GPS to a Joyful Marriage

I hope you all had a joyous weekend and remember to celebrate this Memorial Day for its true meaning.  I ask you to stop for a moment today to pray for the military people who have given us the peace and freedom we know in our country.    This is also a very special day for my husband and me.  We have been away for the weekend celebrating our wedding anniversary.  Rick and I were married thirty years ago today.  SO hard to believe!  I remember when I thought people married THAT long were REALLY OLD! I realize that these days, reaching the thirty year point is quite a milestone. Fewer and fewer couples are achieving it.  It saddens me so to see how quickly couples discard a relationship that could have been fixed.  I often wonder what my life would have been like had I left Rick, over twenty years ago, as I planned to at the time.  I know I chose the right path by sticking it out (thanks to Gods persuasion), and I have been so amazingly blessed by God for my obedience to my we

Every Thanksgiving, after stuffing myself beyond sensibility, I lean away from the table and say, “Why don’t we have this more often?”  I love all the dishes that go with our traditional feast and always question why I don’t make this incredible meal more than once a year.  I just forget about it.  The desire for it never seems to cross my mind. It’s kind of like sex.  I rarely think about it.  It never seems to cross my mind - until after the fact.  Then, I’m completely overwhelmed by the pure pleasure and puzzled how I could so easily forget about this blissful sport.  I’ll say to my husband, “Why don’t we have this more often?”  It stays on my mind… for the next few days.   Men and women are wired differently for sex.  It’s almost always on a man’s mind until that moment of ecstasy.  Then there is relief for a few days (maybe a few hours for the younger ones) and they don’t think about it – for a few days or hours. Most women, on the other hand, need to be romanticall

1 John 2:15-17 “Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” Our love of the world shows through in our attitude when we face problems.  If we fret and stress and get sidetracked from God’s will for us, we are focusing on our life in the world.  We are loving the world – for better or for worse – by fixating even on our undesirable circumstances.  For example: when we face financial difficulties, if we allow ourselves to be consumed by the issue, we are only showing our desire for worldly happiness.  We want our finances to be healthy so we can live a life with the best the world can offer us.  We love prosperity in the world.  We love the world. I

“This world is not my home, I’m just passing through.   My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.   The angels beckon me from heavens open door.    And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.” This song says it all to me.   It sums up what our attitude should be while we live on this earth.   We are put here for a reason; a God-ordained reason, and we need to keep our focus on that, not on the woes and worries we face while we live here. Here are a few thoughts on this song that I find I sing to myself more frequently than ever. “This world is not my home (it sure feels that way), I’m just passing through. (Thank God for that!)   My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. (So then WHY do we worry so much about our finances and ‘stuff’ down here?   We need to stay focused on this!)   The angels beckon me from heavens open door .   (Maybe that’s why it’s difficult to feel contented with our lives here.)   And I can’t feel at home in this world

We all have problems to deal with.  We all have moments of feeling sorry for ourselves.  We all become absorbed in self-pity at some time. I’ve often heard it said, and I know I’ve shared this in previous blogs, that the best way to get out of the pity pot is to reach out to someone else in need.  You will quickly see how severe the problems of others are when you seek those in need. Your own problems may not look so bad. God reminded me of this just the other day on the way to a routine medical test.  On the drive there, I cried to God asking him, “Why Lord” and “When Lord?” - feeling sorry for myself in my fatigue over this desert journey. After my arrival and obligatory waiting room experience, the tech called my name.  She asked the dutiful, “How are you?” to which I automatically replied, “Great!  How are you?” She responded, “I won’t complain.” After some discussion about how people usually complain and my tendency to ask questions, she slowly revealed t