Transformational Marriages

My wife, Kelly, and I will celebrate our 27th Wedding Anniversary on August 27th.  There are couples who have been married a lot longer than we.  Many couples we know have not been married as long but are working hard towards it.  Other couples ended their relationships long ago for various reasons.  All of us will testify to the fact that marriage relationships are hard work, especially good ones.

It seems that God has a sense of humor. When he instituted the idea of marriage between a husband and wife, he could not have picked a more odd way to bring people together in such close, intimate proximity to one another.  Never mind all the issues surrounding the differences between the sexes in how the think, process reality, respond emotionally, communicate, and build relationships.  There are also all the various personality differences to deal with too: introvert versus extrovert; saver versus spender; externalizer versus internalizer; task oriented versus people oriented; verbal versus non-verbal; emotive versus non-emotive; and this list goes on.

What was God thinking? Of course, dumb and numb with overwhelming passions and longings, most couples don’t even consider these issues until it is too late.  This should be reason enough for seeking good premarital counseling before marriage.  Even then, attempting to get two hormonal driven humans to stop and consider reality from an objective point of view is quite the challenge to any premarital counselor.  After all, the couple is thinking, “Our love will conquer all.”  They are too inexperienced to recognize the fallacy of that Disney storyline.

So, hurrying through the preparations for the “big” day, often the real issues of what makes marriage relationships successful are left for a later date. It is a guarantee that, ready or not, that day will come.  And most unprepared couples are left stewing in separate rooms asking themselves, “What now?”  It is then that they realize that it will take more than loving feelings and passions to get through the rocky places of their relationship.

It seems to be part of God’s great plan for marriage to use it as a way to transform individuals. He takes two – or perhaps more correctly, we take two – highly selfish individuals and throws them into the confines of a relationship where they must beat the selfishness out of each other.  Anyway, that is the way it seems to happen.  Then, just about the time that they think they are unselfish and more loving, along comes someone who is the epitome of selfishness – a baby, who then becomes a toddler, who becomes a child, then a pre-teen, and then finally a teen-ager.  Each stage of growth only seems to be intended to increase the self-focused nature of the child to scrape any last remaining scraps of selfishness out of the parent.

White House, Washington D.C., Spring 2010 ©Weatherstone/Ron Almberg, Jr. (2010)

Perhaps this is one of the only ways God realizes that our sinful and selfish natures can adequately be dealt with – in the context of intimate relationships. It is not the stranger or mere acquaintance that drives me nuts.  It’s my family.  How many children have declared, “I’m not a part of this weird family!”?  Or, wished that they had been born of different parentage?  Alas, it is too true – you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.

So it is also in the marriage relationship – the most intimate of all human relationships. The very one that we often are passionate about and with – yes, that very same one – becomes the very one that drives us mad with frustration and anger.  How many couples have looked at each to realize, “We are not on the same ‘page’ are we?”  It is not unusual for couples at some point in their relationship to wake up some morning, look across the bed at the person sleeping beside them and think, “I really do not like him/her right now.”  All of these are the attempts of our selfish nature to exert itself over us and our relationships.  The only way to defeat it is to allow the relationship’s challenges to transform us.

Marriages that transform individuals and couples help them discover that the “we” is more important than the “me.” They realize that the strong emotions that conflict brings does not mark the end of the world or the end of their relationship.  They know that time and determination are on their side.  They embrace the fact that they cannot change their partner but can only change themselves.  They act so that their feelings will follow because their commitments cannot be determined by ever-changing emotions.  They choose to see the potential in their partner.  They remember what character traits attracted them to their partner in the first place, even though those same traits may today be driving them to distraction.  They recognize that their relationship problems cannot be blamed on either party but that they are common problems that each must work on separately and together.  They grow comfortable with the fact that every relationship will experience times of drifting and times of intimacy, that there are different seasons for each stage of life, and that how their relationship began will not be how it appears in the end.

In short, not only will the relationship be transformed over time, but each partner within it will also be changed for the better if they are willing to allow their personal transformation to take place. It is when one or both of the partners in a relationship determine to hold on to their selfishness that unclimbable walls and mountains are created.  This is often when we hear, “I’m just not happy anymore.”  Or, “we are so incompatible with each other.”  A relationship that was designed to do away with all selfishness only becomes the cause for greater selfishness in these individuals.  This usually results in the most selfish of acts: relational suicide.  This brings about the self-destructive acts that become self-fulfilling prophecy that affirms the relationship was doomed from the start.

Want to change your life? Go ahead; get married.  It will surely transform you.  You certainly won’t remain the same over the years.  Further, add children to the mix and it is a sure-fire way to get rid of the last vestiges of selfishness.  Are you single and think, “Ha!  I don’t have to mess with any of that anyway.”  Yes you do.  You have family that will do that for you unless you safely remove yourself to some distant land.  And even then, you have close friends, unless you become a monk or nun of some order that disallows communication.  It seems that God intended all along for our closest relationships to transform us by beating the living selfishness right out of us.

©Weatherstone/Ron Almberg, Jr. (2010)

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The Difference Between Men and Women

Let’s say a guy named Fred is attracted to a woman named Martha.

He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time.

A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Martha and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: “Do you realize that, as of tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

And then, there is silence in the car.

To Martha, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he’s been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I’m trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn’t want, or isn’t sure of.

And Fred is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Martha is thinking: But, hey, I’m not so sure I want this kind of relationship either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I’d have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily towards… I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Fred is thinking: …so that means it was…let’s see…February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer’s, which means…lemme check the odometer…Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Martha is thinking: He’s upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I’m reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed – even before I sensed it – that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that’s it. That’s why he’s so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He’s afraid of being rejected.

And Fred is thinking: And I’m gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don’t care what those morons say, it’s still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It’s 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600!

And Martha is thinking: He’s angry. And I don’t blame him. I’d be angry, too. I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can’t help the way I feel. I’m just not sure.

And Fred is thinking: They’ll probably say it’s only a 90-day warranty…Scumballs!

And Martha is thinking: Maybe I’m just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I’m sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Fred is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I’ll give them a warranty. I’ll take their warranty and stick it right up their…

“Fred,” Martha says aloud.

“What?” says Fred, startled.

“Please don’t torture yourself like this,” she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. “Maybe I should never have…oh dear, I feel so…” (She breaks down, sobbing.)

“What?” says Fred.

“I’m such a fool,” Martha sobs. “I mean, I know there’s no knight. I really know that. It’s silly. There’s no knight, and there’s no horse.”

“There’s no horse?” says Fred.

“You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” Martha says.

“No!” says Fred, glad to finally know the correct answer.

“It’s just that…it’s that I…I need some time.” Martha says.

(There is a 15-second pause while Fred, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)

“Yes.” he says. (Martha, deeply moved, touches his hand.)

“Oh, Fred, do you really feel that way?” she says.

“What way?” says Fred.

“That way about time,” says Martha.

“Oh,” says Fred. “Yes.”

(Martha turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks…)

“Thank you, Fred,” she says.

“Thank you,” says Fred.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Fred gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a college basketball game between two South Dakota junior colleges that he has never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures it’s better if he doesn’t think about it.

The next day Martha will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification. They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it either.

Meanwhile, Fred, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Martha’s, will pause just before serving, frown, and say: “Say, Norm, did Martha ever own a horse?”

And that, my friends, is the difference between men and women.

[author unknown]

Our Aim - Your Aim

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Relationship Rules

1. The female makes the rules.

2. The rules are subject to change by the female at any time without prior notification.

3. No male can possibly know all the rules. Attempts to document the rules are not permitted.

4. If the female suspects that the male may know some or all of the rules, she must immediately change some or all of the rules.

5. The female is never wrong.

6. If the female is wrong, it is because of an egregious misunderstanding which was the direct result of something the male did, said, did not do, or did not say.

7. If rule 6 is invoked, the male must apologize immediately for having been the cause of the misunderstanding without any clues from the female as to what he did to have caused the misunderstanding. See rule 13.

8. The female may change her mind at any time for any reason or no reason at all.

9. The male is never permitted to change his mind or under circumstances without the express written consent of the female which is given only in cases where the female wanted him to change his mind but gave no indication of that wish. See rules 6, 7, 12, and 13.

10. The female has the right to be angry or upset for any reason, real or imagined, at any time and under any circumstance which in her sole judgment she deems appropriate. The male is not to be given any sign of the root cause of the female’s being angry or upset. The female may, however, give false or misleading reasons to see if the male is paying attention. See rule 13.

11. The male must remain calm at all times, unless the female wants him to be angry or upset.

12. Under no circumstances may the female give the male any clue or indication whether or why she wants him to be angry or upset.

13. The male is expected to read the mind of the female at all times. Failure to do so will result in punishments and penalties imposed at the sole discretion of the female.

14. The female may, at any time and for any reason, resurrect any past incident without regard to temporal or spacial distance, and modify, enlarge, embellish, of wholly reconstruct it in order to demonstrate to the male that he is now or has in the past been wrong, insensitive, pig-headed, dense, deceitful, and/or oafish.

15. The female may use her interpretation of any past occurrence to illustrate the ways in which the male has failed to accord her the consideration, respect, devotion, or material possessions, he has bestowed on other females, domestic pets, sports teams, automobiles, motorcycles, boats, aircraft, or co-workers. Such illustrations are non-rebuttable.

[author unknown]

Don't Throw Cigs on Floor

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Marriage and Family: The Selfishness Eliminator

Following Biblical principles and precepts over our own feelings is a much needed message in our world today. This is especially true in marriage relationships.  A recent post by a friend, Cindy Holman, got me thinking about this whole issue.  I have witnessed too many couples break up because one or both “just want to be happy,” regardless of the instructions and commands of Scripture.  I often thought that this is what Jesus had in mind when he wondered aloud, “When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).

When I mentored young couples preparing for the own marriages, I always emphasized the apostle Paul’s instructions to husbands and wives in Ephesians 5 to them. I required nine sessions before I performed the wedding ceremony of a couple. The content of these sessions grew mostly out of the things I wish someone had discussed with me about before I got married! A big part it was starting with a theology of marriage and the marriage covenant.

A Christian’s marriage and the Christian marriage ceremony is more than just a pretty party put on by the bride and groom and their families (mostly the bride’s).  It is the act of making a covenant before and with God.  God is not just a spectator but a participator in the act of the covenant ceremony.  He is not simply another witness of a ceremony between two people.  He is an third agent in the covenant made before the human witnesses in the room.

Breaking up a marriage is more than just a dissolution of a contract.  It is the violation of a covenant persons have made with God.  Yet, how many couples break their covenant with only consideration of their own personal interests and not the interests of God in the relationship?  Marriage is treated more as a contract between two people than it is a tri-part covenant between the each of the individuals and God.  Thus, God enters into and has an active part and interest in the outcome of the covenant relationship.

Because every couple is unique and their relationship is unique, I don’t believe that there is a “cookie cutter” approach to healthy marriages. What works for one couple and their family may not work for another.  Every human relationship has a certain amount of dysfunction in it by fact that spiritually fallen human beings are involved.  I think every married couple has looked upon the relationship of another married couple with a certain amount of amazement at their ability to “make it work.”  This is why God’s covenantal involvement is so important.

Viewing the marriage as a covenant before and with God as a couple helps to solemnize and solidify the relationship, I think. Also, discovering how each individual in the relationship, and so each relationship, is unique is also important.  The uniqueness each person brings to the covenant will shape that relationship and make it a unique one.  This is not a bad thing.  I rather think it is a good thing and reflects the incredible creativity and diversity of God’s work in humanity.

For instance, my wife, Kelly, and I could not be more different as persons. It was soon after leaving college that we realized that the only thing we had in common was college!  This, of course, has led to an interesting journey together. Right now, what we have in common is our children!  Surely God has a sense of humor.  We often look at each other and ask ourselves, “How in the world did we ever get together?”

I like jazz and rock-n-roll. She likes classical and opera. I like comedy – admittedly sometimes twisted and weird. She likes the more serious and straightforward approach to life. I see a lot of grey in the world. She sees it as pretty much black and white. I like the rugged outdoors and to backpack and hike. She likes camping but prefers the convenience of a bathroom and shower. I like to be actively involved in sports. She does not care for rugged physical activities for the most part. I like reading histories and biographies.  She likes reading mysteries.  I like American history.  She likes European history.  I like modern art and decor. She likes early American and antique styles. My relationship with God has always been very personal yet dynamic. Her relationship with God has always been highly communal yet distant. I like discovering and playing with new technology.  She likes the stability of things remaining the same and struggles getting around the computer and internet.  Well, you get the picture. And, yet, we’ve worked hard on our relationship, through it’s ups and downs, getting off the “same page” and then back on the “same page,” through “thick and thin.” I am certain that we are not the only couple like this. Nevertheless, this year will be 27 for us in August.

Purple Starfish, June 2003 ©Weatherstone/Ron Almberg, Jr. (2010)

Many couples like to promote a particular practice as THE  key to THE success of a lasting healthy relationship.  I am not certain there is one outside of a vibrant personal relationship with God that each person in the relationship must have for himself and herself.  For instance, I am not certain that “doing devotions together” is necessarily the magic bullet to a healthy marriage relationship. I am certain it can’t but help! Nevertheless, too many couples find themselves on different spiritual paths. Their approach to God and Scripture is too different to be able to come together reasonably.  The promotion of this idea as the ideal only ensures that couples who do not do this or are unable to do this are made to feel guilty and condemned.  It misses the point all together.

Having a vibrant personal relationship with God that is daily plugged into the Word and His Spirit is what is important. Kelly and I have devotions and private times but have rarely done them together. We have many interesting discussions. We will at times share and pray together. We often pray together as a family or lead our kids in prayer for specific family needs and concerns. One of our family practices is to include praying for missionaries when we prayer a prayer of thanksgiving before our meals.

It would be nice if we could share this together.  However, my approach to “daily devotions” is so much different than Kelly’s and vice versa. How we think spiritually, how we relate to God and His Word, how we process with another person present, and what is meaningful to each of us is so different that we found we get more out of our time separately than together!  Our attempts only led to feeling guilty, condemned and useless because we were trying to meet someone’s expectations of what we were supposed to be doing.

Someone once said that marriage is God’s way of beating the selfishness out of us. He puts two selfish people together and watches them beat it out of each other. Then he gives them kids! Marriage and family is a humbling endeavor to say the least. Yet, it is an important part of shaping us even into our adulthood. If we invite God into the process and humble ourselves before Him, our spouse and our children, He will use that very process to form in us his nature and character. That, afterall, is His ultimate goal.

©Weatherstone/Ron Almberg, Jr (2010)

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