I read a very interesting and well written article in The Washington Post, by Adam S. McHugh, that I thought I’d share. I am a social person in small circles and yet, very introverted in many aspects of my life. I need alone time to recharge and I have never felt the need to be with someone all the time. In fact, when Doug and I go away for a break, often we’ll take off by ourselves and meet back up for dinner. It’s something that I love about my husband, we have the ability to entertain ourselves, but I digress from where this article is going. I have to agree that maybe church can be an overwhelming place to some. I wonder where the line is?
I have to agree with this:
Too often “ideal” Christians are social and gregarious, with an overt passion and enthusiasm. They find it easy to share the gospel with strangers, eagerly invite people into their homes, participate in a wide variety of activities, and quickly assume leadership responsibilities.
A little different post today instead of reading my opinion, I am asking for yours.
Suppose a friend comes to you and tells you a story that completely contradicts their walk with Christ. They never ask for your advice, they are merely talking.
Since we are called not to judge, is it wrong for you to give your unsolicited opinion?
Does your answer change if you are merely a friend or consider yourself a brother/sister in Christ?
I have a friend in need of prayer. I know that when you see this video it will remind you of one of your friends who needs to hear from God right now. I am in prayer for this person, not without my own frustration and not without my own opinion but deciding to set it aside for a touch from God which is the only thing can change the course of action. Let’s agree in prayer today for those people in our lives who are lost and need a touch from God in this moment!
In the name of love we commit atrocities on ourselves and others. Yet,
1 John 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Do we know God? Or do we think we know love? They are inseparable. Do we understand what love is and will we adhere to the principles of love as God has directed or will be continue make a mess of our lives in the name of what we think is love?
Without doubt modesty is nothing less than a holy feeling; and without doubt the person whose rule of modesty has been transgressed feels the same sort of wound that he would feel if something made holy to him by his religion had suffered a desecretation. I say “rule of modesty” because there are about a million rules in the world, and this makes a million standards to be looked out for. -Mark Twain- Following the Equator
Sometimes women, we are our worst enemies. Instead of fighting for true injustice in the world, abuse, sex-trafficking, child slavery and rape we are assessing each other’s dress code and deeming it inappropriate. We disguise it under the veil of religion, determining that we cause men to lust with our clothing. As if we have the power to dictate the feelings of another.
Only who determines modesty? Muslims can feel we Christians are immodest. Certain denominations of Christians determine that other denominations are immodest and the list goes on and on. I find it interesting though that men aren’t held to this standard. A woman’s lust for a man isn’t predicated on his attire or so it seems.
I just want it to stop. The women in the church clucking and running around talking about the attire of others are nothing more than bullies who have determined it is their right to speak out, behind your back of course, about their opinion of the way another dresses. The problem is you can make all the religious rules you want to about dress code. Unless the heart convicts you, you follow the rules in front of the rule authorities but you won’t follow it on your own because it isn’t your conviction.
1 Samuel 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
Col 2:16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. 18 Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. 19 He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. 20 Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 21 “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? 22 These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. 23 Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
The number one search engine term that people use to get to our blog is ‘I am a mistake’ which prompted me to write the blog You’re Not A Mistake. The second thing that brings people to our site are issues with children and we’ve written quite a bit on that.
The third is ‘why do men cheat’. I hadn’t written on it because I didn’t really think I had answers. I began to make notes as to what some reasons are that we hear in counseling as to why men cheat. Interestingly enough I found some common reasons.
Hungry Men Cheat. No! Not hungry as in physical food but hungry as in something is missing. Whether a valid concern or a fantasy of what they thought a marriage was supposed to be, it doesn’t really matter because it still leads them down a wrong path. So the question is why are they hungry and what are they hungry for?
Respect. So often we marry men and then expect them to change. When they don’t become that fantasy man we thought they had potential to become we get mad. We begin to nitpick at their flaws. Who wants that? So suddenly the girl at the office who thinks he has potential and flatters him begins to look good. Just like you used to look before you decided he wasn’t all that.
Lisa Bevere made a poignant statement in her series Nurture. She said that women train their husbands and serve their children. That statement smacked me in the head. How many times have we determined that our husbands way of doing things are wrong and ours is right? What gives us the right? I think most women would respond negatively if the roles were reversed. Quit nagging about what he isn’t and appreciate what he is. I don’t think I have to go into any more details here. Make your man feel as if what he does for you is important.
Letting ourselves go. What does it cost us to put some makeup on and try to look like we care a little bit? There is this thing, I believe, in marriage where we become too familiar. I don’t give myself a facial in front of my husband. I understand he’s visual and I don’t want to put an image of my face with a mud mask as a visual in his head. I also keep myself in decent shape and I wear pretty things in and out of bed. We need to quit lying to ourselves and making excuses for our lackadaisical behavior. We would have been mortified if, when we were dating, our man had seen us the way we run around now. You put your best foot forward for strangers, why don’t we do that for our husbands?
Putting others above him. There is no one above your husband. Not your mom, not your best friend, not your children. You need to remember that. If you don’t put your husband as number one someone else will.
Be sexy, flirt shamelessly, have lots of sex, be nice to him, cook him dinner.
Finally, sometimes no matter what you do and how good you are at the things I’ve mentioned above, affairs happen. Sometimes, you married a bad man who didn’t appreciate what he had at home. Sometimes he didn’t put the boundaries in place in his life that he needed to keep himself safe. Sometimes he’s so busy looking around for the next best thing that he will never be satisfied with the good thing he’s found. There are men who hang with other men where cheating is expected and they fall to peer pressure. Then there is the power they feel in being able to conquer. These aren’t your normal decent men. Your normal decent man isn’t looking at other women with lust. He’s happy at home.
If you are honest you’ll see places where you can affair-proof your marriage. It won’t guarantee 100%, but it can make a big difference.
Ultimately though, I will say an affair is a decision that was made. Two people did not just get naked without a lot of boundaries being broken. So the responsibility of the action falls on the person having the affair. The actions that lead up to this devastating action is ours to examine and change before it’s too late.
I’ve been watching with curiosity a trend that seems to happening in the males of our species. I’m not exactly sure when it started or why but I find by the whole thing strange.
The first thing I saw was that our boys were really emotional. They cry for everything. Yes, we want our boys to be able to cry and not hold things in but they cry over things that don’t seem to be important. They cry when the vending machine is out of their favorite soda and they have to pick another. Is that really an issue to cry over? What is going to happen when life doesn’t hand you what you want and you’re a father of three kids?
In counseling I am talking to married men on a regular basis who say things like, “I hate my job and I am seriously thinking about quitting because I deserve to be happy.” Yes, it would be great to be happy but you have a wife and kids and you are the sole support of your family. YOU CAN’T JUST QUIT! I don’t think my grandfather ever once came home and threatened to quit his job. He understood his role in his family as the support of the home. He probably hated his jobs. He worked out in the fields and drove truck and was a card dealer at night I would bet that it was a pretty miserable to work two jobs and sleep in the cab of your truck as they loaded up your trailers yet not once did I hear him complain. His words to us were simply, “I am working hard to provide opportunities for you so that you don’t have to work this hard.” Since when do emotions enter into sustenance decisions that affect our families?
In speaking to Pastor Doug he felt that there was a shift when men were told they weren’t sensitive enough. So we created a generation of emotional males. I agree he is probably right but there is a problem with that. When a man thinks emotionally he thinks irrationally. Men tend to problem focus while women tend to emotionally focus. When a man thinks emotionally he doesn’t think clearly and it frustrates him and therefore runs the risk of making rash decisions that ultimately hurt the family.
I think there has to be a happy medium. Yes, I believe men have emotions and they need to express them appropriately. It’s normal to cry when your dog dies, when your mom dies, when something is truly sad. It’s not okay to cry when Chili’s is out of baby back ribs. It’s not okay to cry when your baby needs diapers and you have to spend your poker money on them. No one has ever promised you that life would be fair. Life is just but it’s not fair. So your best friend got a Wii for Christmas and you didn’t. It’s okay, your day will come and you’ll get it too. This is nothing to cry about.
I am not in any way including tender-hearted men in this blog. Some men are just touched by sensitive things. The difference is they cry over a baby’s birth or a sad movie not whether they can go golfing or not. I am talking about the crying over life’s issues that just happen. I am talking to the women raising men. If your son didn’t clean his room and wants to go to the movies and your deal was he had to clean his room, no amount of crying should move you to change the deal. These aren’t things to cry about and we need to teach this. These are simply consequences.
I don’t know if I am the only one who thinks this, but this is a very serious issue to me. I see men not stepping up to the plate as men because they don’t “feel” like it. As a woman I am wondering what happens to our children when men seek their own happiness over their the well-being of their family. It used to be that a man would abandon his family very rarely. It was an oddity. Now not having a dad is pretty normal, most births in America are to single moms. The number one thing I hear when a father doesn’t want to be a dad is because he isn’t getting his way. A few years ago I heard a man say, “Well, she bought clothes for the baby and so I spent the same amount on a couple of tickets to the WWE, it’s only fair.” Want to see my head explode? This is a good way to see it happen. We have work to do or rather undo.
So what are some boundaries to consider discussing before you get married and blend a family? Here are some basic questions to get you started but there are many, many more and it is wise to begin to get a list together.
Will children have their own rooms or will they share?
Who will clean the room?
Are children allowed to play with each other’s things without permission?
If a child visits on weekends, will that child have special exemptions from the everyday household chores of the children who live in the home permanently?
Will the children be allowed to bring their pets from their other family home on visits?
Will the non-biological parent be allowed to discipline the children?
What does discipline look like to you?
What do children’s chores look like to you?
Are you allowed to open each other’s mail?
Are there certain things that are off limits? For example, can children come into your room and get your favorite lipstick, razor, blouse, watch?
How much input, into your new marriage, is allowed to be made by your former spouses?
Is a pet snake an acceptable family pet?
How will holidays be handled?
How much is too much to spend on clothing, video games, Christmas?
You can see how problems can arise quickly and escalate into pitting two camps against each other. Nothing is too petty to discuss at this point. It is no wonder we find Lady Tremaine angry when we meet her. I don’t believe any woman sets out to marry a man with children just to torment them and herself.
Finally, a word of warning, do not put this off or think it’s going to work out on it’s own. It just isn’t. Also beware that if you are compromising your answers to get this marriage started, you will face the consequences later. It is much better to discuss and find out that although you love each other, this will not work, than it is to drag yourself and your family through another divorce.
Finally, if you are already married, it is never too late to sit down calmly, not during a battle, and strategize. You already know what the issues are, now it’s time to lay them on the table and come to reasonable solutions.
This is third installment to read part 2 click here.
From Cinderella’s perspective we get the story that she was made to do all the chores and her only friends were mice. This is pretty much the perspective overall of stepchildren worldwide. While the biological daughters were getting their hair done, poor Cinderella was slaving for this family.
When a couple gets married for the first time, boundaries aren’t really an issue. They are established together and little by little as life unfolds, they discover things about themselves and about each other and boundaries are set and discussed. So it is no wonder that we believe that the same process of the first marriage is exactly how you would begin a second marriage.
Not so at all. A second marriage comes with a whole cast of characters that you didn’t have in a first marriage. A second marriage often has children already in place, it also has ex-spouses, ex-in-laws, friends who are friends with your ex, and well, you get the picture. It is a serious misconception that you come into this marriage as a man and a woman getting ready to begin a life together. You come in as two camps trying to make a life together. It is a much harder proposition to make several people happy, rather than just please two people in love.
Boundaries must be set before the wedding. This is one of the pitfalls I see to second marriages. The boundaries are necessary or there will be a lot of presumptions, miscommunications, hurt feelings, and battles. Think about it. If you live in a house, it has clear land boundaries. Let’s say you have great neighbors. You guys BBQ out in the back yard, if you forget to take the trash out to the curb on trash day, if he notices, he halls it out there for you, you guys like each other. One day your neighbor buys a new RV. Only it doesn’t fit in his carport, but if he removes your fence, he can park it in your yard because you have plenty of room! He neither asks you nor considers that you’d mind at all. He simply does it. You arrive home from work, your dog has run away, because the fence is down, and there is this big RV in your yard. Your neighbor looks shocked! How could you be mad? After all, he’s taken your trash out for years. Suddenly you have problems.
There is a saying that says: Good fences make good neighbors. This applies to second marriages. You are bringing two families together there must be boundaries or there will be battles. Those battles can increase and become a war in no time.
Next week, we’ll discuss what boundaries should be set and some serious questions that need some answers.
I once heard Dr. Laura Schlessinger say love is about 30% of a marriage. Being a romantic I thought surely it was more than that, but when you look at a marriage realistically, you find that Dr. Laura and the song by Patty Smyth are right, “Baby, sometimes love just ain’t enough”. You would think that in a second marriage we’d be a little wiser with our hearts but that really isn’t the case. The heart falls in love the same way it always does and the head needs to be the voice of reason. There are some good reasons to postpone or walk away from a potential partner even when you love them.
Look for the warning signals and listen to your gut. Are either of you too involved with ex’s? Be real here, where there are children involved, there are going to be conversations, I’m talking about being too involved. Does the ex have keys to the place? Are family dinners still taking place and are holidays still spent together? Having you come into the scene might be a really confusing thing to a child whose parent has moved out but everything else looks like a family to them. That will create a war with you and the child and it will not be pretty. Is the ex couple still at war? There are no wars when it’s not personal anymore.
Do you agree with parenting styles? This will be the number 1 debate in a second marriage. Do you agree with his parenting style? Does he agree with yours? Is he constantly in court fighting over custody? Ask yourself, do you want to be a part of that? Are you financially equipped to handle that? Does the amount of money it costs to raise the children going to be an issue for you? Will there be things one set of kids will be able to afford to do, say summer camps or luxury gifts, that the other set of kids will not be afforded the opportunity to do? How will this affect your household? Be honest!
Now look at the blame game. Is his divorce all his ex’s fault? Has he claimed to have no control over his life whatsoever? Did everything just happen to him without his participation? This is the mind of a victim thinker and you walk into this relationship knowing that fact. Then ask yourself if you have accepted your responsibility in the demise of your marriage as well? Are you playing the victim?
Often when we see someone who we feel is a victim we tend to think we can fix it for them. We think we can make it all better and they will love us forever for making it all go away. We neglect to think about what happens to the relationship, and the changes it will go through, once one or both of you become whole again.
A second marriage is different in that it brings on added stresses and realizations. This isn’t just about the usual questions of money, career and how many children you want to have. No, the issues in second marriages are even greater than that. I believe that most often we ignore all the other issues that go with a second marriage and we neglect that we are bringing with us baggage that just doesn’t exist in a first marriage.
In my honest opinion I don’t think anyone should go into a first marriage with someone who is on their second marriage, if there are children involved. It’s way too complicated and best left alone. The heartache I’ve experienced in these situations just are too much to bear.
What happens if you are reading this but you are already married and living out a nightmare? Can it be repaired? The great news is it can. It will require serious work. You’ll both have to get some therapy and go through a lot of self-examination, letting some dreams go, letting some control go and have a lot of patience and grace, as you wade through this. Are you willing to do the work? Are you willing to do some changing? I’m praying that you are.
Pastor Susan 