Respect

Our church college age group has become the engaged group. I think the Captain started a trend because a month or so after he proposed at least four more couples were engaged. A few months before that when we were looking for a new subject for us to go over when we meet we didn't know that we'd all be planning on getting married soon, and we picked the Love and Respect marriage conference series. We've mostly gone through the part about women, the love part.

To be honest, I don't remember much about that part. I do remember the guy saying to men to use the word “love” when they speak to their wives. I also remember driving home with the Captain and he said a sentence that had the word love in it five times, and that he was talking about me, but I cannot remember what he actually said. So that was lots of fun, and now we're on the Respect part.

The speaker said that he has asked women to write a note to their husbands signing it “with all my respect” and that most women have trouble with that. While we were sitting there I was thinking “I could do that, I don't understand why some women have a problem with that!” Until I started thinking about actually writing the word “Respect.”

It isn't that I don't have respect for the Captain, I have no trouble telling him that I will be obedient to him, or that I'll submit to him like it says in Ephesians 5:22-24. It's something about the word Respect.

When I was in Junior High School we had a Vice Principal who I had absolutely no respect for, and oddly enough, his two favorite words were Reiterate and Respect. “I just want to reiterate that we need to have respect for each other in this school!” He said practically the same sentence over about six times every morning and afternoon in the announcements, and I think everyone in the school got sick of it after he had been there for about a week.

More recently I went with my family to an urban ministry to kids in our city. The kids were roughhousing and picking fights with each other. My mom finally asked one of the boys why he kept yelling at the other children and he said that he wanted them to respect him.

I'm afraid that, to me, and potentially to a lot of other people, the word Respect has absolutely no meaning. Telling the Captain that I respect him to me seems like walking up and spouting nonsense, or not saying anything at all.

But the way the Captain described it, he made it have a little bit of meaning again. If someone tells him that he has their respect it means that he has earned it, is what I remember him saying. That they think he means something. So, even though the word sounded strange coming out of my mouth I wanted to say it to him because the Captain has done so much that deserves recognition in some way.

I think just saying “Respect” was too small though, it doesn't show how completely blown away I am when it hits me just how much he loves me. Or how impressive it is that he not only finished a book, but agonized over perfecting it and publishing it. Or how hard he's worked at college and jobs he didn't like because he knew he had to get through it. Or how he went back to my dad after being told no, fully expecting to hear “no” again. Or how he always does what is honorable and right to serve God.

I like Wonderful better. I think the Captain is wonderful.