Mike Tyson, ladies and gentlemen.
reblog: We’ve All Got a Lego Stuck Up Our Nose
Originally posted on May 29, 2010
Benaiah comes over with tears in his eyes and says, “EMERGENCY!!!” He tilts his head back so I can look in his nose and I calmly say, “You’re good. You’re not bleeding. Did you scratch yourself or something?”
Shaking his head he says, “No, there’s a Lego stuck up in there.” At this point in the story, I’d like to say that I remained calm, cool, and collected. But, I didn’t. My response went something Iike…
“Oh no! Why would you stick a Lego up your nose? Honey, get off the phone, we’re probably going to the emergency room. Ben, why would you do this? Don’t ever do that again. Oh man.”
Now, in my defense, I looked in his nose and there was most assuredly NOT a Lego up in there which means there was a Lego WAY up in there. So I had a bit of a reason to freak out, at least a little.
We went to the bathroom and one good, hard blow later and the Lego was in my hand. I know it’s gross but I was thankful to have the ironically green Lego piece in my hand and not the recesses of my son’s nasal and sinus cavity.
He cried a little bit and I was relieved but as we sat there watching Astro-Boy later that evening, I reflected back on my response…. or rather, my reaction. Not that I freaked out all that much but, I should have remained a bit more calm. Later in life, when my son has something really important to tell me, I don’t want him to be afraid of my reaction. I don’t want him to hold it in like we sometimes do, only to try and navigate whatever situation or problem he’s facing on his own.
At times, we all suffer silently in temptation, sin, guilt, grief, fear or depression because we’re afraid of how others will react. We’ve got to do a better job of confessing to one another. But more than that, we’ve got to be the kind of people others can confess to because in the end, we’ve all got a Lego stuck up our nose.
“I Wanna Grow Old With You”
Check out the Old People Holding Hands blog and get a little inspiration to enjoy the “for better” moments and hang in there during “for worse” ones. This one’s dedicated to the ever lovely Maria Atchison.
Love the person not the ideal…
A couple weeks ago, my wife and I celebrated fourteen years of marriage. By no means a veteran couple of decades. But, I can say after fourteen years of great joys and quite a few disappointments, the loss of a child and the toll it takes on the relationship, we have learned a lot.
One of the things we’ve learned is to love the person and not the ideal.
You know… the ideal of marriage or the ideal of who you think that person is or should be.
ideal:
adjective
1 ideal flying weather: perfect, best possible, consummate, supreme, excellent, flawless, faultless, exemplary, classic, model, ultimate, quintessential. ANTONYMS bad.2 an ideal concept: abstract, theoretical, conceptual, notional; hypothetical, speculative, conjectural, suppositional. ANTONYMS concrete.
3 an ideal world: unattainable, unachievable, impracticable, chimerical; unreal, fictitious, hypothetical, theoretical, ivory-towered, imaginary, illusory, idealized, idyllic, visionary, utopian, fairy-tale. ANTONYMS attainable, real.
noun
1 no woman could be the ideal he imagined for himself: perfection, paragon, epitome, shining example, ne plus ultra, nonpareil, dream.
Most of the time when you marry, you don’t know who you are, much less who the other person really is. And, marriage is going to change you. It’s going to change them. More accurately, it’s going to reveal the true person versus the person you’ve created in your head.
