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Proverbs 9

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Post  Admin Tue Jun 14, 2011 5:50 pm

Jessica is married to one of those men.

Bert is good at his job - skilled and competent - but he is not accomplished because... well for the same reason he doesn't like the job... they make him work. He likes to be good at it without trying. Jessica feels like he does the same thing at home.

He just doesn't try. He's a great dad to the two kids when for whatever reason he decides it's time to actually do something with them. But he only does that when it's OK for him... when he doesn't have to try hard... like in the middle of his ball game or while she's trying to make dinner or instead of blowing 90 minutes on Facebook. Doesn't he see what Facebook is costing his family?

Jessica gets lost in all the ways he lets them down with his lazyness. And there is something about that feeling of bottomlessness. As if this relationship issue is more broadly damaging than she can even get her head around and how can she expect him to see it? He's the major part of the problem.

This problem anyway. Jessica knows she's not perfect and Bert is rarely wrong when he points out her weaknesses. And that makes it difficult sometimes to sort out how serious Bert's apathy really is - she genuinely despises her faults and wishes they weren't there so they could at least take a more clear look at this marriage. But she works hard at loving Bert. It just seems so... bedrock. We should want to get better at this, right? Why won't he work hard?

Anyway they've just had another argument and it went the same way as usual. She wanted him to try and see how his "need" to do Facebook was taking away from a potentially more romantic and fulfilling family life. She tried to do all the right things in terms of how to bring it up and what not to say and trying to surround her questions with love...

But he felt attacked... and then he bites back.

And his bite-backs cut deep. So of course she reacted and there they went, another b l o w o u t.

Why can't I remember Proverbs 9 at times like this, Jessica thinks to herself now. She knows that letting Bert's biting criticisms go unchallenged is hard. But doesn't Proverbs 9 seem to be saying, on some level, just not to engage that? Isn't that basically "scoffing," what Bert does? How can she make sure she can go on feeling like she is loving him if she disengages during those attacks? And what? Is she then strapped with a faulty image of consent? As if by not arguing she is concurring?

All of this is so hard, Holy Spirit, Jessica prays.

Help me to identify scoffing. And give me a Holy Word to focus on what will make me wise.



5 nights later it happened again that Bert was in the basement on his computer while Jessica cleaned up dinner and put both kids to bed. She told Bert that she missed him tonight, that she likes his company while she does the dishes, and that the kids are always so much better behaved, and they "go right down" when he spends that evening time with them. (She really longs for his presence in this family, and she sees how the kids do too).

He bit back. First he got defensive about it (why can't he see she is asking him for something good?) Then he attacked her for always bringing this stuff up at the worst times. She felt her blood boil the way it always does right before she loses control of her tongue. But she remembered Proverbs 9:7 Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury.(ESV)

Funny. All it did was stop her. It didn't feel very miraculous at the time, she actually felt more surprise than anything else. But I'll-be-darned if the argument didn't just suddenly stop happening.

But the craziest thing was that after "taking" his "dump", he came to find her... he snuggled up in close... and he said he was sorry.

Bert's baptized too, Jessica thinks...

...reprove a wise man, and he will love you.
(Proverbs 9:8 ESV)


Reference: Scripture Meditation on Proverbs 9

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