Whimsical Update To Those Who Invest In Our Lives!
Julie Marie: “A Distraction?”

U.S. Senator Chaplain Dick Halverson once said, “I went to Washington with great ideas to change the world, but people kept interrupting me”. Later he repented of saying this because he found out that kingdom work is not about great ideas, but about people.

In the same way I am need to repent for saying to my son, Nathaniel, “Pray for me, for I am worn out in endless confrontation with Julie.  In a few months I have fought more with Julie than I have in 40 years with Ruthie. I don’t have time or energy for this kind of distraction - I have to do kingdom work”.  Nathaniel, without losing a heartbeat said, “Don’t confuse kingdom work for distraction, dad”.

I do not like and at the same time I love when my kids are right and smarter than I am!

  If you are wondering about Julie and me, wonder no more… Julie is all and more than I imagined. She is a regular superwoman with the capacity to wage war 24 hours.

• She makes me feel like Samson in one moment and be a regular Delilah the next. She has managed to convince me that Pink looks good on me, and we wore matching clothing in public.
• She can give a facial treatment on an airplane with cleanser, creams and moisturizers and when she is done, I smell like a rose and even like it.
• When we walk around a Soccer field, an innocent stroll can end up in a two hour marathon that a month later she is having upper leg pain and I am with the podiatrist trying to saving my right diabetic big toe from amputations as a blister developed full of puss that I am taking antibiotics orally and locally again.
• Julie is in athletic form and a product of thousands of hours of gym work out.
• I am just a mountain boy who has never spent a decent hour’s work in a gym. But when we walk together, we are in a duel; between scientifically developed muscles versus an all-natural Inca muscles that come back when call to war.
• This duel with each other in a sight worth observing and scratching your head. But for me, it is good to go home with a sweatshirt drenched from front to back.
• Julie is organizing my life in such a way that everything is where it should be. Now the only problem is that I cannot find anything without asking her.  

In that moment of vulnerability I saw like seven candidates on the stage. After forty years not going after girls I did not know what to do except to throw a little corn grain around like we do in Peru, in order to catch a chicken by the neck when they come close enough. So I do not know whether it was my grains of corn or just too much chicken for such a small rooster but I fell into the hands of a Red Hen from Lancaster, PA, an Irish-Amish red haired beautiful girl who is a carbon copy of Maureen O’Hara and Sarah Palin.

And now that she has married me, she says with the smile of one who has a frying pan by the handle, the words of Sarah Palin: “Do you know the difference between a Pit Bull and me? - Just the lipstick!”  I have been tempted to cry “uncle” but my stubborn Inca blood refuses to do so before she does, and that is not likely to happen.

So my life is like the case of the duck that met the bullet or the hunter that was hunted or the sheep that went for wool and was sheared. Or like the boy who went hesitantly to a prayer meeting at church and misbehaved that his father takes him to the bathroom to be spanked. In his last act of hope the boy cries to the congregation, “Please, pray for me”.

This is a letter is a cry. “Please pray for us” as we go the wood shed or the doghouse. Again the words of Paul Kooistra come to me, “Gerry, a good marriage is the closest thing to heaven and a bad marriage is the closest thing to hell”. Well, Paul has been my mentor for many years and now as a re-married man under similar circumstances as mine has made clear my options. I want a taste of heaven on earth in this marriage. I want of this to be the best marriage possible God willing.

Paul after meeting Julie said to me, “You and I are pretty smart guys because we chose women smarter than us as wives”. I have always believed Paul’s wisdom and I am not going to start doubting now. Julie is good for me. I need to be more humble like Jesus.

Please pray that the prophetic voice of my son, Nathaniel, that it may be to me like the words of Nathan to David. That I may see Julie not as the distraction from kingdom work, but as kingdom work itself. (Adjusting to one another properly and consciously).

Julie is a wonderful girl and in her beautiful heart I have found a little girl so irresistible that I would be a fool not to treasure and love such a child-like saint like her who is a gift from the Lord himself to my needs and me.

Pray also that some of my lifetime friends may find grace to forgive me for marrying Julie too soon after Ruthie went home to be with the Lord. I believe I was trained by God with Ruthie’s help to love Julie and I plan to do my utmost to represent Jesus before Julie with God’s help and your prayers.

Julie’s longing of her heart is to give her life to Jesus as his witness in Peru to the needy and lost people for which Jesus and Ruthie also gave their lives. I am just thankful to be in such great company of co-workers with God in his kingdom work.

Please pray for us, and those in authority over us as we work in the next step for our lives.

Gerry Gutierrez.