Hunting for Unity

Ladies (and gentlemen you might be able to help too), I need some advice. My husband and I are VERY different. Have any of you struggled with this?  Better yet, has anyone found the cure??

This weekend, Mary McDonald and I had a CVM booth at the Global Missions Health Conference where some 2,500 medical professionals from all over joined to plan our strategy for changing the world. Seriously, at one point, I looked down our aisle of the exhibit hall and saw dozens of conversations going on between people who want to use medicine to transform lives, to save lives, and to bring Life. I was awe-struck to experience so much power for good in one place. Worshipping with thousands of voices on-fire for Christ was so incredible that a 60 year-old veterinarian friend of ours said "Hurry, I don't want to miss one song!" as if he were a 16 year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert.

These two sweet ladies came all the way from Korea just for the conference! 

As veterinarians, it was our first time to join this meeting of world changers, but our differences in species preference did not stop us from making all sorts of neat connections. Like a medical surplus supplies company who plans to hook us up with some donated medical supply for our missionaries, or a company that makes hand-crank rough-terrain wheelchairs who I'm hooking up with my friends at Kupenda for disabled children in Africa.

Nanse nearly blew a gasket just reading our sign!

We also made some great friends, like this vet tech who's been studying Mongolia for decades, and looking for an organization just like ours for almost as long. Nanse-->CVM-->Mongolia = God at work!

A Kenya Relief booth had drawings for banana-leaf art handmade by one of their workers in Africa. When I got the call that I'd won this one-of-a-kind piece, I was a little hesitant to accept it, since I'm still holding out hope that we won't always be a "House Divided."  But maybe that's not the right attitude...

You see I'm struggling with division, dissension, let's be honest--selfishness, because it's hunting season. It feels like it may always be hunting season from here on out. I haven't asked when it ends, as snide remarks seep out of me as involuntarily as Carbon Dioxide whenever the topic is broached. And even if it does end, I predict it will return to haunt me annually. No matter how many times the deer population is "controlled" it's never enough. Reminiscent of our yearly trips to Mexico to spay and neuter dogs and cats, which would provoke questions about the success of our surgeries if we had to keep returning to sterilize the pet population again... Wait a minute! Vet friends, we could start a deer sterilization clinic!! Have any of you castrated a buck?

Okay, I get it, there's more to hunting than just population control. But don't expect me to understand why my husband lathers himself in deer urine, leaves the house hours before he would even consider setting his alarm for anything else, and goes to sit in a tree alone from dawn till dusk without making a sound, to participate in a "sport" where only one of the opponents knows he's playing. If you ask me, bow hunting's not more sportsmanlike, it would only be sportsmanlike if they both only used what God gave them; antlers vs. opposable thumbs.

What I do need to understand, however, is how to support this madness. Or at least how to stay happily married in spite of it. Suggestions?  Here's what I've tried:

• Telling him how it makes me feel when projects are left undone around the house while he's playing in the woods
• Sarcasm and bitterness
• Suggesting an alternating-year hunting schedule so we can take turns resenting each other
• More snide remarks
• Resignation
• Getting up to make him coffee and lunch at 5am

As always, it looks like Jesus had it right, and He's just giving me yet another opportunity to practice...

"With humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus" -Philippians 2:4-5

Fortunately, my uncle gave us tickets to the UofL basketball game this Friday, so if I can't get him out of camo, at least I can get him into some Cardinal Red!