Did You Marry The “Right” Person?

I have done a lot of premarital with couples and weddings in the last few weeks, and it has got me thinking…

How do some couples think a person can be so “right” in one moment, only then to later think they are so “wrong?”

Do people really change that much, or conceal so well their true selves early on, eventually causing the other mate to question “who” or “why” they married?

Yes, perhaps so, but I don’t think it is as often as we too quickly accept. It might even only be true for a minority of couples.

Of course, there are exceptions, but only if you’ve recently discovered you married a serial killer or rapist, thief or criminal, abusive or cheating spouse, child molester and so on…you get the point.

But for many people who might be asking the “right” person question, it’s most likely not from any kind of extreme revelation like I’ve mentioned above. For a good majority, the question: did I marry the “right” person? may in fact, not even be the right or most helpful question to be asking after you’re married anyhow.

Perhaps we should ask this first: Is it possible the questioning may have more to do with the realization you both have somehow drifted apart, rather than about your mate being the “right” person?

I suspect and think this is true for many married couples. Secondly, if you are already married, the “right” question might actually now be more about you than it is about your spouse.

The real issue, first and foremost, may not be whether you married the right person; but rather ARE YOU BEING the right person? Just think, what would marriages, homes, and families be like if every married person took that seriously.

“It’s far more important to be the right kind of person than it is to marry the right person. In short, whether you married the right or wrong person is primarily up to you.” –Zig Ziglar

Have you honestly considered that how you’re treating your spouse can make all the difference? It could all come down to you and how committed you are to being the right kind of person.

For some, the strength of commitment in a marriage varies; it’s only as strong and deep as what they feel emotionally or physically toward the other at a given moment; ‘I felt you were the “right” person yesterday, but today I feel differently.’

Maybe a better way to understand commitment would be to compare it to bungee jumping. When you take that step off the platform, you are committed to follow through. The real reward of exhilaration is in the follow through after the jump.

Here’s an even better question to ask: Is commitment a direction to be pursued as long as it works, or is it a direction to be pursued until it works?

Your spouse being the “right” person might have everything to do with you being the “right” person—the person who follows through with what and with whom they committed to.

Enduring Love

Last Thursday, Debbie and I celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary. It was April 7th, 1990, that we said to each other, “I choose you!” –narrowing our choice down from billions of others on the planet to one.

We essentially made a decision to join our lives together that day. I believe God did something deeply sacred in that moment of which only he can (the joining), but we also made a decision to open our hearts to each other saying: “No one else gets me in this specific, holy, sacred, emotional, and physical way.”

This is where enduring love begins. It begins with a choosing and a decision! But it grows as we decide and choose love again and again.

Love is a Decision. Actually, it’s a series of decisions. And it works for as long as we continue to choose it.

Love is working on one level because God’s love and grace is at work in our lives individually. And, as a result, we’ve grown more in patience, truth, love and forgiveness, etc. But it’s also because Debbie and I understand love as a decision and not exclusively as a feeling or emotion.

You can’t “fall out” of love (or not be in-love anymore) if your understanding of it is that of a decision. You can only decide to love or not to love.

We’ve chosen to love each other every day. On occasion, the choice to love was difficult to make in light of our emotions or feelings. But with each day we’d choose to love, we’d die a little more to ourselves and came alive more and more to each other.

The decision to love actually grows and nurtures a more profound, enduring, and ever expanding love; running deeper and much further than what fleeting emotions and feelings of love alone can sustain.

Want an enduring love? Then never choose anything other than deciding to love–it never fails!

Oh, and there’s a magnificent bonus that comes with the decision to love, it makes the joy of loving even sweeter and more satisfying!

Gifts From Dad That Money Can’t Buy

It’s Christmas time again.

Gift-giving is in the air and we all breathe it in most deeply this time of year.

When it comes to Christmas gifts for my daughters, it’s really quite simple for me: Debbie handles it–they’re girls and their mother is much more in tune than I with what to purchase.

And I love watching our girls open their gifts; Debbie is a master of giving them the kinds of gifts which unleash the purest kind of joy out of them.

Every year I marvel at Debbie’s gift-giving precision, which I had nothing to do with, and every year I remind myself of my contribution, which is the monetary investment for Debbie to work her “magic.”

Nonetheless, I’ve been thinking a lot about the gifts I give our daughters as a father. And not just the ones that cost money and are given on Christmas or some other special day, but rather more about the gifts I’m giving them with my life every day.

Fatherhood Is A Gift.

Fatherhood in general is one of the most understudied of all human relationships. Yet, research has clearly indicated that fathers have strong influences on their children’s overall emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual development.

This just might be the best time of the year for us fathers to be reminded…

“The gifts we give our children every day, that might cost very little if anything at all financially, are the most valuable gifts we can give them overall.”

What gifts are you giving your children that money can’t buy?

Here’s a gifts list I’ve created for myself. It’s not exhaustive or in any order of importance, but I hope it will inspire other fathers to think about their own list.

Gifts From Dad That Money Can’t Buy.

• Love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.
• Love others as myself
• Love their mother
• Have a sense of humor
• Be a teacher more than a judge
• Be a guide more than a boss
• Be fully present when they need me
• Listen at least as much as I talk
• Don’t jump to conclusions
• Following Christ as the absolute best possible way to live
• Tell them the truth no matter what
• Be flexible
• Control anger
• Invest in them—by spending time with them
• Don’t be overly critical
• A warm embrace
• Be their biggest fan
• Create memorable moments
• Be quick to apologize when wrong
• Frequently tell them “I love YOU!”
• Seek the balance of justice and mercy
• When they need discipline, carefully instruct and correct without humiliating, defeating, or being relationally invasive.

The Art of Friendship

Just the other night Debbie and I sat with a newly married couple, specifically for the purpose of sharing how marriage has worked for us in 20 years of our own experience.

Honestly, I’m not a big believer in: “if you do it just like THIS,” then you’ll be in love forever. Everyone’s story and journey is unique with many different subtle nuances; there are thousands of different ways to have a healthy, joyful marriage relationship.

So, when trying to be helpful to other couples, we’re always looking for the most basic foundational building blocks that will translate for everyone.

If you’d ask me to answer in just one sentence: ‘what’s the single most important ingredient in Debbie and I’s marriage relationship?’ I’d answer without any hesitation, ‘We Are Best Friends!’

Unfortunately, in many ways, we have complicated healthy marriage relationships by overlooking some of the most surprisingly simple things like: BASIC FRIENDSHIP.

Actually, we’ve complicated many other relationships in our lives too [work & home], by losing our moorings in authentic friendship as the foundation of all healthy relationships. I really believe that our relationships in general have a great need to relearn and practice the art of friendship.

We desperately need to reintroduce the concept of basic friendship [much of what we learned in kindergarten] and recommit ourselves to applying it in all our relationships…

with children, parents, husbands, wives, co-workers, bosses, employees, family, and friends, etc.

What is ‘the art of friendship’ exactly? Not enough space here to express it adequately in bullet points, but check out the following links below for more:

Ten Steps To A Deeper Friendship With Your Spouse

Basic Rules Of Friendship

But honestly, don’t we just intrinsically know when we’re experiencing true friendship?

We know when were practicing it or when it’s being practiced on us properly, don’t we?

What could happen if we determined to learn and practice basic friendship principles more in all our relationships? I think good things; and certainly more healthy relationships.

Here’s some surprisingly simple ways Debbie and I practice friendship every day with our words…

” I love you!”

“I really appreciate you, because…”

“I’m so glad I married you” Or, “I’m so glad you’re a part of my life!”

“You’re so beautiful or handsome!”

“I love the person I see you becoming!”

” Thank You!”

“I’m Sorry!”

Love Is Not Efficient

Times are tough.  Buckle down.  Be efficient.  Do more with less.

Yeah, we’re all hearing a lot of that these days. But before we all become super-efficient pieces of a super-efficient machine let’s take a moment for pause.

There is a downside of efficiency in our culture.

While we benefit from the technology and culture of efficiency in many ways, there are certain parts of our lives where more efficiency will not benefit us. In our pursuit of efficiency we talk of “saving” time and “making” time but still everyone seems to not have enough of it–especially when it comes to cultivating more healthy relationships.

Love is not efficient!

You can’t do more with less of it.

You can’t short-cut it to maximize it.

“The human heart does not need a more efficient technology or culture to grow; it needs ‘INEFFICIENT’ LOVE.”

Some examples of how you might love with an “inefficient” love:

• Waste lots of time just loving those you love–without regard for time or productivity.
• Gives someone more love than you think they might deserve–overspend it on them.
• Hangout with the people you love with no intended purpose but just being together.
• Love gratuitously, and with a love that doesn’t ask for anything in return.

Instead of loving at the ‘lowest possible wattage,’ make a ridiculous sacrifice and love extravagantly.

My Dad’s Been Gone 32 Years

32 years ago today my dad lost a battle with cancer at age 34–I was 12.

I’ll never forget the morning my mother sat us down to tell us he had passed, it was the single most painful day of my life to date.

But that traumatic event has largely shaped who I am today in some very positive ways.

Here are a few that come to mind today as I reflect back:

• I learned that life is too short to take any day or any person or any thing for granted. All of life is a gift and should be received with much gratitude [the joyful and the disappointing parts too]. When I’m grateful, I’m most fully alive!

• Being the oldest of four [two younger brothers and a sister], I learned quickly and instinctively to love, lead, and care for others in crisis moments even though I too was wounded myself. I think I became in that moment what Henri Nouwen calls a “wounded healer.” That ended up being a good incubator for a pastoral calling that was emerging out of my life.

• I learned that “faith in God” means abandoning outcomes that do not turnout the way I’d hope and yet still trusting God anyway. We all put faith in something. I can have faith in God or desired outcomes…but they are not the same!

• I experienced the self-sacrificial love of a mother that embodied the very nature of Christ so her children would know and experience Christ’s presence daily despite the overwhelming sense of loss.

• I learned that although I no longer had an earthly father, I was not fatherless.

God is a capable “father to the fatherless” ps 68:5. God’s words are true and he never leaves us alone!

I’ve grown to understand and trust that no matter how dark the darkness, devastating the loss, or deep the despair, God is never distant but always near.

Three Thoughts and Prayers for Someone:

If you’ve lost a father or have been abandoned by one, know that God’s near and can heal you.

If you’re a father, and not acting like one, pray for God’s help and know things can change.

If you’re a wonderful father to your own children, please pray for opportunities to reflect the heart and love of God to those who are fatherless and who need to know they’re not alone.

Needing Some Father’s Love?

Play this video clip and I pray God’s Spirit will visit you and you’ll know He’s near!

Life-Expanding Gratitude

Gratitude for people is a wonderful thing that opens up our hearts to so much more of life.

For me, when I think about the wonderful ladies God has blessed me with to love, care, and provide for, it moves me to a much larger perspective of living than I could ever see or experience without them.

Being grateful for “stuff” is certainly better than taking it for granted, but there is no real essence of life in “things” to give back to us anything other than the use of them. Conversely, living in constant gratitude for the people God’s places in our lives, now that’s Life-Giving!

So, love more deeply and allow gratitude to flow for ALL the people placed in your life. And, experience more meaningful and expansive living that opens you up to all kinds of new and exciting adventures.

Work and Leisure Time

In a study on how we use time, Dr. Matthew Sleeth has discovered that in the last twenty years, the amount of time we spend working has increased by 15% and our leisure time has gone down by 33%. 

With all of the timesaving devices we use today, shouldn’t we be better off to goof off more? To put it in perspective, during the middle ages, people–in addition to Sundays–had 115 days off a year. and you???

Extraordinary Kind Of Love

Debbie and I are celebrating 18 years of marriage today, and we’ve agreed to “go” another year with the hopes it can still get even better! ) I often think–in a culture where ‘breaking marriage’ is way too common–why has it seemed to work so well for us? I’m really not sure there is a definite answer, but here is what I believe to be true for us:

Friendship is a major component to real enduring love! Sometimes it’s less glamorous, or even less passionate, but it’s deeper and kind of wiser. At the heart of our relationship is a great friendship.

Unfortunately, much of our culture only knows the erotic piece of love, yet it’s only one part of a larger whole. But when the erotic is joined together with commitment and friendship, it becomes a much higher, bigger, complete, extraordinary kind of love that you just can’t let go of!