Today is my twentieth wedding anniversary and I’m proud to say Shauna and I have a fairy tale marriage.

Between you and me, I think people who claim the proverbial “fairy tale marriage” doesn’t exist don’t know what fairy tales are.

Because in fairy tales, great things have humble beginnings.

In fairy tales, there is always great evil to overcome. And initially, that evil is hidden.

In fairy tales, princesses get imprisoned in towers. And so do their knights.

In fairy tales, love is tested by fire. If it’s genuine, good prevails.

In fairy tales, great battles must be fought against great odds.

In fairy tales, long journeys with challenging quests must be undertaken.

In fairy tales, people are tempted to compromise and often reap the consequences of their folly.

In fairy tales, enemies dress like friends to deceive and ruin.

In fairy tales, powers exist beyond the physical world—and step into the physical world to both help and harm.

In fairy tales, symbols hold deeper and more powerful meaning.

In fairy tales, wrongs must be made right and repentance is key.

In fairy tales, honour, loyalty, truthfulness, and perseverance matter a whole lot.

In fairy tales, romance defies the odds.

In fairy tales, people really do live happily ever after…

… after all the repentance and battles and journeys and persevering and growing in character that made it possible.

Fairy tales are anything but fluffy, vapid, easy stories.

So yes, I have a fairy tale marriage.

Our fairy tale marriage really did have humble beginnings. I really am a prince, and Shauna really is a princess. We really do fight real enemies in battles that matter. Our love is tested by fire, and our life together is a great journey. There is a dragon in the land. The cross is a symbol with deeper meaning and power. Honour, loyalty, truthfulness, and perseverance define our deepening relationship. Twenty years young, our deepening romance defies the odds (we’ve often been told we act like newlyweds). My princess is more beautiful today than the day I married her (which is really, really hard to comprehend).

My fairy tale marriage is epic. I won’t settle for anything less.

Married?

Then don’t you settle either. Don’t you ever.

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The post My Fairy Tale Marriage appeared first on Bradhuebert.com.

I opened up my mail today and was surprised to find a shitload of drugs in it, and I assumed it was some sort of weird sting, but turns out that my post office gave me the wrong box and the drugs were perfectly legal and are supposed to go to a clinic.  I also got a home-made dead frog in the mail and that caused much less confusion, because of course I did.

My friend, Ben Hamby, author of Rise of the Steam Goddess, is a bad-ass who knows far too much about steampunk Victorian vampires, and today he mailed me this:

He goes perfectly with my other Harry Potter-esque taxidermied creatures:

Still on the lookout for Draco Mouse-foy,  Severus Snake and Hairy Otter.  Suggestions taken below.

PS.  ”OMG, DUMBLE-DORMOUSE.”  I just screamed that and Victor just glared at me.  Victor has no appreciation for the arts.

My wife and I spent Thanksgiving in Pensacola, Florida a few years ago. Since our kids go to bed awesomely early, 6:30 eastern, we were stuck in the hotel by ourselves at 5:30 central time every night. There are few things as depressing as sitting on a bed for five straight hours in a Sleep Inn hotel room. In addition to suck-your-soul-out fluorescent lights, the room had this potpourri of bad smells. It was part smoke, part cat, part old Hardee’s hamburger and a smidge of feet.

It was admittedly a good time to catch up on conversation with my wife, but after a few straight days of staring at each other, we were both a little stir crazy. One night, I walked down to the BP gas station that was beside the hotel.

Behind the counter at the gas station was a sad woman in her mid-thirties. She looked tired, like maybe life was hard for her a decade sooner than it should have been. Like maybe she didn’t get to be a kid long enough and all that adulthood was starting to catch up on her.

On the outside of her hand was a small greenish gray tattoo of an X. I was curious about what it meant, so I asked her the significance. Here is her response:

“Oh that? That doesn’t mean anything. My mom gave me that one night when she was drunk.”

That was a kind of weird answer, so I asked her how old she was when it happened. She scrunched up her face for a second in concentration and then said, “I think I was 13.”

When I was 13, I was really concerned about my clothes. I was worried that my mom would buy me a Knights of the Round Table shirt instead of Polo. Or that I would have Reeboks instead of Nikes. These were the kinds of things I focused on, because at that age, kids would tease you for the smallest thing.

But what about showing up to school one Monday with a jagged, bloody green X tattooed on your hand? What was that experience like? How would kids react to that? Didn’t it hurt when her mom gave her that? She was drunk, writing on her daughter with a shaky hand and a hot, homemade needle.

I thought about that the rest of the trip and was considering writing about the marks that our parents give us. They’re not all as obvious as that, and many are actually positive, but I realized that was a narrow way to look at it, because it’s not just parents that give us marks. It’s coworkers and spouses and friends and strangers. And when we don’t know they’re there, sometimes they actually stick.

A few years ago, someone asked me to review a memo at work that included some disparaging remarks about my writing ability. There on page 4 was a giant circle, with a big red line through it, that said “Fluff” and a sentence that promised a coworker was going to eliminate my fluff writing. The person that handed me the memo didn’t realize it was about me. They wanted me to focus on a completely different section of the document, but my eye caught some criticism about the company’s writer, and since I was the only writer there, I couldn’t help but read what was written.

As I walked back to my desk, I was crushed. I felt like my complete lack of value had not only been noticed but captured in a memo. In the quietness of my head though, I felt like God popped in and said, “Hey, that memo doesn’t get to define who you are. I do. And I say you are my son.” I was blown away and, instead of spiraling into despair and shame over that memo, I went back to my desk and wrote what was probably the best thing I’ve ever written for that company.

I wish that single event was enough to forever shake off the bad marks I’ve got on me, but it isn’t. I still doubt. I still believe the lies of the marks. I still, like lots of other Christians, forget who I am. I still give other people’s words too much power. I don’t have it all figured out. Instead, more than anything, life feels like it’s been a long series of believing that I am not who other people define me to be, I am a son of God. I am God’s work of art. And the more I have been open to believing that, the more He’s shown me it’s true.

What I’ve learned over the years is that an experience can’t change that. My relation to God is not a simple little mark. It is not a big tattoo or a little sticker; it is who I am. I cannot completely cover that up or blot it out with failure. The prodigal son tries, he completely messes up his life. But, more importantly, he shows how sometimes the worst marks are the ones we give ourselves. “I’m a bad husband. I’m a terrible employee. I’m ugly.”

These are the words we sometimes hear from ourselves, and they are the kind of words the prodigal son tries to say to his father. (I have written about this story so many times it’s getting a bit ridiculous, but I love the lessons it has for us.) When the prodigal son rehearses his homecoming speech, he decides to conclude it with, “make me like one of your hired men.” That was the last thing he was going to say. But when he speaks to his father, that is the one thing he is not allowed to speak. The rest of his speech comes off without a hitch. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

These words are delivered without incident, but he doesn’t ever get to say “make me like one of your hired men.” Why is that?

Why are those eight words left out? You can certainly read that as just accidental, that regardless of the words, the father was going to cut him off before he finished speaking. And maybe that’s right. But when I read that, I read a father stopping a son from saying something the father would never do. The father would never make him like one of his hired men. He would never give the son a new mark of slavery. He would never call him employee instead of son. So he doesn’t even let those words out. He stops him because no new mark would be given that day. The old truth, the one at the core of the son, still holds true.

Despite the pigpen and the prostitutes, the dirt and the deception, the father doesn’t see a hired man.

He sees a son.

He sees his child.

And that changes everything.

Question:
What’s a mark you need to let go of?

(This is a throwback post that originally appeared on SCL a few years ago.)

Spoiler alert: the answer is yes.

Yes, humor should matter to Christians, but why?

Why should laughter and humor have a place within faith?

It hasn’t always. I’ve never heard an atheist say, “I’m not a Christian, but wow, do they have a great sense of humor!” (If you have ever heard that, please let me know so that I can mail you a box of Thin Mints.)

That said, there are a lot of funny Christians doing funny things right now and maybe the tide is turning.

But again, why?

Why does laughter matter in faith?

The answer, funny enough, is in the Bible.

In Psalm 126:2 it says:

Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”

Then.

Then.

Then.

That’s the most powerful word in that verse. The laughter was not just some frivolous thing. The laughter was not folly. It was was not jest.

It was a sign that the Lord has done great things for them.

In all our failing about to show people the goodness of God, I fear sometimes we’ve lost the simplest way.

To laugh.

To be overjoyed.

To be full of mirth.

Should humor matter to Christians?

It mattered to God, and that’s good enough for me.

Today I want to talk about satan’s favorite word. (And yes, I am lowercasing that on purpose. That’s the middle finger of punctuation, and I always give it to the devil.)

In the last few weeks, I’ve been asking audiences I speak to one simple question:

“What do your voices of fear and doubt tell you?”

My new book Start is about figuring out what you’re called to do, and then doing it with the greatest degree of awesome possible.

But a lot of people, including me, get stuck by fear and doubt when they decide to be awesome. Why? Well, fear only bothers you when you do things that matter.

If you choose average, if you give into ordinary, if you decide to rock vanilla right into the grave, fear will give you a free pass.

The moment you decide to do something that matters with your life? Fear awakens from its slumber. It gets loud and chatty.

So I’ve been asking people what their particular voice says.

And there’s one word I keep seeing over and over. I think it’s satan’s favorite word. What is it?

“Enough.”

I’ve read thousands of voices that people have scribbled down on scraps of paper and, by far, this is the most common word.

Fear tells people:

“You’re not smart enough.”

“You’re not talented enough.”

“You’re not old enough.”

“You’re not young enough.”

“You’re not rich enough.”

“You’re not a good enough husband or wife.”

You’re not anything enough.

And here’s a surprising truth: You’re not. I’m not either. Try as we might, win as we might, we will never be enough. That’s the sad reality of our tiny human lives. Alone, we will never reach perfection. We will never reach completion. We will never reach enough.

That’s the story of the gospel.

Enough is elusive.

Enough is impossible.

Enough is out of our reach.

Until the cross.

Until Christ.

Until Emmanuel became enough.

The great debate for enough is over. The great journey to the land of enough is done. The struggle is complete.

In Christ, you are enough. In Christ, you have enough. In Christ, you find enough.

It is finished.

Question:
Have you ever felt like you weren’t “enough?”

I remember being endlessly entertained by the adventures of my toys. Some days they died repeated, violent deaths, other days they traveled to space or discussed my swim lessons and how I absolutely should be allowed in the deep end of the pool, especially since I was such a talented doggy-paddler.


I didn't understand why it was fun for me, it just was.


But as I grew older, it became harder and harder to access that expansive imaginary space that made my toys fun. I remember looking at them and feeling sort of frustrated and confused that things weren't the same.


I played out all the same story lines that had been fun before, but the meaning had disappeared. Horse's Big Space Adventure transformed into holding a plastic horse in the air, hoping it would somehow be enjoyable for me. Prehistoric Crazy-Bus Death Ride was just smashing a toy bus full of dinosaurs into the wall while feeling sort of bored and unfulfilled.  I could no longer connect to my toys in a way that allowed me to participate in the experience.


Depression feels almost exactly like that, except about everything.

At first, though, the invulnerability that accompanied the detachment was exhilarating. At least as exhilarating as something can be without involving real emotions.


The beginning of my depression had been nothing but feelings, so the emotional deadening that followed was a welcome relief.  I had always wanted to not give a fuck about anything. I viewed feelings as a weakness — annoying obstacles on my quest for total power over myself. And I finally didn't have to feel them anymore.

But my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that there's a huge difference between not giving a fuck and not being able to give a fuck. Cognitively, you might know that different things are happening to you, but they don't feel very different.


Which leads to horrible, soul-decaying boredom.


I tried to get out more, but most fun activities just left me existentially confused or frustrated with my inability to enjoy them.


Months oozed by, and I gradually came to accept that maybe enjoyment was not a thing I got to feel anymore. I didn't want anyone to know, though. I was still sort of uncomfortable about how bored and detached I felt around other people, and I was still holding out hope that the whole thing would spontaneously work itself out. As long as I could manage to not alienate anyone, everything might be okay!

However, I could no longer rely on genuine emotion to generate facial expressions, and when you have to spend every social interaction consciously manipulating your face into shapes that are only approximately the right ones, alienating people is inevitable.


Everyone noticed.


It's weird for people who still have feelings to be around depressed people. They try to help you have feelings again so things can go back to normal, and it's frustrating for them when that doesn't happen. From their perspective, it seems like there has got to be some untapped source of happiness within you that you've simply lost track of, and if you could just see how beautiful things are...


At first, I'd try to explain that it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything — even the things you love, even fun things — and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.


But people want to help. So they try harder to make you feel hopeful and positive about the situation. You explain it again, hoping they'll try a less hope-centric approach, but re-explaining your total inability to experience joy inevitably sounds kind of negative; like maybe you WANT to be depressed. The positivity starts coming out in a spray — a giant, desperate happiness sprinkler pointed directly at your face. And it keeps going like that until you're having this weird argument where you're trying to convince the person that you are far too hopeless for hope just so they'll give up on their optimism crusade and let you go back to feeling bored and lonely by yourself.


And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something — it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.


The problem might not even have a solution. But you aren't necessarily looking for solutions. You're maybe just looking for someone to say "sorry about how dead your fish are" or "wow, those are super dead. I still like you, though."


I started spending more time alone.


Perhaps it was because I lacked the emotional depth necessary to panic, or maybe my predicament didn't feel dramatic enough to make me suspicious, but I somehow managed to convince myself that everything was still under my control right up until I noticed myself wishing that nothing loved me so I wouldn't feel obligated to keep existing.


It's a strange moment when you realize that you don't want to be alive anymore. If I had feelings, I'm sure I would have felt surprised. I have spent the vast majority of my life actively attempting to survive. Ever since my most distant single-celled ancestor squiggled into existence, there has been an unbroken chain of things that wanted to stick around.


Yet there I was, casually wishing that I could stop existing in the same way you'd want to leave an empty room or mute an unbearably repetitive noise.


That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part was deciding to keep going.


When I say that deciding to not kill myself was the worst part, I should clarify that I don't mean it in a retrospective sense. From where I am now, it seems like a solid enough decision. But at the time, it felt like I had been dragging myself through the most miserable, endless wasteland, and — far in the distance — I had seen the promising glimmer of a slightly less miserable wasteland. And for just a moment, I thought maybe I'd be able to stop and rest. But as soon as I arrived at the border of the less miserable wasteland, I found out that I'd have to turn around and walk back the other way.


Soon afterward, I discovered that there's no tactful or comfortable way to inform other people that you might be suicidal. And there's definitely no way to ask for help casually.


I didn't want it to be a big deal. However, it's an alarming subject. Trying to be nonchalant about it just makes it weird for everyone.


I was also extremely ill-prepared for the position of comforting people. The things that seemed reassuring at the time weren't necessarily comforting for others.

I had so very few feelings, and everyone else had so many, and it felt like they were having all of them in front of me at once. I didn't really know what to do, so I agreed to see a doctor so that everyone would stop having all of their feelings at me.


The next few weeks were a haze of talking to relentlessly hopeful people about my feelings that didn't exist so I could be prescribed medication that might help me have them again.


And every direction was bullshit for a really long time, especially up. The absurdity of working so hard to continue doing something you don't like can be overwhelming. And the longer it takes to feel different, the more it starts to seem like everything might actually be hopeless bullshit.


My feelings did start to return eventually. But not all of them came back, and they didn't arrive symmetrically.

I had not been able to care for a very long time, and when I finally started being able to care about things again, I HATED them. But hatred is technically a feeling, and my brain latched onto it like a child learning a new word.


Hating everything made all the positivity and hope feel even more unpalatable. The syrupy, over-simplified optimism started to feel almost offensive.


Thankfully, I rediscovered crying just before I got sick of hating things.  I call this emotion "crying" and not "sadness" because that's all it really was. Just crying for the sake of crying. My brain had partially learned how to be sad again, but it took the feeling out for a joy ride before it had learned how to use the brakes or steer.


At some point during this phase, I was crying on the kitchen floor for no reason. As was common practice during bouts of floor-crying, I was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular and feeling sort of weird about myself. Then, through the film of tears and nothingness, I spotted a tiny, shriveled piece of corn under the refrigerator.


I don't claim to know why this happened, but when I saw the piece of corn, something snapped. And then that thing twisted through a few permutations of logic that I don't understand, and produced the most confusing bout of uncontrollable, debilitating laughter that I have ever experienced.


I had absolutely no idea what was going on.


My brain had apparently been storing every unfelt scrap of happiness from the last nineteen months, and it had impulsively decided to unleash all of it at once in what would appear to be an act of vengeance.


That piece of corn is the funniest thing I have ever seen, and I cannot explain to anyone why it's funny. I don't even know why. If someone ever asks me "what was the exact moment where things started to feel slightly less shitty?" instead of telling a nice, heartwarming story about the support of the people who loved and believed in me, I'm going to have to tell them about the piece of corn. And then I'm going to have to try to explain that no, really, it was funny. Because, see, the way the corn was sitting on the floor... it was so alone... and it was just sitting there! And no matter how I explain it, I'll get the same, confused look. So maybe I'll try to show them the piece of corn - to see if they get it. They won't. Things will get even weirder.


Anyway, I wanted to end this on a hopeful, positive note, but, seeing as how my sense of hope and positivity is still shrouded in a thick layer of feeling like hope and positivity are bullshit, I'll just say this: Nobody can guarantee that it's going to be okay, but — and I don't know if this will be comforting to anyone else — the possibility exists that there's a piece of corn on a floor somewhere that will make you just as confused about why you are laughing as you have ever been about why you are depressed. And even if everything still seems like hopeless bullshit, maybe it's just pointless bullshit or weird bullshit or possibly not even bullshit.