Gratification

Wednesdays at work I spend my lunch hour with the wifey in mind. The other days of the week I spend exercising. I do this because without scheduled time set aside, I’ve found, I won’t plan date night, and date night is just one of the ways us guys have to be intentional about maintaining healthy marriages.

Today I didn’t plan date night, save for 30 seconds of thought that came after my lunch. Instead I wrote about my wife and looked at her from a simple perspective, stripped of the lesser distractions in which I indulge (like blogging).

Simple I hope will be the watchword for 2008 and beyond, as it has given me better perspective on the most important things in my life, my Lord and my family.

So today for a little less than an hour, I appreciated as I listed the things unique to my wife. I summed it up to her this evening by telling her that she has a wonderful enthusiasm for the pure pleasures God has given us – timeless blessings like conversation & relationships, food & sleep, music and words.

I have so many entertainments in my life that, were they to disappear, would probably enhance my life with their absence. When Pookie and I hiked for eight hours in Kaua’i, we engaged in deeper conversation than our typical fare, simply because of the extended time with few distractions.

I just took a break to change my baby’s diaper, and boy have I come to love doing that. We have some of our best facial exchanges when he’s politely letting me clean his bottom. This I never anticipated. A father’s joy at his baby boy’s contentment.

We just began going through a curriculum on 1 Peter for her Thursday morning bible study, and we did a little of that tonight, with me one week behind her (and still postponing catch-up for this blog entry).
Reflecting on the resources available to Christians today, I consider the contrast of a cluttered spiritual life with that of the believers in the 1st century. It may be naïvete, but I often long for fewer things and less appointments in hopes that I can further stretch out and better indulge in the pleasures for which we were designed.

Here’s an exercise. Count up all the distractions you encountered in one day and assess what that list says about you. I’ll go first:

Apple.com/trailers
The Wif and I rarely watch movies on DVD or in the theater anymore, but trailers are so dramatic and so… handy, I check in on this site daily, sometimes more than once. Let’s just leave it at that.

Email
Something I check several times a day. I think I even spend more time checking than actually reading or writing email.

Google Earth
To my shame, my boss asked me today to use it to do an actual ad, and I ended up riding the cool POV tool all over the world, sucked in by an albeit legitimate fascination with the world, but overindulging nonetheless.

My Blog
Something I even make notes for on my Blackberry in the john. Case in point is this typically digressing entry.


It’s getting late. I need to end this or it’ll never get posted and I’ll never get to sleep. The blog is a dangerous tool. Talk about indulgences.