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“Your lying, cheating, cold deadbeating, two-timing, double dealing, mean mistreating, loving heart”

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kitchenmadonna

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Are you headed for a heartache? That is what Patty Lovelace asks in her swinging, jivey-in-a-country-sort-of-way song “Blame it on Your Heart.” I’m here to say, if you have ovaries you are always headed for a heartache of some kind. At the hands of your man or his children that you bore in great pain.

So what are you going to do about it? Eat 5 pounds of chocolate every night while you read romance novels? Go to the honky-tonk and have a revenge affair? Spend all of your husband’s money on high heels and scrapbooking supplies?

If you want to read a man-bashing post, you won’t find it here. I’m just inviting my girlfriends into my red tent for coffee, pomtini’s, biscotti and walnuts. Because we all know that when there are no men around, we say things we wouldn’t normally (I hope) say. So if you’ve got to say something you don’t want a man to hear, come on in and say it here because “what happens in the red tent, stays in the red tent.” In fact, we learn best how to deal with our heartaches from each other. Same for men, especially if they are accountable to other God-fearing Christian men.

Why would the KM write about a cheating song during Lent? Because Lent is a time to offer up our suffering, to learn how to suffer as Jesus suffered, to examine our own behavior and repent, and ultimately to forgive.

We are always worried about our men looking elsewhere. For some reason, the Lord made them visual beings. You can read about this in all sorts of Christian books about how to understand your man. There is a wide spectrum of this behavior from the run of the mill snapping around of a male head to look at a woman crossing a street to a demonic enslavement to debasing pornography.

I really hesitate to give advice beyond saying go to confession a lot, especially if you can find a good spiritual director, talk to the older, godly woman mentioned in the New Testament, and read good Christian books for women, taking care to discern what is good advice and what isn’t. Of course we have to be careful to put the marriage first and not violate that sacred trust except within the confessional or with a professional therapist or with that really Godly older woman who has great discernment.

I think I will say that it is essential to maintain our dignity, in a quiet and gentle spirit sort of way in front of our men but when you are in the red tent, you can let your hair down! We need to vent, with the right women of course, and then it is time to pray for a radical trust that the Lord will always provide in His Providence no matter what. That's hard sometimes. Then you can walk out of the tent with all kinds of dignity.

All I know is that some times such a song will reduce me to tears. Other times like this morning when I was singing to it at the top of my lungs and my man-child looked at me with a “I’m not sure what is going on with her but I’m not going to get in her way kind of look,” I have a really light heart. And if I have a light heart it is because there are all of these women who pray for me and we pray for each other, because I am learning to bear my crosses a little better, and I can always call a girlfriend or look at your awesome wife/mama/still-sassy-girl blogs and know there are always opportunities to get together and laugh and cry and to buck each other up.

Want some more coffee? A hankie?

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  1. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    God loves you .

    Lord knows, my wife, Sharon, has checked my pulse when an attractive woman has walked by and I haven’t looked. Of course, at times I have looked and then we both have giggled. Other times, I have remarked that ‘her cosmetic style would put Emmett Kelly to shame’. If she at all wondered what was going through my pointed head – pointed due to recurrent wearing of dunce caps all my life – I would point out to her all the training involved in one so clearly young – and all too – still and possibly forever – ignorant.

    Moreover, I understood that as my wife so wondrously trained me, I would require intense and diligent re-training. And, perhaps, by this luscious young thing who exhibits no indication of her abilities at training; she’d be following up a veritable genius and saint. My wife was wont to say that ‘a wife has only herself to blame if she has not carefully trained her husband’. My wife trained me in things like food gathering and preparation, wearables laundry and ironing care, floor care, child care, soul care, etc.

    Alas – as this column doesn’t at all reflect – it is she who broke my heart. Her Master – well, yours and mine, too – called ‘Come on Home, Little One!’ and, rather abruptly, too, off she went. Pushed me over for mere love and God Himself. (SNIFF! S-I-G-H!) And, what did she leave me? A ten-year-old daughter who has proven as cantankerous as I am, and in God’s hands. And, fine, but, He is not as cute and cuddly as was Sharon.

    (That 10-y-o ornery hoard of treasure, Helena, is now 34 and has delivered of new treasure – Rachel, twelve going on 34 herself – and Erik, who exhibits every aspect of being nine and male.)

    To my late wife, whom I call Saint Sharon, Little One of the Little Flower of Jesus, I say:

    Thank you and God bless you for your totally open, totally faithful, fiery-warm, steadfast and constant, gently kind, completely generous and vulnerably loving heart.

    (. . . Sure miss you, Little One . . .)

    And, imagine – looking at other women isn’t nearly so much fun . . .

    MEN! Help keep your women alive! Start with something you can handle – say, dish washing. On nice evenings – it is a solid start at foreplay.

    Remember, I love you, too

    Through Christ, with Christ, in Christ,

    Pristinus Sapienter

    (wljewell @catholicexchange.com or … yahoo.com)

    PS: Lotta songs reduce me to tears . . . . . . . . .
    Real men can weep over the sublimity of an all-vegetable quiche course, and sincerely, and at the signal of merely removing the plates. AND, have prepared the very quiche, themselves 😉

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