peace

I have done this so infrequently that every time I sit down to enter a post, I have no idea what to write about. So I think to myself, should I write about the insanity of this fast paced society that keeps me from wrtiting? Or should I stop pointing the finger at society to expain away my own inability to develop disciplines such as posting on my blog? What is worth writing about anyways? It would be easier if I always just wrote about politics or international affairs or social justice issues, etc... Then I could at least rant about my opinions and be yet another person out there complaining about the status quo and doing little or nothing to change it. All the while the most meaningful elements of my life are the things that I often think no one would really care to read about on a blog, especially if they don't know the people involved. But who the heck reads my blog anyways?! So if today's words are not filled with deep insights and earth shattering revelations, well then... too bad. This is much closer to home, much more meaningful and to me, much more worth writing than all the articles I agree or disagree with in the editorials section of the Pioneer Press (wow... now I know I'm a St. Paul guy). Nonetheless, today, the most exciting part of my day was having an argument with my wife over sushi. O.k. to clarify, we didn't exactly argue about sushi, we just ate sushi while we argued. And it wasn't so much of an argument as it was a revealing of ourselves to one another, which, if you've done much revealing of yourself, does not always give you that peaceful, easy feeling. It's much easier to swallow my ideas, opinions and feelings in an effort to appease my wife and keep the proverbial peace. But I'm finally starting to learn that that kind of peace, is not really peace at all. That kind of peace is isolation, a let's keep everyone happy on the surface kind of peace, a peace that Jesus questioned when he said, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." Don't get me wrong, I'm not against peace, but peace is not really peace when it forces you to hide. And among the plethora of things that these last 9 months of marriage have been teaching me, one is my own tendency to hide. It is such a dillusional temptation! I can be so fearful of disturbing the peace and being rejected by my beloved Jenni, the one who has promised her whole self to me, who knows me more than any other, who not only loves me so much, but so well, that I would hide my self from her in order to protect myself from her. What a selfish, not to mention foolish response! Why would I not rather bare myself before my beloved and risk the hurt of rejection but at the same time hope in the beauty of being known and loved even though I may not be agreed with! I can only conclude that fear has stopped me in the past and may stop me in the future. But as for today, I take joy in arguments over sushi, in the revealing of myself and my beloved, in yet another risk that did not end up in rejection, but rather intimacy.