By Bob and Cheryl Moeller

Several years ago when our children were still quite young I decided to take them for an afternoon visit to Timber-lee Christian Center, a Christian camp that has a petting zoo, just north of the Wisconsin border. We walked into the gated area and found goats, sheep, Shetland ponies, and oh yes, llamas milling about us. The children quickly noticed there was food pellets for sale in vending machines to feed the animals.

My pockets were soon emptied of quarters, so the children could buy and feed the docile farm animals. They were particularly interested in feeding the strange looking llama. The kids giggled with delight as they reached out their hand and the llama approached them to nuzzle down the pellet. It looked like fun to me but there was one problem — I was out of money to buy food pellets. I decided to do the next best thing–I would pretend that I had pellets to feed the llama.

So I reached out my hand, and sure enough, the llama walked over in my direction. He reached down and nuzzled for food in the palm of my hand.

It took a moment for him to catch on to the scam but once he realized he had been tricked, he took one or two steps back, then reared up his head –and spit in my face. Suddenly my glasses went green. (I’ve since learned that llama spit is bile that comes up from their stomach. Just thinking about the ugly journey before reaching me is sickening.)

I’ll admit I was momentarily stunned by this brazen and unexpected display of disrespect. I did the only thing a self-respecting man would do in such a situation–I took one or two steps back, reared up my head and spit back at the llama. It would be difficult to describe the look of astonishment on my children’s faces at my behavior.

Later over lunch I heard them secretly whisper to Cheryl, “Mom, Dad spit at the llama this morning.”

“Oh, your father has been under a great deal of stress lately,” she said in my defense. Read More→

By Bob and Cheryl Moeller

When we are trying to play the sculptor with our mate, it simply means we don’t like the way our mate talks or behaves. We believe it’s our calling in life to change him or her. So we constantly chisel away at our spouse, trying to make them more to our liking.

There’s a big problem with playing the sculptor. Even if we are successful in changing our spouse (we’ve yet to meet someone who has), we now face a bigger problem than what we started with. We will now be married to someone who not only has their own set of problems, but ours as well.  You see, all of us if given the opportunity, will remake our spouse in our own image and that’s a tragic mistake.

Playing the sculptor is motivated by pride (“I’m better than you are, so I will fix you to be like me”). It also carries a strong element of anger. We’ve yet to meet anyone working to remake their spouse, who was not at a minimum irritated, and at worst furious, at their spouse’s basic personality traits. The anger in the relationship drips out, like water seeping from limestone walls in a cave.

Playing the sculptor may involve such things as reprimanding our mate for poor manners, showing disgust at their lack of house cleaning skills, or comparing them unfavorably with our family. In worst case scenarios, it degenerates into intimidation or threats. The common denominator in all these attitudes is the conviction our spouse fails to measure up to our standards or expectations.
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