Talk Is Sheep

Suffice to say that Lee and I currently know little to nothing about being parents. We found out two days before Lee’s 30th birthday that our plan to start trying for a baby had succeeded in a big way and instead of the 2 years we anticipated waiting, we now had just 9 months til we would meet whoever this miracle would be. We were beyond ecstatic and more than likely a little shell-shocked but we were in agreement and on our way to our next big accomplishment and adventure.
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Well, we did it. We bit the bullet and BOUGHT OUR VERY OWN HOUSE! It was a whirlwind of a purchase. When we initially put in an offer, we imagined months and months of waiting, counter-offers, and all that jazz…well we were in for a surprise. It only took one counter offer to hit the number that the buyer was comfortable with, and literally only a week and a half from first offer to the text message from our realtor saying “The buyer accepted your offer.”

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Lee and I are always looking for ways to communicate better, especially in the midst of a disagreement. So when Lee returned from a men’s retreat, he was just bursting at the seams with ideas on how we could fully resolve any issue with no hurt feelings or tears (on my part since my emotions all tend to come out of my eyes). It sounded great when he told me that all we would have to do is the following:

* State the facts about the issue
* State how it made us feel
* Say what it would take for us to feel resolved

This is called Clearing (you know, as in clearing the air). Sounds so easy, right? For men, yes, we know it works as evidenced by Lee’s experiences on his retreat. However, it being untested as of yet (as far we know) with women, it occurred to me to say…”This sounds like a great idea, and I am so willing to try it out next time we’re in an argument…however, I’m not sure it would work well for me…or any woman…”

A little back story…
We watched “Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage” in 2010 and one of the things that we learned is men focus on one thing at a time – they have the uncanny superpower of being able to put things that are bothering them in a box and forget about it until it is brought up again. For women, it seems to be a little different, but if there is something that is bothering a woman, it will be connected to every thought she has regardless of it’s bearing on the current situation…(so yeah, we’re multitaskers!)

With that being said…we decided to have a “Clearing” session right then and there on an argument that we had already resolved to see how we could have done better, which seemed like a good idea at the time! Lee led out with his facts (which I agreed with – but wasn’t allowed to say at the time because it wasn’t my turn yet…), then with how it made him feel, and then what he needed for a resolution. Keep in mind that by this time, I’ve already started to say my part about 50 times, so when it was finally my turn I really went for it. I made sure that he knew that I agreed with him on the facts, and then I got into my feelings…and that’s when we started to realize where the problem was with Clearing between men and women. I didn’t have just one feeling about this issue, I had 109,948 feelings that had all arisen from this situation and because this feeling was attached to that action which led to this other feeling…

When I finally came up for air, Lee looked like he’d been drowning for about the 10 years that I had been going over my feelings and I burst out laughing. After he got over his shock, he said “…well, you did warn me this could happen…” and burst out laughing, too.

The moral of the story is Clearing didn’t really work out too well for us the way that it was intended to, but it has left us with a good way to diffuse the situation when we’re in a disagreement. All one person has to say is “Want to try Clearing” and we end up laughing about it all over again.

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Gentlemen, I must admit I’m a hopeless romantic. This is a plus when it comes to the lady of the house. In fact it was how I won her heart. Blame it on watching “You’ve Got Mail” etc. with mom and Clint. But I must equally own up to being thoroughly and completely manly. I don’t really need to go into details, but suffice to say there are days when there is only one thing on my mind. It involves the girl, but not much else. Thusly, I have developed the mantra of “Remember the GIRL.”

Unrelated, I just created a “Girl from Ipanema” station on Pandora. Bosa Nova to the max! Guys, bosa nova is ultra romantic. Which brings me to the title reference. While listening to said Pandora I got totally hopelessly romantic in the general direction of The Lady. And like rolling thunder across the fruited plains, I brainstormed some romance with her. When we got home I interrupted everything that we were doing upon arrival, plugged in the Pandora box and we danced a ditty to some hep Bosa Nova. Needless to say some fanatical romance broke out all over the kitchen.

I started this as a draft during lent. For whatever reason I never got a chance to finish it, so I’m just re-writing it. No biggie.

Sarah and I just got back from a whirlwind of a trip to Greensboro, NC to attend and work the Church of God of Prophecy International Assembly. That’s long-winded for we taught children at a convention. Specifically we taught children the importance of being devoted to God. It’s an awesome and important topic for old people as well, but I’m going to focus on the surrounding idea that Sarah and I teamed up for this.

We minister and teach children biblical principals regularly at our local church, Providence West Chester. But last week was a little bit more intense a schedule. So to the point, marriage and ministry, and what I think about it: it’s awesome, it’s fun, and for now, children’s ministry is a ministry that God has called and gifted Sarah and I both to do.

Ministering with Sarah is awesome! While we both have similar education backgrounds, we’re different people and think in different ways. So while I’m usually the more program-oriented person, we found that for the assembly I was more program-oriented in figuring out, how we would make it, and how we would fly it down to Greensboro. Sarah had to remind me regularly that what was important was the content of the lessons. I argued with her to the point that we could use the environment to harness the children’s fickle attentions and give depth and color to the lessons. But, Sarah is essentially right and we’re able to also use curricula and our own brains to develop engaging and meaningful classes for children together.

Ministering with Sarah is fun! I mean really, if you know our personalities you know we’re pretty bent on having a good time and enjoy ourselves. This applies especially when we work together on things we enjoy. Teaching and ministering to children is tough work, but it can be rewarding and even enjoyable. Being able to do this with Sarah really brings that home for me. We saw, appreciated, and responded to our differences during the classes last week. My favorite thing to do is characters, she is particularly gifted with the object lessons and the bible lessons. I love to watch her as she works with the kids in the ways that she is gifted.

Ministering with Sarah is what we’re called to do! At home, at Providence, Sarah actually directs the elementary ministry. I don’t know what that entails, and I don’t want to. I loathe admin stuff and recruiting volunteers etc. But we still teach the classes together. And while every Sunday we teach, we have to discipline ourselves to spend the time to make the lesson excellent, it is always a joy to finish a lesson and review it with Sarah. We trust God that His Spirit is speaking to the children, knowing that He has a purpose for them and we are a small, if tiny part of that plan.

I was making the trek back to Bloomsburg earlier this year and as I usually do when I’m in the car, I hit the Scan button and search for something good to listen to. Sometimes I’m looking for something to dance to, other times news, but I settled for one of those Christian talk radio shows that today just happened to be extolling the values of marriage. As I listened, I was reaffirmed in my desire to have an amazing marriage. Not to be confused with a great marriage, but one that works because we work on it and lasts because we continue to see the value in each other. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a post on things that I’m growing in. Just some thoughts. Like a stream of consciousness, but hopefully more focused.

This spring has been a crazy time for Sarah and I. We’ve encountered two of the toughest situations outside our marriage that I think a couple can encounter. The first is an ongoing family dispute. As things unfold with various family members I can’t help but hope I am my own person and that is why Sarah married me. I find myself hoping that she didn’t marry me because she’s tragically doomed to be attracted to people who hurt her. Here we are approaching year 3 of our marriage and I’m still coping with the fear of inflicting hedgehog style damage on the most precious person in my life. Read the rest of this entry »

… called “marriage”. So here’s how it works, you’re a guy or a girl and you’ve just gotten married. The goal of the game is to expand the awesomeness of your lives mutually and maintain a peaceful, yet exciting household. In order to do this there are two point systems, his and hers. In order to achieve the winning conditions the couple must maintain a point difference that is manageable enough to keep angry fallouts to a minimum and succeed in creating an awesome family.

His point system is really based on a complex system of task definition. Points are earned based on each task’s time consumption, financial investment or gain, difficulty rating, and effort and attention requirements. Therefore when the man goes to work, this is at least a thousand point process considering this is 8 hours of his life just to start. Then he has to deal with all of the other variables like workload, co-workers, and management. In all by the time he gets home he has easily awarded himself at least 1 million points just to get up, go to work and come directly home. And so by the time he is home he a) wants dinner and b) wants to play video games.

In stark contrast by the end of the day, a woman has awarded the same gentleman in the above paragraph exactly 3 points. He woke up, one point. He went to work, one point. He came home, one point. Meanwhile she has also earned 3 points for the same exact things. In my household, since my wife (in the game ) works from home (WFH, FTW), she has also probably fed the cats, washed some dishes, straightened a room, and done the laundry. This gives her a grand total of 7 points by the end of the day.

If you’re keeping track, the man of the house thinks the score is 1 million to meh – well, he probably hasn’t bothered to give her a score. While the lady of the house thinks the score is 3 to 7. The real trick of the game then is to manage the discrepancies in the point systems. This turns out to be really easy to do if done in a well-planned strategy for each party.

For the man the best strategy is to keep things real, and keep things small. While only receiving one point for 8 hours of work and devoted faithfulness may seem like a huge disservice, this one point system also works for itty-bitty acts of thoughtfulness directed to his wife. So the man’s strategy involves two major tactics – keep the size and time of the task to a manageable minimum and always be spontaneous and thoughtful. For example, when buying roses, one rose will get you the exact number of points from the lady as a dozen roses – one. So, buy one rose. But, if you just buy one rose everyday for the rest of your life, at some point the lady will not be as inclined to give you any points. Summarily, do little, spontaneous things that communicate to her that you are actively considering her during the course of your day. This is a winning strategy!

The woman has a very simple strategy despite the man’s complex algorithm’s for point acquisition. In effect, start out by being thoughtful and spontaneous, if that fails, go big, and if that fails, sex. Though you may find that skipping the first and landing on the third will just work faster.

By following these strategies the man and woman of the house will maintain a peaceful co-existence. The most important aspect of a peaceful household is that both the husband and the wife can be free to and encourage each other to expand, explore and enjoy all of their interests and hobbies.

p.s. I earned exactly 1 point for 637 words. Just sayin’.

Let them eat marshmallows on their cake.

Sarah has teamed up with some our awesome lady-type friends to do some out-of-this-world baking. So while I and my gentlemen brewers are concocting the latest and greatest homebrew, the ladies are doing some kitchen chemistry of their own.

Do not joke about baking dear readers. In this masterpiece there are home made marshmallows. The process here is way over my head so I couldn’t really relate it to you – ask Sarah.

The name of this cake is the hot chocolate cake (though I may be mistaken). It really did taste like hot chocolate. It also melted my brains. I’m not really a huge chocolate fan. In terms of chocolate cakes there are only two that I enjoy, Texas sheet cake and red-devil’s food cake. This latest chocolate rendition may have topped them.

The weekend the ladies baked this was a wonderfully early warm weekend. There was brewing – we were brewing or bottling a blonde and had a whole crew over. The kitchen was a massive hub of conversation, laughter and Ricky Gervase impersonations. The smells of the chocolate, vienna malts, Czech saaz hops, and grilled meats filled the room. The light and the warmth of the sun kept the doors and the windows open to the outside as we spent time indoors and out.

In the words of dear father, “that’s what’s it’s all about.”

photographed in 2008 by Sarah Creasy

We need to do something to get started on here again. So I’m starting the picture of the day. I’ll also share a FUNNY story: – last night Lee was installing a new fan in our living room and asked for my help. As I’m holding up a VERY HEAVY piece that gets attached to the fan, he says I can let go…so I do…and God knows why I decided stand around in the danger zone because before I know it that VERY HEAVY piece has come unattached and crashed right into my FACE!

After a bloody nose and an ice pack, I urge Lee to go finish (because it’s better to wake up with a sore head and a new fan, then wake up with a sore head and a mess but no fan.)

Long story just a little longer: The fan looks great!