While I was busy helping save the free world
Mine was slowly crashing
My wife longed for her husband. He was stuck behind virtual (and spiritual) enemy lines pretending to be an elite sniper in war-torn Italy and France during WWII.
“I’m helping save the free world.” That was my joke. My wife and I laughed about it, but it wasn’t as funny as I thought it was then. It’s funnier now—on this side of things.
The truth is that I wasn’t helping save anything. We married in 2012. Since then, I’ve remodeled our home, paid bills, helped my wife with her dental practice, got her a reliable vehicle. Stuff like that.
Starting about 2014, I began to slowly lose intimacy with her, connection in our marriage and with friends and family, and worst of all, with God.
What happened? I began to shirk my husbandly duties of making her feel loved and secure. Here’s how it went down:
My wife would roll in from her stressful day. She’d see me stretched out and hear sounds of digital death and destruction. (I had the decency to pause the action and say hello and ask her about her day.) What a hero.
It wasn’t like I was gaming every day. I’d work on a project, work hard, and then chill in front of the TV most days a week. I’d watch some sports, drink in more political programming, and decide to kill Nazis as an elite WWII sniper. How noble.
Like I say, I’m no hero and am ashamed that I let things go.
Real heroes wield real weapons and do real battle, not virtual ones controlled by thumbs. Heroes carry children to safety and keep them safe. They pay attention to their families, not to their phones or computers.
The (not so) funny thing is that I wanted to be a hero. In my fake virtual world, I fought evil. In the real one, I failed my wife. It’s a weird dichotomy—nobility and nobody-ness. There are no bodies in video games, just nobodies. No beautiful trees, suns, voices, people, places or reality. It’s just make-believe.
What was real was my wife’s weariness, her longing for my attention, my care, my saving her from her enemies. She needed a hero. Instead, she got a gamer. She married a man who slowly became a virtual husband.
Then I was restarted, rebooted, and am now being reprogrammed by the ultimate coder. God is my creator, but this is no game. He doesn’t play games. He does real-life stuff. And he recreates life, if he must.
I think God could say, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, which is the best way.” Any way he chooses, he’d be right. He’s always right.
I needed a reset, a reprioritization. God uses trauma to trim sails, I’ve noticed. He’s also really really good at turning our trauma into his triumph. When he does, everyone wins. How can the one who made us and remade us ever treat us like we’re not his? That’s not how any good father loves his children—faithful or wayward.
We mere men are the ones who ignore those we love. We do so by loving stuff we shouldn’t. And failing to provide love and care for those we should.
Video games trigger imagination, but don’t reflect reality. A gamer pretends to blow up stuff. In real life, married gamers set slow-fused bombs in their marriages. I didn’t know the damage I was doing then, but I see it now.
We men fall for fake funk. We think if we provide shelter and warmth for our families, we’re good men. These things are good. But when it’s about all we do, we neglect our roles as cultivators and gardeners.
I’ve thought a lot about my job as a cultivator—especially right after my reset. The gardener motif, though, is relatively new for me. I got it from a book by Brant Hansen, The Men We Need. It makes perfect sense.
My garden is my wife. I’m a husband. I have no children, I am a man, true, but I’m also a little boy in some ways. But thankfully, I won’t always be just a man. Created in God’s image, we are much more complex than we realize.
When the tempter tempted Eve, what was Adam doing? (Hansen asks this). Not being anyone’s hero, that’s for sure. If he’d had a couch and a controller instead of a trees and a pruner, he might’ve been sitting on his can … doing what? Playing games.
If he were doing his job, he would’ve shielded his wife from a liar. He would’ve alerted the ultimate guardian of the garden to the presence of a stealthy intruder. Adam would’ve stepped in front of Eve and countered the snake’s lie with truth.
God knew the tragedy that was unfolding. Nothing escapes him. I think he was deeply grieved. The people he created in his image were falling to doubt, pride, lust and blame. Eve distrusted God, Adam blamed God for giving him a woman, all were under attack, but only one was faithful.
Plan B? Or The Plan? If you know me, you know where I stand on the indisputable matter of God’s sovereignty. It is or he isn’t. He who made all things is perfect and loves us perfectly. This means that he’s the hero of every story. And every good story moves according to The Plan.
Nowadays, I have little interest in TV, politics, sports and fake stuff. I prefer building fires, cooking, reading real books, talking with real people, and asking my wife about her day. I care about caring. I seem to be much more analog that way now.
What changed? Me. Who changed me? Not me.
Like I say, God doesn’t ignore those he loves. He loves, so he corrects, sanctifies, resets, and he finishes what he starts. He works.
He gave me a second chance, a new mission. I accept. From now on ‘til the end of my days, instead of pretending to help save the free world, I want to help free the saved one. For reals. Let’s do this.