Category: God

Marriage Beliefs

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. Mignon McLaughlin

Marriage Beliefs

Where do our beliefs about marriage stem from? Most people haven’t thought about this. We might entertain the idea of getting married one day. Or we once we are married we think about what we want our marriage to be. The above quote shows what that person believes about marriage and where their marriage beliefs come from. If you want to know the core of what they believe about marriage just change the topics of conversation and listen to them talk.

Marriage Works

What We See

I remember I was on Youtube and a young artist,was being interviewed. The host did just what I described above. They steered the conversation towards marriage and asked this young man what he thought about marriage. His response is what caught my attention. He said that he didn’t believe in the idea of marriage. Not a huge shocker to hear that from someone today. Then he said he didn’t believe in it because he never saw a successful one. He said that there isn’t anyone around him that has stayed married and then if they are they’re not happy. He’s never seen one work. WOW! What a state to live in.

From listening to this young man talk you understand his beliefs about marriage. He doesn’t like it or care for it. His reason, the core of where this comes from for him; he’s never seen a successful one or one where people were happy.

Our beliefs about marriage come from that same place. What we think and believe about marriage come from   ideas that were formed when we’re children. So if our parents, aunts and uncles, friends parents argue, talk bad about their spouse or abuse their spouse, we will think that is what marriage is. Our beliefs are in part formed by what we see modeled in front of us.

I wanted to model something different than what my parents had. They were happy but the end was bad and they got divorced. I want and am building something that will last. I want to make sure that my children have a marriage modeled in front of them that is one of a happy, fulfilled and fun marriage.

What are we modeling and what are we seeing?

 

3 Ways to Prepare for Life Changes

We May Encounter Many Defeats But We Must Not Be Defeated.” – Maya Angelou

Welcome back to another school year!! My kids aren’t quite there yet, but if you spent anytime on Facebook recently you saw tons of back to school and first day of school pictures. How was your family prepared for the start of the school year? Is your family prepared for other life changes that may come?

Personal Experience

When my wife and I were looking into buying our home, we got a very important piece of advice. That advice was to look for a house that you can afford on one person’s income. Just in case, God forbid, that one person lose their job, you can still make the mortgage payments. We listened to that advice and a couple of years into living in our home, I was the one who lost my job. Because we listened and were prepared, my family didn’t lose our home.

How can we prepare for life changes? We don’t want to have “life happen” and then we’re scrambling trying to get resources together so that everything doesn’t fall apart.

How to Plan Ahead

  1. Practical Planning. This sounds boring, but it is probably the most important. We struggle with life changes because we’re not fully prepared for them. Dave Ramsey pushes having an emergency fund for this very reason. It will help you be prepared for the emergencies. Then they  no longer seem like emergencies to you.

Since the school year has started, this is a great time to plan out the year. If planning a year seems to daunting go by semester. What would make it a success? Is it a certain GPA? Getting volunteer opportunities. For younger children or it could be reading a certain number of books or focusing on an area to improve that was a struggle last year. Whatever the goal is, you want to prepare for this change and define what a successful school year would be.

      2. Overcome Obstacles. We know that the obstacles will come. How will you overcome them? Every new year we set new resolutions of habits, and life changes we want to make. Most people don’t see those changes last because when an obstacle comes up, the resolution gets dropped. Not because they didn’t want to change, but because they didn’t think about how they would overcome obstacles.

      3. Find an accountability group. Preparing for the unexpected life changes is one thing, it’s another to intentionally bring about a change. It’s great to have a goal of doing something. You won’t get it done by yourself though. You’re going to need an accountability partner or group. People that will push you when you don’t feel like getting up early or who will give you some encouragement when you’re feeling low. The people around you are just as important as the goal itself.

It’s the start of a new school year, are you prepared for the change? Are you prepared for life changes?

 

 

Are You Sabotaging Yourself?

Self sabotage. Most of us know a person that does this in a relationship. We may be that person. There we are in a new relationship and things are lovely, we’re enjoying spending time with the person and we love talking to them on the phone. Everything seems to be going great! Then we hit that invisible wall, and something goes wrong, they start to annoy us, then we’re angry at them for a reason that we really can’t explain and we kill the relationship before it ever has a chance to get off the ground.

Sabotaging a relationship hurts one person: The sabotager.

You could be missing out on some of the best relationships of your life, if you continue this type of behavior. So, here are three ways to know if you’re self sabotaging your relationships and how to stop.

  1. Keeping Score

You start to keep a mental scorecard of what you do and what the other does. How much money you spend versus how much they spend. In a good relationship there is no need to keep score. You know that they are just as invested as you are. Both people contribute as much as needed to make the relationship successful.

Keeping score only results in arguments later. Instead, realize and focus on your relationship being a partnership. A partnership where each person is 100 percent committed.

  1. Wrong Priorities

We’re all busy. We all have family, friends, work, and hobbies that seem to take up our time. If you’re always busy – like always busy – then that may be sign that you’re avoiding your relationship.

If you find yourself constantly avoiding relationship commitments, stop and take stock of whether you are truly busy or whether you might be engaging in some self-sabotage. If so, course correct and give your relationship the time it needs. Relationships need time. Invested time is what will allow the relationship to grow and flourish. That won’t happen if we avoid the relationship.

  1. Being Overly Critical

If you find fault in everything your partner does, you could just be looking to start fights for a way out.

It could be a pattern that you have. You are overly critical and no matter what your partner does, it is never good enough.  And then you get hurt and disappointed when they don’t take the initiative or they just tune out and shut down.

Instead of being critical, try appreciating the nice things your partner does. If you pay attention, you’ll likely find more opportunities to compliment than criticize.

Discussion Question

The most important thing in trying to avoid self sabotage, is to recognize it. We don’t want to have such an inflated view of ourselves that we can’t do anything wrong. If a relationship fails, there’s always enough blame to go around on both sides. Let’s do our part to recognize and overcome those things that try to trip us up. How do you protect yourself from self-sabotaging?