Posted on

Day 11: Bless

MORNING
Bless! Our Losses

Good morning. Welcome to Day 11, Blessing what has been lost. 

There is an ancient tradition in the Japanese culture to repair a broken object. If a vase has been broken, it will be repaired with the appropriate materials. After it’s been repaired, a small object of gold is melted and carefully painted over the crack in the vase. When it is finished, the vase is put back where it belongs. The vase now tells a story of an accident or mishap, the care to repair it, and the beautiful gold etching that highlights what was once broken has now been restored. 

We would do well to care for the mishaps of our relationships in the same way. No relationship is free from the problems of life, and no relationship escapes the hurts that come from selfish people. And yet, we often ignore the broken parts of ourselves that have been repaired, blessed, and restored. Beauty from ashes.

When we refuse to accept the blessing (the gold etching over our brokenness) our spouse gives us, we demand contempt and this chokes out grace. Over time, this erodes both husband and wife in their ability to see what needs grace. 

Yesterday we talked about celebrating the wins of our relationships. Remembering the good and joy that has come from being on the same team. Today, it’s still about the team. Teams that lose together will stay committed together. Problems start getting out of hand when we leave the confines of the team and start blaming and pointing fingers. It’s natural to do so, but never really helps anyone that was a part of the loss. 

Our losses together need the care, attention, and blessing that the vase received in the story above. When we bless our losses, we accept them as necessary (albeit painful) experiences that teach us something about ourselves, our spouse, and about God. If we refuse to address the losses, we refuse to let something be healed in ourselves that only this situation might have been able to heal. 

I wish healing worked differently. I wish it always happened with an epidural, or while I sleep, or when I am away on vacation. But it doesn’t work that way. Healing requires that we be fully awake in the pain and the struggle. And glorious things happen when we are awake and alive to what we are asked to do, especially in marriage. 

Blessing our losses means that we have to move out from being the victim of to a participant with. Not that the loss was the result of our choice, but that our commitment to another person includes participating with them (and them with us) in the repair work that needs to be done. When we offer a blessing to something painful, we are choosing hope instead of despair, love instead of contempt, and companionship instead of isolation. 

It’s easy to desire the blessing when it is me that messed up. When we bless our spouse, we give them permission and an invitation to do the same for us when it is our turn. 

Reflection Questions

  • What did I think about my spouse in reading today’s material? Was it kind? Was it thoughtful? Was it loving?
  • Did I have feelings, thoughts, questions, or stories that came to mind?
  • What is something I can do for them today?
  • How can I welcome and receive what they have done for me today?

Assignment
What are 5 difficult stories/moments of your marriage that need a blessing? Answer these questions about each story: 

  • What happened?
  • What did I feel? 
  • How did I respond?
  • What was so difficult for me about this event?
  • What did I do with the pain I felt?
  • What would a blessing from me look like about this story? 

Give yourself some time to complete today’s assignment. You might need 30 or more minutes to appropriately answer the above questions. Be kind. Remember the celebrations from yesterday, not all is loss. Be careful with the difficult stories. It would be wise to go slow, and ask God to show you what you’ve been unwilling or blind to see about these stories before.

The goal of today’s assignment is to, as a team, find something of gratitude for the difficult experiences you’ve had together. This is not an exercise to excuse what has happened, or to enable it to happen again. It is to find a way to say “thank you” together for what has been present in your lives as a couple. Think and pray about how a “gold etching” could become part of these stories.

EVENING

Hello! Welcome back. Great to see you again. How was your day?

Yesterday I said that stories are awesome, and that is true for today as well. Even though the stories you got into today might not be the ones you want to remember, they need to see the healing light of day. 

Take 10-15 minutes tonight with your spouse to talk through your day. 

  • What were the highs and lows?
  • Where were you surprised? 
  • Was there anything different about your day because of the assignment(s)?
  • From this mornings reading, what stood out to you? 
  • If you’re willing, share your answers to the assignment. (Some words of caution about today’s content. Be kind, be careful, and be hopeful. Share your stories, but do so with a hope to reconcile and redeem, not to tear down and criticize. Go slow. Ask for what you need. Take a few days to do this part of the assignment if that’s what you need.)

Remember to offer grace and a blessing. The goal of today’s assignment is to, as a team, find something of gratitude for the difficult experiences you’ve had together. This is not an exercise to excuse what has happened, or to enable it to happen again. It is to find a way to say “thank you” together for what has been present in your lives as a couple. 

Assignment Connection
(Similar to yesterday’s assignment) Break a vase, repair it, etch it with gold. Fill the vase with rocks of blessings from difficult moments in your lives together. 

Posted on

Day 4: Loss

This post is a part of The 15-Day Relationship Challenge. If you’re just now tuning in, click here for the whole series.

MORNING
Top 5, part 1. Keystone Stories of Loss.

Good morning. Welcome to Day 4 of 15! 

Over the past two days, we’ve talked about some of the building blocks to who you are as a person. As we talked about at the beginning, intimate relationships bring up the some of the truest thoughts, feelings, and stories about ourselves. To have successful intimate relationships, we have to know these experiences and not avoid them, especially in our marriage.

A keystone is a stone that a builder places at the top of an arch to connect the two sides together. It secures the arch in place, and allows the arch to bare weight. It literally becomes the most important stone in the building.

We all have a storehouse of keystone stories from our lives. These are the stories that are so foundational to who we are, how we see life, and how we respond to others. There are two categories of keystone stories in our life: Joy and Sorrow. Today, we’re going to talk about sorrow.

Richard Rohr says that if we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it. We will give it to others, which include our spouses, kids, and friends. These keystone stories that remain unaddressed to us, and unknown to those closest to us become a big threat to our marriages.

It is simultaneously a freeing thought, and a terrifying thought: No one escapes home without scars. 

Scars come from wounds, and wounds that mess with our life come from other people. Even if you think you’re parents did the best they could, or that they were as close to perfect as possible, they were still not perfect. In fact, some of the most difficult issues to address are those that come from a really clean or perfect environment. Someone who deals with anxiety that grew up in a “perfect” home will struggle to see their anxiety as anything other than their personal failure of this perfect upbringing. 

To empathize and have compassion for others comes from our ability to be in touch with our own painful experiences in life. We get our word “sorry” from the word “sorrow.” To be sorry means we have sorrow to offer and share with one another. Most of us are far more willing to offer sorrow to others than we are to ourselves. We will get to the difficult stories from your marriage next week, but today we’re going to focus on the top 5 keystone stories of difficulty and pain from your life before marriage. 

These are the stories that need to see the light of day, and to share the burden of these stories with those we are closest to. 

Reflection Questions:

  • What did I notice about me in reading today’s material? 
  • Did I have feelings, thoughts, questions, or stories that came to mind? 

Assignment
Write a brief description for each of the top 5 most difficult experiences from your life prior to marriage. Be as detailed as you can. Answer these questions about each story: 

  • What happened?
  • What did I feel? 
  • What did I do?
  • What promises did I make after the fact?

Give yourself some time to complete today’s assignment. You might need 30 or more minutes to appropriately answer the above questions. Above all, be kind to yourself in. 

EVENING

Hello! Welcome back. Good to see you again. How was your day? 

This morning we talked about painful experiences, which is not usually a subject I’m all that excited to jump into first thing in the morning. I hope the assignment was revealing and helpful for you and your day. 

Take 10-15 minutes tonight with your spouse to talk through your day. 

  • What were the highs and lows?
  • Where were you surprised? 
  • Was there anything different about your day because of the assignment(s)?
  • From this mornings reading, what stood out to you? 
  • If you’re willing, share your answers from the reflection questions. 

Assignment Connection
Pick one story from your assignment list, and share that story in as much detail as you’d like to share. 

______________________________________

Posted on

Day 2: Family Roles

This post is a part of The 15-Day Relationship Challenge. If you’re just now tuning in, click here for the whole series.

MORNING
What’s My Role?

Good Morning. Welcome back. 

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Home is where life makes up it’s mind?” Some of us grew up in chaotic homes, while others of us great up in quiet avoidant homes. Regardless of the temperament of the home, we all carry a massive set of assumptions about life that was formed in our childhood homes. 

One of the primary ways our childhoods impact our relationships today is the role we played at home. We all played a role in our family, and we all fill a role (usually a similar one) in our marriages. When I think of the word “role” I immediately associate it with the word “hole.” Our roles come from the holes in our family.

No family is perfect, and these imperfections create holes in family dynamics. Kids come along and desperately want the attention and affection of mom and dad and they want out of the insanity that is a family. They begin to unknowingly try and fill these holes to cope with the craziness. It’s a wonder any of us are even partially functional in life! 

Here is a list of the most common roles that kids play in order to fill the holes at home: 

Hero
The do-gooder. Rule follower. High achiever. The chosen one. Straight-A student. They come home on time, rarely offer resistance to expectations placed on them, and have an incredibly high standard of what success looks like. They feel like love is earned and have an inflated sense of importance. “If I don’t do it, no one will. It’s up to me.” They make the family look good. Their pain is masked through performance and perfection. 

Mascot
The family comedian or storyteller. They are the practical joker, funny guy, and clown. Mascots cut through the tension of the home by making everyone laugh. They stay emotionally distant from difficulties, but know exactly what to say or do to alleviate the seriousness of a fight or stress in the home. Everything is ok for us if we are laughing. They mask the pain through laughter. 

Scapegoat
All families are messy, and they need someone to take the blame for why they’re a mess. The scapegoat is easily blamed for the problems at home. Their “acting out” (drugs, alcohol, sex, etc) is a way to cope with the family pain. They get compared to the hero a lot. Scapegoats fill the role of being the container for everyone else to emotionally “throw up” on. Scapegoats are generally the most honest in the family. They tell the truth through actions about how crazy the family is. They mask the pain through acting out. 

Lost Child
The family is so focused on laughing with the mascot, blaming the scapegoat, and celebrating the hero that someone is going to be lost. Lost kids get missed in the drama of everything else happening. Sometimes this looks like being a chameleon (I’ll be whoever you need me to be). They stay just on the outside enough to go unnoticed, away from the drama/mess of the family. They tend to be withholding, silent, and afraid to get close to people. They mask the pain by hiding, being unnoticed.

Some of us filled multiple roles in our family home, and sometimes our parents played some of the roles. The roles we played in our family as kids shape the way we are in our close intimate relationships as adults. Knowing what roles we played is tremendously helpful for how we are as adults. It gives us insight and understanding in how we deal with conflict, failure, risks, and intimacy.

Reflection Questions:

  • What did I notice about me in reading today’s material? 
  • What feelings, thoughts, questions, or stories that came to mind? 
  • What role(s) most closely describe me in my childhood?
  • What stories do I remember that illustrate this? 
  • What did I learn about my family in reading through these roles?
  • How might the role I play be impacting my relationships today?

Assignment
Think of a story that best illustrates the role you played in your home growing up.

EVENING

Take 10-15 minutes tonight with your spouse to talk through your day. 

  • What were the highs and lows?
  • Where were you surprised? 
  • Was there anything different about your day because of the assignment(s)? 

From this mornings reading, what stood out to you? If you’re willing, share your answers from the reflection questions.

Assignment Connection
Tell the story you thought of that best illustrates the role(s) you played in your childhood home. 

______________________________________

Posted on

Pressure Treated Relationships

Pressure shows up two ways in relationships: Couples who put pressure on each other, and couples who have been have been pressure treated together. It’s the difference between an insecure relationship and a secure one.

Insecure relationships put a lot of pressure to “say or get it right” because the individuals aren’t yet good at taking care of each other. If one fails to “get it right” it’s known there won’t be much grace available. So they have to get it right, or bad things will happen. These relationships are marked by actions like tiptoeing around each other, avoidance of conflict, and a feeling of fear and shame. This is kind of like building a deck with untreated lumber. It’ll be fine until the fair weather is replaced with foul weather.

Secure relationships don’t have as much pressure to get it right, because they have gone through the “pressure treating process” from another source other than each other. This process is different for everyone. It could be the death of a loved one, therapy, mentoring, a common enemy, shared goal, mutually beneficial purpose together, or a surrender to marriage and God. Being pressure treated produces grace, mercy, patience, forgiveness, fighting for (not against), and most importantly: Belief in each other. When foul weather comes, pressure treated relationships stay strong and true. 

What type of relationship do you have?