Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi, for he was living in the Negev. He went out to the field one evening to meditate, and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching. Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel and asked the servant, “Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?”
“He is my master,” the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself.
Then the servant told Isaac all he had done. Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.

• Genesis 24:62-67

When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, “She is my sister,” because he was afraid to say, “She is my wife.” He thought, “The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebekah, because she is beautiful.”
When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelek king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. So Abimelek summoned Isaac and said, “She is really your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?”
Isaac answered him, “Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.”
Then Abimelek said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.”
So Abimelek gave orders to all the people: “Anyone who harms this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”

• Genesis 26:7-11

In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.”

• 2 Samuel 11:1-3

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

• Romans 8:35

Boilerplate

I’m Harold Dykstra.  I’m retired, but I go to food bank distributions all over Tracy and talk to people that need someone who will listen to their story.  My time is well spent.  A police lieutenant suggested that I write down the conversations that I had with an angel.  I did not know she was an angel at the time.  The angel, for a little over a year, indwelled a life-sized posable action figure my children bought me, so that I would not be perceived as travelling alone.  And in a way, she was training me for what I do while talking to the needy.  She probed my heart to find out what I believed and how I express love for others.  She changed my life.  Oh, excuse me, angels have no gender, but the angel indwelled a doll named Bountiful Babs.  After seeing the angel in that form for over a year, I cannot see her in my mind in any other form.

In the last episode, we talked about wars and rumors of wars.  But this week Babs walked out of the bathroom wearing a plain white T-shirt, that was wet, and a pair of men’s boxers that I had given her.

“Babs!  I can see right through that wet T-shirt!”

“Really?!  Oh, I’m sorry!”  Babs ran back to the bathroom in our hotel room.

I heard her crying.  I took a fresh dry T-shirt from the dresser drawer.  I walked to the bathroom door.  “Babs, I am sorry this happened.  I am just outside the door with a fresh T-shirt.  How did the T-shirt get wet?”

Through her sniffles, she said, “I was washing my hair.  My hair gets dirty just walking around.  I am new to this ‘other living’ thing.”

Note: “Other Living” is our phrase to explain how a life-sized doll had become animated: not human, not animal, and not plant life, but still walking, talking, thinking, and especially being.  Little did I know that she was my guardian angel, only knowing just before she was gone.  All I knew at the time was that she was a fantastic travel buddy, replacing my wife who had passed away due to a long illness.  We had agreed to stay in separate beds and never get casual about our dress with each other.  We were just buddies, and she was obsessive in her interest about getting a human perspective on being a Christian.  This was her first mistake, and an honest one.

I said through the closed door, “Babs, my daughter, Villie (Wilhelmina), she used to turn her head down and comb out her wet hair and then wrap a towel around her hair so that nothing else got wet until the hair finished drying.  You can put the towel with the others later on.  The hotel provides plenty.”

Babs muttered, “Okay.”

I asked, “Can you open the door just a crack and I will place the T-shirt inside the door.  I won’t look.”

She complied.  Within a few minutes, with her hair wrapped in a towel, she came back into the room and sat in her bed.

“I am sorry, Harold.  I did not know that a wet T-shirt was so revealing.  I’ve been washing my hair in the room while you were gone on a sales call.  I will have to be more careful.  Will you forgive me?”

I smiled, “Yes, you are forgiven.  You did not know.  It was an innocent mistake.”

Babs then asked, “But, Harold, you seem so upset.  Surely you saw your wife naked on your wedding night.”

I said nothing.

“The next night?”

I looked at the floor.

Babs then asked, “It may be a personal question, but when did you consummate the marriage?”

I met her gaze, “On my wedding night, but I did not see my wife without clothing, nor she me, for over a year after we married.  We did what we could by feel, in the dark.”

Babs said, “I know little about that, but it seems strange.  Is there a reason?”

I replied, “Several.  Let us say there are three reasons, but all are stupid.  Which leads to a fourth reason.  My wife and I were naïve, stupid, willing to live by the strange requests of others.  Do you really want to hear this story?”

Babs smiled and nodded her head.

I asked, “What am I about to say?”

She giggled and said, “Good Grief, Babs!”

“Good, so now I don’t have to say it.  We got married after our freshman years of college.  She was having trouble in her dorm, and she did not feel safe, so I popped the question, and we went to the courthouse.  My wife, Margaretha, was built like you, a large chest and slender from there down.  There are many reasons why that could be, but her mother taught her that large breasted women tend to get fat.  After all, fat is stored there.  She shamed her daughter to the point where Margaretha was afraid to show her body to me, even after marriage.  She never wore a bikini.  She thought I would be disappointed, thoroughly convinced that her mother’s verbal abuse stemmed from a correct analysis of the situation.  She was, like you are, not fat.”

Babs, still giggling, said, “Thank you for the compliment.”

I continued, “Then her friends told her to be mysterious and not reveal everything all at once.  The only problem with that is the question of when do you reveal those secrets?  This is terrible advice, in that one reason to be celibate before marriage is to hold onto those secrets, or being mysterious so they will want more.  We should not be untruthful.  We should get to know each other deeply during courtship but getting naked, and such, removes much of the mystery.  But afterwards, there should be no mysteries within a couple who are married.”

“Let’s take Isaac as an example.  The camels approached and Isaac looked, hoping it was Abraham’s servant returning with his bride.  But when Rebekkah realizes this is her betrothed who is coming, she puts the veil over her face.  She wants him to love her without seeing her pretty teeth, as an example.  But there was no marriage ceremony.  Isaac took her into the tent, and they consummated the marriage.  Simple.  Marriage ceremonies evolved later.”

“Now, why did I cringe when I saw you in a wet T-shirt?  It was not because you were not beautiful.  You are beautiful.  But if we flip from Genesis 24 to Genesis 26, we see Isaac and Rebekkah visiting the city of King Abimelek.  Isaac had said Rebekkah was his sister, but then he sees them in their tent, caressing.  What do other translations call caressing?”

Babs giggled, “Some say sporting.”

I replied, “And I read a pastor who said, ‘I don’t think they were playing ping pong.’  But what else?”

Babs smiled, “There is laughing, playing, kissing, frolicking, holding, showing endearment, loving, and fondling.  One actually says making love.”

I nodded, “Some of those are silly in that brothers and sisters can hug, kiss, and laugh.  The key is Abimelek saw more than he wanted to see, and he was a pagan king.  He had a moral code, and he got more than an eye full.”

Babs asked, “But this whole idea of Abraham and then Isaac calling their wife their sister seems so farfetched.  Would anyone kill them to still their wives?”

I replied, “Why did Morrie buy a life-sized doll to be my pretend travel buddy?  Why did Wilhelmina dress you in business attire so you looked like a real person?  Now, why you became animated is an entirely different situation.”

Babs blushed, “Oh, I see.  I guess the evil in this world does the same thing that they did back then.”

I nodded, “So, you, my dear Babs, are not my wife, and I am uncomfortable seeing more than I ought to see.  But Abimelek made a great show over Isaac and Rebekkah not being harmed.  He wanted Isaac’s God to know that he meant no disrespect.  So, our little mistake tonight was just a mistake.  I maintain no lustful thoughts and you did not intentionally do anything wrong.  We do not have to go into a full Abimelek mode of writing a wrong here, but you may have a few more clothes in tomorrow’s wash.”

Babs shook her head, “Nope, tomorrow is Saturday, and it’s your turn to do the laundry.  It’s on the third floor, you know, for your information.”  She giggled.  “But I think you are holding out on me with regard to this not seeing your wife in her birthday suit.”

I groaned, “Okay, my parents were puritanical.  They felt you should not look at your wife naked, because you might have lustful thoughts.  You know, like David did when he saw Bathsheba bathing.  She was bathing on the roof, probably due to a nice breeze blowing.  The only roof that was high enough to see over the parapet was the king’s roof, and he should have been off at war.  I doubt if Bathsheba was wantonly exhibiting herself.  But David was there, and as circumstances happened, he was watching and lusting.  My parents thought that if you had the lights on when you made love, you would fill your mind with unclean thoughts.  So, now we have a poor self-image on my wife’s part, advice to keep mystery in the relationship, and not wanting to lust for each other – although a healthy desire to procreate is not really lusting.  After all, we were married.”

Babs asked, “What ended all the nighttime adventures with the lights turned off?”

I groaned again, “Good grief, Babs!  You want the whole story!”  She giggled.  “After the year of not seeing each other, but fumbling around in bed, my aunt passed away.  My parents were coming around to the idea of me being married.  Her parents still weren’t talking to us.  My aunt died, and she left my parents the house.  My parents signed the deed over to us and we have lived there ever since.  Since we married right after our freshman year of college, it was now the summer between our sophomore and junior year.  I had worked with the engineering firm I worked for my entire life, basic engineering stuff, learning what an engineer does really.  Margaretha had worked at the hospital in a basic LPN type job.  She was not ready for her RN practicum yet.  So, we quit our jobs the Friday before Labor Day weekend.  School started the week after Labor Day week.  So, we had a full week to move furniture around our house.  My parents had given us Dutch bulbs to plant, and a huge pile of chicken manure.  We spent that Friday morning planting Easter lilies, tulips, narcissus, crocus, and a lot of hyacinths (near the windows and doors for the aroma).  By lunchtime, we smelled of manure.  I showered first since I was faster, but every time I thought I was done, I still smelled like a pile of manure.  Suddenly the shower door opened.  My aunt had a walk-in shower due to her infirmities with a shower bench to sit on.  My wife said that she could not stand the smell and I was taking too long.  Then there was about ten seconds of not saying or doing anything except gazing at each other.  She broke the silence by offering to clean my body if I would reciprocate.  But instead, we made love in the shower.  That activity can be dangerous with slips and falls, but we had a shower bench.  The strange thing is that once we had properly bathed and dried off, neither of us put our clothes back on.  For an entire week, I put on coveralls to go outside to get the mail.  For the rest of the time, we were like rabbits, discovering everything we could learn about each other, and wondering how we could have been so wrong.”

Babs asked, “Did Morrie come into the world nine months later?”

I shook my head, “No, and that started our first conflict between us.  Margaretha was barren, at least to this point.  We did not know that we each had issues in the reproduction department and that our eventual two children were both miracles.  She blamed our wanton, lustful lifestyle over the previous nine months.  She went back to work at the hospital that next summer and I went back to the engineering company, now with more responsibility, still with one more year of college for each of us.  But Margaretha refused to have sex, none at all.  She wanted us to return to the simpler form of love making, even with the lights off, but not until she was ready, until she felt cleansed of her lustful behavior.  All that summer, she slept and snored in the bedroom.  I slept on the couch.  If we slept in the same bed, ‘something’ might happen.  We got back to that same week after Labor Day when we had gotten so wanton the year before.  I walked into the bedroom without a stitch of clothes on, and I said enough was enough.  She ran to me and hugged me and said she missed me too.  Then nine months later, while I walked to receive my diploma, she was at home with Morrie.  She finished her college that summer, having missed some of her practicum to have the baby.”

Then I paused, “But then, we sat down and did a lot of praying.  We had gotten married, moved into a house, and had our first child, but we had not relied on God’s strength.  We had relied on our own.  Wilhelmina came into the world two years later, but from a lot of prayers in dedicating our marriage and the new pregnancy to God’s glory.  And while Morrie has his issues, and we still need to pray for him, Villie is a pastor’s wife, and she glorifies God every day.  When my wife and I had low points with Morrie, we wondered if our shortcomings had rubbed off, but no, Morrie made his own decisions.”

“Now, you know everything, but I think, somehow, you already knew.”

Babs scrunched her nose and then smiled.  “Whether I knew or I didn’t know, confession is good for the soul.  And I will try extra hard to not flash you anymore, not even for a laugh.  Deal?”

“Deal!”

Credits

Harold’s early love life with his wife is something my wife and I had little problem with, but my wife changed her attitude later in life, rightly or wrongly.  The idea that both spouses had issues in obtaining pregnancy is real for many couples.  A family doctor some years ago thought that neither my wife nor I should have been able to produce children, but we had two miracle children.  Yet, we had friends that had each of the issues mentioned in the story.  And the reasons for not displaying nakedness with the spouse are backed up by research.  I may have even left a few reasons out, so our friends were not alone in their issues.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.