HopeForYourFamily

“I’m really frustrated with my marriage.” - “My wife is driving me crazy!” - “I am so sick of my husband!” - “Our marriage just isn’t what it used to be.” - “I just don’t feel satisfied with my marriage.” - “Is this as good as it gets?” - “I’m not happy anymore.”

So many different ways of expressing dissatisfaction with married life - and I’ve heard a lot of them in my office.  The details of the problems can vary greatly, and just when I think I’ve heard it all, I hear a painful new story.  Humans are tremendously complex creatures, being made in the likeness of a fantastic, multi-layered God.  To say that human relationships, particularly marriages, are complex is a huge understatement.  And yet…

While I am always keenly interested in the particular dynamics of the individuals and marriages of the couples with whom I work, I am beginning to see marriage in simpler terms.  Most couples who seek counseling with me do so because one or both spouses are feeling unhappy.  And they are hoping I can offer them the guidance they need to find the path back to happiness.  It is human nature to desire happiness and fulfillment, and we certainly expect to experience it in our marriages, of all places.   We all know we will experience some times of unhappiness in this journey of life, but significant ongoing unhappiness within a marriage is typically a sign of a problem that needs to be addressed and resolved.  And professional marital counseling is often the best approach.  But here is where it gets…tricky. (more…)

A few months ago, my wife and I invested a good bit of money in having professionals come whip our front landscaping into shape.  They did a great job.  We’ve got all kinds of new flowers (don’t ask me what kind), new greenery, new mulch.  The house has really benefitted from the colorful “facelift.”  It looks pretty snazzy.  We are thankful for our nice home, and enjoy it very much.  We also didn’t want to be the eyesore of the neighborhood.  But we finally admitted we were never going to get the motivation to attack the project ourselves.  So we called in the pros - and are very pleased with our choice.

But now there are weeds.  How did this happen?!  I watched how deeply the husband and wife team dug up the old beds, cleared them out, and filled in fresh beautiful dirt.  The flowers and plants they put in place were weed-free.  So what happened?  Did the weed fairy come visit our house and plant the nasty little green monsters while we slept?  No, the reality of life is - weeds grow wherever there is dirt and water to be found.  This has been a constant on planet earth since, well, the Garden of Eden.  If I want to keep the ground around my home looking fresh and neat and well kept, I’ll have to either keep pulling weeds and trimming edges and cutting grass, or pay someone else to do it for me.  (For what it’s worth, I’m opting to do it myself, because I think it helps reconnect me to the rhythm and order of God’s creation.)

So today I began pulling weeds.  I donned my long sleeve gold Tigers shirt, clasped on the overalls, laced up my old pair of Timberlands, and dug my fingers into the moist, dark earth in front of my home.  I was quickly faced with a very big decision, one I had not anticipated.  What level of weeding was I going to perform?  A quick scan of the sixty feet or so of flower/shrub beds indicated somewhere in the neigborhood of a dozen big, nasty, “devil weeds.”  I don’t know what you call these things, but they are big and ugly and clearly love South Louisiana.  And I was really tempted to just attack them and call the job done.  But they were not alone.  They had less obvious, but more sinister friends.  Mid-level weeds that spread and hunker down.  And don’t get me started on all the clover.  And there was the grass from the yard that refuses to respect my boundaries.  What should I do?!!

I decided I really wanted to get our money’s worth out of the recent landscape job, so I started at one end and began to remove all unwanted greenery (and a little brownery) from my path.  Wow!!!  What a job!  This is a narrow strip of ground, and I really thought the whole project would take a half hour at most.  When I reached the path from our front door (the halfway mark) an hour later, I decided to stop for the night and finish tomorrow.  I may not have finished the weed pulling project yet, but I made some observations in the process that I believe are worth sharing: 

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Being the week of Valentine’s Day, I know what is on the mind of many. Okay, besides chocolate. Sex. Men and women get married with the hope and expectation of having a great sex life. (I know there are plenty of folks working on a great sex life who aren’t married, but I’m sticking with God’s plan for sex - between a wife and husband only.) I would encourage you to read my article in the February issue of Lousiana Homes and Gardens entitled “Passion Like Never Before.” Because the magazine is for a broad audience, I could not go into Biblical guidance there. Well, this is my website, and I believe God’s guidelines in scripture are the best instructions we can find for all areas of life, so here we go!

For those who are familiar with the Bible, you might be expecting me to launch into some hot passage from Song of Solomon - or maybe 1 Corinthians 7 - or perhaps Ephesians 5. Actually, in my experience, the following passage offers the most powerful guidelines for transforming a lackluster sex life into a hotbed of marital bliss - and it never even mentions marriage. Before we move into the scripture, we’ve got to address a common misconception. Hot sex is not about techniques and positions (although they can be fun to learn together). It’s not about buying the right equipment (I do recommend a towel and some unscented baby wipes for cleanup - and a bottle of Astroglide or KY liquid comes in handy now and then). Here’s the deal - a passionate, fulfilling, enduring sex life is the fruit of a marriage where husband and wife are committed to blessing, serving, and encouraging one another in all aspects of life, not just in the bedroom. There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking pleasure in your sex life. God intends it to be immensely pleasurable. Just make sure you don’t get so focused on your own pleasure-seeking that you lose sight of your relationship with your spouse and how to offer your mate the kind of security, pleasure, and fulfillment that would bless him/her. With that, let’s look at Philippians 2:1-7, what I believe is the best model anywhere for how to have a great marriage - including a great sex life. (more…)

Parents of adolescents, how many of you enjoy your children’s favorite music - if you can even understand it?  I realize there are families in which parents and children enjoy the same musical tastes.  However, for many, the choice of music preference can become not only a difference between generations, but even a focal point of major misunderstanding and conflict.  I would urge you, as parents, to give serious consideration to what I am sharing today.  With the right approach, you can take the huge barrier of your teen’s musical identity and turn it into an open doorway into the deep struggles, hopes, fears, beliefs, and desires lying in the heart and mind of your son or daughter.

Music has always been important to people.  It has the power to touch and stir our spirits in a unique and powerful way, giving voice to our inner thoughts and shaping our identities in the process.  In modern America, each generation had their music that defined them and expressed their inner selves outwardly for all to hear - much of it commonly shared by the majority of one’s generational peers.  However, in postmodern adolescent America, music has become a much more personal expression - with scores of styles, genres, and subgenres available for download.  And let’s face it, much of today’s music (but certainly not all!) is distasteful, offensive, or outright disturbing to the parent who can pick out enough words to hear the themes.  So, what do you do when confronted with shocking album covers, myspace pages, cds, and downloads?

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