P90X

My wife is a kind woman. She loves me better than I ever could have imagined. Sometimes love hurts worse than I ever could imagine. Rewind to Christmas morning 2009. I am awake and overjoyed at the prospect of exchanging gifts with my blushing Christmas bride for the first time as husband and wife. The package looked harmless. It was small and rectangular, and I eagerly unwrapped its contents to discover this little gem:

For many of you in America, I need not say more. P90X is apparently the workout program right now. Well, last week I started this program. And that is where the whole love hurts part comes in. Let me just start by explaining that I am not new to working out. When I graduated from UNC, I had a double major in business administration and Lenoir Dining Hall where I proudly gained a chunky 39 pounds. My doctor informed me that apparently 189 is not an appropriate weight for 5'10" unless you are a high school football player, and so started a long process of working out. I joined a gym, read Men's Health, tried a LOT of different workout programs and lost the college weight. After I moved to East Asia, there were no gyms or workout places, so I picked up running and biking and lost even more weight. All that to say I'm not new to working out and nutrition. Never have I tried anything like this.

Luckily, Shelley has decided to join me for this ride through all 7 layers of Hell, and we hurt together. Let me give you the rundown: Day 1, do a billion pushups and a billion pullups (neither of which I can do a billion of...) for an hour. After that is done, immediately do an insane ab workout (which I confess Shelley can smoke me in). Then go home and cry. Day 2, a fancy term called "plyometrics" which basically translates to jumping and squatting until your legs fall off. That way you can make sure to not only not be able to lift your arms to shampoo your hair in the shower after day 1, but now you can't bend OR lift your legs to wash your feet. Day 3, arms and shoulders for an hour, followed by watching your wife smoke you in said miserable ab workout again. Day 4, my least favorite day of the week- yoga. Who knew that skinny people in stretch pants with Eastern mystic mantras could make my life so miserable. Now all those parts that I couldn't move earlier are permanently disfigured from stretches that a human body was never designed to do. Day 5, legs and more pullups followed by the crazy ab workout to remind you that day 1 is only 3 days away. Day 6, kenpo karate for an hour. Day 7, a rest day to reflect on what you just put your body through and what's still to come. We still have 12 weeks on this nonsense to go.

"It is guaranteed to change your body." Well no joke! If you can just survive 90 days of this. We would put up before and after pictures, but that would just be ridiculous, so we'll just say that after one week, some friends here have decided to purchase the DVDs and try the program themselves. We must look goooooood. Now I'm going to crawl back into the fetal position and wait for week 2 day 3.

PREGNANT!

not us, silly. i just thought that title might get a few heart attack reactions. please, there are no plans for babies anytime soon for us. but.... my sister and brother-in-law KATHRYN AND RUSTY ARE PREGNANT! so we actually found out at Christmas when she was super sick and went to the doctor, but she just had her first ultrasound yesterday and started telling people. jarred has been announcing to me pretty much every other day for the past 5 weeks that he is soon going to be an uncle. we both really can't wait! come august 14, 2010 there will be the first klein grandbaby. and we all know that august babies are the best, so thank you for picking such an auspicious month :). kat and rusty, we are so ecxited for ya'll. we having been chatting for this for you for awhile are thankful for this great blessing. we truly think you are going to be incredible, godly parents and we are so excited to watch ya'll raise a kid! and i plan on fighting it out with laura on who is going to be the "cool aunt."

our week in pictures

welcome to max's new game of the week:

jarred was working on his computer at our dining room table when he heard "vrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmm." he looked up to see this all the way through our apartment to the front door:

needless to say, we're learning to keep the bathroom door shut.




also this week, i took the initiative to buy new lightbulbs to replace the ones in our living room that had gone out. in an effort to save both the environment and our electric bill, i thought i would buy the new energy saving bulbs. it also worked out that those were the only kind of bulbs that the store i was at had. i called jarred to find out the watts of the bulbs and i bought the corresponding 40 watts. however, when jarred opened them he was a little surprised by my new favorite bulbs.

also, this week i cooked a whole chicken that i bought with danielle from the market. it took a little while to communicate that we really did want them to cut off the head and feet before we took it home. it works out well living in a country where the delicacies are the exact opposite of what we like. :)

those were some funny things from our week. enjoy the new pictures of max, moms. and as we get ready to leave tonight for the 3rd week out of 5 out of town, i realize that i do indeed have some of my mother's genes in just wanting to be at my home! but we are looking forward to the week ahead and we'll talk to you all soon!

The wedding industry

This post is a response to this article which I read online today from my hometown newspaper, The Charlotte Observer.

As I read this article, I felt really sad. Sad for this poor girl who has been so entrapped by Hollywood that she thinks that is what she is supposed to be looking for in her own life. Sad because she is so obviously lonely. Sad because in 4 years no one is going to be playing Mario Kart anymore. Sad because she is another bad relationship away from owning a cat. Sad that her "in jest" comment is a very very thin veil as to the shallowness that she recognizes in her own heart. Sad for any girl who thinks that marriage is about these kinds of things. Sad because she is the editor of a bridal magazine, and the fact that she is writing something that is to be taken as expert on marriage is an all true reality of what marriage has become in America. If it isn't enough proof, right beside this article on the home page of the Observer website was an article about John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth separation in the aftermath of his affair.

I was married just less than a year ago, and my sister is getting married in April, so marriage is something that is a very present part of my life. As my one year anniversary approaches, I have been thinking more and more about what a joy marriage is supposed to be, how it is so supposed to honor God, and how much of a mockery modern American culture has made of it.

Often my wife has conversations with her language tutor about her marriage. Shelley is heartbroken that her language tutor tells her that her and her husband sometimes go 3 days without speaking a word to each other. There are very many marriages in this country that are broken by men who don't know what it means to be a man, yet after we hear one of these heartbreaking stories, the East Asian can still say with confidence "but it isn't as bad as your America. We don't have a 50% divorce rate." We can't imagine what it would be like to have your parents decide who you will marry like many Middle Eastern cultures, yet their divorce rates are several times lower than those in America. In fact, Muslim extremists name American's rate of divorce as a reason why Middle Eastern nations should avoid the invasion of Western culture at all costs. I'm not suggesting that extremist Islam is a right path, or that the cold relationships between a husband and wife in East Asia is a model of marriage, I'm just saying that we cannot deny that something has gone awry in American's definition of marriage.

Now before I continue, let me just say I am not some Focus on the Family guru whose wife wears high collars and ankle-covering skirts, and I don't plan on keeping my 13 kids couped up in a compound away from the devil and the world (That is not a sterotyping of Focus on the Family gurus, just a clarification). In actuality, I don't like James Dobson because he has a min on one hand, but uses that platform to endorse politicians for the Republican party. (I wonder how many great family people voted for Mark Sanford to be governor of South Carolina based on the suggestion of some Religious Right half p*stor-half lobbyist.) Having said that, I do believe that families remain broken in America, and that is because in a large part marriages in America are broken. Lose the marriage, the rest of the family will soon follow. The sad thing about that is Alison Henry's magazine is a clear picture that things are only going to get worse. For many a 40-50 year old couple who are going through divorce right now, the problem is often traced to financial stress (most often associated with high debt), an affair, or one or both partners not being satisfied in bed (often leading to an affair). The thing is, for many of those couples from that generation, they entered marriage with an understanding of what it is supposed to be and the commitment to make it last a lifetime. Nowadays, 20 something couples getting married often don't even go into it with that understanding. If those who had a basic understanding of marriage some 20-30 years ago aren't making it, then goodness knows what will happen to my generation that are fed the crock that true love is what the horse-faced girl from Sex in the City says. Alison Henry is obviously buying into it, and using her "bridal" magazine as a platform to promote it to the target market of bridal magazines: single women who desperately want to be married.

And thats a starting point for the problems of marriage in America: marriage isn't what getting married is about, a wedding is what getting married is about. Reduce marriage to a wedding, and you end up with marriage as an industry, and man has it ever become that. Bridal magazines are a clear sign. Flip through one of them and read what happiness is supposed to be. Marriage isn't about 60 years together. Its about the biggest diamond, the perfect dress, and the prettiest cake. It is sad that so many marriages end up in divorce, because the wedding that started it all off many times involved a second mortgage to pull it off. My Dad knew this all too well. When he went to rent a beachhouse for my sister's upcoming nuptials, the guy asked him what will you be using the house for? He said "an event." "What kind of event?" "A big event." My Dad didn't wanted to tell him it would be for a wedding because if you tag the word "wedding" onto anything, it automatically doubles the price of that commodity. I don't even want to know what my own wedding cost my parents-in-law because I am scared if I found out I would have to cut off my right leg and offer it to them along with indenturing myself to servanthood to them for the rest of my life on my remaining leg. All this to say, behind the wedding is something that lasts long after the bouquets have withered. Something that takes more work than a magazine will ever suggest (especially the respected publication "Carolina Bride", which probably has a readership of about 27). Something that can't be found only in a man with perfect scruff who lets you win at Mario Kart. Something that is difficult at times. Something that can't be sold or commoditized. Something that is down right impossible to happen apart from the grace of the Father.

It doesn't make sense to me sometimes the Father kept marriage after the fall. When 2 people doomed to sin from birth enter into a lifetime covenant, well how is that going to work out? It is one of those situations if I was the Father where I would say "there is no way that is going to work now. Let's scrap the whole marriage idea. Maybe stork delivery was a better way to go afterall." But I'm not the Father. I can't work miracles like he can. And that is the beauty of marriage in a nutshell. It reflects his creativity, his love, and his ability to work miracles. To bring 2 covenant breakers into a covenant relationship that brings him joy is impossible apart from his ability to work miracles. We can't keep covenants in our sin. Only he can. That is why Abraham didn't have to walk through the pieces of the heifer. The Father knew he couldn't keep a covenant (see Hagar), so why make him make one in the first place? God made that covenant, and he kept it all the way to turning his face away from his own sinless son on a cross. We can't keep covenants. So marriage is a miracle that requires him to work. Take the only one who can redeem us out of the picture, and we are left to ruin. That is one reason why divorce is an abomination to him. It is more than just giving up on each other, it is giving up on the only one who ever gave you a chance to make it in the first place. I was running through my old neighborhood in Charlotte last year and I saw one of my neighbors working out in her yard. I knew that she had just recently lost her husband, and I stopped to talk to her and asked how she was doing. She said "its horrible. I miss him so much. How do you just keep going after 58 years together?" Is that not what marriage is about? They had a wedding somewhere in the past, but for the time since then she had been waking up with him to get him breakfast and lunch ready before he went to work driving a truck, making dinner for him for when he got home. That is a picture of 2 becoming 1 if ever there was one. That's a miracle. When Shelley and I started dating, I had lunch with an old friend of mind and asked him about marriage. He had been married for about 5 years at this point, and at one point in the conversation he told me "I've never been angrier with anyone than I have been with my wife, and she's never been angrier with anyone than she has with me." Try putting that on a Tiffany's commercial. That is the beauty of marriage. They love each other to the core in spite of sinning against each other. My counseling professor told us at a marriage conference this summer "real love is learning to live the monotany of the day in and day out with each other and to love each other in the midst of that monotany." That can't be marketed. It would crash and burn. But it is true. Until our generation understands that marriage is so much more than a wedding, and that love is so much more than being "artistic yet ambitious" (whatever the heck that is supposed to mean), that you won't fall asleep every night with a scruffy dude caressing your hair, and that it is physically impossible for your wife to look like the sorority girl you met on campus after nourishing, birthing, and nursing your line for the better part of her 20s and 30s, the outlook for succesful marriage is grim. Marriage is not about you getting what you want. It's not even about your spouse. It's about the Father, and reflecting the beauty of redemption, and the fact that he would even allow sinful people to attempt to reflect that beauty. Until that is understood and restored, marriage will continue to be a shadow of what it is supposed to be.

Traveling again

Shelley and I just got back from a fun little trip into the village. We ventured into the villages of the southern part of our province to learn a little more about the culture in those villages. It was an awesome time because we got to see a different side of East Asia than we were used to. The jist was we were an hour away from the border of Laos, and we were able to lose the space heaters and long underwear to donn shorts and a t-shirt for a few days while traveling to different rubber-farming villages via bus and meeting people. Usually around this time of year, we are preparing to take a vacation to Thailand over our winter break, but this year due to the cost of returning to America for my sister's wedding in April, we are skipping that vacation and hanging around our city. So, this was a great substitute for us, and we never had to leave the country. We went with 5 of our friends and learned as much as we possibly could about a people group in East Asia that is about as different from the rest of East Asia as you can get. Here are some examples:

Instead of apartment buildings, they live in little villages of these awesome houses that many of them built with their own hands, from cutting down the trees to putting up the walls (read: every man's dream). The bottom of the house is on stilts, kind of like a beach house, only instead of SUV parking they use the bottom to raise their pigs and to store their farming equipment. They also have chickens, lots of chickens.

They make a great living off of rubber farming. They also grow and raise almost all of their own food, and only work 9 months out of the year. Because of this, they don't care if their kids go to college or not, and their kids don't necessarily want to go to college! This is ridiculously counter-cultural here. Everywhere else, education is everything, and the kids face tremendous pressure. Here, may as well work on the rubber farm. It is good money and you have everything you need. While the rest of East Asia is freezing in the winter, they are enjoying evening and morning temperatures in the 60s and daytime temps in the 80s.

They grill their meat. I repeat, they grill their meat. I walked by a restaurant with another guy and the smell stopped us in our tracks. Every man knows when he smells flesh cooking on wood. That smell is genetically ingrained in all of our hearts to cause us to drool. It is something beyond Pavlov and his dogs. It is the way we were created.

It was a great trip, and we learned a lot! We are now back to our apartment and our computers, which means we will hopefully also be back to posting a little more regularly.

Psychology of Counseling

This week Shelley and I have travelled to a different city to attend a counseling class that is offered by a school in the US. I take these classes whenever possible to work on my masters. Most of you did not know that I was working towards a masters, but I am. I am not officially enrolled in a masters program, but the classes count towards a degree when I do officially enroll, which will probably sometime in the next 10 years of my life.

So anyways, I decided to take this class because the timing worked out for us to travel for a week and I heard the professor speak this summer while in CO, and he was an incredible speaker. He has not disappointed this week. The class has been great. I have learned a lot, and dealt with a lot, and listened to others in the class deal with a lot. So by great, more great in the way that it is really great that I am learning this stuff, but I know that I never want to be a counselor. 3 hours of lecture, 3 hours of breakout groups, and I am exhausted. The topics so far: Depression, personality disorders, and anxiety disorders. We still have addiction to go! We are staying at this awesome hotel that is in the middle of nowhere, but conveniently has a Starbucks, DQ, TCBY, KFC, Pizza Hut, and McDonald's all practically attached to the hotel so I can go eat away the dark cloud that hangs after a lecture... wait... I think there will be a lecture on that tomorrow. And keep in mind this is like counseling 101 in a week. I can't imagine what it is like to study this stuff full time in more depth.

For those of you who are counselors and psychologists full time out there, I have a new respect for you. I also realize what a need there is for you, and how valuable you are. I always hear people tell me "I couldn't do what you do, living in a foreign country." Well, I now understand what they mean. Thank goodness we have counselors.

christmas date

i love my husband. you probably already know that. i love that he makes me coffee. i love that he gets up to take max out when he whines before dawn. and i love that he takes me on dates. we're married, and he still takes me on dates. and for christmas this year, he gave a "christmas date." it is a tradition he started last year (though i think he forgot that when my card this year said '1st annual christmas date') when for christmas he got me tickets to tour the biltmore estate, simply breathtaking at christmas! and so this year he planned and organized a night in the big city for us as our 2nd annual christmas date, a tradition i hope will continue the week after christmas for years to come.

i got a text message at 5:00 telling me my ride was waiting for me outside our apartment building. i spent the next hour and a half being chauffered into the city where jarred was waiting since he had to go earlier to get some stuff done. with my ipod blasting country music (no other genre brings back as many memories of family and friends) as i sat in the backseat reading, i might as well have been in a stretch limousine instead of the old, dirty, about-to-fall-apart bread van i was in.

once in the city, jarred took me to my favorite chinese restaurant. it is awesome! and after spending the next hour eating and talking, we went a couple doors down to get a cup of chai from an indian restaurant. i think that getting him in the door of that restaurant may be the closest i will ever get to getting him back to india. i didn't like india all that much either (though i didn't hate it quite as much as he did), but i did love their tea.

and he capped off the night with a couple's massage at this super nice new place, definitely one of the perks of living in asia where they are much cheaper. it was a great night just getting away with each other after a crazy busy month.

and as we rode home, we drove for over 45 minutes before we ever got out of the skyscrapers decked out with flashing neon lights, and it was like we were driving out of new york city. we loved our jaunt into the city, but were thankful to head back out to the suburbs/farmland.

thanks jarred for a great christmas date! tim and jane, you raised a great son.