It’s All About the Experience
This week in the Dispatch:
Baseball is back in Quick Hits
“Everybody Lies” in Books
“Reconnect” with this week’s featured YV Plan!
‘Her Way” on the podcast
A Masterpiece in Streaming
Insights: It’s All About the Experience
Take this week’s Challenge
A big “Next Step!”
This Week’s Quick Hits:
Baseball is touted as the oldest professional sport in the world. As the 2021 season begins, let’s test your baseball trivia knowledge. Score: 3 points for questions 1-5; 5 points for questions 6-10; 10 points for the bonus. Perfect score 50 points.
What is the most popular ballpark food item?
Who was the first Major League player to pitch a ball over 100 mph?
Which city has the oldest baseball stadium?
A batted ball hits the foul pole. What is the umpire’s call?
Where did the game of baseball originate?
What was the first professional baseball team?
Which team won the very first World Series?
What baseball player was inducted into the Hall Of Fame for inventing the curveball?
What baseball innovation was legalized In 1884?
Who is the only pitcher in Major League history to record both 200 wins and 150 saves?
Bonus Question: What player drew the Hebrew word “chai” in the batter’s box before each at-bat?
Read, Listen, Watch
Book:
On an average day, human internet searches will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data. That data can reveal a lot about who we are: what we fear, what we desire, which behaviors drive us; the conscious and unconscious decisions that we make. Everybody Lies gives us amazing insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to gender to sex - all from big data. This book is not for everyone. The data on sex is explicit - so consider yourself warned! This book is gives revelations about our culture, our lives, and ourselves, drawing from studies and experiments on how we really live and think. There is a good chance that it will change your view on big data and the world.
YouVersion Plan:
Reconnect: Refresh Your Marriage by Lindsay Few
Do you feel disconnected from your spouse? Has your marriage lost the oneness you once shared? If so you are not alone. God’s desire for your marriage is intimacy so close that “two become one.” Lindsay Few, our content editor at Awesome Marriage, wrote this amazing plan that combines Scripture, practical application steps, and prayer to move you toward that vision.
Podcast:
Awesome Marriage Podcast: 3 Ways To Do Intimacy HER Way | Ep. 464
This week in the podcast Christina and I talk to the husbands with some practical ways to build intimacy in your marriage the way your wife needs and wants it! Don’t worry guys. Next week it’s the wives’ turn.
Streaming:
All Creatures Great and Small
Masterpiece has given us so many great series over the years. This year, season one of the newest version of James Herriott’s All Creatures Great and Small made its debut. In this seven-episode series, the scenery is amazing and the story of a 1930’s veterinary practice in Yorkshire, England is engaging. If you want a series that tells a great story very tastefully, give this one a look.
Insights:
This week we continue to look at different types of intimacy. Today: Experiential intimacy.
Have you had an awesome experience without your spouse that you later tried to recount to them? Did you feel frustrated trying to describe the experience? There were just no words to describe what you experienced to someone who was not there. When we enjoy an experience together, we have experiential intimacy. It’s not about words or thoughts or feelings. It is about the experience.
Nancy and I can enjoy the experience of watching a movie together. We recently finished streaming an eight-part series that we loved. While watching, we never said much to each other but occasionally looked at each other to say, “What do you think is going to happen?” Then at the end of each episode we would usually both say, “This is so good.” We connected through the experience.
We are big OKC Thunder fans and have experienced the excitement of so many great last-second wins together. The same thing happens when watching grandkids play sports. The best is the experience we have together at church. There is nothing like worshiping together with Nancy. I feel close to her and to God. My Number One and my Number Two at the same time. As important as emotional intimacy, physical intimacy, and intellectual intimacy are to a marriage, experiential intimacy may be my favorite. It usually takes the least effort and can produce amazing intimacy.
Over the years experiential intimacy occurred when we held our son and daughter for the first time, then our grandchildren. Experiencing and celebrating God’s blessings and His goodness. Christmas mornings and Easter Sundays. Celebrating milestone events for our family together and as individuals.
In 1998, Nancy woke me up in the middle of the night in pain. She thought it was her gallbladder. The pain had started the day before and her doctor told her to come in the next day. By bedtime she had felt better, but now the pain was back. I wanted to take her to the ER but she wanted to wait, so I rubbed her back and she went back to sleep.
About 5 am, she woke me and said, “I think we need to go to the hospital.” It was a short drive and I let her out at the ER entrance and went to park the car. As I walked in, I did not see her. The nurse said, “They took her back to a room,” and led me to it. I walked in and saw at least three people around her. She was hooked up to all kinds of equipment and my heart was beating out of my chest. The doctor turned to me and said, ‘Your wife is having a heart attack. I called a cardiologist and we are taking her into surgery.”
I’m pretty good with hospitals and blood - unless Nancy is involved. Then I lose it. Apparently, I turned pale and a nurse caught me and lowered me into a chair. It was pretty embarrassing. My wife is having a heart attack and one of the nurses has to come over and take care of her wimpy husband. The nurse said all the right things but I knew I would be a story at the morning coffee break and I would not have blamed her.
The next few hours were tense. Nancy was in surgery. I tried to stay positive. The kids were both away at college. Finally, a young doctor came looking for me. Nancy was okay. There was some damage, and she would be in the hospital for a few days, but he hoped with time it would heal itself. He let me go in to see her. She was groggy but she was there and alive.
Bringing her home was one of the best days of my life. This experience helped us both see how fragile life is and how quickly things can change. We went through the same experience from entirely different perspectives. Yet, the experiential intimacy was off the charts.
Experiential intimacy is not something that you can manufacture. You can plan experiences in hopes they will connect the two of you but you can’t make intimacy happen. What you can do is work hard at the other areas of intimacy we have been talking about. That builds a foundation where the experiential intimacy can happen.
Challenge:
What normal experiences connect you and your spouse intimately?
What are two life experiences that have connected the two of you?
Share a time that experiential intimacy took you by surprise.
Next Step:
What can the two of you do to help lay the foundation for experiential intimacy in your marriage?
Answers to Baseball Trivia
Hot dogs!
Nolan Ryan. Ryan is among the most successful and hardest-throwing pitchers in Major League history. His legendary fastball was nicknamed the “The Ryan Express.”
Boston. Fenway Park in Boston is the oldest MLB stadium.
Home run! If the ball hits the foul pole, it is fair. And if it hits it above the wall, it is a home run!
England. It descends from the English games of cricket and rounders.
Cincinnati Red Stockings. They played their first professional game on May 4, 1869.
The Boston American’s defeated Pittsburgh for the title.
Candy Cummings. His real name was William Arthur Cummings. In the summer of 1863, 14-year-old Cummings and a few other boys were throwing clam shells and observing their trajectory. Cummings figured it would be fun if he could make a baseball curve the same way.
Overhand pitching. That was one of the five most significant rule changes in the history of baseball.
John Smoltz. His nicknames included “Smoltzie” and “Marmaduke.”
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