I've been thinking a lot lately about the wonderful analogy of a Husband with a Hero. Just like a Hero, a good Husband should be someone who let's nothing stand in the way of him rescuing his Princess, or Fair Maiden. In the fairy tales, a Hero won't stop for anything, he charges forward with nothing else on his mind. He doesn't let anything distract him from his Princess. In real life, we husbands often do let things distract us from our "Princess." Often simply because of laziness, and a lack of determination and focus. But the wonderful thing about the analogy of the story is that I think most men would love to be considered a Hero; we just don't always remember that we have opportunities to be just that, staring us in the face every day. We just need to remember that even though we've "gotten the girl," "tied the knot," and settled down, if we want to be good husbands we have to continue to pursue our wives as if they were being carried away by a dragon every day. That is how we can be their Hero. We need to make them Number One in our lives (aside from God, of course).
The Dragon is another great analogy for us men. For whatever reason, we men are hard-wired to notice women's bodies. We are programed to find them attractive. Even when we are happily married and faithful, we can find our eyes being tugged in directions that we don't really want, when we come to our senses. We may ask, "why are we created to have to fight this all the time?" "Why can't we choose to be faithful, and never find ourselves looking at another woman again?" "Why do we seem to be locked in this eternal battle?"
We may also ask, "Why do Heroes always have some Dragon, or Monster to slay?" Well, what sort of an adventure fairy tale would it be if the Hero wasn't fighting something? It would be pretty boring actually. The idea of a fairy tale in which the Hero doesn't slay some horrible monster, or defeat some other evil character or device, in order to save his Princess, doesn't make for a very interesting story. The Hero is almost defined by his life of fighting.
And so it is with Husbands.
The problem is that our natural inclination to fight is often misdirected at good people or even our wives themselves! We need to direct our desire to fight at the thing we were designed to fight: the lust for other women. This is the dragon, the horrible monster, the evil character who will destroy our Princess unless we fight it and defeat it. Perhaps an even better picture is of a wicked witch disguised as a beautiful woman. We have to be smart enough to see through the disguise.
Our lives are more about the journey than the destination. Of course we want to defeat the dragon, but that doesn't necessarily meant we won't have to fight it again. We can take pride in developing the strength to continually fight the dragon, and always be on the look-out for anything else that wants to destroy our precious marriage; the Princess. We can truly be Heroes! Complete with the action, the glory, and the happy ending.
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1 comment:
This is great. I particularly like the idea of picturing lust as a wicked witch.
My approach these days is to try to fight the dragons and witches by staying away from where I know they like to lurk--the tunnels of television and the marshes of more "mature" movies. Maybe that doesn't look heroic but I have it on good authority that I should be scared of these monsters.
The other thing I find is that my princess can be very helpful in defeating the monsters. If I tell her the ways that the monsters like to attack then they're less likely to be able to get me. And sometimes, when I can tell that they're sneaking up on me, if I work hard to focus on her and think about her, they stay away.
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