God chose me before the foundation of the world. There is no going back on that. When I recognized him for who he was, I gave myself fully to him and I haven’t looked back. Divorcing God is not an option for me. I’m in it for life.
This how your relationship should be. It shouldn’t be one where you are just there until something better comes along. It should be solidly cemented where neither of you has a desire to go anywhere else. This is what it truly means to be a part of one another.
Find someone who at 2 a.m., when he’s opening a bag of chips and waking you up with the crunching and you give him the death look, you love him anyway, knowing you’ll have bags under your eyes. Find someone who loves you when you do your own manic things as well. Don’t hook up with a man who doesn’t understand that there are times in a marriage when you both don’t want to deal with anymore of your stuff but you do anyway. Don’t hook up with a man who thinks it’s okay to throw the relationship out the window when times are tough. Find someone who recognizes that you are a part of him and he is a part of you and without the other there would be a part missing. Find someone who is in it for life. Most importantly do the work right now to be that person with whom a man wants to claim you and be a part of your life forever.
So in my line of work these questions come up all the time. The judgments we are called to make or not make are sometimes very tough on these hearts of ours. Sometimes they speak more about us then they do about the people we serve. I’ll let you read what I am talking about for yourself on Stuff Christians Like. Click here.
I love military life. I love the protocol and I love the well-executed plan. It fits my personality to have order. In the military and in boardrooms across the world there is a meeting where everyone is given a task and expected to fulfill it. There is a meeting of the mind where everyone and everything is clear. A general never goes to battle with soldiers who don’t know what they are going to do because he expects to win. To do so would be foolish. It makes it easy when the couple is on the same page. Often though we hear a couple say, “He/She should know what we are working towards.” Without a meeting of the minds in which both people come together to set the mission, there is no mission, only chaos. We can’t assume anything. A mission must be clearly defined.
Just tell a woman that you want to go to Fiji next summer and that it’s going to take $10k to go. I guarantee you she will clip coupons and wear ‘that ‘ol thing’ in the closet to get the money to go. Tell her you want to save an extra couple of grand for her new wardrobe and she’ll make it happen. Most women are not evil or scattered. They are willing and able to help a mission to get on its way. If she didn’t love the man or didn’t care about their family, she’d go shopping but most often she want to please him and he clearly set the mission and she is going to follow it.
What if I don’t agree with the mission? I mean, this one is an easy one to submit to because I get something right? That happens sometimes when we don’t agree we don’t want to submit to the plan. The time to speak is in the initial meeting. I would voice my opinion and why I don’t think it’s going to work. You can’t whine, you don’t get emotional, you just practically stated your views and back them up with fact. Sometimes your appeal works and sometimes it doesn’t but let’s face it, this is when the rubber meets the road. Submission isn’t submission until you disagree.
So you have to ask yourself two important questions. Does my agreeing to submit to this plan violate my relationship with God? Does my agreeing to submit violate my belief system? If the answer is yes, then you can’t submit period. You can’t override your convictions without losing a part of yourself. BUT HERE IS THE GREAT PART! Your man, the one who vowed to love you forever, would never ask you violate these areas of your heart because the bible is very clear that we submit one to another. God really had the idea that we’d work together for the good of the whole and not for the good of the one. That means that I don’t pull the conviction card out for just anything. I really have to be honest and search my heart. Let me just say here that if you are really honest most things don’t fall into this category. Just because you don’t want to do it, does not excuse you.
There is nothing sadder, and I mean this nothing sadder, than a woman without a mission. She will use her energy for what she thinks needs to be done and we don’t need to ask Eve the outcome of that story. There is nothing more dangerous than a marriage without a mission. It may limp along but it will never be what God designed it to be. A marriage without a mission doesn’t have unity, peace and ultimately the blessing of God. If you find yourself in a marriage without a mission it’s time for a meeting. It’s time for a God-seeking moment. Simply ask the question, what are we working for and how are we going to get there? God will bring the answer. Then work the plan.
Submission seems to be an ugly word for women. The bible says if we are married we are supposed to be in submission to our husbands. I think the word gets a bad wrap because we don’t know or understand what it means and because sometimes men throw it up to us in an ugly way. Today I want to break down the word and make sense of it and show you that it doesn’t have to be bad when all the pieces of the puzzle are in place when it comes to this word.
First off, we have to break the word apart.
Sub- is being used as a prefix for under, below or beneath. Let me just say here that is does NOT mean less than. We need to open up our hearts to read this carefully without shutting down.
Mission- is a task that clearly spells out what we are doing; how we are doing it and the reason we are doing it.
The bible says that a woman was designed as a help-meet. This is not a bad thing and it’s in our nature to be helpful and we are great at making things happen. I think of it, as we are the supports to a bridge. The supports are what hold everything up. It in no way lessens the importance in fact, in increases it. Without the support the whole thing falls flat. A bridge without a support is useless. Again, not saying men are useless just that when we are joined as one in marriage the pieces have to fit together in order to function.
Ever see a woman missing from the scene? I remember when I married Pastor Doug, he lived on skittles and slim-fast and his kids would stay up till 2 or 3 am bleary-eyed watching TV then have stomach aches and were missing tons of school. They were missing a support system. Ever see a man taking care of the kids after his wife has been at a conference? The kids are asking every half hour, “When’s mom coming home?” and dad is wishing mom would hurry up. It’s not a bad thing to be a support. It’s necessary.
The problem is that most men do not have clearly defined missions. So the problem lies not in the fact that women don’t know how to submit. We submit very well thank you very much. We submit when we know the mission. We submit when we know our role. Submission is not an ugly word. It’s a beneficial word. What is the mission of your home? Men, if you don’t know then you can expect for your woman to do something that may not be the plan. A support, supports something even if it’s the wrong thing. There is the problem in a nutshell. Just as Adam assumed Eve knew the mission most men today also assume women know the mission. But Adam was so wrong.
I ran across this blog and thought it was informative and very insightful. It speaks to how we identify women and men based on facial expressions. Through a study of androgynous faces, people were more likely to pick out a happy face as female and a angry face as male. I think it may give us insight to our working and social environments. Click here to read the article.
I heard Dr. Laura say on her radio program that sadness was not a disease. I answered back, out loud in my car, with a big AMEN! I so agree with this statement. Why is it that we mask uncomfortable emotion and don’t want to feel it?
I remember when my husband died and the very first thing my doctor wanted to do, and I am mean within a few days of his death, was put me on anti-depressants and give me sleeping pills. Do you know that 25 sleeping pills have lasted me 6 years? I only took them when I absolutely could not sleep a bit. The anti-depressants I didn’t agree to and so I have never been prescribed them. I don’t believe it’s bad to take them, and I think some people have serious issues with depression and need them, but I don’t believe that everyone needs them. The death of a loved one is hard time in your life. I don’t think anyone has a question about it but whether you drug yourself to numb the pain, or work like a madwoman (as I did) to numb the pain or drink or sleep or over-eat, whatever it is that you do in times of deep sadness, you will eventually have to work through that sadness if you are going to move forward.
I guess don’t understand the avoidance of sadness. Actually, I know we’d all like to never feel sad but sadness is a part of life. It means we are human, it means we care, it means we are really living out our lives. It tells a story that not everything is happily ever after. There are great moments of joy in our lives and deep moments of sadness and to not have those is to not have lived well. It all ends well though, that’s a God promise! Ask yourself a question though, how would I know great joy if I never experienced deep sadness?
Sadness seems to be one emotion we want to avoid. I know that, and I understand that, but it’s not reality. See, everything I know about anti-depressants is that unless you on them forever, eventually you have to still go through the pain. You still have to work through your feelings and you still will need to come out on the other side. You have the right and the obligation to live a life fulfilled. A fulfilled life doesn’t mean it’s all happy, it means it’s all ended well.
Oh, I guess you could wallow in your misery forever. Some people do, they become a victim to their circumstances and they allow it to consume their lives. For some life is never going to be right again. They wear their injury as a badge and you can’t get through a 20 minute conversation with them before their tragedy spills out. You are left trying to run from the conversation because it’s so depressing and you realize this person can’t quit living in the past. But you have to understand that it does not have to be your reality ever. Yes, events happen and are going to happen. Yes, there are going to be sad times and we need to acknowledge them but don’t build your home on events. Build your home on the solid ground of life well-lived, knowing that He who gave life will sustain it through it all. Let each room in your home tell a story that is as diverse and interesting as God designed you to be.
Intimacy is not sex. We often confuse the two but sex the way the world handles it is not intimacy. My intimacy with God is that I can tell him anything and he hears me with an open heart. He may not agree with what I am saying but he hears me. On the flip side, I can trust him to tell me anything and he can trust me to listen. See, it’s watching out for each other in a deeper more profound way then just your normal friendship. God and I are more than friends.
The man who you seek should never be one with whom you can’t tell your deepest secrets to. He shouldn’t be the one who you withhold from. I know often that is the case we don’t want to be seen in a bad light so we project a false image but eventually one of you takes a good hard look around and sees that it’s not what it seems. We need to be able to do better than that.
I love Pastor Doug with all of my heart. I would do a lot of things for him but I don’t want to be in love with an image. I have to say that when we married each other we made the grave mistake of not taking the time to get to know each other better and so we each had our image of the other. Neither one of us has lived up to the other’s image in some areas and exceeded our image in others. It has been a process of unlearning what we thought we knew about each other and learning to love what we know about each other. Some things were great disappointments to each other and some brought great relief and joy. It’s the price we paid for the compromise. This is why I caution you so strongly not to compromise on waiting to get married until you know for sure who the person is and that takes time, a couple of years. It’s too hard to go back and undo what you’ve done and so often I hear the horror stories. Most times at these moments of realizations they become deal breakers and divorce and break ups are the logical next step. When there is a problem in our marriage we dig deep to resolve it. We look to each other and we look to our faith. We are committed to seeing it through and we trust each other. See, that’s when the intimacy comes in. The things we’ve built so far and the things we honestly know about each other have to kick in at this point. Love is not enough to see you through these times. Love is an emotion, intimacy is a tangible thing that you can hang on to because you know it. This is when commitment either locks in or fails.
Sex doesn’t undo all of this rather it’s a quick fix that doesn’t stick. The reality is, you talk and hang out together a whole lot more hours than you are in bed together in any relationship. Erwin McMannus said something profound. He said that you have sex while dating when you run out of things to talk about. In other words, sex actually retards the growth pattern of your relationship when it happens before true intimacy develops. The thing you wanted most is the thing you just pushed away. Don’t confuse sex and intimacy they are not the same at all. I can’t stress that enough.
Make sure that the man whom you call your very own is your intimate partner. One who is trustworthy, who cares for your heart as best he can and who is honestly seeking out the real you while showing you who he really his. Don’t get caught in the trap of, ‘I’ll be who you want me to be’. So often I see women who wrap their whole personality around who he needs her to be or vice versa. This is so fake and so short term. You are who you are. Deal with it. Then seek out the one who loves the true you. You’ll be content then.
The democratic style of parenting, and I’m not talking about the political party, is not sound parenting. Some things are not up for a vote or discussion. In no way am I advocating abuse or unreasonable behavior we all know everything can become extreme. Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Tonight I am fixing lasagna for dinner. I didn’t consult anyone, I am in charge of that area of our household and so I made a decision. Now, let’s say one of my kids gets upset and decides that tonight they don’t want to eat lasagna. That is totally fine with me. You don’t have to eat lasagna if you don’t want to but I am not making something else to eat. They can make a sandwich, eat leftovers whatever. There is no vote here. Many of you would say that is harsh but honestly, that is life. What do I teach when I coddle a whim and fix a different meal for each person? Yes, sometimes I will ask what everyone would like to eat but not often. I’ve been given a task and I do it well. I know what my family likes and what they don’t and I would never purposefully make something they didn’t like to eat. See it starts with these small, seemingly insignificant processes.
When a boss says that she needs something done and I don’t feel like doing it then if I’ve been trained in a democracy I will simply decide not to do it and let her know I don’t feel this is a task for me and require her to give me something else to do. If I do that often enough, I will get fired. If I get fired I will be the victim but only in my mind, because I was taught that people move for me, I don’t move for people. See no boundary was established and no sense of team playing was established because in a democracy when I don’t like something I not only vocally say so I also vote it out. Only that’s not real life is it?
We are doing a big disservice to our children by not teaching them that they have responsibilities that lie squarely on their shoulders and that one day they will have to rule their own life. My daughter Casey was recently invited to her boyfriend’s summer home with his family. She said that his mother complimented her on her upbringing. We might ask why this was a shock to his mother but I think we all know that manners are a much sought after commodity. She told Casey that she was a woman who was well-mannered and helpful and she didn’t see that very often these days. Casey had been nervous about going but her training served her well.
Casey laughed when I reminded her of all the times she was angry with me because I corrected her manners and made her clean up whether she “felt” like it or not. Casey used to say to me as a little girl, “I’m like Cinderella around here.” She was always a bit dramatic. She gave me a really hard time always questioning why she had to do things that her friends did not. Every single Saturday morning we got up early and did family chores. She hated it and voiced her complaints each time. We’d get all the chores done by noon and then spend the afternoon doing family things like swimming in the pool or going to the movies or shopping or whatever but we got our work out of the way first. It wasn’t up for a vote though. It was clearly established. Now years later she told me it was the best thing for her. She said it’s her best memory of family time and taught her about getting priorities out of the way, working together to get things done and then having your fun with nothing over your head.
Parents, don’t be afraid to set order. I am convinced without a shadow of a doubt that those who order their lives are happier than those who live their lives in chaos. Those who see a monarchy for what it is, a set order of relationship and responsibility do better than those who are continually striving to overthrow the government of a house by a vote.
Pastor Susan 