Home » Love

Tag: Love

The Most Effective Way to Destroy a Married Man

Life and relationships, it seems to be a topic on everyone’s mind . . .

Yes, I am a man, so this topic may appear may seem one sided.

But, open your mind and consider . . .

Men are strong and resilient, yet, they are NOT unbreakable.

Many a man shows up in my office . . . broken.

How are they broken?

You and I generally understand that love in relationships should be shown and expressed unconditionally, both in familial relationships and between spouses in marriage.

Yet, what I’ve come to realize is that there is something more important to a man than unconditional love.

Most women and many men fail to comprehend this.

What is more important to a man that true love, unconditionally given?

Respect.

In comparison to women when looking at fMRI scans of the brain, the left amygdala, thalamus, hypothalamus, left caudate nucleus and medial prefrontal cortex are notably more activated in men when the emotion of respect is experienced [1].

All men need, crave and respond to respect more than any other emotion, including love.

When men experience respect, they have a powerful physiological response affecting heart rate, attention and bravery [2].

In fact, we are told by Moses in scripture that God’s power actually comes from His honor, and His honor comes from respect [3]. And, without this honor or respect of those he oversees, “God would cease to be God” [4].

With this understanding in mind, we learn, sadly, that thousands of men are being cheated on by their spouses.

How you ask?

This cheating is not in the form of adultery . . .

Yet, it is just as damaging as an actual affair with another person.

Our culture tells women that “men are owed nothing.”

Men are raised up their entire lives under the guise that they are not actually men until they’ve earned the respect of others – especially their wives.

Women are not required to meet any qualifications to be women.

Men are required to “become men.” They must earn the status of man.

I know very few men that would say, “I am not going to love my wife until she earns it.”

However, I regularly hear thousands of women say, “I can’t respect my husband until he earns it.” Or, “he will not get my affection until he earns it.”

Men need and ache for respect just as profoundly as women need love and attention.

What would you say about a man who chooses to withhold love from his wife if she doesn’t have the dinner ready, or isn’t properly satisfying him in other ways, or isn’t doing all the things he demands on his timetable?

Even if that wife was actually slacking in her responsibility, we would consider that man an absolute monster for using her “slack” as an excuse to degrade, demean or withhold love from her as if she only earns it.

So, why do men accept this approach from women?

Why is it acceptable for a woman to order her husband around and withhold respect, but not in reverse?

I cannot tell you how many women have told me in the exam room over the years, “I love my husband, but I no longer respect him.”

Why is it normal for a woman to assign “Honey Do Lists,” either written or implied, and withhold respect if not completed on her timetable and yet think a man tyrannical, abusive and toxic if he gave his wife a list of mandatory assignments for the day?

I know many women who withhold respect because their husband does not meet her time timetable when taking out the trash, putting the toilet seat down, mowing the law or other lists Honey Do Lists.

Yet, does he withhold love when she does not give him respect on the timetable he needs?

Any woman who belittles her husband, cuts him down, nitpicks him, withholds her affection – physical or emotional – as a ransom . . .

Nags him, criticizes him constantly, humiliates him in public or to her friends, family or in front of her children, and will not allow him to take a leadership role in the home, cannot be terribly surprised when he begins to withdraw in to work or other activities.

If he were to cheat – which itself is a great and indefensible evil, no matter how cold or domineering his spouse may be – it cannot be said that he was actually the first.

She cheated him out of the respect he most dearly needed, craved and thrived upon.

She lied to him, breaking her marital vows, when promising to respect him and treat him like a man, only to turn around and treat him like a child.

If I have not emphasized it enough, men have a profoundly deep desire to feel respected.

It is a travesty that we are not raising our girls to understand and appreciate this one fact.

Instead, they learn, often at the feet their own mothers, from media, from television, from advertisements, and academia that men are worthless oafs who should be handled as such UNTIL THEY PROVE themselves worthy of that respect over-and-over every day of their lives.

If they slip up, they should be nagged, berated, belittled and criticized until they straighten up and act like the hairy muscle bound women they should be.

Men are not hairy women.  Stop treating them that way.

Give that man some respect and you’ll be amazed at the change and response to his character.

If you withhold respect, he will never say it, because he may not be able to articulate it, but that man will feel as if you are withholding your love.

Men respond profoundly to respect.

They will always withdraw when respect is withheld or ransomed.  And, prolonged withdrawal of respect will have a secondary suppression on serotonin, dopamine and testosterone leading to further withdrawal from engagement [5].

“My husband will be respected if he earns it,” I’ve heard numerous wives declare.

“Let him do the chores the way I assign them, let him accomplish everything I require, let him dance to my tune, and then maybe I’ll reward him like a circus monkey with little pellets of respect.”

This approach will destroy him . . . slowly . . . but, mark my words, it will destroy him.

Paul taught the people of Colossae that a husband should not need to earn his wife’s respect any more than a wife needs to earn her husband’s love [6].

A wife ought to respect her husband because he is her husband, just as he ought to love and honor her because she is his wife [6].

Your husband may very well “deserve” it when you mock him, berate him, belittle him, criticize him and nag him . . .

Yet, you do not marry someone in order to give them what they deserve.

In marriage, you give the person what you promised.

What did you promise your spouse?

Are you unconditionally providing and fulfilling the promises to which you covenanted?

If not, you’re cheating on them.

Now, this does not mean that a man has any license to be lazy, abusive, or uncaring.

It means precisely the opposite.

The man has been challenged and commanded by God to live up to the respect his wife provides for him.

Yet, if you parcel out respect on a reward system, your husband will feel demoralized and empty.

He will fill a tremendous thirst as if he were living in a dry barren desert. He will not feel at home in his home. He will not have the sense of masculine purpose and fulfillment that his family life ought to afford him.

After a while, he will dread coming home at night, preferring to remain at work where his contributions are appreciated and his talents are admired and respected.

It is at this point the marriage becomes a very dangerous place.

If a man feels more like a man when he’s away from his wife than when he’s with her, a gory train wreck is lurking right around the corner.

The marriage is already half-dead, and it won’t take much to finish it off.

I was blessed to marry “The Beautiful One.”

She operates differently.  She strives to gives respect without condition, even during those many times I never deserved it nor earned it.

Her building me up with respect helps me to be more deserving of the respect she has already bestowed upon me.

GK Chesterton reminded me of the great lesson found within the story of “Beauty and the Beast.”  The lesson is that “a thing must be loved BEFORE it is lovable.”

This applies to our wives and children.

In that same light, I firmly believe that a man must be respected before he is respectable.

The only reason I have grown as a man, a husband, and a father, is because my wife treated me with respect long before I had any idea what it meant to lead or how to be a man.

Sadly, the average man in America, and the average man I see in my medical practice, is not always given this advantage.

They enter a marriage and find themselves immediately in a dark hole.

They must prove their worth every morning as they wake, and prove their value before as they return home before they ever get treated like they have any themselves.

Thousands of wives’ paint lines across the floors in the kitchens and bedrooms . . . expecting the men to walk them perfectly.

If he stumbles or if he wanders, I think it essential to note that he is likely not the only traitor in the marriage.

She also betrayed him. She promised him a wife, and provided instead, an angry step mother.

This is how you destroy a married man.  This is why many men show up in my office broken.

The two, then, have now betrayed each other . . . in their own way.

There are always two sides to a story.

As men, we will inevitably stumble, as all men do. We are not perfect.

And, many a wife will chastise you and use your mistake as blackmail against you.

Despite this, a man is called upon to endure, to fight for his family, and to never be unfaithful to his wife, and never to leave her.

It is my hope that he has courage and honor enough to never wander.

It is my hope that you give your man the respect he needs and deserves as a man.

To Your Health & Longevity,

Adam Nally, DO

References:

  1. Jäncke L. Sex/gender differences in cognition, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy. F1000Res. 2018 Jun 20;7:F1000 Faculty Rev-805. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.13917.1. PMID: 29983911; PMCID: PMC6013760.
  2. Deng Y, Chang L, Yang M, Huo M, Zhou R. Gender Differences in Emotional Response: Inconsistency between Experience and Expressivity. PLoS One. 2016 Jun 30;11(6):e0158666. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0158666. PMID: 27362361; PMCID: PMC4928818.
  3. Moses 4:1, 3
  4. Alma 42:25
  5. Perfalk E, Cunha-Bang SD, Holst KK, Keller S, Svarer C, Knudsen GM, Frokjaer VG. Testosterone levels in healthy men correlate negatively with serotonin 4 receptor binding. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2017 Jul;81:22-28. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.03.018. Epub 2017 Mar 22. PMID: 28426945.
  6. Colossians 3:18-19

The Elk

(I was asked to speak in church yesterday. This is the talk I gave. For those of you that don’t mind pondering your spirituality, as the spirit so powerfully influences one’s health, I thought you might enjoy it)

The huge elk stood in the center of the dirt road. . . 

The morning air in the pines had been crisp and clean.  The sky was blue, not a cloud present.  Other than the chirping of birds, the Alpine Forest was quiet and peaceful.  I got up early for a morning run before I was needed at our scout camp.  I took off at an easy pace and the ground felt good under my feet.  

A mile down the road it happened.  I came to a dead stop as I rounded the corner.  He stared me down, snorted, then . . . he bugled.  The sound pierced my head and chest, I felt it in my soul. He was a majestic beast transformed, standing taller than my horse.  His antlered rack fully-formed, he towered over me, standing over 8 feet high . . . the hair at the top of his head darker, and hackled.

We stood face to face only a few yards from each other.  He lowered his head and stomped his hoof, when our eyes met, and I instantly felt his temptation to head-butt me off the road down which I had been jogging.

For much of the year, male elk are indistinguishable from the female: bull and doe alike are antler-less. Yet each spring the males regrow their antlers…which in turn are soon covered in velvet.

And, then, finally they come into the “hard horn,” when the velvet is rubbed off from the battles and grind of the year, antlers polished and the bull is ready to mate.  Once the rut is over, the bull’s antlers fall off… taking the bulk of the male’s testosterone with them. The bull’s power is in the horn.

This bull, with which I had come face to face had a full rack, the span of his antlers and easy four and a half feet.  He towered above me in his grandeur.  He was the biggest elk I’d ever seen.  And, his doe was just off the road grazing in the pines.   He looked at her, she at him, then back at me. I felt a chill from my head to my toes.  He owned that road that day, I knew it, and he knew it. I will never forget that moment.  This was his path and I was obligated to step aside.

Men Have Lost Power And Momentum

We live in an age when men have become essentially indistinguishable from women.  They’ve lost their power, they’ve lost their momentum for life and the path.  Men may have their own marks.  

Yet, no size of beard, no amount of gym swole, no tattoo, no amount of bravado can hide the fact that man shed his rack–his essential POWER–a long time ago.  For anyone with eyes, the truth is plain to see: The antlers have fallen off. 

There Is No Safe Path

As I learned on that dirt road years ago, in this life there is no safe path. 

Despite what the minions of the world and those of the adversary attempt to convince us of on a regular basis, there is no escape from the consequences of this life.  That’s the reason that 1/3rd of the hosts of Heaven decided against receiving a mortal body and coming to this test tube of earth where there is no safe path (Revelation 12:9).  

There is a noble path. 

There is an honorable path.

But there is no safe path . . . and to be frank, in the premortal existence, you and I didn’t want that anyway.  That was Lucifer’s modification to the plan – provide them a safe path and they all will make it back unbruised and unscathed so that he could take the glory (Isaiah 14:13-14). 

Yet, civilization and society has created cities and communities of no consequence.  Men and women have been deluded into thinking that if they walk into the street, the car will always stop, and the only result will be an angry driver.  But, this is a delusion.  Ride a motorcycle just once on the streets of Phoenix, and you’ll learn this lesson.  

You and I live upon a telestial planet that does not freely offer mercy.  When you live upon the land, when mother nature is your neighbor, there can be no mistakes.  Despite what the CDC says, nature does not care.  The river will freely swallow you if you can’t swim.  The snake doesn’t care how much you love your children.   And, the wolf has no interest in your dreams.  If you fail to beat the current, you will drown.  If you get too close, you will be bitten.  If you are too weak, you will be eaten. There is no government that can save you.  There is no congress that can legislate away the rattlesnake.  There is no vaccine that inoculates you from the fangs of the wolf.  This is what caused a third of the hosts of heaven to shudder when the plan was presented.  This has been Satan’s pick-up line at the watering hole for millennia.  The alure of safety is a lie. Yet, here you are.  You and I chose to come.  You and I got on that bus.

Who are you anyway?  You and I, we are warrior stock.  Every single one of your ancestors got a body, came to the earth, and kept your genealogical line alive for over 6000 of the historically recorded years to get you here, to this moment, today. 

So, what makes you so sure you were built for safety?  What makes you so sure that safety is the ultimate goal we should be striving for?   

Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

My childhood hero, John Wayne said, “Have you heard of some fellas who first came over to this country?  You know what they found?  They found a howling wilderness, with summers too hot, and winters ice cold and freezing.  Did they have insurance for their old age, for their crops, for their homes?  They did not.  They looked at the land and the forest and the rivers, they looked at their wives, their kids and their houses.  Then, they looked up at the sky and said, ‘Thanks God, we’ll take it from here.’  They were men!’  you and I, we come from real men and real women. 

Coming to this earth was an act of courage.  If you want adventure, you tell the truth about reality in your life, then you take action . . . that is the adventure. 

Action Toward Goals Starts the Momentum

The very act of seeking out your goals takes courage and sets things in motion, it begins the momentum.   Courage implies a risk. It implies a potential for failure or the presence of danger. Courage is measured against danger. The greater the danger, the greater the courage. Running into a burning building is more courageous than telling off your boss.  Telling off your boss is more courageous than writing a really mean anonymous letter or reposting a meme on Facebook or Twitter.

Acts without meaningful consequences require little courage.

Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.  Satan and his minions have successfully turned our attention away from the promises spoken of in Matthew 13:17, the prophets desiring to see the things that you’ve seen, and hear the things that you’ve heard.  

Just because millions of people share the same vices does not make those vices acceptable, the fact that they share so many errors does not make those errors true, and the fact that millions of people share the same psychological pathology does not make these people sane.  Much of our society is on spiritual autopilot. . . the problem with autopilot is that you may be on the wrong plane.  Many men spend their entire lives fishing without ever knowing that it isn’t really fish they’re after. 

Something I’ve learned from my son while mountain-biking is that you hit what you focus on.   But, you first must focus.  And your focus must be on truth, not upon flawed reality. The very act of seeking truth sets things in motion. 

President Nelson defined Momentum in his April Conference talk.   Momentum is the motion of a body, equal to the product of the body’s mass and it’s velocity.  it can also be defined as the force or energy exhibited by a moving body.”  That elk that stared me down, though he was just standing in the road, had momentum.  I felt it.

Spiritual Momentum Aids In The Journey Back Home

Momentum is the most powerful physical force you can have helping you or hindering you.  Once you are moving, momentum helps you more easily reach the goal.  Spiritual momentum aids you in your journey to exaltation and eternal life in our heavenly home.  The speed by which you travel the road of life matters not as long as you do not stop.

For those of you who love to geek out on science stuff, Newton’s first law of motion states that every object at rest will remain at rest unless compelled to change its state, while objects in motion will stay in motion. 

Simple actions in life are often the cause of momentum.  Success often hides within your morning habits.  Everything that happens in our lives is based upon a law of the universe and our adherence to or deviance from that law.

Focused attention on your intentions causes you to gain momentum.   Thoughts are actually matter attached to energy. Our thoughts are made up of hope and dreams.

Often, the difference between winning and losing is usually ones momentum.

People will pay any price for motion.  They will even work for it.  Look at bicycles. People walk into a bicycle store and drop five to ten thousand dollars for something that will help them gain motion.

Momentum Is Applied to Faith

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  (Hebrews 11:1)   Faith then is the actual substance of hope.  It is a substance to which action or motion can be applied.   Much like a boat upon the water, when wind is added to the sails the boat begins to move.   Once in motion that boat has momentum. 

Joseph Smith tells us that the human mind and body would remain in a state of inactivity or at rest (based on Newton’s First Law of Motion) without action applied to the substance of hope, or without faith.  

Benjamin Franklin reminds us to “never confuse motion with action.”

Most of life is routine – dull, grubby and repetitive.  However, this routine is what keeps a man moving toward a goal.  Routine is actually what creates the perpetual momentum.

Routine becomes hopeless if there are no goals clearly defined by you individually or in your family. 

We experience almost all our hope in relationship to our defined goals. 

Momentum arises in the routine day to day activities that move one toward desired goals. 

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream – CS Lewis

If people are to live together in harmony, there must be some overarching structure that unites you.   What else is a family, if it is not an overarching structure that unites you?

Within the family there must be tolerance and even appreciation for necessary individual differences.  Obviously there should be.  But, that does not mean that there is a higher unity that the entire organization is striving for in some manner.  Not just striving for, but pining for or even dying for. 

The absence of that sense of incorporating higher structure is a felt sense of catastrophe on the part of members of the family.  This is why family is so essential to the growth of the child. 

How do you move toward the goal? You break it down into small steps.  Steps small enough that even the useless can do them. . . and those steps are placed into a daily routine. 

You’ll move toward the goal if you break the steps down small enough so that even a child will do it.  This requires a fair bit of humility.  The step you are resisting to take today is often so small that you may be embarrassed to admit it to yourself.  So, then you don’t take any steps at all. 

FIVE STEPS

President Russell M. Nelson, in the April 2022 General Conference, outlined Five Actions that perpetuate momentum. 

First, Get On the Covenant Path and stay there – Renew your covenants every week.  Don’t be afraid of covenants and or commitments.  Do not be afraid of taking on responsibility.  It is within that responsibility that you find out what sustains you in your life. 

A lot of the things that people regard as traps are actually the means to their lives.  Young people are often afraid of commitment because they fear it will prevent them from identifying something more valuable.  You will never find something more important in your life than a committed relationship with someone that you love walking the covenant path together that sustains itself across time and in all likelihood produces children.  That is life.  Do not be afraid to try and fail.  That is why we were given the ability to repent.  

I have had a fascinating career thus far with up and downs and successes and failures.  Yet, the most important thing in my life has been my intimate relationship with my wife and my family.  Commitment is the igniter of momentum.  Only committing to the “right thing” half way causes stress, fatigue, disease and dead pastures.

Second, Daily Repentance brings joy.  Alma taught, “teach nothing but repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Mosiah 18:20).   Tell the truth every day of your life.  If you do this it will change your life.  Stop cheating at whatever game it is you’ve chosen to play.   

How will telling the truth change your life?  You cannot adapt to reality if you falsify it.  You cannot just lie to other people.  What you say becomes you.  The words you say are recorded by your subconscious and your subconscious then works to create the reality of what you say.  What you say becomes you.   We build ourselves out of our words whether those words are true or false, as a man thinketh, so is he.   Well, if I lie, I can get away with something.  NO you don’t.  

In all of my clinical practice, I have never every seen anyone get away with anything, even once.   You think the chickens won’t come home to roost?   All that means is you are too stupid to see the cost of your lies, too blind or too self-deceptive.  You just don’t see it.   You don’t get away with anything.  Nothing.  It’s terrifying when we actually understand that.   What if you can’t get away with anything?  Well, that the old idea of a judgmental God.  It’s an old idea for a reason.   

Do you think you are someone who can warp the structure of reality with your words and get away with it?  There may be those that say, well I’ve lied and got away with things.  But look at yourself, is everything right in your life right now?  Is everything just as you want it to be?  

People eventually figure out who you are and you have to come clean or move on.  No long term relationships can be formed, no love, no trust, no brotherly affection, no friends.  No financial success, not in the real sense.  Or maybe your are just too dim to see the consequences.   Take it from someone who sees this on a daily basis.  You can’t try to warp the structure of reality and get away with it.  You don’t mess with reality.  Eventually you have to pay the piper.  It kills you.  And, it may torture you quite a lot before doing that if you are particularity unlucky.  

Again, this is why 1/3rd of the hosts of heaven didn’t even want to get onto the bus down here to this earth life.   You violate your conscience and you will pay.  That is hell.   

Daily repentance, then is what fills the sails with positive momentum.    

How do you start? Clean up your room.  Attend sacrament meeting.  Tell the truth.  Applying just that little bit of advice changes your life.   Don’t substitute the false for the real.  The trouble is, you think you have time.  Talk to your parents. Talk to your spouse.  Talk to your bishop. 

Third, Learn About God and How He Works. Learn to distinguish between the truth of God and the counterfeits of Satan.  

“Pray always . . .  that we may conquer Satan and escape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work.” (D&C 10:5). 

Learning about God is how you learn about yourself.  

I see men ages 20-35 that are desperate for a discussion about responsibility, and fair play, noble being, God and working properly in the world.  They are desperate actually hear the idea that their lives actually matter. That if they straighten themselves up and fly right that they’ll have a beneficial effect on themselves and their families and their communities.   

The world is starving for those conversations.  Our young men and our young women are starving for that knowledge as individuals.  You in this room have that knowledge.  Share it with them.  Faith cannot be effectively exercised enough to move one on to life and salvation, or have the momentum to do so, without three specific things:

  1. The idea that God actually exists
  2. A correct idea of his character, perfections and attributes
  3. A knowledge that the course in life you are pursing is according to God’s will.

Learn about God and your relationship to him and you will be amazed at the momentum it provides you.  That will move you on to the fourth action.

Fourth, Seek and Expect Miracles.  God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.  

There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is. . . The second is the source of peace and happiness.  

Do the spiritual work to seek miracles. Prayerfully ask God to help you exercise that kind of faith.  

Few things will give you more momentum than the knowledge that God is helping you move a mountain in your life.   

Chose to believe something good can happen.  Expecting it to happen energizes your goal and actually gives it momentum.   

Are you fully committed to your goal?  Very few Americans are truly committed to a lifestyle. They don’t want to be called a fanatic. Are you all in? If you’re not all in, why are you surprised you haven’t had results or seen the hand of the Lord in your life?  

My daughter has just returned from Missouri on her mission.  I lived there while attending medical school.  It was there that my wife and I were fascinated by fireflies.  If God can make a bug’s bottom light up in the night sky, think of what He can do for you and me.

Fifth, End the Conflicts in Your Life.  Matthew 6:14 – For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  See what’s getting in your way.  Rectify the things in your life that need to be fixed.   Look at yourself first to fix the problem. Listen to the other person.  Unhappy is the man or woman who never faces adversity.  For he or she are never permitted to truly prove themselves.  

Seek the Top of the Mountain

You seek the top of the mountain.  You’ve felt this longing for years. 

There is a trail that leads to the top, but the path is long and narrow, it is perilous and often very hard. 

You yearn for easy transport, for the helicopter to take you directly to the peak. 

You search for the silver bullet, the magic formula, the push-button solution that will wipe your old life away and replace it with something far removed… something utterly transformed. 

But, in your heart you know the truth: The fulfillment you seek comes not from tricks, hacks, or shortcuts, but from taking one step after the other until you stand there, at last, on the roof of the world, on the top of the mountain.

The fulfillment you seek comes from becoming the man or woman who climbs, the one who’s trodden the path, climbed the mountain. 

So, do not ask for the helicopter. Do not ask to be taken out of yourself. 

Live your life, instead, in such a way that your mind is transformed, that the miracle happens, so that the thought of traveling the path that fills other men with dread, fills you with soulful excitement.  

Live your life in such a way that the utterly spent exhaustion of childhood comes back to you and you feel like a 12-year-old again. 

Live your life in such a way that all traces of action-crippling ambivalence are seared away, that you may climb the mountain with joy. 

The blinding thicket, the burning wind and lactic burn will never go away. It’s all still there. 

Only now, those pains do not stop you, for you have chosen to be dauntless, lionhearted and valiant. 

And what would seem arduous and unbearable to others who are not lifted from within, as you are, seems instead to you a privilege, an honor, and the greatest of adventures.  

Because you are filled with hope, you are driven with honor, you have the momentum of the Spirit of God. 

Be the one who waits at the bottom of the hill and holds the coats . . . or be the man or woman who climbs to meet the Sage on the mountain, who meets the Master.  

There is one who already showed you the way.  The choice is yours. 

Joy & Love this Christmas

My wife and I were driving home from a Christmas Day visit to Grandma’s house this afternoon.  On the street corner was a young man, probably in his early twenties, who was “tweaking” from what looked like a serious crystal-meth high.  I was surprised to see this on Christmas Day in the sleepy suburban city of Surprise, Arizona.  But, I realized that life has been hard on all of us, and it looked like It had been very hard on this young man.

Why would I be surprised?  For most of us, this has been an awful year when so many around us have lost their jobs, lost their hope, lost their health, and  lost their lives.  Those of us that have survived are so angry and divided that we can barely tolerate our neighbor, let alone love him.

A few weeks ago, I created myself a Christmas playlist of music in an attempt to put myself in a festive Christmas mood. I’ve found myself torn this year between feelings of anger, discouragement, anxiety and stress, and feelings of hope, love and joy.

Listening to this playlist on repeat, I was reminded of the song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and the lyrics.  At the time this song was written, the world was at war in 1944, loved ones were apart. They were thousands of miles away, many of which were never coming home.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

Let your heart be light,

From now on, our troubles will be out of sight . . .

From now on, our troubles will be miles away . . .

These lyrics were appropriate then and they are appropriate now.  In light of all that has gone on this year, the lyrics to the song have retained their wistfulness and joy.  The lyrics remind us that Christmas brings a feeling of expectant joy that may seem out of reach at the moment.

“Joy,” C.S. Lewis once wrote, “ is distinct not only from pleasure in general, but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.”   Every consolation we seek in life – love, beauty, money, pleasure, power, and even sex – is only a poor representative of something beyond Itself.  Those who dedicate their lives to pursuing the symbol rather that’s the thing the symbol represents invariably end up disappointed – or worse.

The misery so many celebrities that people have known in their youth who wanted fame, worked and pushed and fought for it. Then, the moment they became famous, the wanted to take an overdose.  The giant thing they were striving for, the fame that was to make everything OK, that was to make their lives bearable providing personal fulfillment and happiness occurred, and they found they were still the same person.

That thing we want, that thing that the riches of the world attempt to represent, that thing that seems so near and yet so maddeningly out of reach, is the love of God who made us in his image.  It is the only real North Star of our life’s journey, the only true guidepost to become the person we were divinely made to be.

On the very first Christmas, that longed-for thing broke through the earthly barrier and arrived upon our earthly plain.  When you and I celebrate this day, we are boldly declaring our faith in the reality of that event and the truth of It’s infinite meaning: God Is there for you and God Is there for me.  We know within our souls that our yearning is not in vain.

Maybe in this year of anger, pain, death and sickness, when we all have to muddle through day by day, it would be good to remember the people that we disagree with most, the people we hate most, the people we want to throttle most are also desperately yearning and suffering this year. They, too, are striving for the thing they can’t quite reach.  And, many of them do not have our hope and our Christmas faith.

The Savior, Jesus Christ, did not tell us to love our enemies, or our neighbors because he thought it would make them better people or make the world a better place.  He told us to love our enemies so that we ourselves might “be children of our Father in heaven.  He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous.”

To love in that way, the way that Jesus Christ exemplified, is to experience within this vale of tears the vale beyond.  The reality is that God loves you.  Left or Right, black or white, straight or gay, He loves you, and you and I were made in His image.

So, this year, remember, that far-away joy is more real that all of our troubles. Remember, you are not alone. Have a Merry Christmas.