Author: David Willis

If you take care of it it won’t break.

~ David Willis ~ 3 Comments

What was your first car? I remember mine well: 1984 Pontiac Bonneville with a V8 and room for 6 (up  to 10 if you got creative). It was a great first car. It got me from point A to point B without any trouble. It wasn’t a dream car, but it was a good one.

I once ran it into a tree stump. The hood was so long on the thing I couldn’t see, and didn’t remember, that I had parked it by the stump. I was in a hurry. Got in the car, fired it up, and punched the gas trying to pull forward and bam! I expected people to come out of the house I was at to find out what happened. It didn’t even scratch the bumper…or the stump. No harm, no foul.

I know that I changed the spark plugs on it once. I may have added oil to it from time to time. I am not sure I ever opened the coolant cap to check the fluid level. It was an old beater car, and I did very little to improve its status. I remember once when the brakes went out on me when I was driving. Somehow I got the car stopped, but I am not sure how. Did I check the brake fluid? I don’t think so.

As I have made it to other cars through the years I have learned to take better care of them. I didn’t spend any money on the first one (thanks for looking out for me mom and dad), so I wasn’t invested in taking care of it. The two vehicles my wife and I have now I do my best to take better care. It is common knowledge that if you don’t maintain it, you end up having to fix it, which becomes costly and takes a lot longer.

Marriage is much the same way. If you are wise, when you get married you realize that you have to take care of your spouse daily. You have to check all of the vital stats. How is my wife doing today? Is she upset? What is going on in her life that would cause her stress? Are there things that have her worried? Are the kids overwhelming her? Is there something she is saying, even though she hasn’t said anything? These are all things that need to be considered every day.

Marixa will tell you that I am a fanatic about taking care of her. I don’t wait on her hand and foot (which she would probably like, but get tired of), but I do go to great lengths to make sure of how she is and how I can help. There are times that I am not as observant as I need to be, but for the most part I am pretty perceptive. I can tell by talking to her if something is a miss.

I ask her frequently throughout the day what is on her mind. I want her to share her thoughts and her feelings with me. I want to know her more and more. If I feel like I have done something to upset her, I ask her what it is. I don’t go overboard with all of this, but I do make a habit of making sure everything is all right. (There is a fine line with being on top of things and being annoying. I don’t cross that one.)

I know that I can not be for her everything she needs. There are times that she is going to need to be by herself to catch her breath. That is no knock on me, that is just human nature. I know that she needs lady friends to talk with her about things that they are going through that she relates with. I am ok with that as well. I can only be so understanding on things I haven’t experienced myself.

Just like I can’t go out and jump in my car everyday and expect it to start if I don’t maintain it, I can’t ignore the needs of my wife and expect my relationship to be healthy.

What are you doing to keep your relationship the best it can be?

Name your adversity.

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

There are times in life we encounter adversity. Some of us come up against it in some form every day. It comes with being human. It is not something that can be avoided even though we all try. I have heard that there are only three phases in life. You are either headed into a storm, you are in the storm, or  you are coming out of the storm. I think there is a fourth stage as well. There are times of peace. Make no mistake though, those times can go in an instant.

When I was 25 life was good. I had been married for 5 years. I had a steady job. I was enjoying myself. There wasn’t much that time with my wife, a good nap, and a good meal wouldn’t fix. Then, came the lump.

It felt like I had been kicked hard in a way that hurts a man most. I blew it off for a short time, because after all I was invincible. After the pain persisted I made a visit to the doctor. I was referred to a specialist. Within 5 minutes of meeting with the specialist I was being scheduled for surgery. There was no time to think. There was hardly time to plan. I just knew I had a tumor and they were going in after it. Enter adversity.

Chemo took my hair away. I didn't care. The cancer was no more.

Cancer is not one of those things that you can stand up to by yourself and beat. If you could I wouldn’t have gone through surgery or chemotherapy. I needed help. I had just named what was wrong in my body and measures could be taken to combat it. I listened to the doctors, weighed what they had to say, and then picked the best treatment plan for me. Thank the Lord it worked.  It has been six years and I am cancer free.

What is it you are going through? Call it by name. Don’t beat around the bush. Is it an addiction? Are  you in debt? Are you overweight? Whatever the adversity is, name it. Only then can you start to take steps to overcome it. It may take time to overcome. You may need help getting it done, but now is the time to start. There is a lot of life to live on the other side.

You deserve better than that.

~ David Willis ~ 2 Comments

Today on my lunch break I took a few minutes and flipped through my Facebook app on my iPhone. There wasn’t much going on, but one post grabbed my attention. A lady I knew from high school posted the video link to “Stay” by Sugarland. I made a note to watch it when I got home. I knew the song, but had never seen the video. Whoa. That one rips your heart when you watch it.

I had a whole bunch of thoughts after I watched this one:

One, no woman needs to go through this. You deserve much better. You may not see it, but you do. If you are in this situation, there is very little chance it will get better. Men who do this to women are not worth the tears or the heartbreak. You were created in the image of a God who loves you. Living like this is beneath your dignity.

Two, I love the portion of the song where she decides to get up and stand up for herself. The look on her face when she makes the choice is awesome. It is heart wrenching, but it awesome. You see the fire ignite in her mind. Though the pain of it would crush her, she stands up and declares that she doesn’t have to live that way. There is a long journey ahead, but that was a great first step.

Three, any man who does this to a woman needs to grow up. Man up, make a choice, and take care of the one you choose. Real men don’t cheat. I have been in love with my wife for almost 13 years now. I don’t want another woman. I would be stupid to throw away everything I have built for something as dumb. I told my wife before we were married that I was all in. No games. She has my heart completely.

Lastly, this song is a reminder to cherish the woman I love, who loves me in return. I am forever grateful.

I am thankful for the rain.

~ David Willis ~ 6 Comments

I woke this morning to the sound of thunder. I almost didn’t know what it was. It has been a few months since it has rained in this part of Oklahoma. It has been dry and dusty for weeks. So, I lay there in bed listening to the rain come down. It was a peaceful moment.

Aside from enjoying the sound, I am thankful it rained because my yard and my garden needed it. It amazes me how differently things grow when they are watered by rain water. I can water my yard and it greens up a little. It can rain and the whole yard explodes into life. We also noticed last year that our tomato plants responded really well to the rain. It left everything outside my house looking clean and fresh.

Though I know that the rain is a good thing (or can be), why do I almost always think of it in a bad way? I am usually frustrated when it rains. There is something I wanted to do that the rain has interfered with. Or, the electricity goes out in the house because of a lightning strike (not fond of this one) and we are left in the dark for a while. Despite all of the good things that the rain brings, we focus on the inconveniences or troubles.

Maybe this is why we call the hard times in life the storms. We all face times of life when it feels like the wind is howling around us. Thunder and lightning are crashing from all sides. The water is pouring down, cold and hard. We feel battered and are in desperate need of shelter. Anyone who has ever been caught out in an Oklahoma thunder storm knows exactly why this metaphor is used. The storms are hard, but many times good comes from them.

Have you ever had a storm in your life that caused you to reevaluate the way you did things? I have had many. Cancer, financial hardship, and lost friendships just to name a few. After these storms blew over I had a different perspective on things. Many things that I thought were important no longer were and that is OK. I needed the priority change. The storms left some wreckage, but they also washed a lot of things clean. There was a chance to start over at the storm’s end. The yard had been watered, so to speak.

I try to keep this perspective when it rains (in life and for real). I welcomed the rain today because the ground needed it very much. I welcome the rain in my life because it helps shape my character. I may not always like it when it is going on, but I know that it serves a purpose. Even if I can’t see it immediately.

She’s got nothing on you

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Hang out with me for long enough and there are a few things you will pick up on: I love my wife and son like crazy, I enjoying cooking very much, I talk to myself in funny accents (I can do more than 10), and…I am crazy about my wife. There are other things that make me me, but two of these four really define me.

I was listening to the radio today and a song came on that I haven’t heard before. The chorus said something like this: ‘beautiful girls all over the world I could be chasing, but my time I’d be wasting cause they got nothing on you.’ I had to sit back and smile. I feel that way about Marixa. She is the one for me. There is no other.

Strangely enough, the song reminded me of a verse from Proverbs 31:29 that I had just read not too long ago: “There are many virtuous and capable women in the world, but you surpass them all!” (NLT). Loosely translated: they got nothing on you.

I can think of many reasons why I feel like Marixa has surpassed all the others. She is a beautiful woman. She is a wonderful mother. She is the best friend I have ever known. She is brilliant. She is so very creative. She is compassionate. All of these reasons are good ones, but they are not the reason I can say with confidence that she has surpassed all the other women in the world in my eyes. What is my reason? She is my wife.

There is no one in this world that is like her for many reasons, but this is the one that I want to address. I fell in love with Marixa. I asked her to marry me. In front of our God and our family and friends I pledged to love her and cherish her above all others for all of my life. I chose her. I choose her still. She surpasses all the other women in this world because she is my wife. She is the one I made a covenant to love and cherish.

There will never be another. There is no need. I already made my choice. They have nothing on her. Does this ring true in your marriage? It is my prayer that you can say the same thing about the woman who wears your ring.