OCD

I was talking to someone on the phone yesterday and he told me that he had just finished running home to do his yard trimming. He explained that his adult son had mowed the yard and he was fine with that but when it came to trimming, no one could do it to his standards.  Immediately, the thought popped into my head that my idea of trimming is applying a chemical that rhymes with ‘sound up’ once or twice a year. I despise trimming and I determined to engineer my yard such that I could kill off the grass at the edges to not have to trim.

My strategy has a major flaw in that it doesn’t make my wife happy.  She detests seeing dead vegetation where I have sprayed but not enough to either force me into modifying my strategy or doing it herself.

Then I started considering my own OCD tendencies. I need to be clear that while I have some things I’m anal about, there are a lot of other things I’m not. For example, we have two light switches in our kitchen on each side of the room.  If the light is turned on with one switch and turned off with the other then one switch is left up and one switch is left down.  I have to make both of them down and out.  One of these switches is maybe 6 feet from a pile of stuff that I have laying on our dining room table and has been there for at least 6 months.  In fact, my wife tells me many times that if it wasn’t for her occasional prodding, we would live in a pigsty.  She is probably right again.

I cannot explain why I have to have the light switch oriented down together for off. When I think about it rationally, it makes no sense at all why it’s important to me. I just know it is.

In the same vein, whenever I’m exposed to some one else’s, how shall we say, peculiarities, they make no sense to me and even when I’m trying to follow them, for the other person, I’m likely to mess up. I think that’s why I feel so blessed to be married to my wife.  When we committed to each other almost 39 years ago, we didn’t have much of a clue what each others peculiarities were and some of them have changed over time. And even more significantly, we compliment each other in ways that I can’t even fully describe.

“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.” - Proverbs 31:10-12 ESV

“He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.” - Proverbs 18:22

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” - Ephesians 5:25-31

“Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.” - Psalm 128:1-4

I believe God found the perfect person for me and I got the better end of the deal. She, on the other hand, got stiffed.

As far as other people’s peculiarities, hopefully, the next time someone, probably unknowingly, does something against one of my OCD tendencies, I’ll stop and remember all the blessings I get from them.