Eyes Glazed Over

Earlier tonight I was sitting on the couch absorbed in my newest book, Searching for God Knows What, while Steve sat at the opposite end reading a book of his own. I was loving Donald Miller, and as C.S. Lewis once wisely noted, joy and pleasure are incomplete unless they're shared. As Miller's thoughts resonated within me, I just wanted to share that with someone--naturally, my husband.

My exclamation of "I just love this book!" led to a conversation in which I tried to explain it to Steve. First I was trying to tell him about the genre of creative nonfiction, and that went nowhere fast. Then I was simply trying to articulate what it is about this book that I enjoy so much. Eventually I realized we just weren't on the same page. He laughed and said, "I'm starting to understand how you must feel when I try to talk to you about engineering stuff!"

And it was true. When he attempts to explain to me something that he's working on at the plant, or a highly technical scientific theory that he's reading about in one of his dismantling-evolution books (he's been on that kick since reading The Case for a Creator several months ago), my eyes just glaze over. Initially I try really hard to understand, but I end up feeling completely baffled because my brain just cannot wrap itself around the concepts he's describing. Tonight the roles were reversed: I couldn't understand why he didn't get it, and he said, "I know you're speaking English...but that was so far over my head I didn't even feel the breeze."

I guess it's true what they say about opposites attracting, because in a lot of ways we could not be more different!