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.