Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 262

My Jesus Does Stuff

Last month my family and I ventured to Europe, to see the sites of Rome, and Florence, and Greece, and some others. It was tremendously fun, very educational, and extremely hot.

But one day, after my husband had I had toured the Renaissance art gallery in Florence (the Uffizi), I was struck by a rather melancholy feeling.

I couldn’t really put my finger on it until the next day, when we visited another church and looked at all the breathtaking artwork. In Italy, I never saw Jesus do anything.

Jesus was everywhere–though perhaps Mary was in slightly more paintings. But everywhere that Jesus was, He wasn’t doing anything. He was either a baby, or else He was dead. Now, I’m not trying to say that dying on the cross wasn’t important, but more often than not He wasn’t even depicted on the cross; He was off the cross, with his bleeding head cradled in some women’s arms. So he’s a baby, or He’s weak, helpless, and dead.

I found the artwork beautiful, and the cathedrals stunning, but I can’t say that I had very many profoundly religious experiences, because I didn’t really sense the Jesus that I know. Rarely did I see Jesus feeding the five thousand, or talking to the woman caught in adultery or the woman at the well, or pulling little children to His lap, or making a whip out of cords, or even rising from the dead! No pictures of empty tombs here.

In the Sistine Chapel there were some paintings of other scenes from Jesus’ life, but in all, His death and his baby-hood took the pre-eminence, as if there was nothing between and nothing afterwards. And I thought to myself, that’s a very hard Jesus to relate to. You know that He suffers, and you know that He was human, but that’s really it. You can’t get a sense of His personality, or His very real-ness. He seems almost impotent.

In contrast, the saints were always doing stuff–slaying dragons, or writing letters, or debating. The apostles were, too. Even the women in Jesus’ life seemed to take the initiative and do something. But not Jesus.

But then I started to wonder: in all my criticizing of this art, do I honestly believe that Jesus does stuff? Or am I just comfortable with the Jesus that I know from Bible stories, too? Do I think that Jesus’ whole life can be depicted in paintings, and that it somehow ended 2000 years ago? I’m not talking about whether or not I believe that Jesus is alive now–I do, and I think most reading this blog do as well–I’m talking about whether or not we believe and we act as if we believe that Jesus is still active now. There’s a whole lot of difference between being alive and being active.

Do we really believe that God does stuff, even today? Do we really believe that He can make a difference in our lives, or are we trying to follow a God who we know about through the Bible, but that’s really as far as it goes. We haven’t experienced Him. That was the overwhelming feeling I got in those cathedrals: they knew about Jesus, but I didn’t see Jesus being an active part of anyone’s life.

We’re in the middle of Revive Your Marriage month, where I’m joining three other bloggy friends to talk about how to make your marriage stronger. And this week we’re talking about prayer.

So let me ask you: do you really believe that prayer can work to change a heart? Do you really believe that Jesus can do miracles in your life, and in your husband’s life, and in your children’s lives?

We’ve had some hard posts lately on this blog, and I was quite moved by many of the stories in this post about how submission doesn’t mean you put up with abuse. So many women testified about how God did provide, and God did show up, and God did rescue them and show them that He is real. I love those stories!

But how do we experience that in our own lives–especially if our situations aren’t as dire? I know that I have felt God the most in my life during the very tough times, and with today being the sixteenth anniversary of my son’s death, I’m taken back to how much I did feel God carrying me. But what about the times that aren’t as tough, but are still difficult? Just the day to day of life, living with someone that you don’t always see eye to eye with. Living a life that didn’t turn out as you hoped? There’s nothing earth-shatteringly wrong, it just doesn’t feel as right as you were expecting. Can you feel God then?

I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some thoughts. I’ll share them, and then please chime in in the comments and tell us how you’ve worked this through in your own life!

1. It Starts by Recognizing Who is God and Who Is Not

That may sound strange, but I think it’s very hard to feel and experience God when we approach Him feeling as if we know how life should be. When we set the agenda–God, you need to do this! If you would just do X, Y and Z everything would be so much better!–we’re not being humble before God. We’re saying we know best.

If you’re going to feel God, you have to approach Him saying, “I really don’t know how things should go. I want you to take control. I want to give you control, even if that’s scary.”

2. Then, Pray God’s Will

And that’s not a cop out, either. I get kind of tired of prayers that go, “Lord, if it is your will, let X, Y and Z happen, because that just seems obvious to me.” We throw in the “if it is your will” so that if it doesn’t happen, we can say, “well, it’s not my fault. It’s not that I didn’t pray enough. It’s God’s will.”

Yes, but we’re still focused on what we think God should do. I think a better prayer isn’t so much about specific actions God should take as it is about the qualities that we want to see in people afterwards. So rather than pray, “God, teach my husband how to show me love by helping him to see that I need him to talk to me at night, and not sit in front of the TV all the time,” you can pray, “God, make my husband into a man who seeks you first, and then shows your love to others. Let him experience your love in a powerful way, and let that spill over into all aspects of his life.”

In other words, you’re not focused on what you want your husband to do; you’re focused on praying what you know IS God’s will for your husband’s life: that he become more Christ-like. I think that when we focus our prayers for ourselves and for others onto seeing Christ’s characters flow out, those prayers will be more powerful. And they change our hearts, too.

3. Keep Your Focus on Him

Finally, remember that God is enough. When we make God enough, and find our worth and peace in Him, and not in our kids and our husbands, we’re actually freed up to enjoy our families far more than when we’re always finding they fall short. Focus first and foremost on God, rather than on what God can do for you, and you’ll find that you experience Him much more powerfully.

That’s what I’ve come up with, but I don’t know if those are necessarily satisfactory answers for everyone. What do you do when you just need to feel God, and you don’t? When you really do need a certain outcome? How do you cope in prayer? Let’s talk honestly about it in the comments, and help each other!

Related posts:

Quick Question: Does Your Husband Bring You Peace?
Wifey Wednesday: Learning How Not to Sweat the Small Stuff
Wifey Wednesday: Submission Doesn’t Mean Lying Over and Taking It

Revive Your Marriage: Revive Your Prayers!

Revive Your Marriage Series

It’s time to…Revive Your Marriage! This month I’m joining three bloggy friends, and every Monday we’ll all write our own posts on how you can Revive Your Marriage!

Today our topic is Revive Your Marriage through Reviving Your Prayers for Your Husband!

In my book, The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, I talk about how spiritual intimacy is so closely linked to sexual intimacy. If you want to revive your sex life, one of the best things you can do is to revive your prayer life!

But prayer is a tough thing. And I think many women are seriously stuck in a prayer rut because we are waiting for our husbands to take the lead. We want him to be the spiritual leader, and so we’re waiting for him to lead us in prayer. And when he doesn’t, we start getting grumpy and a little resentful.

Or perhaps you just want to pray more TOGETHER, but you’re not sure how to start. It’s a little embarrassing.

Today, in Revive Your Marriage, Courtney at Women Living Well is talking about sentence prayers–how to remind yourself throughout the day to constantly be praying for your husband, and I think that is wonderful! Every time I hear a siren of any kind, that’s my reminder to pray throughout the day, too.

So Courtney has that base covered. I’d like to cover another one: how do we actually pray WITH our husbands, especially if he isn’t that intent on praying? And how do we build him up and encourage him by letting him know that we’re praying for him, and letting him hear what we’re praying?

Here are some thoughts:

1. Ask if he would mind if you prayed about something specific. Saying “can we pray together” is more intimidating than, “can we take a moment and pray about Johnny’s bullying situation at school?” The former sounds like anything from “I want to pray for two hours on my knees with you” to “I want to pray that our marriage will completely turn around.” He may not know what to make of it. Start with something specific, with boundaries around the request, and he may be more likely to say yes.

And don’t forget to ask him what he needs prayer for in the morning! You can even leave him notes in his pocket or in his lunchbox saying, “I prayed this for you today: that you would feel God’s strength even when you’re dealing with difficult people.”

2. If he’s uncomfortable praying out loud, then when YOU pray out loud with him, don’t be too flowery. Just be honest before God. You don’t need to embellish or try to fill in a lot of time to make up for what your husband isn’t doing. Try to be on the same level; if he’s more comfortable with just a few sentences, then utter just a few sentences yourself. That way it doesn’t seem as if this is something that you are primarily doing and he is along for the ride; it’s something that you do together. And remember: there’s nothing wrong with praying a few sentences out loud together, and then praying silently together.

3. Pick a consistent time to pray. If you pray every night over the baby’s crib, for instance, or every night in bed together, then you’re more likely to keep doing it! You can always pray at other times of the day, too, but trying to develop habits makes it more likely to keep going!

4. Buy a book of prayers. I know my ultra-evangelical friends will be turned off by this, but hear me out. For a time our family attended an Anglican church, and the prayers in the prayer book really are beautiful. We left that church when we moved and go to a more traditional evangelical one now, but both Keith and I miss the depth of the prayers. Keith has bought a few books of prayers, and every now and then leads the family in them, especially when we’re on holidays together. Here are a few that I like, and if you and your husband feel uncomfortable praying out loud, these can be freeing (and once you’re comfortable with these, you’ll likely add something else!):

There’s nothing wrong with a written prayer, as long as your heart is in agreement. You may prefer that prayer be spontaneous, but if people are more comfortable reading it, is that really so bad? If your both feeling so awkward that you can’t pray out loud together, then think about the option of buying a book of prayers, or using an Anglican/Episcopalian prayer book. They really do have lovely prayers! Here are some books of prayers to get you started:

5. Pray for Your Husband in Bed. Even if you don’t pray together regularly, you can pray for him when you’re in bed! While we’re lying beside each other at night, sometimes I’ll just lay my hand on Keith’s back and pray a sentence or two for him. For the last two nights, for instance, he’s been up all night at the hospital with really sick children (he’s a pediatrician). He’s absolutely exhausted, getting quite sick, and is stressed. So just praying, “God, I pray that you will give my husband strength for what he has to do and wisdom to do it. Let him know that he’s operating on your strength. Let him sleep tonight. And guide his hands tomorrow.” It’s simple, and it makes him feel great!

And now it’s time for our challenge: what can you do to remind yourself to pray more regularly for your husband, and to let him know that you’re praying for him? Here’s one idea:

My three blogging friends have also written on this today, and you can see what they have to say, too!

Courtney from WomenLivingWell, Darlene from TimeWarpWife.com, and Jennifer from UnveiledWife.com have all written awesome posts on prayer! Click on through to see what they have to say.

And you can have your say, too! Just leave a comment to tell us the struggles you’ve had with prayer, the solutions you’ve found, or how you remind yourself to pray for your husband and encourage him through prayer. And if you blog, you can write a Revive Your Marriage post and link up using the linky below! The same linky appears on all four blogs, so you’ll get even more coverage for your post!

Join us next Monday when we talk about how to “Revive Your Attitude”!

Related posts:

Beautiful Email: Pray with Your Husband
Teaching Kids to Pray: The Five Finger Method
Wifey Wednesday: Praying with Your Husband

Reader Question of the Week: Behind Closed Doors

Every weekend I like to throw up a question someone sends in and let you readers have a go at it. This week a reader asks about problems in the bedroom.

My husband has had problems maintaining an erection. He’s used a variety of medications, but none of them is a “cure all”, and he feels a lot less of a man now. He’s almost become scared of sex.

Has anyone else gone through this? What do you do? Can you maintain a good sex life without intercourse?

Don’t forget this summer: The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex makes a great gift for any woman about to get married!

Related posts:

Reader Question of the Week: What Touch Means
Reader Question of the Week: My Husband Refuses to Work
Reader Question of the Week: What About Menopause?

Thinking Outside the Group

Flickr: k-ideas

Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario and Saskatchewan. This week’s column is about group distinctions and how it impacts true equality.

The Bank of Canada caused quite a hullabaloo with its new $100 bills. Wanting to pretty them up, they decided to depict a scientist gazing into a microscope. Then they made their first fatal mistake. They decided to make the scientist an Asian woman. Cue the outcry: The picture is racist, pandering to the stereotype that all Asians are good at science! Then the Bank of Canada made their second fatal mistake. They changed the Asian woman to a Caucasian woman. That’s racist! You took away the Asian!

This is the sort of thing that drives me batty. People are individuals, not just members of groups, and we need to stop all of this ultra-sensitivity to supposed slights. Besides, often the people who are the quickest to yell “racism!” or “sexism!” are also those who perpetuate group distinctions themselves.

Every time there’s an election, for instance, people talk about “women’s issues”, as if we women all vote the same way. And “women’s issues” tends to be a code name for abortion. Apparently all women are supposed to vote solely in terms of how a political party feels about a woman’s right to end the life she is carrying.  I find this rather strange, since the pro-life position is held by an equal number of men and women. To call it a “woman’s issue” sounds like an attempt to silence women who disagree.

But it’s strange from another viewpoint, too. To carry this to its logical conclusion, men are supposed to vote on the economy, and foreign affairs, and tax policy, but women are supposed to vote on abortion. The price of beef and breakfast cereal going up is just as much a woman’s issue as it is a man’s issue. In fact, I don’t believe that there are women’s issues and men’s issues at all.

To assume that we would vote a certain way just because we belong to a certain group, or to assume that we would be offended by a $100 bill just because we belong to a certain group, is racist and sexist in and of itself. It is assuming that people will think a certain way simply because of what group they are in, as if we aren’t capable of thinking for ourselves.

Thankfully, I believe this “groupthink” will soon be a thing of the past, largely because most groups will soon be obliterated. When I look at my children’s friends, it’s very hard to classify many of them into neat categories. One of their closest friends is part native, part European. Another girl is half black and half white, with the most amazing red hair. Yet another is half Chinese, half Italian. My own half-brother is half white, half Asian. What group are they in? I don’t think the next generation cares all that much, and so hopefully, as they start to become the movers and shakers of this country, we will finally be able to move on.

Canada’s history is replete with shameful incidents when it comes to race. We turned Jews away before World War II. We charged the Chinese more to immigrate in the early 1900s. We treated the natives abysmally. Recognizing this history, along with other sordid incidents, is crucial. But just as crucial is acknowledging that it is indeed history, and it can end. We can move on from our racist and sexist past to embrace a society that truly values people as equals.

And that means thinking of people as individuals, not as members of a group. It means looking past the skin and the genitalia and into the character of a person. Until we do that, then we haven’t really put our history behind us. And I think it’s time we did so.

Don’t miss a Reality Check! Sign up to receive it FREE in your inbox every week! Subscribers, sign up HERE.

Related posts:

When the World Isn’t Safe for Women
The Upper Hand
Guilt Makes the Woman Go Round

A Winner, Vacations, and Announcements!

Hi everybody!

Just a quick post to catch up on a few things here at To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

First, you may be wondering why I wasn’t around in the comments much during August. I was actually away for a trip with my husband and kids to Italy. We went on a cruise first with my mom & the family, and then my mom and the girls flew home and Keith and I stayed for a few days to enjoy Italy. It was our twentieth anniversary trip, and it was lovely, but I didn’t have a chance to reply to comments. I’m trying to go back and reply to some, but if I’ve missed yours, it’s not because you’re not important to me!

I never announce where I’m going beforehand because to me that’s like saying, “Hi! I’m going to be out of the country for three weeks, so come and rob my house!” So instead I try to schedule posts and act like I’m here. But I wasn’t. Thanks to my assistant, Holly, who kept the place running and moderated the comments while I was gone!

Also, while I was away Arlene Pellicane wrote a great post to promote her new book 31 Days to a Happy Husband! I offered to give away a copy, and there were 72 comments left. I used a random number generator, and Rachel F was chosen. I’ve already contacted her by email, and she wins a copy!

I have some really cool observations about faith, life, and Italy that I want to make next week, but it requires pictures, and I don’t have time to upload them right now. So I’ll sign off now until tomorrow.

But I do want to say that I really appreciate the discussion we had yesterday about submission and abuse. I know not everybody agrees with me, but I thought I had to say it.

I’m excited about next week, when we’ll be launching Revive Your Marriage! Are you ready? It’s going to be awesome!

Related posts:

More Thoughts on Mother’s Day

Wifey Wednesday: Submission Doesn’t Mean Lying Over and Taking It

It’s Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you all can comment or link up your own marriage post at the bottom.

Today I want to talk about a difficult subject.

When I was 16 years old I participated in a summer missions team to the Philippines, where we built a kindergarten. Twenty-five or so teenagers along with six adult leaders. I had a wonderful time bonding with teammates, but I chafed at the leaders throughout all eight weeks. I just didn’t agree with their philosophy.

They were intent on making things hard for us so that we would be taught a lesson, even when there was no reason to. When we were mixing the cement, we had a delivery of two truckloads: one of rocks, and one of sand, to mix into gravel. The delivery men offered to make two different piles, but our team leader asked them to put them together, so that we would learn patience and submission by picking the rocks out of the sand. We could have been finished earlier, and spent more time witnessing or meeting the local congregation had he not done that. But he was determined that we should learn about suffering.

The theme during our Bible devotions was “The Way Up is Down”. We studied how Old Testament saints suffered in order to find favour with God. They taught that all summer, and I rebelled all summer. It seemed to me that if we deliberately seek out suffering just so that we could be extra holy we miss out on opportunities to actually serve and glorify God. And shouldn’t that be our main purpose?

It reminds me of a scary Christian movement that, as a marriage blogger, I must comment on. I know some of my readers respect and revere Michael and Debi Pearl’s book, To Train Up a Child, which advocates strong use of what I would term extreme corporal punishment. Several children have been killed when their parents took the advice in this book to the extreme.

But Debi Pearl has also written a book called “Created to Be His Helpmeet”. Mrs. Pearl believes that women should radically submit to their husbands as the head of the house, putting up even with affairs and abuse “without words”. She recounts in her book a letter she received from a woman who was obviously being abused by her husband. What should I do when he comes after me with a knife? She asks. Mrs. Pearl replies: be submissive. “Avoid provoking him.”

Hold on a second here.

Do you remember in Philippians 2, when Paul writes of Jesus:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7 rather, he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death —

even death on a cross!

Jesus took the form of a servant. Jesus was humble. Jesus allowed others to spit on Him and revile Him. Jesus allowed others to hurt Him and walk all over Him. And thus, says Debi Pearl, we should, too.

What if there’s a different way to look at that passage?

The passage does not say “have the same actions as Jesus”. It says, “Have the same mindset“. It’s about your thoughts, your goals, and your attitudes. Here’s what I think was going on, and it can be summed up like this:

Jesus’ Motivation–Jesus’ Action–Jesus’ Result

What was His motivation? To do God’s will and bring people to Him.

What was His action? He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death.

And what was the result? People were reconciled to God.

Yet let’s take this same framework and look at other areas of Jesus’ life:

Motivation: To do God’s will and bring people to Him

Action: Rebuking and Yelling at the Pharisees

Result: People saw the truth of God

Or how about this one?

Motivation: To do God’s will and bring people to Him

Action: Making a Whip out of Cords and Clearing the Temple

Result: People remembered God’s Holiness

Do you see the commonalities? Jesus was always seeking to do God’s will and to bring people to Him. And Jesus’ actions always resulted in people knowing God more, trusting God more, or having more insight into God. At the cross, His actions resulted in people being reconciled to God.

But His actions were not always the same. Sometimes He let others walk all over Him–because that is what the circumstances demanded if He was going to accomplish God’s will and if He was going to bring people to God. Other times He spoke up and rebuked people, or became angry, because that’s what the circumstances demanded. In other words, the commonality was doing God’s will and bringing people to God–the same mindset. The difference was in the actions. Jesus used different actions to accomplish the same purpose as circumstances demanded it.

Paul did the same thing. Sometimes he lay down and let people insult him. Other times he stood up for his rights, appealing all the way to Caesar. He didn’t just “lie there and take it”; he demanded his right to speak the gospel, because that is what circumstances demanded if God’s will to see the gospel spread and people come to know Him was to be accomplished.

There is nothing magical about lying down and being abused. There is nothing inherently beautiful about being walked all over or treated horribly. Yes, Jesus was treated horribly, but He was treated horribly for a purpose. You cannot take one without the other. Does God ask us to submit? Yes. Does God ask us to be abused, used, and discarded? Rarely. There may be times when we have to be treated that way–I think of the believers in some parts of the world who are truly persecuted, for instance. But there is nothing inherently righteous about being treated awfully. In fact, this can become a stumbling block just like any other.

If you think that by being treated miserably you earn brownie points with God, then you are more likely to put up with injustice. You are more likely to see your children hurt. You are more likely to stunt your own purpose and your own gifts. And you are less likely to see the will of God done through your abuser/husband.

Did you catch that last one? Sometimes by lying over and taking it, by putting up with abuse, by allowing marital rape or extreme verbal abuse we actually do the exact opposite of what Jesus tried to do. We don’t point people to God; we point people away from Him.

What is God’s primary vehicle for pointing people to Him? He made it quite clear in Galatians 6:

Do not be deceived; a man reaps what he sows.

If you are preventing your husband from reaping what he sows by allowing him to abuse you with no consequences, then you are putting a stumbling block for God working in your husband’s life. If your husband is engaged in serious sin, and you put up with it and do not bring in a Christian mentor or an elder as we are instructed to do in Matthew 18, then you are also enabling your husband to grow further and further away from God.

This does not mean that God cannot occasionally work in these situations. I can just hear the replies now–but I put up with my husband’s drinking and my husband’s affairs for 15 years, and one day God got a hold of my husband and completely turned him around! Yes, God can do that. But I believe that God did that DESPITE you allowing him to perpetuate sin, not BECAUSE you allowed him to perpetuate sin. And by putting up with it, we let ourselves off the hook, too. We don’t have the responsibility to try to deal with our problems, because we’re supposed to “take it and let God”. We don’t have to wrestle with what we should do. We don’t have the hard questions. We have an easy blueprint for life–squash your own feelings and let others take advantage–and we’re set. And what if God has gifted you as a teacher? Or as an administrator? What if God has great plans for you? Doesn’t matter. You’re supposed to commit yourself totally to your husband, even if that means that he hurts you and drags you down. That doesn’t sound like a God of love to me.

When Paul thought someone was in error, he told him. He went right up to Peter’s face and told him that he was being hypocritical in regards to how Peter was treating Gentiles.

I am not saying that we should make ourselves annoying, or that we should harp on our husband’s every fault. I am also not saying that we shouldn’t be submissive. But there is still a stream in Christian thinking that says, “you are holier when you suffer.” I don’t believe it. I believe that God is with those who suffer, and that God uses suffering. But there is nothing inherently holy about suffering. What is holy is when we pray, submit ourselves to God, and discern what His will is. When we ask God what we should do, and what His purposes are for this situation, and we align ourselves with His purposes, then God works best.

I know this is tricky in real life, because we do need to work out what things to just let slide. We do need to step back and let our husbands lead. We have to let go of the reins. Depending on the comments, this may warrant a follow-up post on how to do that.

But in this post, the main thing I want to stress is please, please, ladies, don’t allow false teaching to tell you that it’s okay if a man beats you, or runs at you with a kitchen knife, or hurts your children. Don’t allow someone else to tell you that you just need to work on being “better”, on being “more Christian”, so that you can win your husband without words. Ask yourself this question instead,

Am I enabling sin? Am I pointing my husband to God, or away from God? Am I honouring God, my husband, and my children by allowing him to treat me like this, or am I hurting us all?

And if you can’t honestly answer that you’re honouring God, then reconsider your actions. Your purpose should always be to follow God’s will, bring Him glory, and bring others closer to Him. How that works out in our everyday lives will differ from situation to situation. But there is nothing inherently holy about abuse, and none of us should think we get special badges for putting up with it.

Do you have any marriage advice for us today? Just leave the URL of your post in the linky below! And make sure to link back here so that other people can read these great marriage posts, too!

Related posts:

Taking Back Control
Wifey Wednesday: When you Don’t Discipline the Same Way
Wifey Wednesday: When Conflicts Don’t End

Hope Springs

A few nights ago my husband and I went to watch Hope Springs, a movie starring Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones as a struggling couple, and Steve Carrell as their therapist.

I had been told that it was both funny and a little shallow. After watching it, I’d agree on both fronts. But I’m still very glad it was made. It’s really a pro-marriage movie, and we need as many of those as we can get. Will you all love it? Perhaps not. There’s no swearing or nudity that I can remember, but it does talk rather explicitly about some sex acts (including oral sex) that may make some people uncomfortable. It’s definitely not one to take your teens to. But if you’re married, there’s really nothing in it that you likely haven’t talked about or experienced.

The disappointing aspect, to me, is that they seemed to blame all of their communication and intimacy problems on sex. And as someone who writes a ton about sex, you would think that I would wholeheartedly agree that sex is the main problem. But I don’t. I think sex is part of a relationship–an important part, but only part. And to say that “if we fix the bedroom, everything else will fall into place” is a little naive to me. Perhaps it’s true in a very small number of cases, but there are usually many, many more issues, too.

Okay, that’s what I didn’t like. Here’s what I did: I have rarely seen a movie which so perfectly depicts how couples in trouble interact. They are in a horrible rut, and they can’t seem to move past it. A few years ago he throws out his back, so starts sleeping in a different room. He never returns to their bedroom. Every morning she gets up and makes his breakfast–two eggs and a piece of bacon, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of coffee. They may exchange information, but they don’t actually talk.

And then one day she loses it and tells him that she wants to go to an intense couples counselling session. He resists, obviously, but eventually turns around. But even then things don’t work very well. He’s not cooperative. He’s so tied up in knots that he can’t reach out to her at all.

Until the end, when finally they break through the walls and intimacy is restored (a little too quickly and with too little fuss, but it is a movie, after all).

My husband and I laughed a lot in this movie, and not even at the specifically “funny” parts, because we could totally relate to what was going on in the couples’ heads. We’ve seen these same dynamics in ourselves, or in other couples we know. It’s really funny.

And the theatre was just packed with couples over 50, enjoying the movie together. I think I was the youngest one there, but I certainly don’t think the movie is just for older people. I think any married person can enjoy it, and glean from it. In fact, for younger people the message would be this: deal with stuff as it happens. Don’t let your marriage get in such a bad rut that you can’t climb out of it.

But I do want to dwell on the sex issue for just a minute, because while I think it was handled a little too flippantly in the movie (really, all the counsellor talked to them about was sex, and not communication or appreciation or any other important things), the dynamic that had developed is definitely one I’ve seen. In my surveys of men for The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, I had several guys say almost word for word what Tommy Lee Jones’ character said, and it went something like this:

At the beginning of our marriage I wanted her so much. I was always asking her for sex, and she sometimes said yes. But when we did make love I could tell it was “pity sex”. She didn’t really want to be there. And that was so demoralizing. I tried to think of anything but what she was doing, but it was so hard. And after a few years I just stopped trying. But don’t feel sorry for me now. I’m not really hurting. I’ve moved on, and I stopped caring years ago.

Basically, these guys used to be really into sex. But now they had totally shut down. They didn’t ask for sex anymore. They didn’t initiate. They had turned off that part of their lives. And that’s what was shown in the movie: Meryl Streep can’t get him to have sex with her no matter what she does, even though it used to be him who had the higher sex drive. And why? Because he was tired of “pity sex”. He was tired of her not really wanting it. It felt horrible. And so he just shut down.

Most marriages have problems where one partner has the higher sex drive. But it’s quite common for the partners to switch roles at some point in the marriage, largely because of this dynamic. The one who really wanted it eventually shuts down, and then the other partner, who still wants to feel some intimacy, can’t seem to get the other to engage.

And that’s sad, because what you’re really missing out on is true intimacy. It’s not just the sex; it’s the physical contact, and the spiritual intimacy, and the oneness that comes from making love.

I guess the lesson that I took from it is that we have to guard our sex lives well. As I said in a recent post, I do not believe the message to women should be:

Your husband needs sex so you should give it to him as often as possible.

That makes sex all about him, and as this movie showed so well, that’s not what men want anyway. They don’t just want quantity; they want to feel an actual connection, and that means that they want their wives to actually WANT to make love.

And honestly, that’s what I think women want, too. We want to be swept away. We want to feel great. We want to be breathless. Perhaps that’s not a reality in your life right now. That’s okay. For many couples it takes a long time to get it right, and over the month of September, during our Revive Your Marriage series we will have a week where you can read lots of people’s wisdom on how to make your sex life better. And, of course, there’s always The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex!

But if you commit to working towards making sex great in your marriage, most husbands will jump right in, even if it takes a while to get there. And for those of you who have husbands who just don’t want sex, then I’d recommend reading this series that I wrote on it a while back, too.

So all in all: a bit of a shallow movie, but still good nonetheless. And in our culture where marriage is always denigrated, the fact that these movies which focus on the benefits of a great marriage are out there make me so happy (even if the movie itself isn’t perfect).

Related posts:

Quick Weekend Intimacy Tip
Wifey Wednesday: Magic Mike, Marriage, and Women’s Libido
Lasting Bliss: Hope and Inspiration for Your Marriage

Are Your Ready to…Revive Your Marriage?

Revive Your Marriage Series

Summer is over – the kids are back in school (or about to be), and we women need to make sure this year is awesome! And the best way to do that is to put first things first. So…

It’s time to…Revive Your Marriage!

Sometimes we need a little boost and when we have friends on our journey – it’s a lot more fun!!!

I’ve joined three bloggy friends who all write amazing stuff on marriage for the month of September, when we’ll be writing encouragement and challenges to revive your marriage!

Courtney from WomenLivingWell, Darlene from TimeWarpWife.com, and Jennifer from UnveiledWife.com (along with me, of course), will be writing on the same topic every Monday, starting next week! Go to their blogs for MORE encouragement and to get to know these great writers.

Here’s how Courtney introduces our purpose:

Do you feel like you need some rekindling in the marriage department? Like your friendship with your husband has gotten lost in the shuffle with bills, kids activities and the busyness of life? Do you feel like you need a fresh perspective to help adjust your attitude towards your husband? Does your time in the bedroom with your man need some spicing up? {*Blush*} Oh ya – we’re going there!!! Prayer – prayer is a key to reviving your marriage.

Join us next Monday, September 3rd as we begin the “Revive Our Marriage” Series.

Each week we will include a devotional and a CHALLENGE!

And you’ll be able to link up your own posts and encourage us, too! To get you ready to do that, here’s the topic schedule that we’re going to cover:

September 3rd – Revive Your Prayers

September 9th – Revive Your Attitude

September 16th – Revive Your Friendship

September 23rd – Revive Your Praise

September 30th – Revive Your Sex Life

So come on over just to read the posts, or, if you have a blog, write your own and link up! There will be a linky every week, too.

**Just to clarify: All four of us will be writing on our own blogs every Monday on the same topic (but in our own unique voices). We will all share the same challenge for the week and the link-up will be shared – meaning when you link up here on To Love, Honor and Vacuum – it will show up on the other 3 blogs as well!

And now, I just want to take a moment to introduce myself to all of the people coming over from the other three blogs today. I’m Sheila. I’m the mom to two teenage girls, and one little boy who would have been 16 earlier this month, had he not passed away. I’ve been married to an awesome man for almost 21 years, and we just got back from Italy from a three week overdue twentieth anniversary trip (hey, regular readers, that’s why I haven’t been responding to comments! But I’m back now!)

Still 30% off at Amazon!

The original title for this blog was To Love, Honor and Vacuum: When you feel more like a maid than a wife and a mother, based on a book I wrote a few years ago. But over the last two years this blog has come to focus more and more on marriage, and specifically sex, with the release of my book The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex. And so stick around and look at some of my posts! Or check out my 29 Days to Great Sex challenge!

I hope you all enjoy this Revive Your Marriage series. I’m already planning my posts, and I’m excited to join such a great group of bloggers. This time of year we’re often overwhelmed with school and new starts to jobs or volunteer commitments, but let’s not forget that the marriage is the centre of the whole family. Let’s give our best energy to our marriages, and then everything else will go much more smoothly!

And now–if you want to join us for Revive Your Marriage, and you want to spread the word, grab the button, and link up below!

Related posts:

Reader Question of the Week: Ready for the Wedding Night
Why Affairs Happen (Hint: There’s Not Always a Reason)
Happily Ever After Generation

The Greener Grass Syndrome

Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario and Saskatchewan. This week’s is a reprint from 2010, as I am taking some down time for the summer.

In West Knoxville, Tennessee, Lee Miller has the best lawn in the neighbourhood. The uniformly green grass is always 1 ¾ inch high. People stop their cars to touch it. Dandelions don’t invade it. Grubs don’t munch the roots. And Lee never, ever has to turn on the sprinkler. But though the grass may be greener on Lee’s side of the fence, the grass also isn’t real.

I have killed so much grass myself that I have dreamt of a fake lawn. But I’d miss the robins digging for worms, and the bunnies that gorge on the greens that grow under our bird feeder. A fake lawn may look nice, but there’s no life there.

That doesn’t stop the envy, though. When we’re in the midst of a season where all we see is the grubs, it’s easy to turn and look at Lee’s lawn and think it’s superior. It’s beautiful. It’s easy. And so we’re tempted to abandon our own lawn for another.

Big mistake. I have known so many who have walked out on marriages and families to take on all the problems of another family. I’ve known men who have abandoned families they have cherished and cared for for twenty years, only to start all over again with another woman with toddlers. They often realize, after they have wrecked their relationships with their older children, that just because you start fresh doesn’t mean it’s easier. That first family doesn’t go away; you still have to work out custody issues and vacations and university plans and even eventually weddings. But you’ve burned bridges and caused ill will in the meantime.

Why are we so easily enticed to stray over that fence? I think we’re naturally lazy. When we’re in the midst of a difficult period in our relationships, and we feel like the other person doesn’t value or understand us, to work through that seems exhausting. And then we meet someone we can talk to, who’s new and therefore exciting, and we convince ourselves that life would be easier if we could jump that fence.

That’s a very short-term view. We forget the value of the history that we have built up. I don’t think I could ever leave my husband because nobody else has walked my life with me. He has been a witness to every major event in my adult life. If we were to split, I couldn’t talk about them in the same way anymore, because others wouldn’t understand. They weren’t there when Rebecca was born. They weren’t there when we laid my son to rest in the cemetery. They weren’t there when my grandfather died, or when my first book was published, or when I learned to drive. Those shared memories are worth something.

Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, in their study A Case for Marriage, found that couples from unhappy marriages who split up were far less likely to be happy five years later than couples who stayed together. Even those who found new partners were less likely to be happy than those who worked on their own marriages. That’s probably why second and third marriages fail at rates far greater than first marriages.

Life is messy, but that’s only because it’s real. If someone else’s grass is greener, it’s either because it’s fake, or because you’ve never been up close and personal with it. Get up close, and you’ll see that it has just as many flaws as yours does. Remember, the difference between a beautiful garden and a wilderness is the time that we spend caring for it. So if your lawn is straggly, maybe instead of leaving it, you just need to care for it a little bit more. And while you’re at it, fix the fence.

Don’t miss a Reality Check! Sign up to receive it FREE in your inbox every week! Subscribers, sign up HERE.

Related posts:

The Greener Grass Syndrome
An Ode to Dandelions
When Waffles and Spaghetti Sound Good Together

Wifey Wednesday: Differences with Your Spouse that Make You Laugh (and Cry)

It’s Wednesday, the day that we talk marriage! I write a post, and then you all chime in by linking up your own marriage posts to the Linky below!

Today we have a guest post from Arlene Pellicane.

My James is a free spirit and I am a rules keeper.  If I see a sign that says, “No Trespassing,” I don’t trespass.  With James it’s another story.  In our first few months of marriage, we visited the lovely Dallas Arboretum.  We paid our admission and began our tour of the 66-acre gardens.  After we had been walking for some time, James looked through the wrought iron fence and said, “Look, I can see our car!”  Yes, the parking lot was on the other side of the fence.  The very tall fence.  We were tired of walking…

Do you know what’s coming next?  “Let’s jump the fence!” James says.  Okay, there are many problems running through my mind.  One, the fence is 8 feet tall and I have never climbed a fence in my life.  Two, what would this look like?  How would the other people know we were climbing out of the arboretum as paid patrons, instead of into the arboretum as thieves?

“Nope,” I announced.  “I can’t do it.” Before you could say “Happy Husband,” James had locked his hands together and was preparing to hoist me over the fence.  “We are not walking all the way through this park to get to our car.  Just climb the fence,” he announced firmly.  After protesting and stalling, I put my foot in his hands and grabbed the fence.  I swung one leg over and then froze.  I was terrified.  I’d never sat on an 8 foot wrought iron fence before, plus I was crazy nervous about doing something I felt was wrong.

There I was in the Dallas Arboretum sitting on top of an iron fence with a leg on each side.  People were beginning to come into view and I was mortified beyond measure.  To make matters worse, I started to cry and kept thinking, “I can’t believe James made me get up here!”  Now I was having a marriage crisis.  James was growing increasing frustrated and said, “Just throw your leg over and jump!”  He thought I was stuck on stupid.  I thought he was the most unfeeling, unkind groom ever.  What knight would perch his princess on a fence of death?

I finally got the nerve to throw my leg to the other side.  I fell into the parking lot in a heap of tears and embarrassment.  There was nothing fond about that moment then, but I sure do love that story now.  Without my free spirited husband, where would I get my crazy stories?  I’ve tamed him a bit through the years (which sometimes I actually regret) so I’m trying to be less rigid and go with the flow.  After all, life high above the arboretum is quite memorable.

What differences do you and your husband have?  Has he ever gotten you in an awkward situation like my fence jumping at the Dallas Arboretum?

You can win a copy of Arlene’s new book, 31 Days to a Happy Husband, by leaving a comment below! I’ll be drawing the winner Saturday night at midnight EST, so leave a comment before then!

Arlene Pellicane is a speaker and author of 31 Days to a Happy Husband and 31 Days to a Younger You. She and her husband James live in San Diego with their three children Ethan, Noelle and Lucy.



Now, what advice do you have for us today? Just link up a blog post on marriage to the linky below! Make sure to include the URL to your individual post, not the whole blog. And then link back here so other people can read these awesome marriage posts! And remember to leave a comment to win!

Related posts:

Wifey Wednesday: Does He Make You Cry?
Wifey Wednesday: 3 Basic Things to Remember to Make Marriage Last
Wifey Wednesday: Make Your Hubby Feel Appreciated