A couple sat in the office, bodies turned in opposite directions, arms crossed, closed off to the other persons influence.  They had been married for 7 years and now wondered whether or not their relationship would survive.  When asked to recount their experience in early marriage, curiously, they focus in on early annoyances.  The wife focuses on her husband leaving his underwear on the floor, expecting her to clean up after him.  The husband focuses in on his wife restricting him from hanging out with his bowling buddies, controlling his behavior and nagging him to do more around the house.  Each couples reaction displays the hurt that deeply divided the two individuals.

At a different time a couple sat in the office, almost on top of each other, their arms intertwined with each other.  They had been married for only 1 year and were invited to engage in a post-marital follow-up session as an extension of their premarital counseling.  When asked to describe their first year they would recount their favorite memories, the experiences that may have been difficult but that they persevered through together.  They would discuss how much closer they feel and how in love they are.

What is perhaps most surprising is that the two stories described above are of the same couple.  How can we explain the significant difference between the two sessions?

A research team operating out of the Northwestern United States has been studying marital couples since the 1970’s.  Operating out of the Gottman Institute, founded by the lead researcher, John Gottman, they have developed a systematic way to study marriages and the qualities of successful versus unsuccessful marriages.  Gottman himself often comments that he can now determine, in the first 15 minutes of a session whether a couple will divorce or not.

One important aspect that they have found is that couples who have become enmeshed in conflict often change their relational narrative.  Early on in a relationship couples will often see their spouse with “rose colored glasses.”  Faults are “cute little quirks.”  Annoyances are easily overlooked as the overwhelming flood of emotion erases any negative thoughts.

As a relationship progresses experiences can back up, negativity can increase and we can actually alter how we recall memories from the past.  While initially she may have stored the experience with innocent and cute feelings, years of minor annoyances have built up and she now recalls the early underwear experience through the sieve of negativity.  She adds the underwear experience to the pile of other memories including when her husband left his dishes around the house, forgot to clean the kitchen, left his tools all over the garage.  Experiences become generalized out to become universal character flaws.  The wife comments that her husband is a “messy slob, who never cleans up after himself.”  The husband, in defense and anger, will lash out and comment on the character flaws he has noticed in her over the years.

Couples who change their marital narrative have become lost in the endless void of conflict and the hopelessness of deep seeded disagreement.  Years of animosity build up from the lack of communication required to process little issues.  Little issues become big issues.

If you or someone you know is in a relationship that has begun to alter the marital narrative it is important to remember a few tips:

1.)  Your grasp on the complete reality of your relational situation is not complete.  Couples who have changed the marital narrative often miss the minor success, fail to appreciate when their spouse does something they like and forget about the times when things were better.  Stop and focus on one or two positive things a day and let your spouse know you appreciate them or what they have done.

2.)  Remember that you are as much at fault for the state of your relationship as your spouse.  Instead of listing out your partners flaws in your mind sit down and think about how you have contributed to the negativity in your partnership.  Maybe list those items out and try each week to improve one or two things about how you relate.  Be honest with yourself and remember to list those things that are the hardest to accept, those are probably the areas you need to focus.  If you’re struggling to identify anything ask a close confidant who will be honest with you to share their observations of your greatest weaknesses in your relationship.

3.)  Know when to get outside help.  Contemporary culture identifies counseling as an experience only for the broken or serious flawed.  In reality everyone on the planet could benefit from interpersonal counseling.  It can be expensive but it can be the best money you ever spent as it will improve your relationships which will make you happier, more successful in your job and more balanced in your life.

We had a pretty relaxing day around here. My sister ended up not visiting, so I wasn’t stressed about the house apartment (I still need to get used to that) looking perfect – I’m pretty picky when it comes to having visitors. Micah and I went to Cornerstone Church this morning. This is the second time we attended (we also attended a couple weeks ago).

Success!!! We loved it – awesome worship experience. Micah and I connected very well with the speaker and he introduced himself to us. We even got connected to another couple with connections in Burlington – what a small world we live in! The first time we attended we really thought the church would be too big for us, but we just needed to give it another chance. I also saw some relatives of mine. Micah and I finally felt like we were making progress on the whole meeting new people.

We came home and I made lunch. Is it just me or do you also crave salads in the summertime? It’s something about the heat & humidity that makes me crave cool salads. I made a huge one – with some great lettuce from the Des Moines Farmers Market. I topped it with tomato (local), yellow pepper (local), mushrooms with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar – the best dressing in my opinion!

After lunch, we crashed. FYI: Sundays are mandatory nap days in our house! Then, we packed up and planned to check out another coffee shop. Unfortunately they closed early because of the holiday weekend. But since Panera was right around the corner, we settled there. Here was my view.

I have the BEST husband in the world!!! We had great conversation and LOTS of studying……

We got a sweet study bible for one of my graduation gifts and started digging this afternoon. Cornerstone is studying the book of Isaiah (one of my FAVORITE books of the Bible). This ESV Study Bible has really great commentary. Including one of my favorite Bible teachers……Dr. John Piper.

I started another Inductive Bible Study on the book of Isaiah. It’s amazing what you can learn in just reading a few verses of Scripture! And Micah and I were oh so thirsty!

Oh yes, back to Panera. I ordered an unpictured carrot walnut muffin and shared one of their new black cherry smoothies with Stonyfield yogurt. It was yumm-o! We were at Panera for a couple hours. We had great conversation. I know I’ve said this before, but investing in your marriage is PRICELESS!!!

We’ve been laying low the entire evening. Tomorrow we don’t have plans. Micah has studying to do for school, and I’m planning a bike ride, and who knows what else.

Leaving you with this thought: God is offended by religious ritual, however impressive, if it conceals an empty heart and a careless life.

Have a great night!

P.S. Tomorrow’s Post: Tour of the Apartment!!!

“Offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life.”     Romans 6:13

Sabbath morning sunrise peaked across the hill and spread its rays over the waiting cars in the parking lot.  I sat behind the steering wheel watching the view, waiting for the bus that would take my baby and I away for the day for a women’s church retreat.  Still catching my breath from the whirlwind of the last few minutes as I had dressed my sleeping baby, gathered our things, and slipped away from the rest of my sleeping family. 

Uncomfortable in the stillness of the new day, I flipped on the radio to K-LOVE.  What I heard first brought tears to my eyes and prepared me for a day of blessing.  Amy Grant’s Better Than a Hallelujah.  I felt so vulnerable as I recognized God’s sweet message to me.  I imagined Jesus looking at me.  He saw my real life, my sleepless nights, my frantic days and accepted the muddy acknowledgements of His Kingship in my life as lovely praise.  In fact, the song indicates that sometimes He likes these better than the polished presents I think He’d favor.

With grateful tears streaming inside the walls of my heart I entrusted myself anew to my Maker and my King.  The bus arrived and Nathan and I joined expectant women who were eager to hear a word of hope from God that Sabbath.  We were not disappointed.

“God has no need for graven altars,

Vast cathedrals or crowded pews—

The sanctuary God loves best

Is a surrendered heart that He can use.”

B. J. Hoff

“I’m sorry I’m so much trouble to you,” she said as I massaged her back. She had been crying under great oppression again, and her face was red and messy with tears.

“You mean that you drive me to Jesus, to seek His face and increase my faith, and my confidence in Him, teaching me to pray with perseverance? Is that what you’re sorry for? Silly girl.” I am the one who needs to apologize, I think. I am a crass profiteer off the war going on about her.

I used to agree with her, back in the bad old days, and complain about the trouble of raising them, and all the heartache each newborn would bring. “Why in the world did you give me so many children, God, if you knew I would be so incompetent at mothering them?,” I would complain. I shrank back and hid under the challenge of this terrible responsibility. I looked for magic wands and formulas to rescue me from the consequences of my hiding. At last, I let my trouble drive me to Him, in the ruins of my life.

But I have learned through much affliction, to love and trust Him, and believe His word. God knows what blessings He can trust us with, and how much of a load of the gift’s corresponding care and concern we can bear. He is looking for faith among those ruins. I have learned to pray, and I say to Him often enough, “Lord, either lighten the load, or strengthen my back!” And He does.

So, I agree with David Wilkerson, who this week declared, “any affliction that keeps me from going astray—that drives me deeper into his Word—is healing. God’s most gracious healing force spiritually and physically can be afflictions. To suggest that pain and affliction are of the devil is to suggest that David was driven by the devil to seek God’s Word.” (http://www.worldchallenge.org/en/devotions/2010/healing-afflictions)

So I no longer refuse Him who speaks to me so directly in the calamities He brings. He speaks so strongly and clearly for me in them, to come to Him, to cast my care upon Him, to rest in His unfailing Love. Affliction has been very, very good to me.

But there is no greater pain for a parent than to watch his child struggle under those great loads we ourselves have learned to bear. It was this very oppressed child, who seeking to bless me, had cleaned my room as a great surprise for me while I had been away and had broken one of my most prized possessions, a frame holding a hand-calligraphied portion of Isaiah 42. (see http://thenface2face.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/holding-his-faithfulness/) She had been dusting and it had fallen, and she was heartbroken–she knew how much it meant to me. How guilty she felt, and she couldn’t tell me.

But how can I tell her myself that now it is an even greater treasure to me, that it is bearing the marks of yet another test of faith, which threatened to crush, but has led me to Him, and then to a glorious overcoming? I long for her to understand how that broken glass is to me now like the world that is passing away, and I look through those broken shards to see the enduring promises beyond.

Faith is a triumph of seeing. We take our eyes off the broken glass, the problems and cares and woes of life, and all that the destroyer hurls our way in the sovereign will of God, and fix our gaze on the Word that never returns empty. And it is all of grace. In the midst of it all, in all my confusion and fear and lack of faith, he still will bless. Trials train my soul. I would not trade these fierce battles for a life of ease, if only His presence goes with me and gives rest.

I don’t know if materialism as I mean it here is a philosophy. If it were, it would simply mean that one believes that things are real – have substance and “thingness,”  and don’t possibly disappear when we can’t see them, as poor old Barclay hypothesized. So that’s not what I mean.

What I mean is not just consumerism – which is part of materialism – that drive to buy and consume and accumulate – but a belief that possessions are good, and that one gains “good” from them beyond their functionality. We can’t deny that we use things, or that we need a certain number of things. We are tool-users, and there’s a reason for that. It makes our lives productive and safer. No one is proposing here that we go back to a paleolithic lifestyle, following herds of wild animals, dressed in who knows what, guarding our campfires carefully because we don’t have flint. I’m acknowledging that we need objects more sophisticated than a heavy rock.

The problem as I see it is that we have endued things with personality. Objects are not just objects – tools and conveniences – but have inherency, a status. “Valuable” is a word we attach to objects. It has value beyond utility. Its mere possession makes someone a “better” person, more worthy of admiration and flattery. (I’m going to avoid including ‘status” experiences here, a a somewhat different topic.) A person derives status from the object rather than the other way around.

Advertising creates a false status – this famous person uses this product, therefore his or her status is transferred to it; a consumer of the product can then derive some status from the product, presumably by some osmosis. In a way there is a logic to it. Tiger Woods is an excellent golf player. He chooses to use a certain kind of nine-iron because he knows what a good nine-iron is; if the consumer buys the same nine-iron, he will be using a better tool than the one he is using now. This is logical within its own little closed loop, but doesn’t take into account the facts outside the loop: Tiger Woods is paid to use that nine-iron and perhaps has not considered its full utility. Or the advertising shows him using it, but the one he uses in tournaments is different. Or it is a perfectly good and usable nine-iron, but without the inborn athletic ability and years of practice Mr. Woods has, the buyer will never realize maximum potential from the nine-iron, and may play no better than he did before.

Derived status just doesn’t work, does it?

So carrying a Coach or Gucci handbag, using l’Oreal hair dye and driving a Lexus do not confer status. They might excite envy in someone who is status-conscious, but the products themselves will not gain status for the one buying them. The Gucci bag will not get you the best table at Le Cirque. (If that is still around – I don’t know – although I just googled it and yes it is, with a huge five star boast. For those who don’t know, it is a restaurant in New York, once the hotspot for all the glitterati. A meal there would cost us a week’s wages.)

Status is illusory. I’m going to just make the bold statement – status is a lie. Advertising lies to you.

Some new products will make your life easier. If you hate ironing, the no-wrinkle shirt will please you and relieve the load of guilt you might feel when you don’t iron – but you have to take it out of the dryer while it is still warm, and you can’t hang it on the clothesline and expect that it will be wrinkle-free. It will make you do some work, too, but that might be a good exchange for you. Those all in one mop devices (rhymes with sniffer) with the disposable cloths for sweeping and washing floors might satisfy your cleaning needs, and you are comfortable with throwing out the little expensive nylon reinforced nonwoven nonrecycable sheets. You are probably not going to derive status from them; they are conveniences and you know it. (Yes, at first convenience products can endow status – in my mother’s day it was cake mixes. Forty years ago, you said something about your socio-economic bracket and the amount of social time you indulged if you were “too busy to bake.” Now you can buy cake mixes at the dollar store, and many children have never had a scratch-baked cake.)

Our culture – that of North America and Europe and the other areas of the globe we influence, which is a lot – has gone status mad. A young friend went to New York City for the first time this spring. She’s a girl from the country, but raised with television and fashion magazines. She’s no hayseed, although she isn’t experienced in the world. She had many memorable experiences in the city, and truly enjoyed her trip to all the cultural sites, but one of her most vivid memories is the other women buying rip-off designer handbags on the street from vendors selling goods packed in a shopping cart. These women were going back to small town Canada with bags that said Prada and Gucci, to a place where some of them will have to drive a tractor and sort seed potatoes. Where the heck are they going to derive this status? No one, I hope, is realy fooled that they got an authentic bag from Paris. How does this lie about status improve their lives any?

This may be materialism at its worst. It is the tremendous waste of resources that goes into making status objects, and the continued deception (most of it self-deception) that these objects confer good. It wastes the materials it takes to make the object, the cost of transporting it, the human energy of crafting and selling it, and the brain cells of the purchaser or recipient who should be thinking of more productive things than owing a fake Gucci handbag.

So having laid out my premise and perhaps having defended it, it’s time to get to the core of this argument.

People are more important than objects. Relationships with people matter more than relationships with objects.

We laugh at edgy comedy where money fixation is used as the punchline – the character who pledges his mother’s house on a short sale in the stock market, hoping to flip a stock fast enough and for enough profit to buy a new Lexus. And what if he fails? (Short sales being a gamble.) Mom will have to go live with his sister. (Cymbal crash, we all laugh.)

There’s the plot of the drama I watched last night – a Johnny Depp movie. He’s a young man in the nineteen-sixties who falls into the drug smuggling business. Despite numerous busts, despite jail time, despite getting married and having a child, he keeps going back to the fast lane. He’s got good intentions for this one last deal, but it always falls apart. He goes from the Miami palace and the jet set lifestyle to prison. On the way he alienates his parents, his first love, his friends, his wife and finally his adoring little daughter. While it is a cautionary tale, a tragedy in the classic sense, it would be tempting to a young person who might think they were smarter than old George Jung, the character Depp plays. He’s got the girls, the looks, the clothes, the toys, the drugs and alcohol. It’s party life. Even if he had succeeded, and had escaped the law, where would that life get him eventually? The same alienation, the same poor health, the same lack of self-understanding. And death.

Maybe we aren’t interested in the fast lane. But we can be just as material, just as grubbing, to get the things we want.

The church often wants to marry culture. It’s a mismatch. Jesus told us it would be. Anyone who can read the gospel with an open mind can see that. Although we have to live in this world, we are not of this world.

I believe the only way to defeat this materialism is to live entirely in God, following the way of Christ, which is a way of realtive poverty and a way of self-denial. For some, that may mean the poverty of a dedicated life religious, with no possessions at all except the clothes they wear, and complete celibacy. For others, it may mean asettled family life, just enough shelter and possessions to be reasonably self-supporting, and in the chastity of marriage. There may be minor variations on these themes, but it all comes down to humbling ourselves before God and embodying that humility in our ways of earning money, our appearance, our public discourse. We need to get rid of our mirros – the glass reflecting kind and the advertising we see in print and video. Mirrors begat anxiety; we are unsure of what we offer the world. We start judging ourselves and then we judge others.

Christ lived in holy poverty and with the interdependence of His group of disciples, based on a village-agrarian culture. It is still a good model, even if our “garden” is a farmer’s market. God calls us to humility in Him because we need that humility to live with others. And although I am communciating with you via this electronic medium, it is not nearly as good as if we could live in real-time community. We ar all spending too much time bathed in the glow of plasma screens and not enough time under the sun God provided. Our words are silent on deaf ears. Although we are building productive virtual communities, we need to look to ways to make them face to face and hand to hand.

I feel the world changing. Soon I believe we will be ready to move out into a real community of voices, smells, and the sights of  three-dimensional human faces. This virtual community can become a real community. The time is shifting fast. God is working in hearts, minds and through our hands.

If one were to look at my Bibles they would see writing all over the pages. Most of the writing are dates – dates where whatever I was praying for is long buried in the past but nearly all have something to do with my beloved husband and our children – but mostly our Marriage. The shame is I was too lazy to keep my journals – and I’m a writer in heart and character. I’ll never remember. The biggest shame is this Christian-prodigal-turned-repentant Stander didn’t listen to or heed the many promises – and warnings – given by her Savior. I’m still not very good at writing in my journal but when something hits me between the eyes I know the Holy Spirit is speaking to me.

I have two more promises to add to the many He has given during my stand for the restoration of my Covenant Marriage. They are just as important as the rest and if you as a Stander are reading these, claim them as your own. But most of all Praise your God for He loves and cares for your Covenant Mate infinitely more than you ever could – and He loves and cares enough for you to speak to you through His precious Word. He has something to tell you.

Always Be Ready

Always be ready because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back. It might be in the evening, or at midnight, or in the morning while it is still dark, or when the sun rises. Always be ready. Otherwise he might come back suddenly and find you sleeping. I tell you this . . . . “Be ready!”

Mark 13:35-37 NCV

Be dressed, ready for service, and have your lamps shining. Be like servants who are waiting for their master to come home from a wedding party. When he comes and knocks, the servant immediately opens the door for him. They will be blessed when their master comes home, because he sees that they were watching for him. I tell you the truth, the master will dress himself to serve and tell the servants to sit at the table, and he will serve them. Those servants will be happy when he comes in and finds them still waiting even if it is midnight or later.”

Luke 12:35-38 NCV

Faithful Stander, be ever watchful and ready for your beloved Covenant Mate to walk through the door for as we continue faithful to our God and our Covenant Mate, we will reap the blessings that God alone can promise and perform. And He will. To and for His glory.

Praise Him for His Mercies are new every morning and His Love endures forever.

Amen.

–Celia

(c) 2010 05 28 TheEphesianMarriage Blog. All other trademarks and symbols are the rights of the respective owner.

Sent on the Now Network from my Sprint® BlackBerry

Chariots of Fire Theme

Chariots Of Fire

Vangelis

Swing the Mood

Jive Bunny

Boom 

Satellite

P.O.D.

Speed Turtle – Brian Wilson

Blue Moo 

That’s Amore 

Babe

Dean Martin

Mae East 

Dreamer

Continentals

(Steve Taylor)

Runaway 

Hoodwinked

Fleming and John’s Myspace page says:

 You can download a bootleg of their Awesome “Hoodwinked” Soundtrack here

Cutest Lil’ Dragon

Tri-Danielson, Vol. 2

Danielson Famile

Zaceus was a wee little man  

The Word & Song Bible

Stephen Elkins

Ill-m-i 

1956

Soul-Junk

Linus and Lucy 

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Vince Guaraldi Tri0

Anima Fundi 

Grunt

Sandra/ Boynton

Birthday 

Forefront Records

Kevin Smith

Willy Wonka Theme 

Charlie & The Chocolate Factory

Danny Elfman

Heaven

Adventures of the O.C. Supertones

O.C. Supertones

Take me to your leader Space Mix (The Space mix is not on the album, It was on a Radio CD I have from college.)

Take Me to Your Leader

Newsboys

Plymouth Rock

SMiLE

Brian Wilson

At this point the “Dashing” was over and this was the sound track to the clean up effort

Little House on the Prairie theme

Little House on the Prairie

Lucy Meets Mr. Tumnus

The Chronicles of Narnia

Harry Gregson

Zurgs Planet

Toy Story 2

Randy Newman

Learn your lessons well instrumental–  (Ripped from the dvd)

Godspell

Did I step on your trumpet 

Ships

Danielson

By Wanda Parker

Below is a sample of a Parenting Tip found in the Sunday Plus curriculum.

We are now providing on-line training check it out here You can also check out the Sunday Plus Curriculum here

PARENTING TIPS

TEACHING CHILDREN TO PLAN, PREPARE AND IMPLEMENT TASKS

Celebrations provide a great opportunity to train your children to plan, prepare and implement tasks. These are skills that are vital for a productive adulthood.

THE ABILITY TO PLAN OPENS MANY DOORS.

PLAN

1. Planning begins with a purpose.
2. Planning requires looking into the future.
3. Planning requires looking at ALL the options.
4. Planning requires making difficult choices based on desired outcome – Purpose.
5. A planner learns to eliminate what feels good for what will bring the desired outcome.
6. Planning requires one to learn to be intentional.
7. Planning teaches one how to predict outcomes.

PREPARE

1. Preparation of the plan provides the opportunity to learn new skills to fulfill the plan.
2. Preparation teaches perseverance.
3. Preparation teaches cause and effect

IMPLEMENT

1. Implementing a plan builds vigilance.
2. Implementing a plan teaches consequences.
3. Implementing a plan develops a sense of accomplishment

LACK OF PLANNING SKILLS LEADS TO A DIFFICULT ADULTHOOD

• Adults unable to predict outcomes resort to impulsive decisions.
• Adults unable to understand cause and effect take dangerous risks.
• Adults who didn’t learn to persevere, may have trouble keeping a job.
• Adults with no sense of purpose will have no life goal.
• An adult who does not believe s/he is capable of accomplishing anything of worth won’t accomplish anything of worth.

Who do you want your child to be when s/he is 40 – mentally, emotionally, physically, socially, and spiritually?

As a parent, if you desire to be more intentional in planning out how to walk with your child into adulthood ask your Children’s Pastor/Director for KidTrek’s Child Discipleship Plan.