9 Neanderthandal Habits of a True Man You Never Thought Would Make You Melt, but Will.

I came across this article today which was being furiously passed from woman to woman on my facebook and touted as the best thing in the world.
As I said there, and will say below, the article annoyed me quite a bit, for many reasons, but mostly being that:

" If you try to help me put my jacket on or take it off, I will cut you. Because hijab and it took me an hour to get it right so don't freaking touch it.
And me no likey chick flicks I don't expect you to either.
I like flowers but I once dumped a guy because he brought me flowers EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.... and spent too much time with my family.

I should write a post called: "9 Neanderthal habits of a true man that you never thought would make you melt... but will." In fact, I'm gonna."

and

Also, I love and appreciate opening doors but sometimes aintnobodygottimefodat and I just can't stand the wait, I'm just like MOVE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST MOVE. So pick your moments, men.

So now here I am, writing this post. Let me start off by saying that all those ideas I read about are nice, but if you hold out for the guy who embodies that post, you are going to be either (a) marrying a damn liar or (b) missing out on a lot. So without further ado, I give you nine things men actually do that used to drive me nuts but I now find incredibly endearing.

1. Closing doors. 

The writer mentioned that she liked men holding doors open. Well I like men closing doors.
First off, I like when my man closes the figurative door on a situation I didn't have the guts or common sense to close one on myself. They don't mind being rude or direct, and I love that because I do. Close them doors, for me boys!
That's a big one...  for sure. But also, I like men literally closing doors.
Men slam doors every where they go. Doesn't matter if they are little men or big men, they will pretty much slam every single door they encounter, and whats' even funnier is that you can bet on them yelling at any kid within ear shot for slamming doors themselves. Door slams always carry a message: things like "leave me alone" is a common one, yes, but another is "Oh my gosh I'm so excited!!" and there's also "I'm late!" too. While door slamming is a regular occurrence in a household full of boys, they are almost always loudest at naptime and after the children have gone to sleep. I have no idea if this is intentional or just a weird Murphy's law thing, but there you go.
 Whatever the message, whatever the reason, I melt a little bit when my house is full of guys and my door is slamming constantly as they happily go in and out forgetting things and yelling things to each other.

2. Eating everything in the house.

Sure it's nice if they save the last bite, but lately I've been noticing how nice it is to have a house full of hungry men I get to feed. There's something about chasing them out of the kitchen, slapping their hands away while they touch stuff, and watching the look of satisfaction (not to mention the good mood after ) that comes when guys have eaten a hearty meal and are grateful for it. If they are eating you out of house and home, you likely know the joy of finding happy men all around you and there's nothing like it. Like my Mediterranean mothers before me, this year I have really learned to rejoice in my kitchen duties and to find peace and pleasure in stocking and re-stocking.....  and re-stocking the fridge. I used to LOATHE Dinner prep, practically considered suicide when it "+1" started turning into "+ 3" around here on a regular basis, and seriously thought about just walking out one day and leaving everybody hungry. I prayed about it a lot and the Lord gave me a brilliant vision for hospitality and told me to embrace that hot, dirty kitchen.... and now let me tell you, I wouldn't trade my job for all the world. I now love to feed people, but men especially, because nobody is more thankful or happy after a good meal.

3.  Spending time with the guys.

Love a guy who loves to be around family. That's always, always important. But ladies, have you ever really stopped to appreciate the hilarity that ensues when guys get to spend time with each other? It's a glorious sight to behold, and one of the most enjoyable ways to spend an afternoon should you have the good fortune of listening in.
Men get together and play jokes on each other, talk smack to one another, give each other a hard time, build things, do projects, figure out ways to dominate the world..... it's amazing. Also, you will NEVER have to worry about things like home invasions or things that go bump in the night with groups of men around. You will learn all kinds of interesting things and come out with such a great appreciation for who men are and what they do. Most importantly should your guy be the kind who works in a "guy-oriented field" (military, first responders, etc.) you will find that even dull moments at work can be made hilarious and gleeful and learn a thing or two about making glory out of ordinary tasks. Most importantly, metal sharpens metal, so if your man has the blessing of having some good guy friends--- let them go, be, do. They come back way better than if they had spent eight hours locked in a house with you. and what happened will keep you entertained for a whole day of folding laundry and rinsing dishes.  I promise. :D

4. Making you watch action/war/ adventure movies.

Like most women, when I married my husband I had fantasies in my head of snuggling on the couch watching The Notebook or something most nights, while he whispered sweet nothings at me about how amazing I was. Yeah right. Instead I have spent literal years of my life listening to deep discussion about weaponry, armor, tactical gear, combat methodology, body building, philosophy, and kingdom building. I have seen Red Dawn (7 billion times to date) and Dune and Braveheart and Rob Roy and the Last of the Mohicans and The Postman.... again, and again, and again. I go to sleep to the sounds of Rambo, or Rocky IV,  not Rapunzel, and you know what? It's been kind of amazing. If you want to know why, you'll have to read my older blog on the topic right here.  Do it.

5. Sending weapons.

Sure, it's nice when guys send you flowers. But you'll know it's love when they send you weapons-  especially weapons THEY want to own. ;) Over the years, I've received endless knives, spears, bows, and battle axes and I'm not going to lie to you, I've often been like.... seriously? All I wanted was a gift certificate to Amazon. But there is nothing quite like the feeling of having a visiting man notice one of your gifted weapons on the table or something and hearing him say: "WOW  This thing is awesome. Where did you get it?" Now that's love. :D

6. Walking in front of you and/or getting in your way.

When I was first married, nothing irritated me more than my husband walking miles ahead of me when we were out and about or him stomping around in front of me when I was trying to get stuff done. Ten years in and now I love both. I love watching him when he is getting in my way because he's also active, doing something important to him, and I love to see him at work and to watch his process. It's adorable, and almost always a good, playful conversation starter.
But it's the walking far ahead of me thing that makes me melt....  I love the looks we get as a family when he walks into a room, with me behind him and our long line of kids trailing behind me. It's like people just want to stare open mouthed, or clap or something. EVERYONE has something to say. It's hilarious. I love it.

7. Trying to have sex with you all the live long day.

Yeah, kissing your forehead is cute. But you know what's adorable? When your husband won't leave you alone. Slapping your butt in public, making big eyes at you over the toilet he's fixing, or sneaking you off during a big holiday meal... whether you're in jammies or gym clothes, if he's a man,  he's constantly at you and it's pretty flipping awesome.

8. Filling up your fridge.... with beer. And random edible animals.

Sure, we all love a guy who fills up your gas tank. But have you ever known the joy of opening your freezer one day and finding a chopped up deer in there? Or a squirrel? Or a Greenland freaking shark? Yeah, living with men is crazy, but you will never, ever again has as much fun as you do once it begins, especially if you let them do their thing.
I've always tried to, which is how I have ended up with enormous frogs and chocolate-and-habanero covered crickets in my fridge at times but the tradeoff is the fun of the unexpected find and.... well, it's love when he wants to share his poo-smelling Durian fruit with you "just to try it." So choose love.

9. Putting his jacket on.... the floor. 

Yes, that's right, I'm actually going to say that there is something endearing about these crazy neanderthals leaving their clothes all over the dang carpet. Because let's face it, when you're a new wife you spend a lot of time crying over this stuff, right? ("I mean, *sniff* he threw his disgusting, sweaty PT shorts here and it's like TWO INCHES AWAY from the laundry basket I bought, restored, and spent six hours painting pink and electric green and now I have to touch them! Why doesn't he respect me??!") But now that you've been married ten years, you do things like giggle when you find one of his socks hiding in the blender or on the ceiling fan("How did he do THAT??!") and sigh when you find an invisible man made out of clothes standing up next to the bed, realizing he was so tired last night he literally just peeled them off and slid in with you. You learn to love this stuff, because it means you're IN, and that he loves you. And in the end, I'd rather have that a million times over than any of the formalities I read in the former article y'all are passing around like it's the best thing you've read all year. ;)

Here's to men--- may you know them, love them, raise them. Polite and totally wild. And here's to savage gentlemen. Amen.

Passion and Purity

I have been pulling quotes from this book, Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot, to a single friend today and pulling it off the shelf for the first time in a while.
For those of you who don't know who she is, Elisabeth is the famous wife of missionary Jim Elliot who was killed in the amazon river basin by the indigenous people he was called to serve.
She is a speaker and author, and to me is and always has been a seeker and finder of Truth with a capital T.
Though she is not a Catholic writer, she is a Catholic thinker as evidenced by her work.
From what I understand of her personal life, her brother has converted to the Catholic faith. From what I read that she has written, she writes the truths of the Catholic faith. Because she is revered and well known by non Catholic Christians as a very holy and faithful woman, it would cause a ruckus if she were to convert. Whether or not that is her reasoning for NOT converting  is honestly none of our business. All I know is that both protestants and Catholics will LOVE her books. Kind of like a female CS Lewis... exhibiting three of the four marks of the True Church: One, Holy, Catholic... and lacking the "Apostolic." :)
This particular book is one I would give to any young woman, about dating and preparation for marriage, and the meaning of womanhood.
It makes me want to cry just knowing how much wisdom there was in here that I doubted as a single person, and knowing how to the degree that I followed its advice, I received such a blessing in my marriage. If I knew then what I know now!
My dear friend Liza gave this book to me when I was first learning what it means to allow Jesus to be Lord of ALL my life. Like most young women, I was pre-occupied with boys, and wanted nothing more than to know with certainty what my future held.
Having grown up in the world, I had absolutely no sense of myself as a woman, only shreds and remnants that modern, anti-woman feminism hadn't yet completely destroyed.
I had never really considered words like "meek" and "quiet" and "modest" in relation to my personhood, and it was very hard to peel the layers of that onion. So hard in fact, that though I loved and respected Liza very much and believed in the picture of the spirit-filled life she was painting because I saw the fruit of it in her own life, I struggled to understand and apply the things she was teaching me because they were so different and so... HARD.
Of course,. the other way was hard too. I wasn't getting anywhere, and I wasn't happy. But I wasn't weird, either, because I was doing what everyone else was doing to some degree. Now that I had this book in my hands it was like God calling me to stand apart from everyone and watch and trust.
I was afraid.
But I was intregued.
I went through three or four copies of this book. The first one I was given I shredded in a fit of anger. The second, I threw out. One day, in despair and knowing that I had worn out any possible chance of success at this "love thing," despite lots of success at finding interested men-- at least for a while--I marched over to the bookstore and picked up a new copy. And I tore through it from cover to cover.
I left for the Army determined to apply every principle I had read. I came back married. God's way works.
It was a hard marriage in the beginning, and applying the things I had learned in the book helped. God's way works.
We've been married for a long time now, and we love each other very much. Did I mention that God's way works?

So what is the radical message of this book?
It is simple: trust, develop a relationship with God, and wait. 

I will never forget the day I read these words on the page:

"My heart was saying:" Lord, take away this longing, or give me that for which I long!" The Lord was answering: "I must teach you to long for something better."

The book is filled with little pieces of wisdom she has gleaned through her years of devotion to God, reading His Word , and personal experience.
For example, on the topic of what men actually want, she says:

Women are always tempted to be initiators. We like to get things done. We want to talk about situations and feelings, get it out into the open, deal with it. It appears to us that men often ignore and evade issues, sweep things under the rug, forget about them, get on with projects , business, pleasure, sports, eat a big steak, turn on the television, roll over, and go to sleep. Women respond to this tendency by insisting on confrontation, communication, showdown. If we can't dragoon our men into that, we nag, we plead, we get attention by tears, silence or withholding warmth, intimacy, and attention. we have a large bag of tricks.

CS Lewis' vision of purgatory was a place where milk was always boiling over, crockery smashing, and toast burning. The lesson assigned to men was to do something about it. The lesson assigned to women was to do nothing. That would be purgatory for most of us. Women, especially when it comes to the love life, can hardly stand to do nothing.

And yet... that is what we must do! Wait, and do nothing, maintaining holy friendships with all...  and trust, keeping them at arms' length until there is a declaration of love and intent from a man. 

Not only is this necessary for the purity and future health of the marriage, it is a treasure for the woman to have and hold the true meaning of womanhood not only in the single or celibate life but in the married life as well. It helps me TODAY, in my marriage, to know these truths, and when I forget them, my marriage has suffered.

What do men want from women?

This list is hers, but I have seen it over and over again through the years in everything from cosmo to psych journals.... always the same.

Femininity.
Affirmation.
Encouragement.
Tenderness.
Sensitivity.

Vulnerability.
And lastly-- mystery. that there is much in the inner workings of a woman's heart that he hasn't discovered yet.

In my own life, I have witnessed couples who have lived by these rules and seen the fruit of them. I have friends who never kissed another person until their wedding day. I have friends who remained unaffiliated and unattached until their engagement day. They have lives full of joy, even in the midst of trials and difficulties. 

I have friends who have done nothing like that and claim that they are very happy with their choices. I know that I have regrets in my own choices NOT to follow her advice and that's all I can go by. 

Buy this book for your daughters, no matter what your religious background.

Read it yourselves. It is a powerful testimony of the glory of womanhood fully lived, and a heart-warming relevation of the touch of the Divine Hand in the human experience.

I have never read another book which so aptly captures the beautiful experience of womanhood and the sacredness of our calling.