it that people think pursuing happiness is the ultimate goal of their lives? Why do people persist in believing that nothing is more important than their own happiness? Why don’t people understand that true happiness cannot be achieved apart from God.

Would you like an example? Have you ever bought something you really wanted? You know the desire of wanting that thing you’ve been looking at for a long time. It’s a car. A computer. A television. A boat. A designer purse. A house. You finally get the means to obtain this item. You feel a rush, as the transaction is completed. You think, “Now at last I can be satisfied!” Five minutes later, you feel unfulfilled. Why? Because your goal was in obtaining it, not in keeping it. How much money do rich people need to be happy? Just a little bit more.

Happiness is a horrible goal. If you do what you think will make you happy, you have become a selfish, self-absorbed excuse for a human being. You exist only to fulfill your own desires. You take and take, and give to others only grudgingly. Instead, God has a plan for your life, where you give up your desires to Him, and He makes you truly happy.

I took my 15 year old son to see The Avengers today. It was an amazingly entertaining movie.  It’s the best movie I’ve seen in the past 10-20 years, literally.  I want to see it again. I mean now.

Special thanks go to my wife’s sisters for the gift of the tickets. While it would have been fine to see the “regular” version, they bought us a gift card large enough so that we could see the IMAX 3D version, which was really nice.

My wife drove us to the theater, the “Goodrich Hamilton 16 IMAX theater.” Nathan and I bought our tickets, received our 3D glasses, and went in the theater. He wanted to sit right up front, which is a horrible place to sit for an IMAX movie, so I overruled and we sat in the middle of the theater.

The glasses we received.

As soon as the previews started, I knew something was wrong.  The screen “doubled up” the images to let you know “put your 3D glasses on.”  We put our glasses on, but the screen was still showing double images.  I figured it was maybe a problem with the projector, and hoped they would get it figured out by the time the movie started.

They didn’t.  I sat through about ten minutes of movie before I pulled out my iPhone.  I googled the phone number of the theater and texted Kim so she could call the manager and tell them there was a problem.  She texted back that the manager said nobody else had complained.  We endured it for a little while longer (I didn’t want to miss anything), but about a half hour into the movie I had had enough. I got up and walked to the exit to find the manager.

Right before I got to the door I saw the bin where you put your 3D glasses after the movie.  Someone had missed the bin, and their glasses were lying on the floor.  The glasses looked nothing like the glasses I had been given. I picked them up, put them on, and walked back up the ramp to where I could see the screen.  Guess what:  it looked great! There was no more blurriness or double vision.  I realized that they had given us the WRONG 3D glasses.  I didn’t know there was more than one kind!  I grabbed another pair of returned glasses from the bin and went back to where Nathan was sitting.

The glasses we should have received.

We enjoyed the rest of the movie, as it was intended.  After the movie I told the employee collecting the glasses at the exit that I needed to talk to a manager.  He said, “Well, I think the managers are in a meeting right now.” I said, “Oh, well that’s ok. I’m just a paying customer, so I guess I don’t matter, right?”  He backed up from his “gatekeeper” attitude pretty quickly and said he would get a manager.

The manager appeared, and I calmly said, “Today is my son’s 15^th birthday. We just paid $31 to see The Avengers in IMAX 3D.  My wife is the one that called you to tell you we were having a problem.”  I then told him how the movie was unwatchable for the first half hour until I pulled two “used” sets of 3D glasses and realized we had been given the wrong type. I gave him the glasses that we had been given by the ticket agent.

The manager, a young man named Justin, then gave us one of the best examples of customer service I’ve seen in a long time.  He didn’t argue. He didn’t question us. He simply apologized for his employee’s mistake and gave us two vouchers good for any movie, as well as two vouchers good for free popcorn and pop.  I will be going back to this theater, because mistakes happen to everybody. It’s what you do AFTER the mistake that determines the difference between having satisfied customers and having to find a new job because you don’t have customers anymore.

As many of you know, we have been praying for the past several weeks that God would provide the money that we need to pay my school bill.  Once I pay the school bill, my workplace will reimburse me for $2000 of it.  We have prayed about it and asked others to pray that God would provide the money.  I had come to the point today where I prayed, “God, I’ve done everything I can, and there’s nothing else I can do about it. I am trusting in You to either provide the money so that I can finish, or show me what it is You want me to do if I am not supposed to continue with my degree. I trust You either way.”

God answered our prayer today, and He said ‘yes!’ A couple in our church has graciously offered to loan us the money for a month so that I can get my degree this summer! My last class will be July 24^th. We are praising the Lord for His goodness, and we are so thankful that He saw fit to move this couple to help us, and we are thankful to them that they were gracious and responded to our need. I would name them, but I’m not sure they want me to. So thank you, you know who you are.

In our family devotions on Tuesday night we read the story of Jehoshaphat from II Chronicles 20.  It’s a great story about God’s protection and provision.  Judah is being attacked by a huge army, and there is nothing the people can do. They pray to God and wholly put their trust in Him. My favorite verse is 20:12, “O our God, will You not judge them? For we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon You.” (NKJV)

When you don’t know what to do, remember: God does. Thank You, God, for being in control and for always doing what is right. Thank you that I don’t have to worry about the future, because You have a plan for me, and You will make it happen. Help me to continue to trust in You no matter what.