What’s more important than loving your wife and showing her kindness and respect? Nothing.

I have been married four full days, and full is an understatement. Since we’ve been in Kauai the fullness has fully thawed and I am overflowing. I am finding the comparison, the only one that seems remotely able to capture this experience, is heaven. I am in heaven. We are in heaven.Or so as I imagine it will be. My wife is sleeping on the couch next to me and I am having a hard time believing I am alive or that life could ever suck again. I know it can and I am not really in heaven… but God’s giving me a taste of it.

Our first day here, Heath and I met two older and delightful marrieds, Dick and Laurie. We grilled out with them tonight and they sang this amazing duet for us(with a little twisting of Laurie’s arm) about garbage men. Anyway, Dick had given us, more specifically me, some wisdom on what he has learned in his forty-four years of marriage. Which gets to the point of why I have started writing again in my blog:

My hopeful intent is to document wisdom I pick up as a husband, how to be a good married, and so forth. Maybe I’ll do this for a year, maybe less, maybe. I had this idea last night and it fit right in with my goals to be the best husband I can be for the love of my life, Heather.

OK, back to Dick. The first time we met he said, “I’ve got five words of wisdom for you as a newly wed: Don’t let your wife get too hungry. Yes, that’s more than five, but those are not trite words. I have known this about myself for a long time. I do get ornery when I need food.

Tonight Dick offered another proverb: Don’t be too critical. Yes! I am with him 100 percent! But I would go one step further: Don’t be too critical, but build her up, encourage her often. I want to do this. I want to be a good husband.

“Oroyan’s 2000 effort “Golf Ball Hunting” is the dance Quentin Tarantino would want to make. The performers literally bounce off the walls, jump like ninjas, and go fast and furious from beginning to end. In short, it’s a blast.” – Star Tribune

“Edward Bruno Oroyan’s “Golf Ball Hunting” sends an army of five dancers (the BLM men and Selle-Virtucio) on madcap maneuvers. In what appears to be a boot camp for ninjas crossed with the Marx Brothers on massive doses of performance-enhancing drugs, these dancers bust through space, leaking testosterone. It’s a fast, funny, rambunctious addition to this gutsy evening of dance.” – Pioneer Press

“Oroyan’s piece Golf Ball Hunting is a much more conventional work, featuring five movers’ fast-paced urban-oriented moves over a trip-hop beat. It was also an audience favorite, drawing rousing applause.” –Twin Cities Daily Planet

I’ve been thinking about this lately and I think it is biblical: I think God calls us to have a life open to spontaneity. God calls us to keep our eyes open and our minds active, and if we do that we should be continuously making choices that could dramatically change our lives. Every day, hour by hour. There is so much opportunity to show love to people around us but we so often miss it because we have to stick to our schedules or we refuse to see and hear. 

So many Christians see planning as a virtue, that safety(financial, physical, spiritual, etc.) is a main goal. Those things aren’t bad, but I know God hasn’t called us to a life of security and comfort. Think of all the examples Jesus displayed and gave in parables that told us to stay on our toes and in the ready, that we don’t know when things are going to happen, that someone might come knocking at our door unexpectedly, that we might come across a beaten man on the street, that we are called to love even on our day off! 

The wonderful thing is is that God TOTALLY provides security and comfort, but it is not something we control and plan. It comes when we realize we are helpless (and we are!) and we can relax into His lead. As a dancer, I have such a hard time being led because I am so used to being the leading partner; listening and letting someone else lead is a skill and it takes trust. When the beautifully competent Leader of the universe wants to keep us from tripping over or own feet, I want to let Him! I want to see the woman crying at the bus stop and hear the sigh of the coworker alone in the break room. I want to open my senses and take it in, let it soften my heart and open my schedules. 

Some are more apt to this than others, for sure, but that’s no excuse. I think we need to keep striving for complete dependence on God and simply be available for the opportunity He stacks into our hands. Like Isaiah, “Here I am!”

Why do they even make medium and hard toothbrushes? Every dentist and every piece of literature about taking care of your teeth says that you should brush gently and use a soft toothbrush so you don’t damage your enamel and prematurely cause your gums to recede. I can understand that the demand is probably affecting the supply, but how stupid are the toothbrush companies? Their customers’ teeth are going to fall out early because their short gums can’t hold in their tiny, thinning teeth. Goodbye teeth, so long toothbrush! Unless you brush your dentures… Do you brush dentures? Or do they just soak? I guess if you brushed your dentures you might use a hard toothbrush and it wouldn’t matter. Might work better, in fact. I know I like a stiff brush when I scrub my porcelain toilet. Hmmm…. So maybe those toothbrush companies aren’t so stupid, as long as people are brushing stains from their dentures and toilets. But maybe hard toothbrushes should be sold alongside plungers and old people stuff so as not to confuse those of us who still have teeth and want to keep them. 

A year and a half after shooting it I FINALLY get to see it! YES!

Yay! Also, there’s a little blurb in Minnesota Monthly(scroll down to ‘Great Expectations’)!

How do you feel, she asks.

I feel homeless, I say.

What do you mean, she asks.

Have you ever been homeless, she asks.

I feel fine, I say.

An album of nearly every poem and song I ever shared with anybody. 

I really enjoyed the editing done to this!