Tag: sickness

In Happiness and in Health

Should this guy marry or not? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I saw a couple of days or so ago a post on Facebook about a bride who wanted to change her wedding vows. She wanted to take out the “In sickness and in health” part and replace it with “In happiness and in health.” Why? She didn’t want to be stuck with a husband with a long-term illness. She went to Reddit to express this and thankfully, got slammed repeatedly. The story can be found here.

Let it be known also that through my entire marriage of ten years, I had to care for my ex-wife in many ways due to her mental illnesses. If someone wants to come to me and ask if I would be willing to care for someone with long-term illness, I can say I already have. This is not to complain about her either. Had she wanted to stay and work on our marriage, I would have kept caring for her.

We’re going to be looking at key parts of this article.

“Claiming that she hates “taking care of sick people”, the bride said she wanted to “live my life to the fullest” without being burdened with an ill husband.”

Okay. This is mainly being written for this husband. Dude. Take a look at this. She has come out and stated that if you get stuck with a major illness, that you will become a burden. She wants to live her life to the fullest. What is that all about? Her. For me, it was a privilege to get to care for my ex when she was sick. So possible future husband, she only wants you if you are in good health. If you come down with some long-term cancer or something like that, well she will be gone. She is not willing to be 100% faithful.

“While she said she has “no problem” with caring for him if he was sick with a cold or flu, she wasn’t prepared to look after him if he had a “chronic” or “severe” illness such as cancer.

She also outrageously said that she would put any of their future children up for adoption if they had a disability, saying “taking care of a disabled child for more than 18 years is too much”.

The post sparked an angry response on Reddit, with thousands criticising the bride for being “selfish”.”

And look at this. This woman has also said she will do the same with children. Those aren’t going to be just her children. They will be yours as well. Do you want to have to say bye to your children because your wife sees them as a burden? Do you want to have to explain to them years later that you gave in to that kind of treatment?

Reddit users are calling her selfish? Rightly so. This lady is entirely selfish and marriage will not change that. Your marriage will be all about her.

“However, the bride justified her stance, explaining that she’d spent a long time looking after her sick parents and wanted a break.

“This is harsh, but I hate taking care of sick people,” she wrote.”

Traditionally, the parents of the bride pay for the wedding. I can imagine if this happened that her parents are so happy to provide for their daughter who says she hated taking care of them. She is right on one thing. It is harsh.

““My siblings and I were always taking care of our parents whenever they get sick and I just hate it, I’m sick of it and I hate feeling bound or obligated to take care of somebody.

“My life is full of moments and events like this and I just finally want to live my life to the fullest.

“I’m going to be married soon to my lovely partner and the best guy in the world. I’m so lucky and happy to have him by my side.” “

Once again, it’s all about her. Surprisingly at least, she didn’t end this by talking about how she’s the best woman in the world in her mind and her husband will be lucky to have her by his side. She’s lucky and happy to have him, until he gets cancer. Then it’s off to find someone else as he’s keeping her from living her life to the fullest. He’s only the best guy in the world if he’s healthy after all.

“In her post, the bride said her fiancé was unhappy with her request to change her vows.

“We have been thinking a little about our marriage vows,” she said.

“My fiancé is going to have a traditional Christian one: ‘I, _____, take thee, _____, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I pledge thee my faith.’

“I’m going to have an identical one but without the ‘in sickness’ part, I’m going to replace it with ‘in happiness’.”

I read “We have been thinking” as, “I have been trying to get my fiance to accept my new idea and he wants to go with this dumb traditional thing.” She is right that this is apparently a great guy. This guy is being clear in his vows. She’s wanting to change them meaning she’s not wiling to make the same commitment.

So to the guy again, here’s who is the one who’s least committed to the relationship. It’s the one who cares the least. You can give 110%, but it can still fall apart because of her actions. Do you want to risk that? Do you want to have a future divorce and be paying alimony and only get to see your kids when a judge says you can?

““My fiancé says that he will not accept this and he is very mad at me, he is even rethinking the whole thing.”

Good for him. He should. I encourage him to run for the hills and find someone more worthy.

““I just don’t want to feel obligated to take care of anybody sick for years of my own and only life.

“It’s so stressful and I think he is being very unreasonable right now, it’s just a marriage vow and I have the choice to change it.”

Look at that sentence. “It’s just a marriage vow.” For her, this is no big deal. Just a vow? This is her one and only life and you, hopefully no longer future husband, would ruin things for her if you got sick, which could well be beyond your control.” Note that you are being unreasonable in her eyes because you’re not willing to concede this whole thing to her.

“In response the extreme backlash, the woman said she was happy to care for her husband if he was suffering from a minor ailment.

“It depends on the disease, obviously – I’m going to have no problems taking care of somebody with a cold or some flu or some broken bones,” she said.

“However, if it’s chronic or severe and requires so much time and playing around (diets, restrictions, surgery risk, special conditions, frequent problems…etc) like Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, disabilities, cancer… etc then no.

“I had enough of those in my life.””

Again, how much warning do you need? This woman is not marriage material. She is only so much committed. Now let’s look at children again.

“When asked whether she would care for their future children if they had a disability, she responded: “If they are abnormal and the tests detected that, then I honestly would abort them.

“I made this clear to my fiancé before, even though we are both Christians),” she said.”

If this lady wants to claim she is a Christian, she really needs to rethink what a Christian is. Christians do not abort children because they have inconvenient sicknesses. To the man here, she is willing to kill children that are also yours. Get out now, set up blocks on email and phone and Facebook, and never look back.

“Otherwise, I would give them up for adoption. Taking care of a disabled child for more than 18 years is too much, almost like the past repeating itself but somehow reversed roles and worse and I just … I just can’t do that.

“Obviously it’s not for all cases. Like, if they got it when they are [age] seven or eight then I’m definitely going to keep taking care of them.

“It will be very unfortunate but as a mother, I would do my best to make their life better.

“However, if they had a disability at [age] two or three then I’m sorry but I just can’t do that. It will not be fair for them and it will not be fair for me and it will not be fair for my husband.

“At least I would give them the chance for a loving family that is capable of caring for them before getting too attached to me.”

Since the husband is a Christian, husband, consider this. What did Jesus say about the least of these? How you treat them is a picture of how you treat Jesus? This is how she would see her own children!

I will say I am thankful Reddit has been hard on this woman. At least there are still people in this world who see marriage as a serious vow. I don’t know their worldview, but they are treating this seriously. Kudos to them.

To the man, again, get out now. If you marry and things go wrong, you can’t say you weren’t warned. The bride is right about this being a one and only life to an extent. You don’t get to replay this. You deserve better. If you are willing to be 100% committed, find someone else who is. Physical beauty that drives us men so much will fade, but unfortunately, her attitude will stay forever and as appealing as she might be physically, her attitude is just ugly.

Get out now.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Thoughts on Coronavirus

What are we to make of this virus? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I first heard about this virus a few months ago listening to the radio and how it was mainly in China. Then we heard words about it being leaked out through places like cruise ships. I still had no major concerns about it. Then I heard about it being in Georgia with a confirmed case. Again, I wasn’t concerned.

Yet immediately it seemed all the world around me had gone mad.

I don’t even know for sure when it happened, but it was like one day I woke up and there was panic everywhere. Naturally, the Babylon Bee had some good articles with some Christians celebrating because greeting times at churches were canceled. (Hey. There’s some good at least!) Also, nerds woke up to a utopia where sports were canceled, social interaction limited, and everyone was being told to stay inside. Hey. We’ve been training our whole lives for this.

Now I’m not about to speak as a medical specialist here. For me, I’ve been doing much of the same things I always do. Do I tend to wash my hands? Yes. Do we always keep hand sanitizer around here? Yes. Do I prefer to not go out if I don’t have to? Yes. Other than that, I haven’t much changed my program.

There are apparently two major sides to this debate. One of them is that this virus is absolutely nothing and we need to treat it as such. The other side is the side that we’re all going to die and this is practically the apocalypse. If anything, it looks like the latter side is the one that has the most representation.

Now as you can imagine, I lean more towards the former. We’ve seen several virus scares in my time. We’ve seen Swine Flu, of which I actually knew someone personally who came down with that and was in a coma and yet I did not have hysteria over it. We’ve seen Ebola, Zika, MRSA, and others. We have survived all of them. Humanity is tough stuff and whether you are an evolutionary creationist or not, we all know that humans adapt and survive.

I have also seen numerous cases of people getting this and getting past it. We are even told some people might not even know they have it and it’s like a mild cold for them. Do some people die? Yes. I am not discounting that, but people also die of the regular flu every year and we don’t have this kind of panic over it.

Before you talk about the vaccine being different, I have got the vaccine every year and some years I still got the flu. My wife and I both had it one year and this one was so bad that I tell people I had two fears with it. The first was that I was so sick I was scared I was going to die. The second was that I was so sick I was scared I wasn’t going to die.

There is a proper fear to have that is the exercise of caution. It might not be wise to go down a dark alleyway at night by yourself if you’re unarmed and unprepared to defend yourself. You might not want to invest in that get-rich-quick plan your co-worker is talking about. Not all fear like this is wrong.

When fear becomes controlling and dominating though, we have a problem. My concern is not so much with the virus. It is more concern with how we are responding to this virus.

A few days ago we were running out of bread. I went to the store to get some. The first day, nothing. It was like being in Tennessee when a blizzard came or rather was reported to be coming. Many of us have been surprised to see toilet paper being gone from the stores as well.

This has unfortunately led to hoarding, and for the huge majority of us, this is very wrong. Some people are taking more than they will ever use and depriving those who are not as capable of getting basic staples. If you are a family of three or four, odds are you do not need six loaves of bread and 5 packages of toilet paper.

There was even a story of a man in Tennessee who was buying out hand sanitizer and selling it at exorbitant prices back. Thankfully, he was found and is donating those to charity. This is the kind of behavior that we are sadly seeing being done in our society.

Not only that, but I am concerned with the measures we will take particularly with government. Will we be sacrificing our personal freedom for the idea that the government can protect us from this virus? Right now, our national enemies can tell that if they want to send us into hysteria and shut down our economy, then just manufacture a virus and send it our way. The more we sacrifice freedom for the illusion of safety, the closer we get to losing our freedom altogether.

Odds are, you are not going to die from this virus. Unfortunately, the media has a great history of making things worse than they are. One such subject I have written about is the idea that violent video games lead to violence. For instance, when a new Grand Theft Auto game came out, which I don’t care for, the media told us there would be a surge in crime. Well, there was a change in crime when the game came out. It went down. Unfortunately, to this day, many people treat the idea that violent video games leads to violence as common knowledge.

We had the same thing with the Joker movie, yet I heard of no violence that took place in movie theaters because of the movie. I did hear about a violent event happening in connection with Frozen 2, but no one said anything about that one really. We know in our culture that in media, sex sells, but also fear sells. Fear keeps people glued to their TV screens watching the news wanting to know what they need to do next.

My personal thinking is that in a couple of months if not a few weeks, this whole thing will blow over. My concern is that people will say “It is because we took these precautions that we were all saved and we must do so next time.” In the meantime, much more damage is being done to our society. While big corporations are getting bailouts, what happens to the local Mom and Pop business in your area? The government doesn’t know about them and they’re not going to get the help.

In the meantime, please try not to panic. This is not the end of the world. If you are a Christian also, you should realize God is still watching over this world. It’s His world. We’re just living in it. Pray for the well-being of your neighbor and if you can, do something to help them out. If you have an elderly neighbor who can’t get out, go to the store and get them the staples they need. If you have been hoarding, go and give that to someone who really needs it.

For what I am sure is the overwhelming majority of you, you will be fine a year from now and if you die, most likely, it will not be from this virus. The world is not coming to an end because of this. (Despite what the prophecy experts will tell you.) We will make it. We will survive. Panic does us no favors whatsoever.

Take proper and healthy precautions all you want, but panicking about this will not help you. It will pass. We will survive.

In Christ,
Nick Peters