Differences Stir Passion

I’ve thought for years (in an analytical sort of way) that guys are different. I’m not talking about physical differences but about internals, like how their brains work. More recently I’ve been thinking about how my husband’s brain works.

Sometimes this man I love doesn’t seem to get what seems (to me) obvious. Frankly, it’s peeving. No matter how well I explain, he doesn’t pick up what I find so clear.

Could he suffer from a thought malfunction, something that more extensive feminine input could remedy? Or does he process reality differently? Do his thought patterns move along different neural paths, male type paths that I can barely describe? Is it possible that he’s not suffering from a deficit but is simply and singularly male? I think so. He is different from me. And his differences, though at times a source of frustration, also stir my passion for him.

All this started me thinking about my relationship with God. We are also intimate yet different. But with God I don’t find the differences frustrating. I don’t quite get how God thinks, but I’ve never thought God suffers from a deficit. He’s just simply and singularly God. I love His differentness – it’s reassuring, unpredictable, powerful, personal, and deeply stirring. His otherness arouses me. He makes my heart quiver with joy and a good kind of fear. God is exciting, in large part because He differs from me. His otherness stirs my passion for Him.

God often compares our relationship with Him with the marriage relationship. Intimate yet different. What if I make the same comparison? What if I consider my husband’s differences a positive? What if his differences, like God’s, don’t connote a deficit? When I look at him as different – but not wrong – my perspective shifts: I am me and he is … other. Exquisitely other. His otherness, like God’s, becomes deeply stirring; it makes my heart quiver.

Noticing my husband’s otherness arouses me. Noticing God’s otherness does the same. And what does my otherness, from my husband and from God, produce? It arouses in each of them a passion for me.

Differences turn out to be a gift.

Differences Stir Passion
© Lynne Fox, 2011, 2016
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