He Is Able.
Christ isn’t asking us to believe in our ability to exercise unwavering faith. He is asking us to believe that He is able.
— Beth Moore, Praying God’s Word Day by Day, p. 106
Emerging Differences
At some point in a marriage, differences erupt. It was pleasant to dwell in the fiction that nothing could blight the serenity you shared. You could smirk at couples who argued, certain that you would never find yourselves at loggerheads. But no more. Troublesome topics that had been relegated to the background now clamor for attention. Once one or both of you begin to divulge what’s important to you, you’ll land yourselves smack in the midst of some pretty rough strife.
Why go there? Because it’s necessary. Because after the intense togetherness of the Honeymoon Stage, there’s a need to assert separate desires. Because, if you don’t, you’ll get drawn back into the dark side and feel smothered. Because the realities of who your partner is and how you function together are hitting you in the face. Because the old deceptions you had relied on for equilibrium don’t work any more.
And also because you’re intrigued by what you’re finding out about your partner. You intuitively feel that your partner has something to teach you. When you struggle through serious disagreement, you may understand and appreciate each other more deeply….
When you can deal with differences that arise, you will bring both tolerance and dynamism to your marriage. If you suppress them, however, you’re setting yourself up for trouble….
The process of reckoning with differences is essential to the vitality of a relationship. Couples need to know that they can work through conflict; otherwise, they’ll always live in fear of it. Partners need to know that they can speak their minds; otherwise, they’ll bottle up everything, and wind up angry and estranged. You must be able to own up to the lies that you’ve told yourself and each other. If not, those lies will dominate the relationship.
— Ellyn Bader and Peter T. Pearson, Tell Me No Lies, p. 102-104
Believe in Recovery
Some days, we may do particularly well. We may assertively refuse someone’s invitation to be codependent. We may deal well with a particular conflict or feeling. We may have a few moments of intimacy or closeness. We may buy ourselves something special, then not wreck it by telling ourselves we don’t deserve it.
Some days, we may have to look more closely to notice what we did. Maybe we took time out to rest when we were tired. We said The Serenity Prayer during a trying moment. Things got crazy and we detached when we noticed ourselves getting hooked in.
On our worst days, we still look for something we’ve done toward recovery. Sometimes the best we can do is feel good about what we did not do. We pat ourselves on the back because we didn’t run to the nearest bar, drag home an alcoholic, and fall in love with him or her. For some of us, that’s real progress and not to be overlooked on the gray days.
All the days count. Believe in recovery. Our lives and experiences can be different and better. The process of getting better is happening right now, this moment, in our lives.
— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency, p. 236-237
Americans and Failure
“Here in America, on the other hand,” he went on, “people don’t fear uncertainty so much, and they fear failure even less. You change from one job to the next like you’re changing channels on the television. If you get tired of working for other people, you can try to start your own business, with hardly a moment’s thought about the risk. Look at how many businesses fail after only one year, and almost none make it past three. America is a land full of failures, and I say that only because that is what makes it great. In this country, when your dreams crash and burn all around you, you’re expected to simply learn from your mistakes, pick up the pieces from the wreckage, and start all over again. There’s no shame in it. And if you’re tired of your job or of running your own business, well, then you can go back to school at night and learn how to become a lawyer or a doctor or an architect or whatever you like. If you’re willing to work, there are no preconceived notions about what you can become or how far you can go. Trust me, it’s not like this in other parts of the world. It’s the main reason so many people come to this country — to be free of the old ways of thinking about themselves.”
— Peter Pezzelli, Italian Lessons, p. 70
The Power of Children’s Books
What is it about a good children’s book that has such a seismic effect on so many lives? What is the special magic of children’s books that we remember all our lives and that is more intense than even the most profound reading experience as an adult? I think it is that those early books are the first that transport us out of the egocentric life of the child, conjuring worlds of experience and events about which we had never dreamed. Although that magic transcends the self-centeredness of the child, it also allows that self to roam and become part of the story and the magic.
— Michael Gorman, Our Own Selves:Â More Meditations for Librarians, p. 19
Too Easily Pleased
The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
— C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Living in Eternity
Living in eternity is, in fact, the way we are supposed to live all the time, right now, in the immediate moment, not hanging onto the past, not projecting into the future. The past is the rock that is under our feet, that enables us to push off from it and move into the future.
— Madeleine L’Engle, Sold Into Egypt, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, compiled by Carole F. Chase
Friendship in Marriage
Another important reason to deepen your friendship with your lover is that you are more likely to be kind and loving toward someone you consider a friend. Friendship is an invitation to be kind and generous to both ourselves and our partners. When your lover is your friend, you understand that he or she was not put on earth just to make you happy. Your lover has as much right as you do to have personal habits and quirks. When we are truly friends with our partners, we show them goodwill and do not just expect to have goodwill shown to us.
— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 154
Standing
What is your assignment from God? To stand with Him, praying for the one you love to be released from the enemy’s control, coming back to the Lord, and coming back to you. “It is too hard,” someone will say. What is too hard? Praying for and being faithful to the one you promised to love?
Do you realize that every word in the marriage vows… can be carried out while you stand? They are the promises of one spouse to another, without the demand of anything in return. For your prodigal spouse, away in the far country for a season, may you always say, “With God as my witness, I take you as my covenant spouse, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.”…
How many times a day do you think of your absent mate? How often does something happen that will instantly remind you of the one you love? Rest assured that you are coming to your prodigal’s thoughts just as often. When you were married you became one flesh, a relationship that simply cannot be dissolved at will. Your absent mate may wish you would drop from their memory, but God will never allow that to happen.
— Robert E. Steinkamp, The Prodigal’s Pen, p. 15-16
Unselfishness as a source of conflict
A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others.
— C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters