I thought you were in a ditch!  Thus began many a phone call from my mother. When she was unable to get in touch with me she naturally assumed that I had been hit on the head and was lying in a ditch where only her constant worry could save me.  Her logic was flawless and I have applied it unsparingly to my children.  She loved me and wanted to spare me pain.

Unfortunately, the ditch is an apt classroom for some lessons. Some pain is inevitable; in fact Jesus promised it when He said, “In the world you will have trouble.”(Jn 16:33)  He is also a loving parent that works to help his child avoid unnecessary pain.

It is a rare thing to learn from someone else’s experience.  Most of us resist these lessons for various reasons:

Often I believe that I understand the principle because I understand it as theory, but to grasp it I must experience it personally.  How many of us have learned the concept of HOT without burned fingers?  It is often through pain, of various types, that teachable moments occur for wisdom to be gained.  There are other lessons that are only truly learned in the doing.  If I describe the taste of a boysenberry in the great detail will you know the experience?  Even when following an expertly crafted recipe the learning is in the doing.

At other times I am just too arrogant to apply the truth others have shared to my experience.  For instance, my behavior would tell you that I believe speed laws are for people who don’t know how to drive fast and safe through a school zone.

I also fail to learn because I believe the lesson was meant for someone else.  As long as I grade on a curve there will always be someone more selfish or foolish or otherwise sinful than me.  Alas, Jesus eschews the bell shaped curve and compares me to an unchanging standard. Drat.

Think of this as a travel guide for the road to maturity, written in large part from the perspective of the guy in the ditch.  The ultimate destination of any serious follower of Jesus is to be the person God had in mind when He first thought of you.  That is my goal; to be the man He thought of when He knit me in my mother’s womb (Jer 1:5).  I want to be like Him and I have been on that journey, with limited progress, for nearly forty years.  Some of you have more experience; many are faster learners than me.  I have no delusion of having arrived or of having even reached the borderlands of Jesus-likeness.  I am just a fellow traveler who takes notes on the turns, the hazards, and the lessons learned.  It would be great if we, or others who pass this way, would learn from our experience and could travel unimpeded by trials, at least the self inflicted ones.  

To be an intentional learner, one who is wills himself to identify with the principle and see it as applicable, you probably have to spend time in the ditch.  At least for me it has been a required and recurrent prerequisite.

It is particularly difficult and rare to learn from the experience of others about relationships.  As I write today there seem to be an inordinate number of couples struggling painfully to relate to one another in a healthy way.  Concurrently there are at least six young people we know who are contemplating marriage in the near future.  Yet, there is no shortage of experience to be learned from.  There is biblical principle, and there are scores of valuable books on the topic.  There are mentors who have done well in these areas who enjoy sharing the lessons they have learned.  But often we fail to ask what they know, or worse we resolve that their lessons do not apply to our unique lives.

So, my heart is moved to write for a bit about the relationship lessons learned on the road thus far.  Think of this particular entry as a two-part disclaimer. 

First I have tried to be clear that I have nothing new to say.  My hope is that the timing or the method of delivery may be of used by the Holy Spirit to instigate growth.  This is not self-deprecation; God has taught me a great deal about relationships through graduate degrees, seminary classes, and decades of practice applying biblical principles of growth and healing.  I am learning more from being IN a growing marriage for more than 30 years.   And I am sorry to report that I remain a willful and selfish man who will find new ways to mess this relationship up in 2012.

Second, as I have also stated above, learning from others experience must be intentional and will, if necessary, include pain to induce a teachable moment.  The bible is full of stories about warped people doing warped things.  We read them knowing full well that the selfish and short sighted actions will lead to terrible outcomes of biblical proportions (that’s how they get passed the Editor and make it into the bible).  Some of them are so obvious they could be in a low budget horror film; “Gee, everyone is getting killed and the angels assured me that I wouldn’t turn into a pillar of salt unless I looked back”.  “But, a little peek couldn’t hurt”, the audience screams “don’t look, don’t look” but it’s too late. She’s a salt lick.  

At times the instructions are as clear to us as the angel’s instructions to Lot’s wife.  By the way, it’s probably safe to assume in movies and stories of biblical proportion that any character that does not merit a first name is likely to get killed early in the story.  Anyway, even when the instructions are obvious we humans, like our first parents, will figure out a way to convince ourselves that the rules do not apply to us.  The audience screams,” No don’t do it”.  Salt lick.

Most of our lives lack the clarity of moment-by-moment verbal angelic instruction.  For us there are biblical principles and an indwelling Holy Spirit to guide us.  If I would take the time to listen to the Spirit’s subtle promptings or to apply God’s principles to my situation then I would be much more mature by now.  If I had listened, at the time, to the many mentors God has provided through the years I would be much further down the road. The beauty of Grace is that, unlike Lot’s wife, we get do-overs.  He loves us and He knows what we are made of so He understands our failures.  When we truly seek forgiveness He blows off the salt and sets us back on the road to maturity.

That’s my two-part disclaimer.  In the coming posts I will attempt to impart a few lessons Elaine and I are learning.  Some have been well traveled and are almost automatic.  Others are poignantly current lessons from recent time in the ditch.  The ones that I am planning to address include choosing love, fighting fair, and developing realistic expectations.

I felt it was important to include this lengthy disclaimer before launching into a discussion of relationships for the reasons above, and because those who write, teach, or counsel on the topic tend to present an idealized view of their own partnerships.  This may be accidental, in that the examples shared are selected to present a best practice and therefore have a happy ending.  Even a cautionary tale is shared in the past tense and the couple has obviously survived to share the story.  This transparency can be misread and we do the teacher a disservice when we do so.  The teachers who cause me more concern are those who perpetuate this by presenting themselves as exemplary.  These folks inevitably become the wrong kind of example.

The generations well versed in happily ever after desire to idolize relationships.  We may even wish to appear that we have it all figured out.  Well, I don’t have it all figured out; and when I have thought that I had it all figured out I ended up in the ditch.  Our experiences, in the fast lane and in the ditch, have equipped a couple of flawed people to be fiercely dedicated to Jesus and calling on his power to love and serve each other.  So, on to the first topic: being in love…..