Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 263

How to Cook a Step-Family

Today we have a guest post from Ron Deal from Smart Stepfamilies. I know I rarely write on Step-families, because I’m not part of one. But I also know it’s a big issue that many of you are facing. I really appreciated Ron’s take in this article, and wanted to share it with you.

If you’re part of a stepfamily, how are you going to bring the different ingredients of your family together? What’s Your Style? Here are a few different styles stepfamilies adopt:

Blender. This mentality assumes all ingredients can be whipped together into one smooth mixture–the “blended family.” But those of us who specialize in stepfamily therapy and education do not use the term “blended family” simply because most stepfamilies do not blend–and if they do, someone usually gets creamed in the process! When cooking, blending is a process by which you combine ingredients into one fluid mixture: think of a fruit smoothie or a cream soup. Rarely can it be said that a stepfamily becomes ‘one’ in a relational sense. More realistic is a process by which the various parts integrate, or come into contact with one another, much like a casserole of distinct parts.

It is quite normal for a stepparent to have close bonds with one stepchild, be working on bonds with another, while experiencing a distant relationship with an older child. Relationships will be different within the same stepfamily, not one fluid mixture.

Food Processor. These stepfamilies chop up one another’s history and attempt to instantly combine all ingredients with rapid speed. When love doesn’t occur right away, people are left feeling torn to pieces; no one remains whole.

A classic example of this mentality is the adult who demands that the stepchildren call their stepparent “daddy” or “mommy.” It is as if the child is told, “We’ve chopped up your real dad and thrown him to the side. This is your new dad.” Some parents actually think their children will buy that.

Microwave. These families refuse to be defined as a stepfamily and seek to heat the ingredients in rapid fashion so as to become a ‘nuke-lier’ family (pun intended). They avoid labels like stepfamily and the implication that they are different from any other family. People tell me they resent being called a stepfamily, because it makes them feel second-rate.

No matter how desperately you may want your stepfamily to be like a biological family, it simply cannot be. It is true that every stepfamily has aspects that are reflective of biological families. But every stepfamily also has unique characteristics that differ from biological families. Some parts function the same; some don’t.

Pressure Cooker. This family cooking style results in ingredients and spices (that is, rituals, values, and preferences) being put under pressure to meld together completely. The family is under great duress, and since expectations are so high, the lid often blows off the pot.

Paul and his children developed a meaningful Christmas tradition in which each person opened one gift on Christmas Eve and the remaining gifts the following morning. However, his new wife, Sharon, and her children held the tradition of opening all the gifts Christmas morning after a special breakfast. In a panic, Paul called a few weeks before their second Christmas together. “I’m dreading Christmas this year. Last year Sharon and I combined our holiday traditions and it was disastrous. To honor my family, we had all the children open a gift Christmas Eve, and to honor Sharon’s family we had breakfast and opened the remaining gifts. But no one liked the outcome. Everyone acted as if we were at a funeral instead of a celebration, and eventually Sharon and I ended up in a fight that lasted through New Year’s Day. What are we supposed to do this year–go to our separate corners and pray no one throws a punch?” Finding what works during the holidays sometimes takes trial and error; but pressuring people toward acceptance only leads to error.

Tossed. Like a salad, this style throws each ingredient into the air with no consideration as to where it might fall. The ingredients keep some of their integrity, yet are expected to fit together with the other pieces. Examples of this style can be subtle or extreme.

When one child is spending time at their other home, remaining children often believe they can play with the absent child’s toys or belongings. Children should be taught that even though someone is temporarily away from one home, the absentee’s stuff is not free game. Respecting one another’s possessions is important because it teaches people to honor others; it also communicates belonging to the child who is spending time at the other home. “You may be at your dad’s house, but you still have a place here.”

Culinary Insights

So if all of these integration styles are generally not helpful, what style should be used? I recommend a Crockpot cooking style. Time and low heat make for an effective combination. Ingredients are thrown together in the same pot, but each is left intact, giving affirmation to its unique origin and characteristics. Slowly and with much intention, the low-level heat brings the ingredients into contact with one another. As the juices begin to flow together, imperfections are purified, and the beneficial, desirable qualities of each ingredient are added to the taste. The result is a dish of delectable flavor made up of different ingredients that give of themselves to produce a wondrous creation.

Stepfamilies need time to adjust to new living conditions, new parenting styles, rules, and responsibilities. They need time to experience one another and develop trust, commitment, and a shared history. They need time to find a sense of belonging and an identity as a family unit. None of these things can be rushed. Adults who are trying to prove to their parents, friends, church, minister, or themselves that their remarriage decision was right for everyone, push their family to “blend” quickly. But they are often greatly disappointed and feel like failures. A slow-cooking mentality invites you to relax in the moment and enjoy the small steps your stepfamily is making toward integration, rather than pressuring family members to move ahead.

Cooking with low heat refers to your gradual, intentional efforts to bring the parts together. It is working smarter, not harder.

Let’s contrast some Crockpot approaches to the examples of what not to do.

As a crockpot stepfather, you don’t worry excessively about why you’re not immediately bonding with your teenage stepdaughter. Slow-cooking stepparents understand the cardinal rule of relationship development with stepchildren: Let the stepchild set the pace for the relationship. If the child is receiving of you, then openly return the child’s affections. If she remains distant or standoffish, find ways of managing rules and getting through life. But don’t insist a child automatically accept your authority or physical affection.

The food processor adults have a similar struggle. They want the children to refer to their new stepparent with a term of endearment. When this doesn’t happen naturally, the food processor parents demand they do so. But a crockpot adult would understand that a stepparent can be “daddy” to his youngest stepchild, “James” to his next oldest, and “Mr. James” to the teenager. Crockpot stepfamilies recognize the emotional and psychological attachment children have to biological parents and don’t force them to change those attachments.

And Paul, the pressure cooker stepfather who finally turns to the crockpot method, would encourage his stepfamily to develop an entirely new Christmas tradition. He and his wife, for example, might have a series of family meetings with the children to discuss their preferences and wants. It may be that they decide on an entirely new tradition to honor each family’s history by alternating how gifts are opened, or they may decide to let each parent and their children keep their own tradition.

Unrealistic expectations often set couples up to overcook their stepfamily. Trying to force, pressure, or quickly cook the ingredients of your home will likely result in a spoiled dish. But stepping down your expectations and giving your stepfamily time to cook slowly will make integration more likely in the long run.

Ron L. Deal, LMFT, LPC is President of Smart Stepfamilies, author of The Smart Stepfamily: Seven Steps to a Healthy Family and the forthcoming The Remarriage Couple Checkkup with David H. Olson.  He has appeared on numerous national TV and radio broadcasts and leads stepfamily conferences around the country.  Find other articles, resources, and conference information at www.SmartStepfamilies.com.

Related posts:

To Love, Honor and Vacuum Study 6: The Family That Cleans Together
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When I Find it Hard to Pray as a Family….

The Getaway Plan

Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario and Saskatchewan. This week’s is a reprint from 2009, as I am taking some down time for the summer.

By the time you read this, I’ll be back, but right now my family is preparing to go camping. The girls are collecting the towels, bathing suits, and bug repellent, my husband is filling the coolers, and me? I’m dusting my bedroom.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, it’s because you are missing the crucial nesting gene. I have one, which may surprise most who know me, because it only manifests itself when we are preparing to leave. On a normal day I may be perfectly content living in a home with stacks of unopened mail scattered around the dining room, dust bunnies plotting a takeover of my house under my bed, and unidentifiable contents in Tupperware containers lurking near the back of my fridge.

But when we are leaving these things are absolutely out of bounds, as anyone with any self-respect would agree. Unfortunately, my husband and my children do not share the gene, and so they have the gall to become frustrated with me, and to express this frustration in unpleasant ways, when they think that I am letting them “do all the work” of packing and “holding us up” and “wasting time” instead of actually contributing to the camping cause.

Mysteriously, they fail to see how my actions contribute to a holiday. After all, what’s a holiday if you have to come home to a messy house? So as I’m collecting our clothes, I notice the dust more than I do on normal days. Or when I’m piling suitcases in the hallway I notice the floors could really use a mopping. Don’t even get me started on what happens when I go through the fridge to figure out what we need in the coolers.

By the time we actually exit our premises, then, our house is in tip top shape. And yet instead of lauding me for this spurt of high energy cleaning action, my family feels resentment because they want to “get going”. Honestly.

My husband even had the gall to inform me that one day he is going to announce a magnificent, surprise holiday, just so that I would clean the house. Then, with all the suitcases packed and all the floors sparkly, he would tell me that we’re going to stay home, because it’s so nice to live in now. I was not impressed.

Cleaning, though, is not all I do when we’re preparing to depart. I also have that compulsion to attend to all the errands I’ve been nonchalantly ignoring. I may have decided they’re not urgent for three or four weeks running, but when we’re about to leave the house for five days, they become a priority. And since I’m running to the bank, why not check out the sales at some of my favourite stores, too?

Then, of course, there’s the email I must answer, and the thank you notes I must write leftover from business engagements a few months ago. In short, whenever we go on vacation, my to-do list magically gets to-done.

Naturally this makes vacation preparedness a very stressful activity, and one might wonder if getaways were even worth it. But I know the answer to that one. It’s found in sitting around a fire, eating smores and not caring if you get marshmallow on your sweatshirt. It’s found in playing cards inside the camper when it rains. It’s found in getting up one morning and reading an entire novel just because you can. It’s found in having time to walk, hand in hand, with my husband for hours because there’s nothing else to do. Vacations are bliss. And I’m just glad that, thanks to me, coming home isn’t so bad, either.

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Related posts:

The Getaway Plan
Following the Plan
My Summer Grocery Cart

Wifey Wednesday: Sex Should Be Mutual

It’s Wednesday, the day that we talk marriage! I introduce a post, and then you all can link up your own marriage posts in the linky below.

Is sex all for him?

If you read this blog, you’ll know that I don’t think so. But it’s awfully easy to see how many women get that idea. It’s certainly what I thought at the beginning of my marriage! It’s easy for men to get aroused and to feel pleasure; women are much more tricky. Men pretty much always get satisfaction from sex; women aren’t guaranteed anything. And men have this need for sex that we women are told we have to fulfill if we’re going to have a happy marriage. So your husband bugs you for sex or he doesn’t feel loved, and it doesn’t feel that great to you. You have to do something you don’t even like that much in order for your husband to feel loved. Sounds pretty awful.

Now, it doesn’t need to be that way! But there’s an undercurrent in a lot of Christian writing about sex which goes something like this:

Men really truly need sex, and so women have to give it to them when they need it. Never say no, or you’re hurting him, and he could end up having an affair.

That’s not the message of this blog, and I hope none of you has gotten that idea.

When I wrote The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, what I was trying to do was to write a book that would show that God designed sex to be a mutually beautiful experience. Both of us are supposed to enjoy it. It’s supposed to make both of us feel more intimate. Both of us need it. The only real difference is that men, in general, have more of an urgent felt need for it. But the best way to meet that need is to realize that we have a need for it, too, and then to act on it. And to realize that when we step out to meet our husband’s needs, if our heads are in the game, it’s likely to be a very good experience for us, also. So step out!

But remember that men really need to be wanted, not to be placated. And if we give this message that men “need” sex, and women therefore must perform, it’s all too easy to start seeing sex as something distasteful, and men as animals. That’s hardly a recipe for real intimacy. It also is EXTREMELY damaging to a woman’s sexuality and libido. When it’s constantly preached that men need sex, and women need to provide, and that is the primary context (which I see in many popular marriage books), I can totally understand why so many women think, “God must hate me. God made me as a receptacle that’s just supposed to be there so my husband can use me.” That is NOT what God intended at all.

The solution, to me, is to make sex something that is mutual–that you both want, that you both feel pleasure from, and that you both feel intimacy from. It should be something that is both fun and frequent, and desired by both. That takes some work, but that’s the goal. It’s not that he’s an animal who needs it all the time; it’s that God made it to be wonderful, though different, for both of you, and He made both of you to experience real intimacy in sex. It’s for both of us!

Now, last month I wrote a rant on things I’d like to say to men about sex, and one of those things was this:

After she’s had a baby, she needs six weeks before she can have sex again. Let her have those six weeks to get used to the baby. You do not need her to “help you” in other ways.

If she’s having her period, and she feels distinctly unsexy, go for five days without sex. You really can do it (some women feel aroused during their periods; others just don’t). To demand that she satisfy you in ways other than intercourse when she finds intercourse really distasteful and uncomfortable is a little much. Use some self-control! You can have a healthy sex life for the other 22 days of the month. You really will survive.

And if she’s in her first trimester and she’s puking all the time, instead of worrying about your own sex drive, how about getting a cold cloth for her head? Or giving her a massage? Or letting her sleep? She’s sacrificing a lot physically for this baby. It is not too much to ask you to do the same thing.

If she’s withholding sex for an extended period of time, yes, you need to confront her and do something about it. But if it’s just occasionally for physical reasons, I think that’s why God says one of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control.

In response, a number of commenters said it was unreasonable to expect men to go that long without sex, and that women should “lend a hand”, so to speak.

I’d like to address that just for a moment, because it is a question I get a lot. “My husband can’t wait the five days while I have my period. What should I do?”

In a nutshell, here’s what I think: a healthy marriage consists of give and take in every area, including sex. So the wife should give when she’s able, as much as she’s able, and as enthusiastically as she’s able. At the same time, when she is not able, the husband should then give grace. To me, that’s a healthy marriage. For most of the month, you have a great time, and then for those five days you concentrate on other areas of relating, like talking, or cuddling, or watching a movie, or whatever–unless, of course, she would like to do something more sexual (and about 30% of women do. There’s nothing wrong with that!)

This idea that a man cannot go for five days without release is a little much. Yes, a man will feel an urge for sex if he waits for five days. But that doesn’t mean that this urge needs to be met. After all, before you are married a Christian man will refrain from sex. I think five days is enough to wait. And ditto the six weeks (or however long you individually are told to wait) after having a baby. I normally think six weeks is too much to refrain from sex, but after having a baby, you’re exhausted, and you have something totally new to concentrate on. To say that the wife “must” help her husband some other way is to ignore the mutuality of sex.



Now, all of this is said with a caveat, which is that both of you should be enjoying frequent, fun sex at other times. If you’re doing that, a husband will find it easier to wait the five days, or six weeks, or whatever, because he isn’t fundamentally insecure that his wife doesn’t desire him. When a husband doubts whether his wife really loves him or wants him, then he often wants sex more frequently.

So I wouldn’t say that you can refrain from sex during the entire pregnancy, or during the baby days at all, and I’ve written before on how to deal with sex if you’re nauseous for months on end, or if your hormones are all over the place. Again, we need to have give and take.

But I do not think that it is unreasonable to ask your husband to wait five days while you have your period (and indeed, that’s what the Old Testament demanded anyway. One commenter noted that while the Old Testament said this, in a patriarchal society men had more than one wife, and so were unlikely to be waiting that long. First, only the rich had more than one wife generally. And secondly, I do not believe that God set up rules to do with sex and marriage assuming anything other than monogamy, when monogamy is His ultimate plan and anything else is a distortion). This doesn’t mean you HAVE to wait. Many women actually enjoy sex during their period, and many women like surprising their husbands and helping him in some other way. It does give you a feeling of power, which is, in and of itself, fun. I’m just saying that it shouldn’t be an obligation.

When sex becomes an obligation in a marriage, that marriage is going downhill. If she feels like it’s just for him, she’ll start to resent him and resent sex. If she feels that he only wants her for his release, and not because he wants to feel close to her or wants to show love to her, that’s the quickest way to shut her off that I know.

Look, both parties should give sexually. A wife should make love as enthusiastically and as often as she can. But a husband also should love and honor his wife when she is unable to do that. And to say, “well, she’s only having her period, and her hand is still fine”, or “she has to wait six weeks to have intercourse, but she could do something else”, to me, is being a little selfish. First, many women are just simply sick through their periods. I know several friends who can’t get out of bed for three days, and one of them has a husband who is still asking her to satisfy him in other ways. How is that loving your wife?

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I spend a lot of time on this blog telling women to step up to the plate and learn to love sex and learn to love their man. That’s so important. But that message should not be distorted. Men should also step up the plate and learn to love their women, and that means being patient when she is feeling distinctly unsexy or extremely tired and sick–assuming these conditions are temporary. If you demand something during those times, you’re not really loving her, anymore than if she is consistently refusing him when she is perfectly able to make love, then she is not really loving you.

If you really desire true intimacy in your marriage, both parties should learn give and take. That’s the mark of the Christian life. It isn’t getting every physical need met; it’s learning to love and learning to experience intimacy. Isn’t that what we should aim for?

Again, I urge all women not to use this as a “get out of sex free” card. If you really resent sex and want any excuse not to have it, the best route is to figure out a way to actually love and anticipate it! And for that, may I suggest The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex?



Now, what advice do you have for us today? Just link up a marriage post in the Linky below! And make sure to link back up here on your blog so that other people can read the great marriage posts.

Related posts:

Wifey Wednesday: Do You Try to Avoid Sex?
Wifey Wednesday: Wedding Night Disasters
Wifey Wednesday: Recovery from the Guilt of Your Sexual Past

The Wild Child

Today, our guest author is Pearl, who says about her article, “It was spawned by Julie Sibert’s posting of May 8th.  I wish to impart hope to those who are currently rearing difficult children.  I was in such anguish during those years, any kind of encouragement would have been cherished.”

Blessed with a Wild Child?

I lovingly refer to our difficult first son as the wild-child. Faced with a group of moms, I can usually gauge who has a wild-child by watching her reaction to this sentence. “Well, you just make them do it,” meaning an authoritative parenting style is used in instructing the child how to behave. Mom’s with a wild-child will raise their eyebrows, look me straight on, and with much sarcasm say, “yeah, right.”

One in twenty children is labeled as having a difficult temperament (Thomas & Chess, 1977). This disposition can display:

1. Extreme emotional reactions (meltdowns)

2. Negative response to new situations (hard time adjusting)

3. Not easy to please

4. Bad moods

5. Hypersensitivity to loud noises, clothing irritants, food textures/tastes.

These children can also exhibit high IQ’s and creativity. Thus, difficult temperaments may also be called the ‘artistic temperament.’ Within this difficult temperament there may be other specific disorders.

During the early years of my oldest son’s life, it seemed all we could do was hold on for the ride. At 9, he said he wanted to die on several occasions. At 11, he was provoked and choked a fellow student. At 13, he jumped from a two-story ledge for fun and broke both bones of both legs six inches above his ankles. He was handcuffed and put in a paddy wagon at age 15. And yet, he won first place for his Drug Awareness speech. He won an award for the most volunteer hours at a local nursing home. He was certified as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) his senior year of high school. He taught himself to play guitar and now in his mid-20’s composes soft jazz to play at local restaurants.

My husband and I gave him knowledge of God’s Word and Jesus’ love through our words at home, Bible class, camps and youth rallies. Homelife had structure. I only worked part-time. His father and I tried to work as a team in parenting. But, we never had control. We lived in a world of extremes. Each morning, I held my breath wondering what the day would hold. Each night, I collapsed in bed weary from mental exhaustion.

The good news is we all survived. Our wild-child evolved into a highly philosophical, kind young man who is beautifully quirky. God has allowed us to use our experiences in raising him to encourage those who are bewildered with their own difficult temperament child. I wish to impart some hope and tools for those who are still in the trenches.

NETWORK – If you notice discrepancies at an early age and behavior that is extreme, find other families who are dealing with similar issues. You will start to get a sense of who is dealing with a difficult child. Through sharing, you may gain awareness of effective therapists and much needed support.

ADVOCATE for yourself – Carefully consider if health care workers play down your concerns with your child’s behavior. If you have any inkling something is wrong, it probably is. Don’t let anyone question your ability as a parent. I loved when the Lord gave me the opportunity to gently clue in the clueless.

ADVOCATE for your child – My son was empowered when he saw that I was on his side when dealing with school problems. That’s not to say I condoned his behavior. When he saw that I was his representative and empathetic, he would take counsel better when we got home.

REMEMBER THE CHILD’S BEHAVIOR DOESN’T REFLECT YOU – Your precious child was born with this temperament. You are separate and apart from the child. They make their own choices. (Please, remember this when they hit teen years.) Their behavior is NO indication that you are a bad parent.

PRAY

1. Relinquish Control – Relinquish control, gain freedom. I gave my wild-child over to the Lord daily. Inside or outside of my presence, I couldn’t control my child’s behavior. The Lord could protect him, calm his mind and help his decisions. The Lord was faithful with my trust in Him.

2. “How do I get through this, Lord?” – Although I couldn’t control the situations, I prayed God would give me the wisdom in how to proceed. God consistently put resources in our path at just the right moment (books, comments from strangers, good teachers, out of the blue suggestions.)

3. Hope – Daily ask for hope and the ability to see it. I needed daily reassurance of my child’s goodness. I knew that his behavior wasn’t bad, it was just outside of societies accepted norms. Still, I needed to see the tiniest bit of positive. I had to work with the Lord by being observant for the positive action. Even if it was just an instant of sharing kindly with his brothers or petting the dog lovingly. Those moments were my joy.

No Difficult Child in your life?

If you do not have the blessing of a difficult child, please remember this verse.

Ephesians 4:29, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

Nothing hurt my heart worse than a negative comment about my son, even out of ignorance. Parents of difficult children are beaten down enough by society and its behavioral standards. Don’t contribute to their weariness.

Final Hope

Wild-child parents, your life will never suffer from boredom. If you’ve given your child to the Lord, know that your child is going to grow into a productive godly adult. Never doubt it. However, you may have to shift your expectations of what that adult will be like. Frankly, I’ll take beautifully quirky over sedate seriousness anytime!

Pearl: The grittiness of life has helped shape Pearl. Her luster comes from layers of experience and HOPE from the beloved Word of God. Pearl has parented children with learning issues, has navigated the genepool of mental illness, and has dealt with marital conflict and sexual fulfillment issues. Pearl focuses on sexual intimacy and restoring waning female libido. She wishes to share HOPE with her beautiful readers to help them understand their men, marriage and sex. Swim on over to the oysterbed (www.oysterbed7.com) where the water is fine!

Related posts:

Dealing with a Sensitive Child
5 Steps to Raising a Child Who Will Stay Christian
The Best Interests of the Child

Reader Question of the Week: How Do I Spend My Time?

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 stewarding our time, as parents and as a couple.

My husband and I have 2 small children. I want to spend as much time with them as I can because they are only little for a short time. He says we should be spending more time with each other and send the kids to someone’s house more often because once they are grown and out of the house it will only be him and me. I love him very much and do enjoy spending time with him, but I also like family time. What should I do?

What do you think, ladies? How do you negotiate this?

I wrote an article called, Are You a Better Wife or a Better Mom? that speaks to this, as well.

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: Mom needs help with sons!
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Choosing Joy

Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario and Saskatchewan. This week’s is about waking up to joy. 

Recently I read an article about a woman who had rediscovered joy after her marriage had fallen apart. For two years she languished in a deep depression, but one day she woke up and decided that she was going to get rid of everything in her life that caused her pain, and fill her life instead with as many things as possible that brought her joy.

She stopped listening to the radio where singers crooned about broken relationships, and turned back to instrumental jazz, which made her feel peaceful. She painted her home her favourite calming colours. Instead of staying home with all her cats, she added a dog to the mix so that she’d have incentive to take walks by the waterfront every night, which rejuvenated her. She took up a craft. She began to volunteer. She did things which invigorated her.

And then she listed one choice that really resonated with me because I did the same thing: she cancelled cable and stopped watching all the crime shows.

Fifteen years ago I was completely addicted to the show ER. I loved it. But I found that every Thursday night I’d head to bed in a funk. I vividly remember the day that I realized I was letting a TV show, with its horrible stories of family breakdown and violence, bring me down. Sure, it was entertaining, but that melancholy feeling wasn’t worth it.

Movies and TV shows have grown even more violent over the last fifteen years. The CSI type dramas are almost pornographic; you can watch the bullet tear apart flesh in slow motion graphics. And the new incarnation of The Batman series is so much darker than the Michael Keaton one from the 1990s. The violence is brutal, dehumanizing, and even evil.

I don’t believe in censorship, and I certainly wouldn’t say that movie companies should be prohibited from making violent and dark movies. But that doesn’t mean that we have to go watch them, either.  Often we choose to watch movies or play video games that are flashy and riveting and titillating. But I wonder how many of these things actually bring any lasting joy, and how many instead rob us of happiness?

Perhaps one of the reasons that so many of us feel perennially dissatisfied and out of sorts is that we have failed to learn the lesson that this woman embraced: we need to make choices to fill our lives with good things, rather than bad things. And why don’t we do that? Because we’re essentially lazy. I feel so much better when I cook a good meal than when we order take out. We eat better. We sit around the table. And I get to cook—which I actually enjoy doing. But when I’m busy, and I don’t have time to grocery shop, I take the lazy way out. And I never feel good about it.

When I knit everyday for at least half an hour, and have a creative outlet, I feel better. When I veg in front of movies because I’m tired and don’t have time to hunt around for needles, I don’t.

The things that bring us a sense of accomplishment, purpose and joy tend not the easy things in life. They’re not the flashy things, or the trendy things, or the default things. They’re things that require effort and planning. And that’s why we often avoid them.

Everyday we make little choices of what we will do and how we will spend our time. Those choices define who we are and what our priorities are. That once spurned woman chose joy, and it changed her perspective on everything. I wonder if we, as a culture, will ever turn our backs on the things that rob us of purpose and even humanity, and again choose the things that feed our souls. Perhaps then we’d stop feeling so melancholy, and start feeling alive again.

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

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That One Perfect Person
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Wifey Wednesday: Is Honesty Always the Best Policy?

It’s Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you all can link up your own marriage posts in the linky below!

I received an email recently from a woman who is occasionally tempted by porn. She’ll go months or even years without looking at it, but then she’ll be tempted for about a week to look at it a lot.

She wants to stop; she confesses it to God; and she’s feeling really guilty.

So here’s the question: should she confess it to her husband?

I received another question recently from a reader who had developed an attraction to a man at work. She has now gone out of her way to avoid him, has made sure she never texts him, and is looking at leaving for a different job so that they aren’t thrown together in any way. But she still occasionally finds that she dreams about him. She tries not to think about him, but doesn’t always succeed. But she does love her husband.

Should she tell him?

I find these very difficult questions, and I’m going to give my opinion with the humble assertion that I truly may not be right. I don’t really know. But here’s what my gut tells me:

1. Secrecy when we try to hide things from ourselves and from God is always wrong.

If you are doing something you know is wrong, and you are running from it and aren’t trying to stop and aren’t confessing it to God, you’re in dangerous ground. You need to be honest with yourself and honest with God.

2. Accountability Needs Another Person

At the same time, as important as it is to be honest yourself, to keep us on the straight and narrow we usually need another person. We’re supposed to “confess our faults one to another”, as James 5:16 says. We are supposed to tell others about what we are struggling with so that they can pray with us and so that we can’t hide behind a false veneer of righteousness.

So I’d say that it’s really important to find ONE female that you can talk to (or male, if you’re a guy and you’re reading this). Find someone you can trust, whom you can also help keep accountable so it’s a two-way street. Find someone who will hold you to what God says, and won’t justify or pooh-pooh or rationalize your behaviour. And find someone who will pray with you.

3. Be Careful About Sharing with Your Spouse

But IF you’ve confessed to God, and IF you’ve put things in place so that you’re minimizing the temptation and preventing the sin, then I’m not certain telling your husband is always the best policy. You have to ask, “why am I telling him? Is this something that he NEEDS to know, or am I telling him simply for the sake of complete transparency?” And if it’s something that will hurt him (like having a crush on a co-worker whom you are now going out of your way to avoid), I’m not sure it’s really helpful to tell him. I think it’s far more helpful to throw yourself in to making your marriage as fun as you can and in wooing your husband again so that you feel attracted to him.

If you tell him that  you’re attracted to someone else, someone that you aren’t pursuing and aren’t planning on pursuing and are now avoiding, you’re just hurting your husband when no real sin has taken place. Does your husband deserve that?

At the same time, I can see where certain things need to be confessed, like if you’ve really overspent and put the family in debt. You can’t try to hide that, even if you do the finances in your house. Or if you’ve been faking enjoying sex for years and years, and now you want to restart your sex life. I don’t know if you can really move forward in something like that unless you at least give your husband a bit of information about what’s really been going on. And if you’ve had a full-blown affair, I do believe that needs to be confessed.

So I would say that you have to ask yourself certain questions: will we be able to maintain a healthy and close relationship if I DON’T tell him, or is it necessary for me to tell him? In the case of a debt, for instance, not telling him will increase your anxiety and potentially cause major ripple effects. In the case of a crush which you have dealt with, I would think that real intimacy is better maintained by keeping silent with him but then pursuing an ever more romantic and passionate marriage.

What do you think? Does everything need to be revealed in order to be passionate and intimate? Is honesty always the best policy? Let’s talk in the comments!

Now, what advice do you have for us today? Write your own marriage post and then link up the URL to that post in the linky below! And be sure to link back here so other people can see all the awesome marriage posts!

Related posts:

Wifey Wednesday: Why Kindles Can Wreck Your Marriage
Wifey Wednesday: Getting into a Frisky Frame of Mind
Wifey Wednesday: Too Tired to Have Sex?

Top Ten Posts for July

I so appreciate all my faithful readers! Thanks for coming back, and for all the encouraging emails you send! But I’d also like to welcome my new readers, and point out some posts that you may not have seen yet. July was my biggest month ever, with over 300,000 unique visitors. That’s awesome! So if you’re relatively new, take a look and see if you’ve read these posts. And if you’re a regular, you won’t want to miss these!

Now, often my top posts are older ones that get “pinned” a lot. So I’ll do the top 5 posts by traffic last month, regardless of when they were written, and then the top 5 posts that were actually written in June. Make sure you didn’t miss any of these good ones!

Top 5 Posts from July

1. The 50 Most Important Bible Verses to Memorize. If you’ve always wanted to memorize Scripture, here’s a great place to start. Plan to launch into it in September with your family.

2. 16 Ways to Flirt with Your Husband. I do love this post, and apparently other people do, too!

3. 29 Days to Great Sex: The Act of Marriage. It’s Day One of the 29 Days to Great Sex! If you haven’t worked through it with your husband, why not start now?

4. Magic Mike, Marriage, and Women’s Libido. I tell you what I think of the movie. Hint: don’t see it. This one’s actually a recent post!

5. How to Have an Orgasm. Okay, this one isn’t pinned (people don’t like to share it), but it’s still really popular!

Top 5 Posts Written in July

The first one was Magic Mike, but that’s in the list above. Here are the next five:

1. Men: Here’s What I Wish I Could Say to You About Sex. I go on a rant!

2. Dear Young Christian Guys: Love Her Like a Man. Wow, another post addressed at men made it into the top 5. Maybe I should write more!

3. Top Ten Things Hardest Things to Share After Saying I Do. An awesome guest post from my friend Rajdeep!

4. Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise and What Their Divorce Tells Us. My post about how difficult it is to be married to someone who doesn’t share your beliefs.

5. Fifty Shades of Grey Replaces the Bible. Wow. A hotel pulled the Gideon Bible and put in 50 Shades of Grey instead!

There you go! My top 10 posts from last month. Do me a favour? If you particularly like any of these, share one on Facebook or Pinterest for me? Thanks!

Related posts:

Enjoying My Vacation…
50 Shades of Grey, Great Links, and More!

How God Used Poison Ivy

I have a dear 16-year-old friend named Liam. My girls have grown up with him and his younger brother Paul; our two families camped together every summer and spent winters at a rustic cabin in the woods.

This summer my mother led a missions trip to a Kenyan children’s home, a place which has rescued over 3000 children. Our family has been there three times; my mother six. But this year, for various reasons, we just couldn’t go. But Liam did.

The week before he left, he took a canoe trip with his family and got poison ivy on his eye. How horrible! And right before a trip to Kenya. Everyone was grumpy and rather perturbed at this intrusion and inconvenience.

The doctor said, because it was eye, and because he wouldn’t be near great medical treatment, a cream likely wouldn’t be good enough. He needed steroids. And so Liam was put on Prednisone.

Fast forward to Kenya, and Liam starts to develop a rash on his legs. Nothing serious, and it’s not itchy, so my mother, the team leader, isn’t alarmed. My aunt, who is also on the team, and who happens to be a physician, is very worried indeed. Because it turns out that Malarone, the medication you take to ward off malaria, has a weird, rare side effect that can result in vasculitis (an inflammation of the veins) and eventually, well, death. And it turns out that this all starts with a rash.

The treatment? Prednisone.

My aunt almost didn’t go on the trip, and had she not been there, my mother would not have recognized that this was anything to be concerned about. Liam would have kept right on taking Malarone. And that would have led to–well, you get the picture.

And if he had not had the poison ivy, the reaction would have been worse, because the Prednisone was already calming it down.

I’ve thought about that incident lately in regard to prayer. My blogging friend Rachel has recently put out an ebook, The Sensational Scent of Prayer, looking at what prayer smells like–what is its purpose to God? What does God like to see?

I’ve found myself wondering lately, wouldn’t it have been easier, God, if you had simply prompted Liam’s parents to put him on a different anti-malarial drug in the first place? It’s wonderful that you arranged for my aunt to be on the trip, and for the poison ivy, but it would have been easier if you simply hadn’t have had them choose Malarone in the first place.

But God is not the God of the easy. God’s primary purpose is that we bring glory to Him. As Rachel says in her book, that is what prayer is about: learning to focus on God and praise God even in your circumstances. And what did this episode show Liam? It showed him that God was in control–in very weird ways. Sometimes, as Rachel says, God is in control of things we don’t like. Rachel follows the story of Hannah, Samuel’s mother from the Old Testament, who desperately wanted a child, but “The Lord had shut her womb.” How must it feel to know that God did this to you?

Rachel knows what she’s talking about. She has a special needs daughter, Taylor, with a debilitating illness called MPS, which brings a shorter lifespan, and a more difficult and painful one. I know what it is to have a child with a terminal illness. When I was pregnant with my second child, we were told that he had a terminal heart defect. He may live into his thirties, but he may also die very young.

The latter came to pass. Christopher only lived 29 days. And today would have been his sixteenth birthday, and so I write today in memory of him. I know what it is to pray desperately for God for a miracle, only to see nothing happen. The obvious thing that you wanted to happen, the thing that you felt would be best, didn’t come to pass.

I’m sure that Rachel has felt that, too, and yet she still has learned to turn to God in prayer. And while God has not answered any prayer for healing, God has answered other prayers in marvelous ways.

God is in control. That needs to be the starting point for prayer. And His plans are not always ours. We want the shortcuts, the obvious things. What He wants is a relationship; a deeper trust; a revelation.

Would we have had that if Liam hadn’t have gone on Malarone in the first place? Nope. But because of his reaction, we got to see how God can use something as awful as poison ivy. We saw how God put all the jigsaw pieces together because He cares about Liam. His parents saw that. My mother saw that. Even my aunt, who was nervous as she was treating Liam (rashes and reactions aren’t exactly her medical specialty as an anesthesiologist), saw God in control. And I got to think again that too often I expect God to do the logical, and forget that there are others factors at work.

Today my son would be 16. No, let me rephrase that. Today my son IS 16. He just isn’t sharing a birthday cake with me. And through these difficulties in our lives we either are drawn more towards prayer, or we give up on prayer, thinking, “it never works anyway!”. Yet perhaps the reason it doesn’t work is because we’re looking at it with our perspective, instead of God’s.

If you’re struggling with prayer, why not read The Sensational Scent of Prayer, and follow Hannah’s journey of prayer with Rachel. Maybe you just need to be reminded of who is in control, and that He really does love  you and wants to bless you–even if things aren’t working at as you think would be logical and obvious.

Today, I’m realizing that even though my prayers were not answered as I had wanted, I have been blessed indeed. And my son is safe. He is celebrating his birthday with my grandparents and my uncle, and with others who I’m sure adore him. And we remember him, and thank God for the difference he made in our lives. And that gratitude, even in grief, is the sensational scent of prayer.

Related posts:

Difference Between Discipline and Dedication
Thirteen Years Ago….
When I Find it Hard to Pray as a Family….

Reader Question of the Week: Can You Get Over Adultery?

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, “Can you get over adultery?”

We’ve had an affair rock our marriage, and I’d like to know from others who have been there: can you get past this? Can you rebuild trust and find intimacy again? In our case both parties are sorry and want to work it out, but I just don’t see how we can get to a point where this isn’t always hanging over us.

What do you think?  Leave your thoughts in the comments!

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: Wait, He’s Watching THAT?
Reader Question of the Week: Ready for the Wedding Night