I love my family.  I have two loving, supportive parents who have been married for over 40 years.  I have two older siblings, two older sibling-in-laws, a beautiful niece, and four rambunctious nephews (five, when you include my step-nephew).  We’re blessed enough to live within 20 minutes of each other - and even though we don’t see each other nearly as much as we should (given our proximity!), our family gatherings are fun, rowdy, stressful, and entertaining.  (This is where I should mention that my niece is 9, two of my nephews are 8, and the other two are 5ish.  That’s a LOT of kid energy!).

Growing up, our family dynamic was slightly different than most - I’m the youngest kid by nearly 9 years. My experience of growing up was a hybrid of being the “baby” in the family, while also feeling like the only child - since my older siblings were grown up and in college by the time I was entering 4th grade.  The glue holding us together though, were my folks.  Married young, my parents had a couple decades of marriage under the belt when I came on to the scene.  Though they certainly had their ups and downs, they stuck things out (and still do!) and I’ve witnessed their marriage grow and flourish because of it.

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I miss my grandfather. One night, in 1994, he went to sleep and never woke up. Instead, I woke up the next morning, received a phone call and cried. I miss him for a variety of reasons and I am sad for many reasons as well. My wife never met him and I hate that. My children never met him and I hate that too. I think that my family may understand me more if my grandfather were still around. Why? Because in his own simple way, he made sense of the world in which we lived. And sometimes common sense is in short supply. And for me, he made sense out of chaos, not because of his simplicity, but because he understood chaos better than most.

Now, he came from a generation that isn’t known for conversation and emotional dialogue. Tom Brokaw called it the ‘Greatest Generation.’ He fought in Asia and was wounded in battle. He worked on the Chicago Northwestern Railroad for over 40 years (a photo of that engine hangs above my son’s bed) was married for fifty years and fathered four children. He had a Marine tattoo that simply looked cool. He was tough, but in a way that was unassuming. He once drove himself to the hospital because he had, what he called, a ‘stomach ache that wouldn’t go away.’ The doctor diagnosed it as a ‘coke can size’ hernia in his stomach. An urgent surgery was performed and a few hours later, he drove himself home.

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In church a few weeks ago, my pastor talked about what happens when a person dies within a Jewish community.  The friends and family of those left behind travel to the grieving’s house and simply sit with them.  They don’t make pat comments, they don’t swoop in and try to fix everything, and they don’t come in armed with an array of distractions.  They respect their grief and just sit in silence.  

 

Earlier today, I was watching the movie “Sunshine Cleaning” - a story about two sisters that form a bio-hazard clean up business, cleaning up the messes often left behind when people die.  In one poignant scene, they arrive at a house and find the frazzled widow waiting to give them the house keys.  Amy Adams’ character senses the grief of this old stranger and offers to simply sit with her. She reaches over and clasps the old woman’s hand - just as I imagine occurs in those grieving Jewish homes.  

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Step 1:  Trust God.

 

Immediately, I fell on my knees, sought Him, and went back to church.  My sense of failure sent me there -- love, forgiveness, and restoration kept me there.

 

Step 2:  Find community.

 

Family support was key, as was friend support.  Stepping into community with fierce protectors, of me and my marriage, kept me strong.  And fighting.

 

Step 3:  Remain hopeful.  

 

I remained hopeful, first for our reconciliation.  Then, for my own restoration.

 

Step 4:  Be honest.

 

There was a period of time early on where I couldn’t share what was going on at home.  But hiding that anguish never felt healthy.  I needed to discuss how I felt to get to a new level of honesty about me, about us.

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Love is for losers.

 

Losers fail to recognize the needs of their significant other.

Losers avoid confrontation and bury the problem.

Losers have high expectations that do not match reality.

Losers cut themselves off and figure the relationship out alone.

 

Love is for losers.

 

Losers sacrifice their needs for their significant other, placing their needs above their own.

Losers willingly tackle confrontation, even if they may be wrong.

Losers are willing to let go of their expectations, settling instead for the beauty of reality.

Losers are humble enough to seek wise council from the community around them.

 

Everyone is a loser when it comes to love.  You are either losing the relationship or losing yourself in the relationship.  I don’t know about you, but I identify with both sets of losers.  The first set of losers explains how my marriage died.  The second set of losers paints a picture of what my next relationship will be.  Either I’m seeing my wife through my own personal needs, or I am setting those needs aside to humbly meet her needs authentically.  

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I am no longer a believer.  I haven’t been for quite a while, actually.  I think it started when I was going through my divorce.  So much I had understood about God prior to my divorce was completely turned upside down, and I didn’t know what to make of it. I lived a good life, I went to Church, I prayed, I did all the things young Christians are supposed to do - and yet, when I got married my life fell apart.  I believed that God would reward me for my good behavior.  I believed that because I trusted Him, everything would be all right.

 

What I believed was wrong.  But He wasn’t the problem - it was me.  I succumbed to the typical American brand of Christianity.  In the United States, our consumerist culture wired me to expect God to behave like a vending machine.  

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Marriages that fall apart seem to end in different ways. Witness the couple that argues constantly, always one upping each other with threats to leave, daring each other to end the marriage. Maybe you know a couple that deliberatly spends more time apart than together, slowly realizing that going through a divorce is an inevitable formality they will have to deal with. Or perhaps you've seen the marriage that never ends - they are honoring their vows, sure, but without a relationship or friendship they are missing the purpose behind marriage in the first place.

My marriage was more like a sucker punch to the gut. In hindsight I could see it coming but at the time of impact, it took me by surprise. It was at about the three year mark when our tension boiled over. We were the couple with the friendly facade to the world around us. Everything in our marriage was "hallway good". (You know what I mean - the typical "hallway" response when people ask how things are going). The truth is, I was assuming things were fine with our marriage, ignoring some distinct warning signs. I was doing what I do best - ignoring the problem. Things were happening that were triggering emotions in me - anger, fear, and jealousy to name a few. But my desire to maintain peace allowed me to ignore the red flags in our relationship. This denial allowed us to ignore the root of our problem. We were no longer connecting emotionally and authentically.

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I was working this morning (of course at a coffee shop) and got to talking to a 29 year old guy.  It was a good conversation.  Turns out he's divorced.  I listened to his story for about 20 minutes - probably more.  He talked a lot about his confusion and the difficulty of being in such an unstable time of life.  He, of course, never dreamed of his marriage ending this way.  His dream has now become a nightmare.  To make it even more difficult he has a child he barely sees now.

He talked a lot about his wife's decisions.  I listened for a long time and then asked him one question: "What did you do wrong?"  It's not just him, we're all really good at looking at the wrongs in others and failing to see where we failed.  The question took him back a little, but he did walk through some things he has realized.  Some were very general and ambiguous, but some were very specific.  I think he was really starting to grasp what it was he could've done differently / better.

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Eugene Cho, a second-generation Korean-American, is the founder and lead pastor of Quest Church in Seattle and the executive director of Q Cafe, an innovative non-profit neighborhood café and music venue. He and his wife are also the visioneers of a new organization to fight global poverty called, One Day's Wages.

You can stalk him at his blog or you can follow him on Twitter.

 

If I Were Jon and Kate's Pastor

 

Have you seen “Up” yet?  I just came back from my second viewing and just in case you are wondering if all the glowing reviews you’ve been hearing are true, well, the answer is an unequivocal yes.  This film works is enjoyable on so many levels, it is sure to become a Disney/Pixar classic.  

 

What struck be watching this movie the second time around are the many layers present in this movie.  It’s an adventure movie that (mini spoiler alert ahead) touches on themes of life, death, loneliness, companionship, abandonment, greed, friendship, perspective, and priorities.  Not bad for a film that features talking dogs!

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