Lifetime Guarantee (9 page)
Read Lifetime Guarantee Online
Authors: Bill Gillham
As a male, God made me more of a logical thinker than your typical female. She tends to be more of an intuitive thinker, more of a sensitive person. If I came in contact with a strong gal in high school, I would use sarcasm and invective on her. I would catch her in a group setting, rarely one-on-one, and make fun of her—ridicule the way she looked, the way she sang, the way she acted, the new zit she was trying to hide on her neck, or whatever—until she broke from the stress. You see, she couldn’t fight that way. Her sensitivity would disarm her, whereas I was insulated with indifference to her hurt. I could laugh off her retorts and hurl double the insults back in her face. She would break and begin to cry or scream at me. At this point it was usually difficult for me to keep a straight face, because inside I was experiencing glee. I had won!
Sad, isn’t it? But look around you at the millions of marriages, both Christian and non-Christian, that fit this mold. A strong gal is married to a threatened guy, and open warfare is the order of the day.
I am not proud of what I just told you about myself. Quite the contrary. But do you see a picture of a seventeen-year-old boy struggling for self-esteem? Do you see that’s how he played Lord of the Ring in an effort to generate and maintain self-esteem? And when I got saved, all this garbage was going to become my “old ways,” my flesh that I would have to struggle against.
As my flesh was being formed along the lines I’ve just described, Anabel, my sweet wife whom the Father gave to me, was also having her flesh shaped. I’ll let her tell the story in her own words.
Bill was having lunch recently with Harold, a friend who had been my classmate at dear old Poteau High. Harold was a very competent, aggressive student—an athlete. As they were discussing years gone by, Harold made this observation: “You know, Bill, Anabel and I were in the same class when we were growing up there in Poteau. I had one goal. That was to beat her in at least one common undertaking. I never did.”
I am one of two daughters of Marcus and Jean Hoyle. One of the most tender and intimate moments that I remember with my beloved daddy was sitting out on the back steps one evening. I was between his legs, and he had his arms around my neck. Mother had just undergone a hysterectomy. Dad, in a very gentle, poignant voice, said to me, “You know, honey, you’re the only little boy I’ll ever have.”
Now, I can’t remember trying to be a tomboy to please my daddy. But I was the ultimate in tomboys! There were a lot of boys in our neighborhood, and they would congregate in our yard to play. If we played cowboys and Indians, you can be very sure that Anabel was the chief. If we played cops and robbers, I was the sheriff. I even remember daddy tying ropes in the mulberry tree so that I could be Tarzan. And neither of them ever said anything like, “Anabel, when are you going to grow up and start acting like a little lady?”
I was playing Lord of the Ring, forming patterns for male-female interaction and relationships to get their acceptance (I
thought
) and generate self-esteem. My patterns were not very acceptable ones to the males.
At Howard Elementary School, of course, the most important subject of the day was recess. This particular time, we were running races down under the hill. I can remember telling mother and daddy at the supper table how I had beaten Mervin McConnell in races that day. I’m sure they responded favorably. But that was not the ultimate. The ultimate was the time when I told them that I had beaten Joe Harold West in races. Why? Well, Joe Harold was my boyfriend! Sigh. (Stage whisper from Bill:
To put this in perspective, Joe Harold became an all-state running back at dear ol’ Poteau High.)
Eighth grade. Everyone anticipated the annual trek up Cavanal Mountain in the spring. I had a new boyfriend, Robert Henry Kendrick. Of course, he didn’t know it, and I had to impress him. How was I going to do that? Why, the same way that I had been impressing boys since the days in our backyard. I was going to do whatever he did as well as he did it or better! Robert Henry was definitely the “leader of the pack.” But guess who was by his warm side all the way up the mountain? Anabel. I still remember the two of us sitting on the big rocks that overlook Poteau Valley. I don’t remember verbatim what he said, but it was something to this effect: “You’re quite a mountain climber.” He had noticed me. My heart sang! But my joy was short-lived. He
carried
Joan Caldwell down the mountain because she had a blister on her poor little foot! (Stage whisper:
Anabel could’ve carried both of ’em down the mountain.)
I began to see things in the movies about this time that made a definite impression on me. Names that you may not recognize—Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart—were my stars. I
liked
what I saw. One movie had a profound effect on my life,
Mrs. Miniver,
with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. Why? Well, I saw two people as man and wife who had fun together; they respected each other; they were tender and loving; they were kind and considerate. I wasn’t seeing this in my home. Mother and dad had a stormy relationship. I started thinking,
Maybe this being a woman isn’t all that bad.
I began to see that I was something very special, something very beautiful—a woman.
But the patterns I’d developed for interacting with males and that Bill had developed for interacting with females were going to lead us into a self-destructive marriage.
As you can see, Anabel and I developed very different kinds of flesh. During our courtship, however, I was careful to keep all my undesirable, critical-toward-women behavior under wraps, especially with Anabel. I treated her like a queen. You see, she is a beauty, and it fed my masculinity needs to be number one in her life. But after the marriage, when I got her into the castle with the drawbridge up, I began to show my true self. This loving, caring, tender, compassionate, attentive, young man became sarcastic, hateful, critical, indifferent, self-centered, self-indulgent, and downright mean at times. I began to pour all my years of pent-up frustration against strong women out onto one of the dearest women God ever created. I was a strong woman hater.
Someone may be wondering why I would be dumb enough to marry a strong woman. Why not choose one who would submit to my every wish?
Remember the rattlesnake illustration back in Chapter 1 that demonstrates how your emotions get stuck? Well, since I had spent twenty-three years doubting my masculinity and my ability to have it all together as a male, as a leader, how did I feel by now? Inadequate. Oh, I
wanted
to be the strong leader at home, but I didn’t feel I could do it. I felt more like a boy. I felt I needed a combination wife and mother. My feeler was stuck on about an 8. So I married a woman who would run the ship, discipline the kids, manage the money, make wise decisions, and so on.
I married according to my feeler, in other words. But bless her heart, Anabel had not married my dad. She had married someone who was out to destroy her. I didn’t know this. I didn’t lie in bed at night and plot it. I didn’t know what was driving me. All I knew was that I
felt
frustrated, threatened, and unhappy with myself. It all looked hopeless.
Here’s the way the cycle went. I stayed frustrated with myself, say, at level 5. Show me someone who’s frustrated, and I’ll show you someone who’s hostile. I had a deep need to ease that frustration. As a Christian, I knew it was not of God and wanted to overcome it, yet the hostility sat in there like a bomb waiting to detonate. (Some Christians have “implode” flesh, some have “explode.” I have explode flesh.)
Anabel, meanwhile, kept doing things that irritated me, and I cut her down to size with my tongue. She, laboring under the burden of performance-based acceptance, made like Avis and tried harder. Stung by her husband’s criticism of her performance, she felt rejected.
Remember, though, that Anabel also felt
self
-rejection. She couldn’t love herself as well as she could had she not received this negative feedback on her performance. What was her old, fleshly remedy for the situation? Try to improve! So she doubled her effort, and more often than not, she made improvements on her already yeoman production.
This in turn threatened me even more, as it was a continual reminder of my own inability to accept myself as male. Her competency increased my self-rejection since I was being “outdone” by a woman, and my hostility accelerated. What was my way of getting relief? Strike out at the “cause,” Anabel.
Being rejected again, she tried to do better (to get her need for love met), and the cycle began again. We were two people walking after their unique versions of the flesh.
In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul speaks of having known a man who was lifted up into heaven. He then says that he, Paul, was given a thorn in the flesh to keep him humble. Most would agree that the man who was lifted to heaven was Paul, else why would he have been given a thorn to keep him humble?
It is irrelevant to our discussion to speculate on what the thorn was. The emphasis in the passage is not on the thorn, but on its purpose. It was to make Paul’s flesh trip (pride) unproductive.
The Lord has designed your marriage so that each of you completes the other. There have been many books written enumerating the positive ways spouses complement or complete one another. But I’ll bet that if you examine your situation honestly, you will discover that your spouse’s flesh in some way is a “thorn” in your flesh. There will be something about his or her flesh patterns that bugs yours or makes it unproductive for you to use them. God’s purpose is that you be broken from walking after the flesh, and He has lovingly given you a “thorn” to motivate you to abandon the flesh trip.
Take Anabel and me, for example. One of my eight-lane, green highways is that supercritical tongue. One of Anabel’s is a supersensitivity to any evaluative comments about her performance. Our omniscient God left those in there at our salvation for us to “work out our own salvation” (mature in Christ; see Philippians 2:12,13). He could have zapped them out, but He left them there for us to work on as a learning and maturing activity so Christ could be glorified through our victory.
What if God had married me to a leather-skinned woman whom I could bounce invective off of all day long and she’d keep dishing it right back at me? She’d finish with, “Okay, boy, it’s Cheerios for you until you get your act together!” Why, I’d redouble my efforts to come up with innovative ways to destroy her. My flesh trip would actually escalate under such conditions. But no. God married me to a gal who can’t even tolerate it if I suggest she buy a different brand of green beans. She’d go through a half day of down time over such things. Brother, that’ll motivate you to beg God to help you clean up your act.
And how about Anabel? What if she were married to a guy who would never say anything evaluative to her? She could just go through her Christian life sheltered from ever having to deal with her unique version of the flesh. If she got “hurt” at Sunday school, they’d just change churches.
Instead, however, the Lord gave Anabel and me to each other for keeps. Our toothbrushes are in the same glass. There’s no way we can run from one another. We have to stay hitched and “make no provision for the flesh” (Romans 13:14). We are learning how to let Christ live through us to overcome the flesh. And praise God, it’s working! We are making progress to His glory. How about you? Are you receiving the thorns you need for dealing with your flesh, or are you murmuring at God about them? All murmuring will get you is a season pass on the wilderness merry-go-round. You’ve got to hold a funeral for that kind of behavior.
1. What do you see God doing in your life to motivate you toward dealing with the fleshly patterns you have recognized?
2. Why does God not erase all the old flesh patterns at salvation, total commitment, or some other significant single encounter with Him?
3. If you have USDA Choice Flesh, by and large, and find yourself running into one brick wall after the next, what is one of the potential reasons for this?
Answers in “Answers to Questions for Further Study”.
An “Old Man” in a New Earthsuit
Earlier in the book, I pointed out that the perspective and thinking of small children is totally self-centered. All they care about is getting their own needs met and having their own way. And has it ever occurred to you that they don’t need to be taught to be that way? Nobody has to instruct a child to pursue his needs regardless of the consequences to others; we have to teach the opposite over and over. Likewise, nobody has to train a one-year-old to defy mommy and throw a tantrum when she wants him to take a nap; it just comes naturally.
As you continue to read, keep in mind that we are all self-centered. We are all lost people living our lives on planet earth and trying to milk acceptance out of people and the world. God was moved by His great love to do something to solve our dilemma, to make it possible for us to undergo a radical change in nature. He gives us the opportunity to get a heart transplant (“I will remove the heart of stone [hard]…and give you a heart of flesh [pliable]” [Ezekiel 36:26]). With this new heart, we can begin to look to Him to supply all our needs, which is as it should be.
God solved your problem in the lovely Jesus. Every answer to our dilemma is wrapped up in Him. It’s imperative, however, that we understand
how
Jesus is the solution to the problem if we’re to be able to appropriate Him as our answer.
In this chapter, we will consider phase one of God’s redemptive solution, the reason you and I needed redeeming. I urge you to read it in detail, even if you feel you already have a thorough understanding of the Fall.
Realizing that some of you may like a more detailed explanation of a tenet as I do, I have created several appendixes for this purpose. The ideas developed in each appendix are referenced in the text which follows.