My Wife

My wife is a stay at home mom. She is a somewhat non-traditional stay at home mom, since she is a part time hairstylist, but she is the primary care provider for our children. It needs to said, however, that a stay at home mom is so much more than the provider of childcare. Having a wife at home loving and rearing your children in a beautiful and responsible way is invaluable.


Every man should be so lucky as to have a wife with strong faith in God and a firm grasp of what is most important in her life and in her kids lives. A nanny or a grandma can never fully understand what it is that your kids need and what it is that you want them to have. No surrogate mom can pour out the love that can be felt from a warm biological mother. No substitute parent will work as diligently to instill the values that you want your little ones to pick up on. Certainly you wouldn't expect any daycare worker to do as good a job balancing the one on one time that every kid needs to learn and develop. At this point you are probably asking why I felt it neccessary to reel all this off. I haven't said anything more than a simple list of platitudes that you could read in any number of Mother's Day cards. The truth is that this should read more like a Valentine's Day card. I am expounding on the incredible qualities that my wife possesses, but even more so I would like to try to explain why this makes me love her all the more.

I am not trying to convince you that she is perfect. Diana is not perfect. Funny thing is that she would be the first to tell you that. Noone is more self-critical. Noone has more trepidation over whether she is making the right choices for our children than my wife herself. What I hope to help you understand is that this self-evaluating, humble behavior is one of the things that makes her qualified to be a mom. Her realistic outlook on life is also one of the things that makes her an outstanding spouse.

I have noticed a tendency, in the moms that I know, to devalue themselves as a wife. As though the more they settle into the role of mothering and being a "mom", the less they feel valuable as a wife to their husband. Even more to the point, they begin to see themselves as undesirable. Somehow society has convinced them that the two things are diametrically opposed. They have been sent the message that being a motherly figure is not sexy. Filling sipper cups, changing diapers, and rehearsing the alphabet, are all things that are said to drain them of their sexuality. I beg to differ.

When I look at my wife I see a real woman. She's not a high school girl anymore. Praise the Lord! Nothing against high school girls, mine was one when we fell in love, but they do not possess the traits that make a good wife. Do you remember the old country song "Older Women Make Beautiful Lovers" by the Statler Brothers? It sounds trite and maybe even insulting to say this about my wife, but it's true. I think that song may have been about the virtues of cougar hunting, but I mean it in the most straight forward way possible. I would never want a doe-eyed young girl to follow me around bobbing her head in mindless agreement to everything that I said. As a man I need a partner who is an intellectual equal. I need someone who is willing to put me in my place when I need it. I need someone who can sense when I need support and be there to hold my elbow and help me along. There is almost nothing as powerful and devastatingly heart-warming as knowing that a mature, beautiful, clever, and real woman, like Diana, is making a conscious to decision to continue being with me each day. She isn't here because she is a scared young girl or a trapped old vixen. She is a gift from God, and she is purposefully making a choice to be my wife.

I can't speak for every man out there. I don't even think I have exactly said these words out loud to anyone before so I can't even tell you how they might react to what I am saying here, but I have a very strong suspicion that most men would agree with me. Deep down we all desire "to have and to hold" a real woman. My wife Diana is real and I thank God daily that he has sent her into my life.


-Posted from my iPhone

Think of nothing.

I sat in my livingroom the other day watching my 2 week old daughter, Olivia, sit in her Boppy pillow. She was not sleeping, as is usually the case, she had her eyes wide open staring at the front door. She would occasionally hold one of her hands up, and look at it quizzically, twisting it slowly at the wrist. Mostly, however, she just sat there blinking the sleep out of her eyes and exuding innocence and contentedness. She seemed to be thinking about nothing and doing it with some skill. In fact this is probably not true. Given her limited motor skills and her raw undeveloped sense of reason, this whole scene in her Boppy pillow could have required a great deal of effort on her part. I would like to think she was just relaxing though. I would like to think that she was taking a moment to think about nothing at all.

Quite a few years ago my Pastor taught a world religions class to a group of us in High School. The book that we used in that class was called The World's Religions and was written by a man named Huston Smith. It is an excellent resource on many things religious and I continue to refer to it to this day. In this book Mr. Smith describes one of the "yogas" of Hinduism know as Raja yoga. In Raja yoga the purpose is to find your way to god through psychophysical exercises. In fact it actually includes the exercises that most of us associate with the term yoga. The thing is to use all different means to accomplish a state of relaxation and meditation. I am over simplifying here but, the Hindu believes that you can focus your brain beyond the physical self and commune with god on a purely spiritual level. While I am not a Hindu, and I think they take it too far, I do wonder if we couldn't do with a little relaxation and meditation. Even one of the Biblical fathers, Isaac, is recorded as having used some similar practice. In Genesis 24:63a we read "And Isaac went out to meditate in the fields toward evening."

I will bet that watching me throw Isaac into the same new age colored, bag as the Hindu makes you a little uncomfortable. It probably should. The world doesn't need another wishy-washy, "many paths to the same god", speech. That is all we seem to hear anymore. What I am saying is quite different. I just think that the misled Hindu can give us great insight into what the human mind is truly capable of. I find their experiments in psychophysical exercises intriguing, and sad. They seek truth in the method of looking deeper into themselves to see god. In fact, on a grand scale they would even have us believe that we are god. This is where we must part ways. I will never follow the Hindu into the blasphemy that we need no more god than is already in ourselves. I am convinced, however, that meditation can, and even should, have a place in the Christian life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it in a beautiful matter of fact way in his book Life Together, "The period of personal meditation is to be devoted to the Scriptures, private prayer, and intercession, and it has no other purpose. There is no occasion here for spiritual experiments". I couldn't agree more. I do not think that we should try to dig deeper into our spiritual selves in some kind of experiment. I think that we need to do as Paul suggested in 2 Corinthians 10:5b "take every thought captive to obey Christ". This scripture is speaking to the idea that we should try to take control of our thoughts and our minds and hold them captive to Christ.

Sometimes there is no better thing to do than to clear our minds and listen to God. Try to follow Olivia's blissful example and think of nothing.



- Posted from my iPhone

Communist Books!

Has any one seen the Adam Sandler movie Bedtime Stories?











I watched it this week when I was sitting up at 5:00am with my daughter Olivia (see my post "New Life") in the hospital. Honestly the movie isn't that great. It was pretty much what you would expect: mediocre, predictable, and it had a few funny parts.

Every once in a while, though, a forgettable movie like this can have a funny quote that transcends the movie itself. Watch from minute 1:00 to 1:19 of this clip from Youtube- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6x7LkUY-ZE
In the clip Skeeter (Adam Sandler) laments the propaganda leaflets that his sister is trying to pass off as kid books to his niece and nephew.

As a father of three, two of which love reading bedtime stories, I have seen my share of crap masquerading as literature. The 1991 book The Berenstain Bears Don't Pollute (Anymore) is a great example of this. We mistakenly purchased this gem in a stack of books we picked up at a garage sale. We have since discarded the rag. The hapless father in the book is potrayed as a nature hating slob and must be reformed by his enviromentaly conscious children. Even my wife, who has accused me of being over sensitive to hidden agendas, couldn't stand this book. It is too bad that Stan and Jan Berenstain found it necessary to sully their decent series of Berenstain Bears books with this thing. In a series that extolls moral virtues such as telling the truth and sharing, this book seems awkward and ill-advised. The sad part is that they were probably just keeping up with the Jones'.

Go to Barnes and Noble sometime and peruse the kid section. The "books" there are often hard to stomach. Global warming, campaign rhetoric, and vegetarianism are all common topics. How can it be? What happened to kids books being simple fodder for their imaginations? Where did all this come from?

Every junior-Soviet with an idea knows that the place to start indoctrination is with kids. It is an old Communist idea. Wikipedia quotes a Soviet official as having said it this way:
"We must make the young into a generation of Communists. Children, like soft wax, are very malleable and they should be moulded into good Communists... We must rescue children from the harmful influence of the family... We must nationalize them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficient influence of Communist schools... To oblige the mother to give her child to the Soviet state - that is our task."

Perhaps, like my lovely wife, you are now accusing me of being hyper-sensitive to hidden agendas. Maybe you are thinking "he's a paranoid whacko." Well... maybe you haven't tried to read a kids book since you were a kid. It keeps getting worse too. With almost no public backlash these propagandists have gotten more and more bold with each printing. Consider yourself warned. You might wanna look closely at the next book your kid checks out from the library.

Twitter nation?

I am now on Twitter. Look for @Benjamson
Just another one of my weak attempts to join the digital world that surrounds us.



- Posted from my iPhone

New Life

My daughter Olivia Grey was born this week! What a pleasure. She is adorable and she already has me all wrapped around her finger.


- Posted from my iPhone

Thank God for Sunshine

Today we had unseasonably nice weather in the Pacific Northwest. It was 55 degrees and sunny. What a blessing! You can really appreciate good weather in February.

When spring rolls around we will expect these kinds of days. Heck, in April or May we flat out demand nice days. Greedily taking what we see as rightfully ours. It is only in the middle of a dreary month like February that we understand the blessing being bestowed on us.

Thank You God.


- Posted from my iPhone

Congratulations Drew!

Congratulations Drew Brees!

What a fantastic Superbowl. What a deserving MVP.
I have been really impressed with everything that I have witnessed from the star quarterback this week and this season. Drew Brees is a real class act and it was nice to see a nice guy finish first for once.

Who Dat?!?!


- Posted from my iPhone