Command Marries Dreamer – Preparing Session with Shalom Brand from the Big Texas Shindig

Transcription

[music plays]

Shalom:  Command man marries dreamer. You have to learn to give up your dreams at times to help him. You will need to learn to serve him joyfully. You will have to learn to keep your heart and mind pure, and not be bitter or angry at him for not letting you pursue your dreams.

My dad is a command man and my mom is a dreamer. My mom loves herbs. She loves to study. She loves reading. She loves to create and make things. She’s wild. She was really wild when they were young. Here’s my lovely mom, and everything I learned, I learned from her. Tell them a story about when you first got married. The one where you threw rocks at dad.

[Laughter]

Debi Pearl:  Oh, that story. Yeah I’m a survivor. He wouldn’t do what I wanted him to do, so I gave him an ultimatum. “Do it or I will throw rocks at you.” I’ve learned a lot since then.

It is true I am a dreamer. Like if I had been turned loose to do what I wanted to do, I would probably be a chemist. I wouldn’t mind developing toxic poisons out of chemicals or stuff like that. I’m inclined toward strange and un‑ordinary, just weird things. Yeah, I like writing novels about end times and weird potions . . . Like one time I decided I wanted black hair. Well, I have pretty dark hair. I wanted to know if I could create dye naturally. Back then I liked to wear an old muumuu. I built a fire, and I had a big metal . . .

I was stirring stuff, you know, herbs, walnut hulls. She didn’t know about all this.

Shalom:  I do. I was there. [laughs]

Debi:  [laughs] Then I died my hair with walnut hulls. That is a lot of acid in walnut hulls. I turned out with dark green hair. [laughter]

Debi:  My poor husband. He’s put up with a lot. [laughs] Everybody thinks I’ve really been a helper to him, and I have, but I didn’t start out the perfect helper. If I had known all of this at the beginning, and if he had known all this at the beginning, we would have tapered our lives from the beginning a bit.

Instead I instilled all that herb stuff into Shoshanna. Her and her husband both are dreamers. They come up with all kinds of . . . But it takes people to have dreaming ideas to come up with medicines, bad vaccinations, and stuff like that.

[laughter]

Debi:  But, as a dreamer, if you will go into marriage with a King, a command man can be so . . . They declare something, and even if they step back and they know they might have made a mistake, they won’t admit it hardly.

[laughter]

Debi:  It’s amazing how they won’t admit it, because they’re command men. You know a steady will ask you to do something, and almost apologize even when he knows it’s true. Believe it or not, it’s harder to obey a steady, because it’s not an iron law. But if you go into marriage thinking “Okay, my husband is a command man. He’s not being cruel to me. He is not being selfish. He’s being a command man. That’s just who he is.” When you don’t fight against him, he won’t fight against you. If you go “Okay . . . ”

Over the years, I could tell my husband, “You’re missing the road. You’re supposed to be turning here. You’re supposed to be turning here.” He just wouldn’t listen to me. Now I go [motions] and he goes, “What? Am I supposed to turn?” It’s not like he’s gotten Mr. Tender all these years. He’s learned to trust me because he knows I’m not trying to lead him. I just know the road’s that way.

[laughter]

Debi:  It’s a learning process, but that’s how you get married to a command man.

Shalom:  I don’t want y’all to think, “Oh, well I like this or I like that. I’m going to have to give it all up. Eh, it’s not worth it.” Getting married, that is. I want to encourage you in this: It’s not that you have to give up your dreams. It’s just that you have to maybe . . . sometimes . . . You might be in the middle of a sewing project—you can still be the dreamer that you are—but be in the middle of a sewing project, and he comes in and says, “I need you to come outside.” My husband’s a dreamer. “I need you to come outside and move the tractor with me.”

Be willing and flexible enough to jump up. “Okay, this sounds fun,” and go out and move the tractor with him. Just learn to be flexible and willing to stop what you’re doing at the moment.

Alexis’s sister is a dreamer. That’s what she’s working on. If you ask her, if she was here, she would say, “I’m learning to be more flexible. Be willing to just stop what I’m doing to take care of the needs of the family.” If she’s in the middle of something and her mom comes in and wants her to do something. What would she have done two years ago?

[sighs]

Shalom:  Any of y’all do that? [sighs] “But I’m in the middle of . . . ” Now she probably would stop, pause, [sighs] “Okay, Mom,” and she would go do it. It might still be a struggle for her because she’s only 15 years old. But she knows that’s something she needs to work on. When she gets to be 20 years old and some guy comes along, he’s going to see her—”That’s a good girl. She’s a visionary. She’s out there doing something. She can sew. She can cook. She can do all this stuff.”

When I saw her at church, her dad told her to do something. She stopped and she went and did it. She had a good attitude; she didn’t huff and puff. She was willing to give up what she was doing. So dreamer girls, that’s what you need to work on.

[music plays]