The Marriage Talent

In Matthew chapter 25:14:29 Jesus tells the story of rich man giving money to 3 of his workers, with an expectation of a large return on his investment. The parable shows us that God, who blesses us with great gifts and abilities expects us to use those abilities to further his kingdom. One investment that the Lord makes in most of us is our spouse. An investment you ask? Yes, considering how important each and every one of us is to God, the fact that he would give us one of his sons or daughters and put them in our care is one heck of an investment! Now what are you doing with what God gave you?

I was one of those guys who really wanted to get married and chased many potential wives all over the world. But one day I prayed, “Lord, if you never let me marry that will be alright with me.” When I prayed that prayer I knew I meant it, because I was scarred to death. This was right around the time I met Candy. Now Candy was a very pretty missionary just back from the Philipines who was 6 years older than me. When we met it was not love at first sight for either of us, but I very quickly realized that this one was different, because thinking about her made me sick to my stomach.  No other female had done that to me. But I was tired of chasing women, when the end result always was some really great friendships…… “Don can’t we just be friends?”  So the prayer went out “Lord I think you want me to marry Candy, but I’m not going to chase her, If she is for me, YOU make it happen.” This prayer was prayed in early December of 1987, on January 7. 1988 Candy and I were engaged. When he wants to, God can move real fast.

After years of wanting a wife, I had one. But the newness of the situation was (like it is for many people) challenging for  both of us. I knew that I had married the right one, because I have even to this day never grown tired of her; mad enough to leave the house for a couple of hours yes, but tired of her no way. But I have let my job, hobbies and friends especially in the early years, have a much higher priority in my life than my wife.

Second only to my Salvation, Candy is God’s greatest gift to me, an investment in his kingdom with the  profit being the glorification of the Lord!  One of the ways we give God a return on his investment is by obeying his command and having Children, but it’s not the only way. The maturing of 2 people growing in their walk with God, as they grow together in Love and respect is another piece of fruit that falls from the marriage tree. If you are not growing together more and more over the years, you are probably not growing closer to God either. Now I know that there are exceptions to that statement, so don’t run me out of town just yet…. I know that we can’t control the actions of our spouse, and sometimes we all do things that cause great harm to marriages, sometimes to the point of separation and divorce.  But our marriages can also become poor performing investments when we take our spouse for granted, when we treat them as second in priority to our children, our jobs, our golf or football game.  Wait a minute Don, I understand about the jobs  the hobbies, and other outside activities getting in the way of our marriage, but surely our kids can’t  become a stumbling block to our marriage. Yes they can. Children should never, I repeat never take a long term place of  being more important to us, in our lives than our relationships with our spouses. “There has to be ample, purposeful Mommy, Daddy alone time away from the kids, with conversation that is not centered around the kids. If you don’t do this, when the last kid leaves…. you look at each other and say “who are you” and then trouble begins.

Now I’m a TV/Film director / editor , not a marriage counselor, what do I know about marriages? Not much….. But after being married now for 22 +  years I realize just how big an investment my marriage  has been for  the Lord, Candy and myself. It is not for me to ignore or take for granted, and it is certainly not something to lay aside in pursuit of somebody else who looks like they might be the blue chip investment we’ve been looking for, though in reality they are penny stocks.

What are  you doing to enhance the value of the great investment that God gave you?

A Tale of Two Cities…….. Sort of

Those of you who know me, know that I grew up an Air Force brat and then joined the Army after dropping out of Texas A&M. Because of these factors, I have been blessed to live in some pretty awesome places: Alaska, three different places in California, West Point, New York, and of course White Oak, Texas among many others. But there are 2 cities I have lived in that are a world apart both geographically and culturally, but they share one unique characteristic, and how they handled their uniqueness and how our country is analogous to them is the subject of this blog.

In the late summer of 1981, after I finished TV school in Colorado, the Army assigned me to the American Forces Radio and Television Network affiliate in Berlin, Germany. Yeah!!!! Dream job….. Scary City. In 1981, Ronald Reagan, had just become President, the Cold War between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was warmer than ever and the divided city of Berlin (110 miles inside Communist East Germany) was ground zero for the whole stinking mess.

A little bit of background: Towards the end of WWII, Winston Churchill of Great Britain, Joseph Stalin of the USSR, and Franklin Roosevelt (and later Harry Truman) of the U.S met and reached an agreement to divide Europe up into two different spheres of influence. Leading to the Warsaw Pact of eastern Europe and the countries that made up NATO to the west. They also carved up Germany into four roughly equal sections: One to governed by the USSR, another for the US, one for Britain and one for France. The Allies (US, Great Britain and France) insisted that they also got to share in the city of Berlin. So it was also carved up into four not so equal sections. The communist East being about the size of the other three sections combined. The Russians and their East Germany buddies didn’t really like the idea of a free city roughly the size of Atlanta, Georgia inside their territory, and they tried very hard to remedy the situation. In 1948 and 1949, they blockaded the city preventing any food, coal and other supplies from reaching West Berlin by road or rail. The Allies rose to the challenge and supplied the city with an around the clock airlift. The Russians laughed and said it would never work, but 11 months, 200,000 flights, and 13,000,000 tons of food later, they stopped laughing. In the early 1960’s East Germany was loosing so many skilled workers to the West, that their survival depended on some drastic measures. Up went “the Wall” not to keep the Allies out, but to keep their own people in! BY GUNPOINT!

Jump ahead to 1981, the roads and railroads to West Berlin have long been re-opened, the Wall is now the norm, and the four powers rule a divided Berlin together, but with their hands always ready to reach for their guns. Keep in mind that the 3 parts of West Berlin have merged together, and it is very hard to tell the difference between the US sector and the French and British. But there was a wall and guns and minefields between the West and the East. The ironic thing… Private First Class Don Walker was encouraged by his superiors to visit the East as much as possible, as long as he had others to go with him and the proper paper work. It was a show the flag sort of thing.
If we ever got in trouble with the East German police we were to demand a Russian officer, who would then mediate the issue and get us back to the West.

Bottom line, no trust, constant espionage, and a very uneasy co-existence that could develop into full scale war at any time.

It’s now 2010 and I live in another divided city: Texarkana, USA. Texarkana, is really two cities in one; Texarkana, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas. In stark contrast to the Berlin of the Cold War, there isn’t a whole lot to tell them apart. On Stateline Ave. which divides the two cities, the northbound traffic is in Arkansas, and the southbound traffic is in Texas. The only way to really tell the difference is the little flags hanging from the streetlights. Oh yeah, and there are no liquor stores on the Texas side. These are really two different cities though merged into one. There are two police departments, two fire departments, two city governments, one water department. The level of cooperation between the two, (at least from my prospective) is phenomenal. If there is fire on the Arkansas side, and they need the help of the Texas side, they got it, same with Police and other services. You can live on the Texas side and work on the Arkansas side, or visa versa, The point is that for the most part the two cities “feel” like one city, not quite Texan and not quite Arkansan…. It is Texarkana,USA

Which brings us to the subject of our country, the United States of America, for over 233 years now we have been mixing our cultural, political and spiritual differences together and coming up American. Yes we had the Civil War which was really geographical in nature, fought over an issue that one part of the country wasn’t really ready to let go of.
But now a new Civil War is looming and it’s not geographical. It is dividing our country even on the family level, all across the map. The issues are deep and divisive, Abortion, who can be married, whether or not the name of God can be proclaimed in public venues or not, spending money we do not have and wealth re-distribution. All of these stand higher than slavery did as an obstacle to the further existence of our nation. We are leaving Texarkana, the two sides working together as one and moving to Cold War Berlin, Two sides peering over the wall at each other living with our hands on our guns waiting to take the other side out.

I don’t have a solution that will make both sides happy. I am firmly on one side of the wall, with issues I cannot compromise on. The Wall is there and it is getting taller by the day. The contemptuous spirit that seems to rule both sides damages the cohesiveness of the nation, and when we are torn apart internally, our resistance to outside aggressors is weak at best……. Our Country needs God’s Favor restored and we need it now. Don’t cosign the US to ash pit of history. Pray for, don’t bad mouth, our Country’s leadership, Pray for our Country, and pray that we can come together as One Nation Under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.