Great quotes (part 3)

C.S. Lewis:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen.  Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

I tried to explain to my agnostic husband at one point that faith results from a perception of God's existence more than anything.  I think Lewis said it better than I.

Mike Adams:

I would not even trust a Marxist to give me directions to the grocery store.

This guy likes to be offensive and exaggerate, but this one sentence made me crack up.

John Lewis:

Mitt Romney comes across like a sort of bizarre-world combination between John Kerry, Richie Rich, Charlie Crist, and Data from Star Trek.

I think that about covers it.  Goes a long way towards explaining last November, no?

Managing Finances Like a Man

Dear Dave,

My husband doesn’t like dealing with money. For years, I’ve handled everything from paying the bills to making the decisions, and he just does whatever I tell him. This makes things really hard on me, but he says financial issues cause him stress. Do you have any suggestions?

Carol Lee

Dear Carol Lee,

The plain truth is you need your husband to step up and be a man. I’m sure he’s a nice guy, but it’s unfair for you alone to carry the weight of all financial and household decisions. It would be unfair, too, if he were the one carrying it all. This isn’t a gender issue.

Normally I enjoy reading Dave Ramsey’s columns.  Usually he is full of good sense and compassion.  In this case, this paragraph left me taken aback.  Wait a minute!  I manage all the money in my family – does that mean my husband isn’t a man?

Then I reread the first paragraph.  I see what the problem is.  She feels overwhelmed with doing all the finances herself.  I guess that’s the difference.  I have a system, and managing the finances is pretty easy for me.  I guess that comes with having a CPA.

But it did start me thinking – is this dynamic sustainable?  Just because I feel fine now about managing all the money doesn’t mean I’ll feel fine about it forever.  And what about my husband?  Is he going to resent me at some point?  I hope not.  In the time we’ve been together, he’s gotten better about telling me when something’s bothering him, which is handy since I can’t read his mind. 

I guess I’ll just chalk this up to one more way that my husband and I are not like any other couple we know.  And just trust that my husband will let me know if and when it becomes a problem.  That’s all you can do in marriage, right?

Convalidation Conundrum (part II of II)

Is a convalidation a wedding?  And does it merit a wedding celebration?

I did some poking around on the rest of the internet, and I did find that I’m not the first person to have this question.  I also found the “vow renewal” thing refuted:  

“It is important to realize that a convalidation is not merely a renewal of vows made previously but is a new act of consent by each spouse.”

And accordingly, Canon #1157 states that, “The renewal of consent must be a new act of the will concerning a marriage which the renewing party knows or thinks was null from the beginning.”

So does that mean we can have a wedding?  From the same site as above: 

“Customarily, since the couple’s married life is a known and public fact and may have been so for many years, a simple celebration with an invitation to close family and friends may seem more appropriate than a large celebration.”

I see.

Frankly, it’s bullshit that I even have to ask this question in the first place.  Plenty of couples (including Catholic couples) live together for so long that they are common-law married before they actually get married.  In some cases they even have a couple kids together.  Those couples do the all-out wedding celebration and no one bats an eye (except the previous couple generations).  My husband and I were at least honest enough to make it legal as soon as we knew that was the direction we wanted to go, and my girls have benefit from having a father figure for all this time.  Yet we are the ones getting penalized.  Apparently, it’s not tacky to live together indefinitely and have children before having a big white wedding, but it IS tacky if you have a big white wedding for your sacramental marriage after previously demonstrating your intent publicly with a civil wedding. 

Yes, I realize I sound like a stodgy old conservative (even though I am still of childbearing age), but if everyone gets to live like a married couple before marriage and STILL have a “real” wedding celebration, then it really shouldn’t matter whether you have a wedding celebration for your legal marriage, sacramental marriage, or the second Tuesday of every month.

I don’t know what we’re going to do yet.  I am warming up to the idea of a wedding celebration, tailored for the things we care about and excluding the things we don’t.  Not because I want to “recreate our wedding day” or to “relive my one glorious day of being the center of attention.”  (Although, admittedly, if you need other people’s help to make something happen, being the center of attention comes in handy.)  It’s because our story is awesome, and it’s worthy of being celebrated.  When we don’t celebrate our milestones, we say to each other and to everyone that we don’t matter. 

And we do matter.