Wichita Family Magazine February 2015

february 2015

DEFINING AND REDEFINING LOVE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF DATING LEAD TO THE PERSON YOU WERE MEANT TO BE WITH

Wichita Family • February 2015 - 1

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Published By: Lucky 7 Publishing LLC 316.295.8465 www.lucky7publishing.com

Publisher:

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Todd Vogts

Publisher Todd Vogts publisher@wichitafamily.com

Wichita Family Magazine is published 12 times a year by Lucky 7 Publishing LLC. Wichita Family Magazine is available free, at schools, stores, restaurants, libraries, retailers and local attractions, as well as other places families frequent. For a complete list of where to find Wichita Family, or for subscription rates, email us at publisher@wichitafamily.com or visit our website at www.wichitafamily.com.

Copyright 2015 by Lucky 7 Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. Wichita Family Magazine is not responsible for errors, omissions or contest fulfillment from third parties. Reproduction in part or in whole without written permission is strictly prohibited. Wichita Family is distributed free of charge. The magazine’s advertisers make this possible, so support them! We reserve the right to edit submitted material. All submissions will be considered for publication, but we reserve the right to refuse material. Materials will not be returned. Any editorial content or advertising published in print or online is the property of Lucky 7 Publishing LLC. 2 - www.wichitafamily.com

Message from the Publisher The month of February is a month dedicated to love and romance. An entire industry of cards, chocolates and flowers is built around it, thanks to the flagship holiday of Valentine’s Day. For the February 2015 issue of Wichita Family Magazine, I decided to take a different approach to addressing this. Rather than expousing all the great gift and date ideas a person could use to treat his or her loved one, I thought it would be better to actually look at the idea of love and what it means because the best date or the perfect gift aren’t the point of Valentine’s Day. Rather, it is to show someone how you feel.

Perhaps that involves a fancy dinner or a sparkling new necklace

with matching earrings, but the important point to make is that you love someone.

On the following pages you will find essay about love. They are from different perspectives, but they all show what love is and could be. They look at the heart (pun intended) of the matter.

The idea is love evolves. It is always present, but it doesn’t always take the same form.

This is true regarldess of how you look at it. Each individual has a different perspective on love, and each individual’s perspective on love changes with time, experience and needs at any given point in life.

These essays are not intended to tell you how you should view love, as it is a very personal emotion. Rather, the goal is to encourage you to truly consider love and define it on your own terms. The writers of these Valentine’s Day Essays want to help you gain a larger perspective.

In an ideal world, the essays will

help and inspire you in your own relationships, but at the very least it is hoped they will entertain.

Doing an issue based almost solely on the topic of love is a gamble for Wichita Family Magazine, but I feel it is a universal topic. I hope you enjoy this special issue of essays. As the publisher, I want to be able to experiment and still serve you, the reader. I hope I haven’t missed the mark with this issue.

As always, I welcome feedback of all kinds. Please feel free to email me comments or questions. My email address is publisher@wichitafamily.com.

More importantly, though, enjoy February and Valentine’s Day. Make it a special time with those you hold closely in your heart (whether it is a significant other or your entire family).

And don’t stress about gifts or dates.

Just show how much you care.

Of course, flowers and chocolates are rarely turned down, so that is always an option.

Wichita Family • February 2015 - 3

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~ A Valentine’s Day Essay ~

Love from the Perspective of One Dating

By Kendall Perry

I

have been in a loving, committed, dating relationship for over a year now.

I know that I am with the man that I will spend the rest of my life with, but my road getting to this “prince” of mine has been filled with Knights, jesters, and even a few frogs that I have loved . . . Or felt that I loved.

Knowing that there are many out there who have had the same experiences with dating, brings me the courage to share this peak into my journey.

My faith, wholeheartedly, leads me to believe that there is one person with whom I will spend the rest of my life.

However, my experiences have proven to me that the man at the end of my future aisle could have been a number of men because I have been in love more than once.

I have dated, committedly, since my sophomore year of high school; believing in love and loving the feeling it creates so much, that each dating experience became so incredibly serious and “real life.”

Each relationship had me dating with a purpose. During the life of those relationships, I was able to picture many of the suitors as the man I would spend my life with.

Of course, all of these past men would have fallen into the category of “my type” — sweet, dark hair, hard working, and funny, with a little facial hair!

I would meet the particular man, and after some time spent guarding my heart, I would fall for him based on his qualities, how he made me feel, and also how he was able to, secretly, mold me into the perfect fit for him and what he needed at that time in his life.

And that pattern continued in many relationships, without me realizing it. I would be blind to my new mold — loving this guy like crazy.

But eventually, the love would fizzle out, the happiness would turn to bitterness and skepticism, we would burst from our forced molds, meaning the relationships then ended.

So what makes my current man the one that I will commit the rest of my life to?

Well, he has never asked me to change. He has never discreetly tried to mold me. Instead, he has helped shine a

light on who I really am, the woman who was many times not herself in order to be in love.

He has embraced my faith, helped me to see that my silly side, controlling and obsessive sides, and my annoying, childish side don’t need changing.

He has also helped me realize that my imperfect attempts at loving the way God created me to do, are for him, and always have been because my kind of love fits his needs and takes care of his heart.

To find someone who fully embraces your cracks and flaws is the best gift that dating has to offer. And that is why I have so much faith in the dating relationship that I am in.

He is my gift and my future.

That is how I know that this go around with love, and picturing this amazing man at the end of my future aisle, is real.

As a dater, feelings of love will come and go. The “right” person in that particular time of life will swoop in, take up residence, and pluck at your heart strings. But then the plucking might lead to festering, and the festering could lead to leaving.

While these experiences and poor examples of the delight that dating can be, hurt, they will be worth it because from them, you learn exactly why that particular relationship did not work. And from that, youlearn what to look and wait for in your next dating experience The right person will make your dating experience one that transitions beautifully into a forever relationship; no swooping in and out, but a bold march in, with no intentions of leaving.

So from the perspective of one dating, date!

Make yourself vulnerable, and find yourself as you get lost in the perfect relationship!

Kendall Perry lives and teaches in Central Kansas.

She is dating the luckiest man alive, Wichita Family Magazine publisher Todd Vogts.

Wichita Family • February 2015 - 5

Defining and Redefining Love ~ A Valentine’s Day Essay ~

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6 - www.wichitafamily.com

By Ian Anderson

y wife and I are in the stage of life where the most romantic gesture comes in the form of sleep, with sleeping in as the red rose. Three boys, seven and under, have remade our romance; they’ve done so unwittingly, and they have given us a gift we didn’t expect.

As a younger man, I had certain ideas about what my marriage would be like, as well as ideas about what fatherhood experiences would bring me.

Perhaps some were more vague than others.

Thoughts about spending time with my wife certainly outnumbered thoughts about my children. And then, three years into our marriage, our first boy crashed into our world (literally, in a sense — he was born five and a half weeks early in the middle of a winter hail storm).

Never had I experienced such a rapid life change.

All our priorities shifted, as they must when babies arrive, and my romance with my wife was no exception.

My wife and I found ourselves in deep, uncharted waters, our maps of previous journeys of little to no use. The way we spent time together, the way we communicated (and what we talked about), and what we valued in one another grew from a two- to a threeperson affair.

It was messy . . . still is.

Could it be we often let our concept of love remain fixed throughout our ever changing lives?

How is it that we could ever grow older, add responsibilities, add little ones (and one day send them off on their own), and not expect to have to allow our love to also grow and change?

Maybe it’s that taste of romantic love.

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w w s t d

We’ve had the desire and passion for one another — and it’s good.

If we allow our idea of love to change, we think, will we taste romance again?

Yes. However, the first has to die to give birth to a new, fuller kind.

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I Never Knew How Selfish I Was

n i r

The first shock of marriage was to adjust to living with my wife — the daily things I used to do because I was alone, such as reading or watching a game at my own leisure, had to be planned around her, or given up for her.

And that’s painful; routines die hard.

And yet, that’s love, isn’t it?

It’s not so much the flowery notes and chocolates, it’s the willingness to show another person they are worth the interruption.

The word interruption feels cold, but we feel that way about, well, people.

The ones around us have that frustrating habit of usurping our plans. And I can always choose to watch the game instead of talk to my wife, yet if we allow the tug of love to get to us, the interruption is no longer an interruption — it is, the people are, exactly what you and I need to grow out of our old, self-serving ways.

The effect is, of course, much more powerful with little ones.

Infants can’t tell time; two a.m. is not 2 a.m., it’s snack time. They will have their snack, and they tell us so with a volume better suited for outside play.

I don’t know when the growth happened, but I know it came and I know it was — and is still — painful.

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w d e i

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Every little part of me that died went howling and fighting to its death.

Sometimes those parts are resurrected, and I have to cut their throats anew. The bloodbath rages on weekends when the boys want to build, pretend, wrestle, read, talk, talk, talk, eat, build, pretend.

Often when they sleep, and are finally still, I stand and watch their chests rise and fall, their contented breaths wrecking me; maybe it’s in those moments love tries to seep in and hurt me again, because I’m reminded of all the times that day that I was not savage enough to kill my own desire on their behalf.

Or on my wife’s behalf.

I’ve had more practice with her, yet I fail just as often as with the boys.

So, What About Romance?

Those ideas I had as a single man about romance, yes, they had to die.

At first, they had to die the death all self-serving desires need to die in order for romance (or any love) to work; if I refuse to speak my wife’s romance-language, it’s not romance (or love) at all.

I learned and continue to learn (and relearn) to think of her needs as more important than my own. Indeed, it’s when I do this that I find I’m in the right mindset to receive love as I’m giving it.

This is when I no longer see my wife as an interruption; I see her as she is — she is lovely, and she is my opportunity to express love.

And so it was that when the boys were added to our number, my love for my wife had to become new once more.

I was aware, and knew deeply in many ways, that other loves existed; my mother and father showed me great love as a child, I have many great friendships, and my God has expressed His (un)dying love for me — and He continues to do so in all the “interruptions” He sends and redeems before my very eyes.

Yet, until I became a father, I didn’t know the depth of what marriage meant. Children brought along another death, and in its shadow I learned my wife was a friend, an encourager, a blessing beyond romance I am still discovering.

Now, romance comes to our marriage like the promise of a long-awaited holiday: the work weeks flow one into the other, yet the calendar still whispers of the rest and joy to come.

This Valentine’s Day, I’ll thank my boys for showing me a rose does smell as sweet with another name — sleeping in on Saturday morning.

Ian Anderson is a teacher, a husband, and a dad. He lives with his family in Central Kansas. Occasionally, he tweets here: @ian_writes.

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