Catching Foxes- Family and Marriage

Genesis 2:24: "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh."

 

Although I loved my Dad greatly, growing up I was always closer to my Mom. Even in my late teens and early twenties, I remember thinking that when I got married no woman was going to stop me from helping my Mom whenever she needed me. No way, no how! Period!!! If the truth be known, it was my moving out to Arkansas to care for my Mom after she had surgery that lead to me meeting Karen.

After dating Karen for several months, I learned that Karen's parents were really great people and my Mom really enjoyed Karen's company. We hit it off oh so well.

Then we got married...

And we all continued to hit it off oh so well. Karen and I made a conscious decision that we would allow our parents to offer advice and give us pointers, but ultimately we would make decisions together. I am happy to report that in 19 years of marriage we have not been able to reach an agreement only once, which worked out in the end to both our satisfaction. We have been blessed in this area.

Very early in our relationship, I learned that I did not have to fear Karen not allowing me to help my Mom because Karen was more nurturing towards her than I was. I feel blessed to have a wife who cares about my Mom's welfare so much. When Karen and I had to move away from our home for me to begin my Government career, it was Karen's idea to move my Mom into our  completely paid off home in Oklahoma so she wouldn't have to pay rent any longer. Karen continues to show as much, if not more, love to my Mom as I do.

During our entire marriage, Karen's parents (and now just Dad) have been really good to us. They provided us with working automobiles when we needed them and they loaned us the down payment for our first home. They never asked for anything in return and we truly would have struggled more without their help. We really have had good in-law relationships and I know we are very, very, very blessed! Over the years, we have both lost one of our parents. My Dad passed away in 2007 and Karen's Mom passed away in 2010. Both are greatly missed.

Unfortunately, there are those married couples who have not had similar positive experiences.  One or both spouses allow their parents to be so involved in their lives that it interferes with their marriage. Well meaning parents go beyond offering advice to actually making decisions for their grown and married children. Some of those decisions even become enabling decisions: ones which enable their grown child to do something that violates the sanctity of the marriage. This depth of involvement on the parents' part inhibits their child from becoming so completely united with their spouse that they won't function as God intended as "one flesh."

When we had been married nearly two years Jonathan was born and Justin and I became parents. Almost exactly two years after that, Jeremiah joined the family. Justin took being a dad very seriously and was actively engaged in parenting both boys from the beginning. In fact, he took a week off work when Jonathan was born and assumed responsibility for as much of his care as possible. I didn’t change a single diaper until Jonathan was at least a week old and he was around two months old before I gave him a bath. I had a C-section with Jeremiah which added another dimension to my recovery. Once again Justin was right there taking a very active role in helping me care for newborn Jeremiah and two year old Jonathan.

Psalm 127:3 says, “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from Him.” Our children are blessings, but they can also add stress to a relationship at times. They have a unique ability to both unite and divide a couple, depending on the situation and how it is handled. Here are two examples.

Babies and small children require a lot of time and energy, often leaving a young mother exhausted, especially if she has more than one little one to care for. Because of this, a husband can sometimes feel he has been “replaced” in his wife’s affections. If not dealt with, this can cause conflict between them. Justin’s involvement in the care of our boys from the time they were born helped us avoid a lot of potential problems. When he was home, we took care of their needs together, and we made sure Justin had plenty of one on one time with each of them. Even now that the boys are teenagers, we continue the same approach to our parenting. This has made it easier for us to find time for each other and has helped give both of us the assurance of our place on each other’s priority lists.

In our marriage, the area of parenting most likely to cause a disagreement between Justin and me is discipline. We agree on all of the major issues of discipline, and on the rules and standards we expect our boys to live by. The disconnect sometimes occurs in how our individual personalities tend to want to handle disciplinary issues. We agreed when the boys were very small that we would not settle those issues in front of them, but to work it out privately and then implement what we had decided on together. Thankfully, we have had very few situations where this has been necessary, but it has proven to be a good plan on those rare occasions. And we have found that handling disagreements about discipline, or any other parenting issue, in this way helps strengthen the unity in our marriage.

One of the most important things a couple can do for their kids is to love each other deeply and work diligently to keep their own relationship strong. We as parents are the primary examples of marriage our children will be exposed to. We have the responsibility to provide a godly model for them to follow. Justin and I are definitely not perfect parents. We have made mistakes and will continue to do so occasionally. After all, each new stage of the parenting process offers new things to learn and new challenges to meet. But we have learned that if we choose to live according to Genesis 2:24 and function as “one flesh,” we will be much more successful as parents and our children will not divide us but will truly be the blessings God intended them to be.

Catching Foxes-Hobbies and Marriage

By some peoples' standards, Karen and my first date may have been almost anticlimactic. Our first date was on Sunday June 19th, 1994. We went out for lunch at a Western Sizzlin Restaurant, went to watch the "Flintstones" movie at the theater, went to a local park for a walk and then to my brother's house for a short visit. We finished out the day by going to the evening service at our Church. We had a ball!

 
I sometimes have to scratch my head when I hear some married person say, "My spouse and I just don't have any common interests." I have to wonder how those individuals got together in the first place. On our very first date, Karen and I discovered that we shared a similar interest in going for fun leisurely strolls. To this day, Karen and I enjoy walking through the woods out behind our house or traveling to Jasper to the Riverwalk. There is something magical about walking together, hand in hand, and just enjoying each others' company.

 Hobbies and interests are areas in a lot of couples' relationships that tend to draw them apart instead of strengthening their marriage bonds.  Couples thrive when they share similar interests. That doesn’t necessarily mean each partner will enjoy every activity, but it opens up the opportunity for greater sharing and compromise.  Sometimes that sharing is going to be an act of selfless giving. I say that because one spouse may really dislike doing what the other spouse enjoys, but makes a conscious decision to put their spouse’s desires above their own. I also say that there is opportunity for greater compromise because the spouse who enjoys doing something that their spouse dislikes can choose to alter their activities in some way to maybe make them more enjoyable for their spouse. Let me offer up a example. When Karen and I first got married, Karen did not like to fish. It wasn't her thing. I loved to fish but I didn't want to go fishing by myself. Karen decided to support my fishing desire by going with me, but instead of fishing she took her cross-stitch or crocheting with her. Since Karen loves to cross-stitch, crochet and sew, over the years I have learned to do all three so we could spend time together doing what she enjoys. It truly is about sharing and compromise.

Time together as a couple has to be guarded and kept as a high priority in order to keep the relationship strong and growing. When couples are dating and newly married, spending time together is a top priority. But as time passes, and responsibilities increase, that priority is often allowed to slip further and further down the list of importance. In some cases, it may even get abandoned completely. Justin and I have found that it is sometimes necessary to find creative ways to spend time together. It takes not only sharing and compromise, but intentionality as well. In our desire to make the most of the time available to us, we have learned that we enjoy a lot of the same activities, such as the walks Justin mentioned earlier. We also both like to camp, garden and just work outside in general. These have become “our” hobbies and we do them together.
 
As Justin said, when we were first married, I took my cross-stitch or crochet projects along and went fishing with him. Over the years, though, I laid down my needles and picked up a fishing pole. I developed an interest in fishing and now enjoy it probably as much as he does. And during hunting season, I will go sit out in the woods with him. Not only did I gain an enjoyment for fishing and hunting, I learned that these things can be fun simply because I do them with Justin. Now I still crochet and cross-stitch, but I’m more likely to do them when we are watching a movie or traveling and I need something to keep my hands busy.
 
Of course, this doesn’t mean we never have any time to ourselves. There are times when each of us will have a few hours to spend alone. One example is opening day of firearms season. Justin likes to go out by himself on that day. That is his time. On the occasions when he takes the boys on a father/son outing, I get my time. There is nothing wrong with couples having hobbies they enjoy doing alone. However, it becomes an issue if those hobbies start to cause division in the relationship. Then it is time to re-evaluate.
 
For me, one of the best things about Justin and me spending “hobby” time together is the company. We have grown closer in the process of exploring different activities and finding out which ones are a good fit for our relationship. Even when we encounter something one of us enjoys more than the other one does, our relationship is strengthened by both of us participating in that activity together, because it is an investment in our marriage and in each other. Both spouses win when each puts the others needs and desires above their own. Marriage is the most important and most intimate human relationship a person can ever experience. I can’t think of any better place to find a best friend than within that relationship. No matter how many other friends I have, or how close those friendships become, my very best friend is and always will be the man God has given me the blessing of spending my life with.

 

Catching Foxes-Careers and Marriage

 

Would you allow your career/job interfere with your marriage?

"Then Jesus called the crowd, along with his disciples, and said to them, "If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and for the gospel will save it. For what benefit is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his life? What can a person give in exchange for his life?" Mark 8:34-37

Ok, I can already hear somebody saying, “What does this have to do with marriage Justin?” Actually it has quite a lot to do with marriage when you stop and think about what Jesus was saying. Jesus was teaching about the principle of exchange in these passages. You give up something to get something. The same principles work in our lives every day. How many of us have taught our children to put a portion of the money they receive into their savings. The first dollar that my children put away in their savings didn’t instantly put them in a position of long term financial freedom, but over time they are learning the principle of saving money which can lead to financial freedom.

Studies show that 80% of households in the United States now are dual income households. Both spouses work to support the standard of living that is required or desired. I am extremely grateful that the Lord has blessed our finances in such a way that Karen does not have to work outside the household. I will add though that to do so takes a certain amount of discipline because we do have to budget our finances and live within the established means. As the only income earner, I have a responsibility to provide adequately for my family to the best of my ability and that is what I strive to do. When you apply the principle of exchange to your career, you realize that in order for you to have the finances to support your family’s standard of living you have to give up some of the time you could be sharing with them. A few years ago I found myself traveling all over the United States for my employer, literally from the West Coast to almost the East coast and I lost a lot of time with my family. As the project I was working on launched and matured, I was able to travel less and now I am able to be home with my family every night. For that I am truly grateful.
 
For a lot of couples, it is truly a challenge for them to balance their careers/jobs and marriages because they have to work a lot of extra hours/days just to generate enough income to survive. For them it seems like a no-win situation where they have to exchange the valuable time they should be spending with their spouses for the income they receive for spending time at work. Karen and I have experienced these exact same issues in our marriage and we learned this one practical truth; healthy couples do not find the time to be together, they make time to be together. You may have convinced yourself that you simply don’t have enough time to schedule each other into your day, but that’s not accurate. You have the time to do whatever you want to do.
 
Making time to be together can be a challenge, especially for those couples whose work schedules may conflict with each other, but it isn’t impossible. However, it does take creativity and the willingness to think outside the box. Justin and I have learned to make the most out of the hours and days we have available to us. We work on projects together, run errands together and do housework together. All of these things have to be done anyway and doing them as a team gives us valuable time to interact and connect. It also makes the “chores” more enjoyable.
 
An important thing to keep in mind is that spending time together is about connecting-physically and emotionally. There are times when it may not be possible to be together physically, but the emotional connection can still be nurtured and kept strong. With the technology available to us today there is very little reason not to interact on a regular basis. When Justin is at work, he and I make contact with each other almost every day either by phone or email or the occasional text message. When Justin was doing a lot of traveling for his job, he called to talk to me and the boys at least once a day. Most days he would call two or even three times. There is also the fun of an “old-fashioned” hand written note hidden in a lunch, in the car, or in a suitcase for someone who is going on a trip. Keeping connected and finding creative ways to spend the available time together does take work and planning, but it is definitely worth the effort and can be a lot of fun as well.
 
Another thing we have found about balancing Justin’s career/job and our marriage relationship is that eventually things will change. Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven.” Every life and every marriage has different seasons. Sometimes one spouse will have a job with challenges that threaten to interfere with the marriage relationship. Those challenges are for a season. They will not last forever. When the boys were very small, Justin spent a couple of years working full time at night and going to school full time during the day. We didn’t see a lot of each other during that time, but it was a season that we were determined to get through. Since then we have seen several different seasons in regards to Justin’s career. Each one has offered the opportunity for our marriage to be damaged or to be strengthened by the experience. We have survived each season and our relationship has flourished in the middle of everything we have faced.
 
I am glad Karen brought the discussion around to "seasons" because we have experienced a lot of those in our marriage. There were times when those seasons seemed to have lasted forever but in the big scheme of things they were not really that long. I guess what made those seasons much easier to handle for both of us was the attitudes we adopted while we were in the middle of those seasons. Karen has been extremely supportive of our career and those gyrations that we have had to go through to make us more effective and promotable. If either of us had adopted the attitude of "what is best for me", then it would have been so much more difficult. My career really isn't my career, it is our career. You see, when God put us together as a couple, we became one and because we are one, we have only one career. We both play our parts in our career and we work together as a team.

Catching Foxes- Friends and Marriage

Song of Solomon 2:15, "Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom."

 

Marriage is sacred. It was created and instituted by God himself. He placed His blessings upon it and declared it good. Most couples are on guard for obvious threats to their marriage, so Satan will seek more subtle means to break down the relationship. Over the course of the next several posts, we will explore some of those "little foxes" that sometimes negatively affect our marriages. The first question we want to address is, "Would you allow a friendship to interfere with your marriage?"

Most people wouldn’t deliberately go out and make friends with people who would come between them and their spouse. It usually starts out innocently enough; they meet somebody who shares like interests and they want to spend time with them. Most all of us experience two types of friendships, those with the opposite gender and those with the same gender.

As a person who works with more women than men, I tend to form stronger opposite-gender bonds than same gender bonds mainly because of the dynamics at work. Because of this, I am acutely aware and careful in what I say and actions that I take any time I interact with persons of the opposite gender. This is because I wouldn’t want to do anything that could be misconstrued as infidelity. When I speak of infidelity, I speak of emotional and physical infidelity.

My love and respect for Karen is so strong that I am extremely purposeful in protecting the confidential and intimate issues that we share. As my closest friend, I would be guilty of emotional infidelity if I shared ANY details with my friends of those thoughts, concerns, hopes, fears, passions or problems that Karen as my soul mate shares with me. It is this trust that builds an emotional bond between the two of us which is much stronger than the physical one. Yes, I said the emotional bond is stronger than the physical one. Why? God puts within us a desire to become one with another human being. The Bible tells us in Genesis that he (God) saw that it was not good for man (mankind) to be alone so he created the opposite-gender. In Genesis 2:24 it states, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” In addition, there is no doubt that in normal healthy relationships, we form emotional bonds with our parents and children that are stronger than any physical bond.

The sharing of too personal of information is what I see as one of the biggest problems with people that I interact with. When they become comfortable with those around them, whether the same or opposite gender, they start talking about stuff that they shouldn’t. In the case of opposite gender friendships, this could send the wrong message that there is something lacking in the relationship and that there is a need that needs to be filled.  This can lead to emotional infidelity because an illusionary bond of mutual understanding/compassion forms that strengthens and deepens emotional intimacy. Basically, opposite gender friends become so close that they cross from casual relationships into obsessive ones. They find they can’t wait to talk to that other person and they think about them all the time with excitement and anticipation.

Why is it important to understand how emotional infidelity brings division into a marriage relationship? As Justin mentioned above, when a man and a woman get married they become one flesh. This oneness gives married couples (especially Christian couples) a power Satan hates and will make every effort to weaken and destroy.  Too close of an opposite gender friendship can be just the tool he needs to accomplish this.

How do we prevent this from happening? Proverbs 4:23 says, "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." (NIV) We have the responsibility to pay attention to what we are doing and what we are allowing into our thoughts and hearts. To do this properly we need to listen for the Holy Spirit's voice and be obedient to His leading. We also need to be sensitive to the feelings of our spouse. Often a husband or a wife will be alert to relationships that pose potential threats to the marriage long before the spouse who is in that relationship realizes there is something wrong. Keep the lines of communication and accountability open between you and give careful consideration to how your spouse feels. No one, husband or wife, should ever be allowed or made to feel threatened by a relationship outside the marriage.

Justin and I hold ourselves accountable to each other for the opposite gender friendships each of us has. For example. Justin and I have a mutual close, male friend with whom I interact on a semi-regular basis.  By my own choice, I make myself accountable to Justin for my interactions with him. I always let Justin know if I have a conversation with this friend. This serves two purposes. It builds trust because Justin knows I'm not going to hide anything from him. It also gives me a point of reference. If I should ever find myself willing to conveniently "forget," or deliberately choose not to tell Justin about my interactions with this friend, it will be time to take a hard look at the friendship and my reasons for being secretive.

This concept holds true, not only for this friendship, but for all of my other opposite gender relationships as well. Why have I chosen to conduct myself in this way? Because I'm guarding my heart, and my marriage. This friend has never been a threat to my relationship with Justin, and I intend to keep it that way. Justin is my best friend and the love of my life. I have no desire to hurt him in any way. So in order to protect my marriage, I would not hesitate to distance myself from ANY friendship that may cause him to feel like he is competing for my affection.