Ok – so in proofing, I decided that corny parodies are
not my forte, so I deleted the Beverly Hillbillies John Lennon parody that
originally was at the beginning of this one.
It was more tacky than funny, and wasn’t fully necessary. I deleted the parody, but it’s a story that’s
decades old. “John and Yoko sitting in a
tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G” and all that business.
She started showing up at the recording sessions. She was causing friction with the other
members of the band. She was never NOT there. Every time we saw John, there was Yoko. In the end, we all blamed her breaking up the
band. People deeply and truly can’t
stand her even now, all these years later. When they tell the story of the Beatles to
their kids, the beginning of the end starts with, “and then John Lennon married
Yoko Ono.” Because John chose Yoko over
the Beatles, and the world has suffered all of these years since then because
of it, right?
In truth, the Beatles were fracturing and slowly
splintering long before Yoko came along.
For several albums “the brilliant songwriting team of Lennon and
McCartney” had simply been the “pair of brilliant songwriters, Lennon and
McCartney”. Listening to the albums,
there are clear differences in both style and lyric between the Lennon songs
and the McCartney songs. On one hand you
have Lennon’s “I Am The Walrus” and the other is McCartney’s “Blackbird”. On one hand you have Lennon’s “In My Life”
and on the other is McCartney’s (sure let’s beat THIS horse one more time)
“Helter Skelter”. They were becoming
solo acts that happened to still record their solo material with the band. That’s an over-exaggeration…there was still
some level of collaboration, but they weren’t sitting down together like they
were with “Love Me Do.” But Yoko is an
easy target. She was the non-Beatle that
had the public’s eye. And she had the
public’s eye because she was always with John and pulling him away from the
band. And my question all these years
later is this: Was that really a bad
thing?
To illustrate my point, let’s flip it over the other
way. The best illustration for the
opposite of Yoko always being in the sessions is the KISS song “Beth” where
dudeman is on the phone with his woman, and essentially tells her this: “Beth, I know you really want me to come
home, but me and the guys are playing some music and need to get our song
right, and while I’m terribly sorry, baby, and I love you very much, I’m
basically picking the band over you. So
now I’m going to hang up the phone, go back to them and hope you understand
where you truly rank in the grand scheme of things, baby.”
One more illustration, then I’ll wrap this all up and
bring it home. “I Love Lucy”. You all know it. You know the characters. You know the situations – it’s usually Lucy either
1) wanting something or b) misunderstanding something followed by 30 minutes of
the most unbelievable circumstances imaginable.
(bonus points and your next devotional is free if you caught what I just
did there) Most episodes are just
absurd. And in one particular episode
Lucy thinks that everyone has forgotten her birthday (granted this isn’t her 1)
wanting something or b) misunderstanding something – it’s actually a surprise
party, so my apologies for generalizing).
But she thinks that everyone has forgotten her birthday, so she
leaves. Like, for real leaves…to the
point of going to sleep in the park. And it’s there that she meets the “Friends
of the Friendless” group. Then Lucy
decides to take her new-found friends to Ricky’s club to show him that SOMEBODY
out there cared about her birthday. At
the club she finds that it’s a big surprise party, and the episode is probably
most famous for Ricky’s actual singing of the “I Love Lucy and she loves me” theme
song. But before all of that exciting
conclusion and resolution – using our Mr. Peabody Way-Back Machine (for the
Rocky and Bullwinkle fans) we saw Lucy come into the club and one of the
Friends of the Friendless asked Lucy about Ricky. And Lucy’s response was the throw-away,
quick-laugh line “He’s not my friend, he’s just my husband!”
He’s not my friend, he’s just my husband. Ouch.
She’s not my friend, she’s just my wife.
All I can do is shake my head. I
shake my head because when that episode was filmed in 1953 that was supposed to
be funny. Today it’s becoming more and
more just “how it is”. We choose playing
with the band over Beth. We blame Yoko
for having the unmitigated audacity to want to be involved with her husband. Is that where we’ve come? Have our marriages become so disposable
that…you know what? I’m not even going
to finish that sentence. Yeah, they
have. Is the divorce rate really
50%? No, it’s really not. According to the US Government recent statistics,
the marriage rate is 6.8 marriages per 1,000 people. The divorce rate is 3.6 per 1,000. So if the divorce rate is 50%, then the rate
should be 3.4. It’s not. It’s higher than that. The divorce rate is actually closer to
53%. It’s more than half because we’d rather play with the band than be with
our spouse. Because Ricky’s not really
your friend, he’s just your husband. I
do need to dispel another myth nearly as popular as Yoko and the Beatles’
demise. It’s been long said that the
divorce rate among the church population is as high as the outside
population. That’s not entirely
true. It’s true when coupled with the
identifier “are you a Christian” and “are you divorced’, then, yes, the rates
are roughly the same. However, when
coupled with the identifier “do you attend church regularly” the rate drops to
roughly 38%. That’s still more than 1
out of 3, but it’s nice to know that some people in the church take that
commitment made before God as seriously as He intended.
Sometimes it’s work.
Sometimes it’s getting married when you probably shouldn’t have. Sometimes it’s outside people getting
involved and trying to force the other spouse out of the picture. The reasons are copious (you two dollar word
of the day – in an attempt to keep this admittedly preachy devotional light),
but it seems to be more and more frequent.
Husbands and wives drift apart.
To the point that “he’s not my friend, he’s just my husband” isn’t a
throw-away punch line, it’s the main plot.
Men bury themselves in their hobbies to avoid dealing with it. They go on long hunting trips, or volunteer
for trips at work or monster projects requiring long office hours that keep
them away from the house – because they’d rather do that – or anything else –
than be at home.
And please don’t misunderstand me. There’s nothing wrong with hunting or having
a job that makes you travel and be away from home. But when you start to notice that you’d rather be doing that than spending time
with your spouse, then you need to stop and make your spouse your
priority. If you get to the point, that “home
with your spouse” is the last place you want to be, then get help to fix that
and fix that quickly! There’s not a
person on this planet that I’d rather be with than my wife…ever! EVER!!
I’ve forgone promotions and job offers simply because they’d take me
away from her. I’ll admit that I’m
blessed with my job. The job I have is
one that allows us to pay the bills, but by far, the best part about my job is
that, in a world that requires more and more time away from home – especially in
engineering, mine allows me to be home every night. I’ve been offered jobs that would have paid
me more money. But money isn’t what I’m
after. Spending as much time as I can
with my family is what I’m after. That’s
not bragging – unfortunately for her I guess (haha!) it’s the truth. But again, I understand that it’s not that
way for a lot of people. For a lot of
people, in order to provide food for their family, they have to sacrifice time
with their family in order to earn it, and I’m in no way judging for that…because
when you’re not home, you’re hoping with all you are to get back there as
quickly as you can. But if you’re choosing to chase money over your
spouse, you’re making the wrong choice.
Listen for the Whisper of Matthew 19:4-6 where Jesus
sounds a LOT more like John Lennon and Yoko Ono than He does the KISS song
“Beth.” 4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who
created them from the beginning
made them male and female, 5 and said,
‘For this
reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the
two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What
therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” When Jesus says, “Let no man separate”, He’s
not talking about a divorce lawyer and a family court judge. Jesus said “no man” and that includes Paul
McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr…and each of their screaming fans. God’s picked that person for you. And it’s up to you and your spouse to make it
work. And yeah, just like Christianity,
it’s not always going to be about you.
But it can be…the Bible says men are to love their wives like Christ
loved the church. And that was enough to
die for it. So if making her happy is
your top priority, then you’ll be tickled to death to do something that you
don’t want to do simply because it will make her happy. The wife is supposed to have the same
goal. When you get to that point, you’ve
gotten it. I’m not saying that I’m
there, but that’s my goal. It’s about
compromise and love, and if you love her enough then you’re willing to offer
yourself to her. Just like Jesus offered
His life for you and the church. The
hard part is getting over our own selfishness long enough to do that. The world condemns Yoko Ono. They blame her. They hate her. They burn her on the stake of shame for being
the one that squashed the Beatles. Comedians
make jokes (that I borrowed in my dorky Beverly Hillbillies parody) that if
Mark David Chapman had aimed just a little to the left, he’d have been a
national hero.
But not me. While
I think she’s definitely “an odd bird” so to speak, I stand tall and applaud
their commitment to each other. Even if
their marriage DID break up the Beatles, then so be it. Want to hear something that sounds odd? A marriage should be bigger than the Beatles. So I stand on the highest mountain and
applaud them loud and proud for choosing each other over something as
significant to world cultural history as the Beatles. The world points at Yoko and accuses, “how
dare you?” The worlds sings, “Just a few
more hours, and I’ll be right home to you.
I think I hear them calling. Oh
Beth, what can I do? Beth, what can I
do?” And then the world wonders why you
won’t sing along with it when it sings, “Beth, I know you’re lonely, and I hope
you’ll be alright, ‘cause me and the boys will be playing all night.” But you know who didn’t choose the band over
his wife? John Lennon. No, not because she was already there, but
because they valued their marriage more than anything else.
Do you?
~Dwayne
ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.nethttp://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com
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