Jayne,...please! Who do you think we are?!

It's pretty obvious that you are way over your head trying to keep work and family afloat.

No 2x4's around here.

Ok so ears asked if H ever does talk. Yes, I've noticed that he talks in social sitches with coworkers. As in, when we have a bunch of guys over for dinner from either his work or mine.

Reading that thread of ... Insight? ... Hmmm. Is it a bad sign that I identify with at least some of what she says? I think it was last night, when I told H I felt like we were just roommates. This lack of intimacy is really getting to me. I keep telling myself all the good things about H, but the LB$ deposits from him doing the taxes and letting me get a dog only can last so long...

Nonononono, I need the 2x4s I think.

I NEED to call Steve. I don't see any point in asking H again if he'll participate. It's finals week though, I can't do it this week, I can't do everything.

So I should tell y'all why I was grumping. Cus it involves an AO from the week before. And for the 1st time in a long time, I can no longer say without a shadow of doubt that our M is A-proof.

Well, that's curious. How is it A-proof?

Maybe this is a good place to investigate? So he feels 'safe' with coworkers. Why?

So he feels 'safe' with men. Why?

What can we do with this information?

Hmm, I dunno if it's that he feels safe with men. Thinking back... I think he can also talk to female coworkers the same, it's just that we haven't had any female coworkers over to our house yet, except once for babysitting.

I think he just feels safe talking shop.

And I meant, right now I canNOT say it's A-proof. 99% of the time, I could say it is. Not right at the moment though. I definitely want it to be A-proof, just not sure how to get there if H isn't willing to do his part to help build intimacy.

Wow, are you on something Jayne??? I only ask cos you are a whole lot 'goofier' than usual... but I still love ya

So, tell us more about the AO and who is not A proof????

Hi lil!!!!!

That goofiness is prolly avoidance.

And no, I'm not on anything, not even a glass of wine. LOL

I shoudl correct what I said - I think we are A-proof as far as making the moral right decision goes. Just not in the sense of, "How To A-Proof Your M" - we aren't in that state of intimacy. And from how I interpret what Dr. H and others say, that is not to be taken lightly. One shouldn't just blindly say, no our M isn't all it should be and there's no intimacy, but that's ok, neither of us would ever do anything like *that*.

ok, thats good you realise that.

Glass of wine... now there's an idea!

Argh I just typed a big long thing about the AO, and I lost it! ARGH!

So now you can demonstrate exactly what AO means, right?

LOL good one!

Thanks for giving me a reason to smile about it.

I'll maybe retype it in tomorrow.

jayne, I'm going away this weekend, with my mom to visit my brother and his wife, and won't be back until late Monday. So if I don't reply, it's not because I'm mad (((jayne)))

Ok, thanks ears!

I hope you have a great visit!

Well the timing is probably poor, probably not too many folks around over the weekend, but I'll try again with the AO post, hopefully while a few folks are still around.

Ok so this started 3 Sundays ago. While H is not a believer, he did agree to raise the kids "in the church". He usually goes with us when we go... but he doesn't help in promoting the going. IMHO he passive-aggressively puts up little resistances and roadblocks. DJ I know, but before you tell me to OH ask him, I've tried - that's my nature, to want to to talk; it would take a major effort on my part for how I'm feeling to NOT fall out of my mouth - his response was to ignore me, as if I didn't say anything.

If I was perfect, I'd get up early enough to make sure everyone was ready, etc. But I'm far from perfect, and I'm most imperfect in the mornings. Thus, we're almost always late.

Three weeks ago, I forget what happened but it turned into an AO - I'm not sure who or what started it, but it certainly was on both sides. When we got to church, H dropped us off at the front door like usual, and we went inside. Normally he parks the car and catches up with us as I'm checking the kids into Sunday school. This time, we were so very late that I asked them if they wanted to stay with me for "big church". They said yes. We went in and sat down in the very back row, right beside the door. At the time I couldn't care less whether he saw where we were or not, but he should've been able to see us if he looked. I never saw him come through the door though.

After church, we walked all around the parking lot looking for him. I thought maybe he'd stayed in the car, or maybe he'd even left but I thought surely he'd come back when it was time for church to be over. We couldn't find the car, and we were getting cold and wet. We had to walk back into the church and ask to use the phone just as they were locking up. I felt quite embarrassed. He was home, acted all nonchalant, and came to pick us up.

The following Sunday, I made sure to get the kids and me ready without needing any help from him. When I told the kids to get in the car, he started to get in too, on the driver's side. I told him I would drive. He shrugged, and walked around to the passenger's side. I asked him if he'd rather stay home, and he said, sort of, and I said then go ahead. So he went back into the house. The kids and I went on to church without him.

Then last Sunday, I was getting ready and trying to get the kids to get ready, but we were running late again. H was again doing stuff that I thought was P/A slowing down the kids. I just gave up and stopped trying to get the kids ready, and we didn't go.

So I was grumpy that he wasn't being supportive in taking the kids to church. Definitely not feeling very Christ-like at that moment.

I'd been thinking, is it really in God's will that I push H to go to church if he doesn't want to? So I backed off. I still feel resentful though.

So that's what was going on Sunday, with me feeling resentful and H acting sort of cold (even for him)... until finally in the late afternoon he asked about his birthday dinner.

Jayne,

I became a Christian when I was 11 years old. I grew up going to church more than much of anything else until I was married for a couple of years. I started to drift away from church gradually, mainly due to my job. I worked long hours, often 7 days per week and traveled a lot for over 12 years. My wife too drifted away and our marriage suffered as well as our individual relationships with God.

In about 1990, my wife began to go to church again. I seldom went along, but instead opted to stay home. I reasoned that I should stay home anyway since I was usually out late Saturday night (I worked on a short-track stock car in those days) at the race track. As she began to recommit to her faith, she didn't nag me one bit. She didn't try to get me to go to church at all and I only went when I wanted to go myself. She did exactly what she needed to do...

She prayed for me daily and asked God to bring me back to where we both knew I belonged.

It wasn't a big emotional experience or some catastrophe that got me going to church, I just went a few times, found myself reading the Bible again after leaving it collecting dust for a few years and found that as I spent more time in doing what I should have been doing all along, my brain still held all the things that I once knew and I began to recall them more and more in my daily life.

I found myself relating lessons from the Bible to people at work and the guys on the racing team (try relating a life lesson based on the people of Israel wandering in the dessert to a bunch of guys drinking beer and whistling at girls...) I realized that church was where I needed to be.

I now am an elder in the local church. I am the media/sound/video director, work closely with the worship band as a team and with individuals, taught Sunday school, ran children's programs, led adult Bible studies and preached a sermon a time or two per month for about 3 years and was even invited to speak at other churches.

In our church, we had a woman who worked with the kids for years. As her own three sons grew up and left to live their own lives, she kept working with the kids. Her husband was one of those guys who figured church was for three times in your life; to be hatched, matched and dispatched. He came to church about 2, seldom 3 times per year.

She didn't nag him or even try to get him to go most of the time, though she did often spend hours praying with others in the church for him to have an awakening. She prayed for him, as we all did, for years...

When he was baptized a few years ago, he received a standing ovation from the congregation. Today he is in charge of our building and grounds, has put in many long hours doing remodeling and maintenance projects (He's a retired carpenter) and he also leads men's Bible studies and is head usher.

Also in our church was a woman who was our church secretary for many years. Her husband never came around except at Christmas and Easter. He had been raised Roman Catholic and spent as many hours at the OTB and casinos as he did at home. Every week his wife sponsored a wives’ prayer meeting. Every day she prayed for her husband. Never did I see her trying to convince him that he was wrong.

Today he runs our greeters program. He's often the first one there and the last to leave (well, normally that would be me, but he's second to arrive and next to last to exit)

My point is, these women all did exactly the same thing. They turned their husbands over to God and then just prayed for them. They MODELLED what a Christian wife should be. The SHOWED their husbands what was right. In the end, it was by their being a Christian wife that their husbands became Christians. And any one of the men would run headlong through a brick wall for his wife...

Your post just took me back and I thought I’d share that with you…

Mark

Thanks Mark,

I know that was meant for Jayne, but it helped me too.

Jayne, I see where the AO lead to the non birthday............

Hi Mark,

That was AWESOME. Thank you so very much.

I'll work on that, work on absorbing it and implementing it... wow, it won't be easy... I like to reason things out. Letting go, giving it over to God and trusting Him...

One concern I have is how will it affect our kids if their dad stays home while the rest of us go to church. What do I say when they ask why he stays home, or when they argue that they should get to stay home as well?

I *really* appreciate your commenting on my thread.

Jayne, just popping in while these folks sleep in. I'm still of EST. So you had an AO, made LB$ withdrawals. What's your plan to address that?

Ears, leave it to you to keep encouraging me to stay on track! What, I can't wallow in self-pity on your watch?

Plan.... I'm still trying to figure out. I'll update with more details later, but at the moment I'm almost clueless and am planning to talk to Steve at the earliest available appointment.

Hi Jayne, you've mentioned many times that your husband doesn't like to talk. Perhaps this is the reason he doesn't want to go to church with you. I used to really hate the small talk that you have to make with people you don't really know.

I used to run off without talking to anyone. Perhaps your husband is the same.