time for us

March 12, 2012 7:00 am

That’s it. How to take care of our love? Among other ways, by taking care of the time for us. But how is it possible to find that time, if you leave for work at dawn and come back home at dusk? Of course, you are left with the proverbial „5 minutes” in the evening. Unfortunately, after a day that leaves you exhausted and seeking for a fast way to unwind, those 5 minutes are easily – almost automatically – wasted.

And yet I’ve found a way. I started to protect the time for my beloved wife in my heart. It is enough if you direct your thoughts – in the middle of the hustle and bustle – to that person. Even though she’s at some physical distance, she’s also close to your heart. What would all this mean, all our work, efforts, confronting challenges, if we weren’t given the chance to be received by the arms waiting there for us? And those returns home are totally different, if you let yourself “feel” your mutual love, and become conscious of it for a couple of seconds during the day. Such “mental text message” will be received by your wife. Especially if you add your smile, kind word and gesture when you come home. Then it turns out that those 5 minutes that you’re left with at the end of another hard day are far more difficult to waste.

Out of those text messages and unwasted 5 minutes a day, I get, in turn, the strength to save maybe one whole evening a week, or maybe one day a month… that we may have just for us, to nurture our love.

Michał

Veronica

March 9, 2012 7:52 am

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him (Isaiah 53:2)

My husband, children and friends do not always show “beauty or majesty”. And sometimes I don’t find it easy at all to look at them and to be with them, especially when they are annoyed or “difficult” in any other way. But this is then, and probably mostly then, when I can put to test my love for them.

Am I able to find within the mercy and courage that Veronica had? To offer the gestures of kindness, that favourable look that goes beyond my daunting impression about the other person’s behaviour?

Am I ready to welcome the other in his/her suffering? Or do I stay entrapped in my own fear, resentment, sense of helplessness or discouragement?

The test may come out better or worse, but I’m sure love should not be missing from the ways of the cross.

Basia

my love's burnt out,

March 4, 2012 7:24 am

a wife told her husband.

Does it really work that way? Can love burn out?

The education making me ready to start work lasts from 12 to 19 years (if you add postgraduate studies).

Getting a certificate in a foreign language – requires 600-650 h.

Driving lessons – about 60 h.

How much did it take you to get ready for marriage? Marriage preparation course?

Is that enough?

What else can you do in that field? How to translate your knowledge into competence?

A feeling may burn out, but love never does!!!

You just need to know where to look for love. How to take care of it! How to nurture it.

Fr Jay

I + you

March 1, 2012 8:29 am

I like what Michał wrote. Just the day before I was talking to a friend who said that you have to realize that a married couple is two separate people. 1 and 1.

It’s obvious at the first glance that I and my husband are different and no one would take me for him – and the other way round. At the second glance, I see that „he” has entirely different habits, ideas for leisure, and his ways to react to events. When he puts away clothes, he does it in a manner so varying from mine. Let’s be honest: it’s sometimes annoying.

That’s when I need the third glance. And then I realize that „he” is someone other than „me”. And it’s not about the list of differences that could be listed endlessly. He is different in the absolute sense, „the other”, as God is – „the Other”. I have no rights over „the other”, and if I think otherwise, I’m a usurper. On his face God wrote a message for me: „Thou shall not kill”. And the face, even while speechless, expresses this message in its defenselessness.* How much respect and concern is necessary not to hurt this defenselessness – in my dictatorial inclinations.

Love in marriage is not a cavity that devours the other and digests him/her into the perfect copy of its own „perfect” self. Because the distance between „I” and „you” can only be challenged by dialogue, by opening myself to the otherness of „you”. It’s a journey into the unknown.

Małgosia

*You can read more in Emmanuel Lévinas’s Time and the Other.

how to become a born optimist

February 27, 2012 6:24 pm

Every day at 13:30 sharp my cell phone reminder beeps and displays: “That’s good, because…”. At that time of day, originally selected for no special reason,  I usually come to a conclusion that miraculous effects of caffeine are just mythology conjured up to please the palate. In general, at 13:30, the pace of the day speeds up and many (un)expected things happen. And the reminder keeps on repeating, every day ever since Spetmeber: that’s very good, because…

That method, which I started implementing on holiday, was frequently put to test. The most difficult moment came when – by killing a mosquito on the toilet flush hose – I brought about a huge hydraulic failure. The hose broke in two and turned into a shower.  My Husband had just fallen asleep and I, left to my own devices, was depserately trying to figure out the ending of “that’s good, because …” I succeeded in the end.

That’s how I started saying things nobody would have suspect me of. It’s wondeful there’s that thick mist today, we’ll take such extraordinary photos of the seaside. It’s great it’s raining, because the kids had been dreaming of putting on their wellingtones. At times, I seemed to be surrounded by some fabulous aura.

In short, that’s a very good way to change the attitude of seeing the hole into seeing the donut around. The Author of the method, Fr Jay, has also another saying of his: you need only 21 days for a thing to become your habit.

That does not sound like a lot of training, compared with the results behind the finish line.

Małgosia

That's good, because…

February 26, 2012 4:18 pm

… each difficult experience teaches me something. I appreciate especially those lessons which correct the beliefs I hold about my own self. The positive beliefs, in particular.

How really grateful I am to those who helped me – either with their words or behaviour – to find myself in a difficult position. They showed me how many things I still have to work on.

Sometimes it takes a while, before you get quite used to saying this, but each time I repeat to myself: “That’s good, because… “, it takes me shorter to react to difficulties with a smile.

That’s good, because the world looks better with a smile. Doesn’t it?

Fr Jay