ESPRESSO - Euphoria without the unsightly track marks.

"Recalculating"

Geoff Husa is preaching Sunday morning. Pathway is going to support the Husas in their ministry among the Mibu in Papua New Guinea and they'll be explaining their work in both hours. The extra time I have with no sermon prep allows me to do things like remove popcorn on ceilings. (I got it primed and painted today.) It also allowed me to play 18 holes this morning, although in all honesty I try to get enough church work done early each week that I can take a few hours for that diversion on Fridays.

I got paired with another "single," a man who goes by "WD" but who is 87 - one of those old guys who doesn't hit it very far but consistently puts it right down the middle of the fairway. Toward the end of the round he was getting tired and started pulling it a little, but he still played very good golf for someone his age.

WD's second wife died of emphysema two weeks ago (his first wife passed away many years ago). Both women were golfers and he met this second wife on the course. He was a plant manager for Ford and retired at 55 when they wanted him to move to Turkey. ("That was back when they were making money.") WD also plays quickly; get to the ball, take out a club, one practice swing, hit the ball and head on down the fairway. We enjoyed playing together and agreed to look for each other next Friday.

Everybody has a story, and most of them have an interesting one. I like pulling it out of them.

Over the years I've encountered too many situations of spousal abuse. The first one came when I had been in ministry for about three years. An Army lieutenant regularly pushed his wife around, pinned her against the wall and sometimes shoved her to the floor. When I learned about it I went to talk to him. He freely admitted to the behavior and challenged me to do anything. "Nobody will believe you because everybody on base thinks I'm a great guy." He said the brass on base wouldn't believe he abused his wife because he talked about her all the time. I encouraged his wife to take action but she was unwilling, and apart from her readiness to change the situation I couldn't realistically help her.

I thought about that experience this week with regard to Dr. Michael Brown, a Houston-based surgeon who runs a hand surgery center here in Phoenix. He advertises a lot on local TV, emphasizing a technique he developed for curing carpal tunnel syndrome that is done arthroscopically and thus significantly reduces recovery time. In the ads his beautiful family sits around him in a living room setting and at the end of the commercial he tells us he'll care for us just diligently as he cares for his family. His 4-year old daughter then sweetly says, "Daddy's little girl!" (I could never figure out what she had to do with carpal tunnel surgery.)

This week we got the news that Dr. Brown has been arrested in Houston on felony spouse abuse charges against his fourth wife, eight years after he pleaded guilty to beating his third wife. He is now prohibited from being near his wife or his children. He also can't see his two children from wife #3, a woman whom he beat with a bed post when she was pregnant.

I am suspicious of husbands who seem overly effusive about their wives. I knew a pastor who often talked about how wonderful his wife was and about their great relationship. It got embarrassing. I have no reason to think he abused her but I did subsequently learn he had real problems with his temper, and lost control around people in his church. I'd be real surprised if a man who blew up like that in public didn't also do it at home.

I realize this is going to sound totally bizarre, maybe just plain wrong, but I've thought about what I'd do if Pam died before me. Would I say anything about her at a memorial service?
I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Our relationship is personal, it's organic, and it's between the two of us. After 39 years together I couldn't begin to explain it to anyone. People attending a memorial service would know who she was as a person, so I likely wouldn't tell them anything about her character they didn't already know. And I couldn't begin to explain who we are, our relationship. I don't know the words that describe it. We're "us." It's way past verbalizing.

I've been asked why I don't write more about Pam in my blog. Two reasons. First, I don't think it's fair to speak for or about her. I want to respect her privacy. OK, at least most of the time.
But it also has to do with the privacy of who we are. I can write about politics or home improvement or sports or old cars. I know how to talk about those things. But who we are is ours. I can't and won't try to describe that.