Tag: love

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Marriage

Identifying Your Role in Your Marital Problems

For the last few months I have been feeling like there are times when my husband and I are disconnected. Of course, in my mind, it was my husband’s fault because I can do no wrong, right? Well, I’ve recently learned that I can do wrong and I have been wrong for months.
Someone very wise spoke to me recently and said that I cannot base my marriage and my role as a wife on the words or attitude of my husband. My husband has bad days just like I do. My husband is human.
This person also reminded me of the good in him, which I had apparently quickly forgotten considering that I had just spoken about how amazing he is at his birthday party. The very next day following this affirmation of my love for him, I found myself angry and heartbroken over something small and declared that he can’t possibly love me. It was that easy for me to throw away almost five years of love, fun, smiles, and hard-work simply over a series of small arguments. Though I always think small arguments are indicative of a bigger issue, we usually know how to identify the big issues and work through them. The fact that we weren’t working through them told me that something was very wrong, and at the time was sure that it was him.
The night that we had our first issue also happened to be the second night in a row that we didn’t read the bible and pray as a family as we usually do. I decided to break the pattern, so I prayed with my daughter, and then again on my own. When I was praying on my own, I began to lift up our family. While praying for my family, God began to instruct me to pray against anger and hurt. I thought I needed to pray for the issues within the family, but what I realized was that one of the factors causing the issues was the anger and hurt I was harboring. There seemed to be a lot of anger within me that God wanted to deal with. How can I expect my house to remain standing if I don’t take care of its foundation? I am a part of that foundation.
By the next day, my husband and I had the chance to really sit down and talk. Our issues stemmed from varying views on disciplining our child. I had a hard time listening to his criticisms, but I listened anyways. That night he said that he wanted us to get back into reading the bible and praying. The first verse in Proverbs 29 says, “Whoever stubbornly refuses to accept criticism will suddenly be destroyed beyond recovery.” Between the continued verses about criticism and discipline, I had an incredibly hard time reading the chapter. But, through those verses, God truly opened my eyes to the changes I needed to make in my attitude in order to have a healthy marriage.
I am learning that when I have an issue in my marriage, I need to first look at myself before blaming my spouse, and then approach the issue. The Word says, “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3-4).  Before turning to and on your spouse, consider looking at your faults first. This will enable you to have a healthier perspective on both your role and your spouses’ role in the disagreement. Once you have gained a healthy perspective, you will then be able to clearly discuss the issue and agree upon a solution.
Also, it is important to spend time with God together so that you two can continue to maintain and strengthen your foundation. Storms may come your way, but once you take care of your foundation, the two of you will be able to remain standing and defeat and overcome all obstacles that come your way. “For where two or three gather together as my followers,[a] I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20) When you gather together with your family to pray, you are allowing God into your household and into your marriage. And with God, you cannot fail.
 
 

Categories
Communication Home Marriage Physical Intimacy Spiritual Intimacy

Sex and the Christian Wife

Like most women who didn’t enter into their marriages in piety, I was not a virgin when I met my husband.
Honestly, even if I was, I probably would not have made it to the alter a virgin.
I fell deeply in love very quickly and let’s just say, I couldn’t keep my latest promise to God.
My man and I had fun. We spent weekends in bed, ordering food, and staying up long enough to satisfy each other. It was as amazing as it was damning. We both knew what we were doing was wrong, even though it was soooo good.
Now that we are married, sex has taken on a new form. It is more than just fun. It is transforming.
Everything I thought I’d never be able to do (due to lack of flexibility) God has somehow given me the strength to do.
As weird as it might sound, I think the youth pastor from my old church was right, “Sex is better after you pray!” The euphoric feeling of confirming that we are one sends me over the top every time. The way we touch goes far beyond what I’ve experienced in the past.
According to my current pastor, “Sex is meant for procreation.” Apparently, it is not meant to be enjoyable or done in any other position but missionary. He is right, God says that we must “multiply,” but he also made sex a significant part of marriage.
Sex is the joining of two souls. In the end, you walk away with a piece of that person. “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’” (1 Corinthians 6:16). This is why sex should only be between man and wife. It is spiritual, not just of the flesh.

I remember discussing sex with another woman from my church and I said that the first form of sex involved God, Adam and Eve. She considered me a weirdo from that point on, but she wasn’t able to see past the negative connotation of sex. What I meant, though, was that God’s definition of sex is two souls coming together to create something new. When God made Eve, he joined his soul with Adam to create her. He took Adam’s rib and from His breath formed a new being.
The beauty of that encounter is the same way we Christians need to see sex.
It is not something nasty or wrong, as long as you’re with the right person.
 It is the one thing that only married couples should do, so why should we act as if it is wrong? For appearances? As long as my bedroom/bathroom/whatever room I’m in’s door can lock, no one can see me. Yes, God can but the wonderful, amazing ecstasy of it was also created by Him, why wouldn’t He want us to like it?
I won’t lie, there are times when I’m going the extra mile that I feel guilty, but the word says that his body belongs to me and my body belongs to him.
It also says that I must be submissive to him, servicing him in the way he requires. I am a woman that is intent on following the word. So whatever he requires, wherever, and however he requires it, I will give it to him.
Because he is mine and I am his and it shall remain that way.

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Home

Finding Love

There is no mistaking I grew up with a very distorted view on love. My parents divorced when I was only four years old & something went awry from there.
Without knowing their story I cannot blame them for what went wrong. But something did. Somewhere in their love story something was lost, and I inevitably went looking for it.
I didn’t go looking for what went amiss in their love story, but I went looking for a way to fulfill my own. I always ended up in the wrong place, but I kept looking anyway.

And, one day it hit me.

How do I even know there is more to love than what my parents showed me?
Why do I think there is more?
I had only ever known my parents as being divorced and logically I should have been okay with that. They were the ones who modeled what marriage was (or wasn’t) and that is what I should have seen as acceptable for my own life.
Except I didn’t.
It wasn’t until recently that I started to realize just what it means when God says He knew me before I was even born. As I began to recall back on situations that caused hurt in my life God started to reveal to me where He was in each of those moments.

When I was kicking and screaming in my bedroom doorway, “no one loves me!”, God loved me and in a very real way He was that doorway standing strong, framing my life.
When I was kicked out of my house at 13 I felt rejected and damaged; Yet God provided a safe place for me to go, and He accepted me in my brokenness.
When I lost my virginity at 15 I thought I had found love. But when my reality was crushed by truth that I had been used for a “game” I contemplated if life was worth living. And, it was then, as I sat on the edge of my bed with a piece of glass in my hand, that God planted a deep seed in my heart that stopped me from ever causing physical harm to my body.

So, ask yourself. How do you know there is more to love than what has been modeled before you?
What tells you that love is more than what you have ever experienced?
The day I decided to open my heart to God He showed me I was right all along to believe in a better love. And, ever since that day I have felt whole. I no longer feel like I am missing something because I know the creator of love, and He has fulfilled the void in my life that I so desperately wanted for 20 years. I am married now, but my search for love was completed before my husband ever proposed.
I encourage you today to ask yourself if you have ever experienced true love. And, not the kind of love they sell you in movies or books. The kind of love that no human can fulfill, but the kind of love that cannot be explained because it far surpasses all understanding.

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Engaged Home Marriage

Four Things A Wife Should Hear From Her Husband Every Day

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Marriage Physical Intimacy

Romance Your Hubby This Valentine's Day With the 5 Senses

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Dating/Courting Home

Why You Should Stop Waiting?

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Why You Should Stop Waiting?

It seems like the dawn of day will never come, well at least with me it does when the agonizing diminishing minutes of waiting in the Starbucks line drag on for what seems like an eternity. You scroll through the news feed, you check your Instagram, you take a selfie or two (don’t even try to deny that you haven’t done this its just sad) and sweetly jam to whatever blasts its way into the speakers of your car. Waiting.
Then you finally reach the glorious window to grab the drink you just felt like you went through a marathon of tribulation to get! It tastes just as good as you thought it would and you realize you carried on with life in the waiting. You continued to be. The drink came just like you knew it would without a second thought. And all the while you carried on living life in its entirety because of one great assurance; the reward for the wait would be there in the end.
Now I know that is an infinitely grand symbolism to relate the relationship woes of singles to the steamed Starbucks lattes we savor, but stay with me I promise I’ll whip up a delight for you in the end.
WAITING
Webster’s states the word waiting as a period of time spent inactive or stationary. For many singles the ideology behind being in the season of waiting means being inactive or dormant to life. We should just await the arrival of his or her significant other, or the the next season of life when in reality Jesus came to “give life and life more abundantly.” Jesus didn’t sacrifice himself in hopes that during the “waiting” season of our lives we would expel ourself from living it.
In 2 Peter 1:2 it states, “Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God.” God wants us to have peace in the grace of the season He has us in. When we are celebrating in the season of our singleness He means for us to stop waiting in the literal since of giving up life and wait in the beauty of His assurance, the assurance of the great reward awaiting in the end of our season.Whether that is moving into a new season of singleness, a new relationship, a new place to live etc. When we stop looking to the next season to make life better and start seeing Jesus for all He has and is in the now. We settle in the peace of the grace of the present. 
SEEING SINGLENESS
Singleness is to be lived. Not waited out in agony of finally being done like a math test or credit card application. Singleness isn’t about the pursuit of “finding the one.” Singleness is to be savored like a Starbucks frappe on a hot day. It’s to be lived in its fullness to grasp the great grace; knowledge and truth the Lord wants to extend to us.
When the choice to choose forever with the right person does come, (if marriage is even the end result for what God has for you) that its viewed through a season which was lived out in love and light not one waited out in disillusion and depression.
Singleness isn’t to be viewed with bitterness and sarcasm such as, “All good things come to those who wait”, I sure hope so because if I’m waiting for bad this is going to suck. “Why are you still single”, because becoming a magician was taken? Singleness should be a place on the journey where books are read, road trips are made at midnight, community is at your core, relationships with sisters or brothers in Christ are deepened, laughter is abundantly more, where dreams are drawn up and accomplished by the droves. Stop waiting for life to start or force people into a place which hasn’t yet been established for them in your life because you are so tired and exhausted of the process we’ve deemed waiting.
STOP WAITING
Hear me out please, I am not saying throw in the towel and go completely off the cliff of your foundations and cornerstone of standards. I am saying though stop claiming singleness as a dead, dormant dry season meant to be the end of all ends until you get to the mountain top. Instead change the viewpoint of singleness to be lived out not waited out. Let life be enjoyed, let God become more savored and let love most of all nourish and grow in the living out of the waiting.
“I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully? Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” Ephesians 3:16-19
This verse to me is the motto us as singles should be holding onto in a season where Christ longs to make His home in our hearts and bring us to trusting in Him even more for filling the space where our future mate will capture one day. But in the mean time letting God’s love grow deep in us to keep us faithful and strong. And this is the very best part so we can have fullness of life! A season of waiting isn’t death. It wasn’t meant to wait out with dread and expectations of lack. It is meant to be lived in the fullness of life, to be enjoyed to the utmost all the while increasing our faith and hope in the assurance of the end result that God is ever faithful in His promises to us!

 If we are just waiting to wait out the waiting we are waiting our life to death.

And when we finally start living the waiting fades in time and we soon realize the reward came just at the perfect time and we arrive to the window of goodness, exceedingly abundantly more than we could ask or imagine. A future full of promise and the reward of all that our sweet heavenly Father promised us. And it just so happens to beat out a good Starbucks drink any day. Don’t you think?
 
Written By: Angela Groce

Categories
Dating/Courting Engaged Home

Set the Foundation for Love with Honesty

My husband and I met in person at Central Park. Our business conversation quickly turned into a conversation about everything else. As he walked me to the train (after his attempt to kiss me) he stared at every movement my large lips made. I kindly asked him not to do that because it made me uncomfortable as most full-liped ladies would know. Now that I think back to that encounter, I wonder if he was looking at my lips or mesmerized by the things I said to him.
As I said in a previous article, he told me he loved me just days after meeting me. Thinking back now, I know that we were at the most vulnerable points in our lives and were able to be honest. Honesty is most important when trying to develop a relationship with someone. It is even more important than having things in common and spending quality time. It’s definitely more important than playing the so-called game of “trapping the man.”
We’ve all done it: try to find ways to get him to put a ring on it. But it is impossible to make him want you if you aren’t being yourself. The best way to show him who you really are is by the words you use. Don’t be afraid to voice what you are looking for in a relationship. You don’t want to run him off with your long list of demands but be candid about the type of relationship that you want. Make sure that you are clear that you want a monogamous relationship that can possibly lead to marriage. Why waste time? In the past, I’ve told guys that I just want to keep it casual when I really wanted to say, “I want to have your babies.” Although, God allowed me to be fearless enough to say that to my husband on our first date, I could have kept that to myself. The thing that I did let him know, which was the right thing to do was that I was tired of mindlessly dating. Yes, I was young (20) but I was tired of having a broken heart. I made sure to let God know and let him know.
I was honest but I wasn’t demanding—not at first anyway. I simply explained to the man I knew I wanted to marry, that I don’t casually date and that I hoped that the next man I was monogamous with was going to be the last person that I was with. I assured him that I was not pressuring him into anything but I wanted to be open with him. I didn’t want to date him under false pretenses and I didn’t want him to do that to me either. He appreciated my honesty and felt like he could be honest as well. It turned out that he was tired of just dating too. He was actually considering marrying someone else if he didn’t meet the right one by age 30. He appreciated that he met me before he made the mistake of marrying the wrong one.
Though it may be early in a relationship consider that the early days are your building days. These are the days that you are constructing the foundation for a long-lasting love. Love can only exist in an honest place. Its foundations must be biblical in order to thrive. “The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences.” (Proverbs 18:21) You have the power to speak life into your relationship by being honest so be mindful of the words that you speak to your potential spouse. Also, be careful not to be demanding; that is a good way to run him off. Don’t think that as soon as you talk about your intentions for your future that you should start planning your wedding. “4Love is patient and kind…6 It does not demand its own way.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-6) It just means that you’re not wasting anymore time in relationships that aren’t going in the right direction.

Categories
Dating/Courting Engaged Home Marriage

Why I Needed Marriage (And Still Do)

I was still a teenager when I officially “went crazy,” according to my friends. I literally went from graduating from high school to planning a wedding with my beautiful young fiancée. Six months later I was waiting for her at the altar.
Why did my friends think I was crazy? Because in their well-pondered logic, I was still in the infatuation phase of the relationship. From their perspective, there was a likelihood that I was marrying Sarah because I still had the “warm fuzzies.” Good analysis, guys, but your logic was flawed!
We had invested seven years of friendship into this relationship already. We had fights where we got so mad at one another that we couldn’t even speak. We laughed so hard that we gasped for precious oxygen between intervals of embarrassingly high-pitched guffaws. We wiped away tears that we had caused one another to shed.
My point? Infatuation was not the engine driving our decision. Love was. Love anchored me to her bedside when she had her wisdom teeth removed and I helped her up from her bed to the bathroom door because she was so nauseated she couldn’t stand. Undiluted, ever-increasing love planted her feet before that altar and emboldened her tear-jerking vows to me—me—on our wedding day. Yes, it was love, but also peace. It was the perpetual peace of God in us that evaded well-intentioned skeptics and hand-wringing nervousness of people around us.
Though the objective of marriage is not to fulfill my needs, these are five reasons that I needed marriage—and still do:
1. I need what God hid for me to find in my wife. God has graciously and humorously deposited attributes of Himself throughout creation. My wife is a treasure trove of beauty that contains pieces of the mysteries of God that I am privileged to unearth, through the inexhaustibility of Christ in Sarah. (2 Corinthians 4:7)
2. I need to love someone even when there isn’t immediate gratification. Godly marriage is an invitation to invest into a something big that doesn’t only benefit us. I need to love outside of myself, my ambitions, my rewards. I need marriage because it evokes an “other-worldly,” supernatural, bond-breaking love that “covers a multitude of sins.” (I Peter 4:8)
3. I need my wife’s tenderness. I need my wife’s feminine tenderness. I get into “warrior mode,” slaying dragons, and hunting beasts to protect and provide for my family. But God gifted man with wives to bring the beauty and tenderness of His nature to man. My wife does that for me.
4. I need my wife’s relationship with the Lord. My wife is such a worshiper! She is prone to enter into the presence of God and man, waving the banner of His majesty. She brings to my relationship with the Lord the reverence and awe of Him that I so often neglect.
5. I need my wife’s friendship. I need an encounter, in the flesh, with true unconditional love. My wife knows things about me that none know, besides God Himself—and she loves me and approaches my weaknesses with patience and faith in the God Who “works all things together for the good of those who love Him.” (Romans 8:28)
Every night I kiss the face of a fellow pilgrim who nudges me ever-closer to the shores of Heaven. In the end, we will reach those shores together and look more like Jesus because of our journey in marriage. I needed marriage then, and I need it today. And I accept this certainty with a smile on my face.
Does marriage provide God-ordained solutions to your shortcomings? How does it push you closer to Christ?

Categories
Dating/Courting Home Marriage

Let Your Husband Find You: Part 2

In the previous article, I described some tips a pastor gave to find (or not find) a husband.

  • Let your husband find you.
  • Make a list of all of the things you want in a husband.
  • Trust the word that God gives you.

I followed these steps and my husband of almost four years has every quality I desired from height to ethnicity to personality.
When I heard the sermon I was only 19 and the story seemed far fetched but I was so desperate for relief that I was ready to try anything. I must have sat in that bath tub for more than two hours listing all of the things I desired and trying to be honest with myself and God. There were many times that I said what I thought I wanted and then had to mentally erase these so-called qualities that have gotten me in trouble in the past. After praying, I sat silently, waiting for God to speak to me. It wasn’t long before I heard a quiet voice tell me that I will meet my husband in a year and six months after, I would be married. He said that the devil will send people in my way but not to get distracted.
The very next day, I met a Packaging Designer for Fisher Price. He was sexy, strong, had money and was a little mysterious, every girl’s superficial dream. I tried to turn him into the man I asked for but in the end, I realized he was like every other “man” I dated: selfish and abusive. Even with that experience, I still tried to force three more relationships, including one with my ex…and his baby….and his baby-mama and each were utter failures. June 2010, a year after my prayer, I decided that I wasn’t going to get married; I’d just focus on my writing career. The next week, I met Robert Crewe. His best friend introduced us because we were both writers. We spoke everyday for three days before we actually met. I was convinced that we were going to be friends at most. Three days after meeting him, while on our first date, we stood at the Promenade Downtown Brooklyn (New York).
I said to him, “There’s something that I want to say but I’m afraid to say it.”
He said, “I want to say it too.”
Instead I told him, “I want a daughter with your eyes.”
Three years later, I gave birth to Jael Octavia Crewe, a beautiful little girl with daddy’s eyes and mommy’s nose.
There are no words to explain God’s miracles but I want you to know that you can and will experience them. I was a woman with very little faith in what God spoke into my life but I always kept it in the back of my mind because I knew that maybe, one day, it would be true. Everything He spoke into my life has happened thus far. Even though I had naysayers, including my spiritual counselor, I held on to God’s blessing. As we move toward a new year, I want you to sit down with God and discuss your future. Don’t be afraid to claim your destiny and declare your victory.
Revelation 21:6-7New Living Translation (NLT)
6 And he also said, “It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End. To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life. 7 All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children.

Categories
Dating/Courting Home Marriage

Let Your Husband Find You: Part 1

It was four years ago when I expressed to my pastor that I was in love and we were going to be married. He insisted that my husband-to-be only told me those words to sleep with me. It was at that point that I knew I didn’t have a counselor. I felt alone. How dare he try to take away my blessing? That day I walked away feeling like I was in a fight for my life. I knew that his feelings were that of many people who could not understand finding happiness in just 6 months.
A year and a half before meeting the love of my life, I sat in a bath tub with tears flowing down my face. I was suffering from a broken heart. My ex-boyfriend cheated on me again and this time got a girl pregnant. I felt like dying. Was he the best that I could do?
As I cried, I recalled a sermon that I heard just a few weeks before. He met a young woman who was desperate for a husband. He explained to her that her husband will find her.
“The man who finds a wife finds a treasure, and he receives favor from the LORD.” Psalm 18:22
As women, we cannot force relationships because its not our calling to. God created man FIRST meaning it is his duty to initiate the relationship. When he finds his wife he finds a good thing because he has found the missing part of HIM.
The pastor then instructed her to make a list of all of the qualities she desired in a husband and said that in a year, she will be married. The word of God says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7 It is when we ask, and have faith that God will answer us. We may not receive what we want exactly when we want it but in His time we will receive our answer and possibly our husband.
The young lady didn’t believe the pastor but by the next year not only was she married, she had a child.
God knows exactly what we need and when we need it. It is not up to us or anyone else to tell us what our calling or a blessings are. When we make the conscious decision to talk to God about our future, we are relinquishing the right to take control. “Give your burdens to the Lord, and he will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.” (Psalm 55:22). If we put our total trust in Him, He will not steer us wrong, whether it be in relationships or life in general.
Following the pastor’s advice, I was able to marry the man that I requested. I rebuked every negative person that tried to advise me against following God’s word for my life including my pastor. We cannot let anyone stop us from obtaining what is rightfully ours.