Marriage - Revising and Refreshing

In all walks of life you will meet experts.  Experts on finance, HR, marketing, building, athletics, decorating ... you name it, there is probably a qualification somewhere that covers some aspect of it.  But nowhere, is there an expert on every aspect of marriage.  It's easy to become incredibly complacent about how you conduct your life alongside the person you have devoted yourself to and it's easy to become caught up in the mechanics of day to day life, living alongside each other, but not with each other.  

Show me a married couple who insist their marriage is perfect and I'll show you either two liars, two very disillusioned people who haven't quite realised they're married or two people whose lives are so far apart, the chasm between them has become so normal, they don't see the abnormality of it.  Marriage is hard work.  At times it is heartbreaking, lonely and confusing, but mostly you wonder how you'd ever live without that person and the rewards of sharing your life with them are immense. 

So many people now enter marriage flippantly, blinded by the notion that it's akin to their career path.  If they get fed up with a job or it doesn't pay the rate they want, they move on.  If the spouse gets a bit boring and the responsibilities become monotonous, they move on.  For some that do stay the course they think by the time they've clocked up a decade together, they've got the whole thing nailed.  I'm sometimes cynical like this as I've clocked up 14 years of marriage and find myself at times thinking I'm a bit of a guru when it comes to certain problems and how to deal with them. There are many challenges within marriage I can confidently expertly advise on because I've experienced them and there are some challenges I know nothing about because I haven't.  Having gone through some very challenging moments, I can see things from the same platform as the poacher turned gamekeeper, but even my advice has the danger of becoming flawed because of the complacency of time and familiarity.  At other times I can be the best person to speak to and my advice can be well received and heeded.  But as I said, nobody is an expert on every aspect of marriage.

So, how do you deal with this?  How do you keep your marriage alive and fun?  How do you still love that person the way you did on your wedding day?  How do you learn to love them more?  How do you live as one, yet remain as two individuals?  How do you get through problems? How do you forgive?  How do you move on and how do you look back and choose to reflect on the good times and not throw up the bad ones?  How many of us married couples really take time to evaluate our marriages and treasure them for what they are and what the years have given us?  Do we really stop and think about what our marriage means to us?

Having gone through a separation and reconciliation, I can say that I have evaluated my marriage.  Andy and I both had to evaluate it.  We had to look at what God had given us and what we were doing a mighty fine job of destroying.  We had to stop and think where we stood before God and before each other and we had to look at very uncomfortable situations we were finding ourselves in.  We learned that the best support for us were couples in solid relationships or people in no relationship.  People with faltering marriages of their own proved toxic to our efforts to rebuild ours, so we had to distance ourselves.  We found some couples with seemingly healthy marriages took sides with one or the other and that created wounds and distrust, moreso because we asked them not to.  Because of this, rebuilding our marriage broke friendships as we found some people actually enjoyed taking sides and creating tensions between us - it staggered me particularly how two faced people were.  We had to sever previous friendships which was heartbreaking, but necessary.  The rebuilding of those friendships will hopefully return one day, but in order to save what was precious, sacrifices had to be made at the time.

Going back to the basics of anything in life is a good thing.  It's refreshing to remind ourselves why we made a certain choice, why we chose to be where we are or why God chose to put us where we are.  It's healthy to go back and repoint the bricks upon which we've built our lives, to rediscover the simple pleasures and attractions that have led us to where we are now.

So Andy and I have booked ourselves on The Marriage Course.  Seven sessions covering various aspects of marriage and how to build on them.  You may well think that after nearly 16 years together and over 14 years of them being married, we'd have run out of things to talk about or build on.  But that's why.  We don't want to become flippant, stale and stagnated in our marriage.  We don't want the newlyweds thinking we're a pair of past it old timers whose marriage consists of bringing up children and working.  We have so much more than that together.  We've weathered many storms throughout our marriage and we've also seen many rainbows, but the fundamental foundation for me and Andy is that our marriage stays strong, alive and God centred.  We're really looking forward to it and to having many more fantastic years together.  We know it won't always be perfect, but we will always remember that God made our marriage and remains in the centre of it.  Taking time out once a week to rediscover parts of our relationship that could so easily be lost, to pick up where things have become stale and just to spend time alone talking about the two of us and not the kids, finances, shopping and 99 other things will be fun, thought provoking and essential.

So, whether you've been married one year or 25 years, never be afraid to look back at the basics.  Don't get caught up in thinking that because you tell each other you love each other every day and you text or message one another or you get through a day without an argument, that you have nothing more to give or receive.  You do.  You both do. 

The Party To Make Up For Parties

Maddie has missed out on many birthday parties, purely because her birthday lies in the summer holidays.  Sharing the same day as her I remember from my childhood, all my friends having parties, sleepovers and fun days, but when it came to my birthday nobody was around, mainly because they were away on family holidays or my family was away on holiday.  I got used to having quiet birthdays, but despite this my Mum and Dad always made sure I had a good day, making a fuss of me and getting me nice presents.

Maddie mentioned last year that she hadn't really had a proper party for her birthday.  Over the years she's been very gracious about this, has never moaned or complained and never asked for anything the others had.  She's seen them have laser quest parties, bowling parties, sports parties, swimming evenings, pizza building parties, gym parties, indoor activity parties, discos,  .....  but Maddie's days were quiet, like mine had been.  So, this year, for her 11th birthday, we decided to have a party to make up for parties, inviting the friends she felt closest too and the friends she wanted to get to know better in the future.

The only obstacle that faced us, was it being in the holidays, friends being on holiday and this year, herself being away at a Church camp on her birthday.  So her celebrations have spanned nearly two weeks!  A few presents opened before she went away, a cake and shoebox stuffed with small goodies smuggled to camp in her leader's car as a surprise for her birthday morning and a party and sleepover the weekend after.

Maddie has the most fabulous group of friends.  Sadly, not all of them could make it, but she had a great crowd at her Water Walkerz party last night. As well as asking her older brother at the last minute if he'd like to come and bring a friend, which meant a quick phone call to another friend, the group was made up of a neighbour, Brownies pal, school friends and church friends.  Girls who had never met each other before, but who got together to have a great 2 hours of fun, water zorbing, sliding the chutes, playing volleyball with the lifeguard and munching on the poolside buffet.  They even did a fantastic job of singing Happy Birthday to Maddie so loud, they drowned out the sound system!

Four friends came home afterwards, two went home at 10.30pm and the other two stayed over for the night, finally drifting off to sleep some time after 3.30 this morning.  Filled up with pizza and midnight munchies, the girls still managed to fit in a breakfast of sausage, eggs and bacon.  It was a real shame to have to send everybody home, but Maddie has had a great time.

Judgements of the Unqualified

I usually don't blog about the lives of celebrities. I may catch the odd headline on the news, but beyond that my interest fades.  I've never been a buyer of OK, Hello or whatever the latest hot pick on the newstand is.  I'm simply not interested in what their duvet cover looks like or what dress they're wearing whilst sidling up to the fridge in their fifty thousand pound kitchens.  I try to avoid the speculation about who's having affairs and who's been photographed slumped in a drunken stupor in the back of a limo in the early hours, or who's had a tantrum at the nightclub bouncer because they're not A-list enough to get in the club in the first place to end up in a drunken stupor.  But over the years, as I've got older, it's become more and more impossible to watch the news without all this being thown in front of me.  Tragedy, violence, humiliation and despair sadly attract the journalists and the more depraved the story, the quicker it hits the headlines.

And this brings me to Amy Winehouse, who this afternoon, tragically secured her place amongst the members of the macabre '27 Club'.  A young woman noticed in her teens, with a raw unusual quality to her voice - a sound so distinctive amongst her peers, that set her apart, accelerated her ability to grab the heights of fame and elevated her to the sycophantic attentions of those who saw the opportunity to exploit what should have been nurtured and protected.

For many years I was intolerant of drug users and alcoholics.  To an extent I still am, but ignorance by innocence is somewhat excusable, ignorance by dogmatic arrogant choice isn't and as I've experienced more and more of life and modern pressures, my intolerance to these people has softened.  I will never accept that people have no choice when it comes to drink and drugs, unless they're physically forced.  Nobody MAKES them carry on drinking to oblivion and nobody forces them to snort up powders or shoot toxic liquids into their veins.  It is a choice, but the strength of character to walk away from this is sadly lacking in those people, like Amy, who are flung into a life of money and glamour when they're far too young and immature to handle it.  Furthermore, having the discerning ability to see through the murky intentions of vulturous advisers who are set on exploiting young talent in the guise of a support network is nigh on impossible.  Especially when the very trappings of success are promising a future where everything landing in your hands is considered a reward for talent.  And those trappings, for Amy, enabled her sadly to lend those hands to her own fate.

So my reaction to her death is not one of surprise, but immense sadness and anger.  Anger that the Press saw fit to make a mockery of her troubles, to document her struggling to perform, to deliberately set about catching her during some of the most undignified and despairing moments of her life.  The 100m distance ban on all media near her or her friends came too late and in reality was a sneer though the viewfinder of the modern age zoom lens.   My immense sadness at a unique young woman who was really given no chance to turn her life around without every step she took being scrutinised.  Each visit to rehab dismissively mocked by the tabloids, a father who resorted to speaking to the press in an apparent desperation to 'reach out' to her.

Disbelief at people, who even after she's died, seem to think they have the qualification and authorisation to determine that her death was deserved.  Because, obviously, they have such great experience of having associated with people like her, they are so well placed to quantify those statements.  People who say 'life is what you make it'.  These people clearly having absolutely no pressures in their lives, no disappointments, and sat on the pedestals of their self inflated egos.

I would challenge these people to confirm whether they have the same disgusting abusive attitude towards obese people.  After all, eating beyond the body's calorific need is surely self abuse - but an illness that many people struggle with and need support and understanding to cope and live with, not taunts and sneers of disgust.  Do they have the same attitude towards people in debt, who spend beyond their means because the lure of goods in shops are just too tempting?  Or what about people who just can't keep up with the cost of life - are they failures in the eyes of those simply because life is too tough for a season in their lives?

I feel incredibly sorry for Amy and my heart reaches out to her family and friends.  Those people close to her who have had to watch the woman they love and care for, slowly ebb her life away.  A woman they could appreciate and love for her immense talent and for who she was to them and it is my hope and prayer that in her death, she is afforded a moderate amount of dignity and her family are allowed to grieve without the voyeuristic vultures of the media and public performing their own moral autopsy on her.

A Splash Of Memories

Us parents have to constantly judge whether it's right to become stressed about something when teaching our kids.  Some days things bother us more than others.  Some days we worry too much about what other people are thinking or saying.  Some days we don't realise that when we say 'no', it's not because it does our kids any harm, but more because we can't be bothered dealing with the things that follow.

So, occasionally, I dig out these photos below and remind myself that some days I can just say 'yes'.  Like this day in July 2007 when coming home on the last day of the school term, the local area flooded.  We were faced with this and the only choice we had was to go through it and get extremely wet, or trudge the long way round.  Maddie and Joshua had a schoolfriend coming home for tea and after much begging on their part, followed by a quick mobile call to their friend's Mum, the go-ahead was given for them to dive in and 'swim' in the field on the way home.  

They had such fantastic fun coming home that day.  Admittedly, had it been the day before, they would have probably had to walk the long way round. But occasionally us parents need to chill, to stand back and just let our kids be kids and let them do those mad little things, that ordinarily we'd never dream of letting them do. 

So, if you're a parent, let go once in a while, let the kids do something a little wacky - as long as they're safe, no offence is caused to other people and nothing gets damaged, ask yourself where the harm is?  If there isn't any, give them those precious moments to dive in and swim.

Happy Exhaustion

 

Andy and I have four happy exhausted children today.  The younger two are in bed after having an absolute blast of a day at the South Reading Churches Fun Day, followed by a first birthday party for a dear little boy in our church.  And for Sam an extended day involving a much longed for trip to Toys R Us early this evening to spend birthday money.

The older two are collapsed on the sofa vegging in front of the television having enjoyed a great day out in the fresh air just being kids and enjoying a bit of freedom and independence.  They're about to head up the wooden hill.

Me and Andy?  A lovely cool refreshing beer each, feet up and DVD.

All's good in the house :-)

Friends

I adore this picture.  My son, Sam, is on the left. 

Two little boys holding hands waiting their turn on a fun game.  Two little hands that speak many words.  'You're my friend and we're in this together'.  When they're older, they won't be holding hands with each other, but I hope when they both become young men, they have the same attitude and conviction of heart that extends their hands to any friend that needs them.

Silent Sunday

Happy Dog

One large baked beef marrowbone presented to Toki this evening.  He was so excited he shook!  He's been in the garden for 20 minutes now munching on this and there's no sign of him wanting to come in.  This must be the equivalent of a five year old being given the biggest ice-cream ever!

Rundown Days

I often get people asking me how I cope with having four kids, house to run, church things, commuting to work, working outside the home, fitting in a social life, doing shopping, etc and sometimes the answer is quite simple.  I don't always cope.  I get days where I'm so utterly exhausted I don't know what to do with myself.  Sometimes it's not physical exhaustion, but mental meltdown from having to shuffle so much information, remember who has to be where and when, who needs what, what needs to be paid to whom, how much they want, when do they want it by, what form needs to be handed in, who needs what sports kit today, who's at after school club, who needs picking up, who's walking home, what's for dinner, what e-mails are more urgent, has that staff member got their pay rise, has the translation for this letter been received, has this manager got enough money to pay that contractor, what time is it in Kirkee so I can speak to a technical manager on tour about something, have I filled in the information on this database, have I returned medical certificates to regional offices because they're written in Arabic and I can't understand a word that's written, what time am I leaving work today, is there enough petrol in the car, do I have a babysitter for tonight, is the washing done, has the dog been walked, have the pets been fed, are the clothes on the kids bedroom floor there because they're dirty or are the kids too lazy to put them away, have I replied to that birthday invitation one of them brought home yesterday, have I read my Bible today, have I prayed today ........

Life.  Just plain ordinary busy hectic life.  But some days it gets too much and I wake up feeling totally overwhelmed.  Headaches start, I get short tempered and snarky with the people around me I love and they take the brunt of my vain attempts to do it all under my own strength, despite me having a wonderful husband who does so much to help and often tells me to stop worrying about things.  So, today I'm off work, because I'm feeling a bit grotty and run down.  But instead of vegging in front of the television I've decided to use some time to be a Mary, rather than a Martha and I'm already feeling a little uplifted.  I'll be blogging more on My Martha, My Mary over the next few days as I really feel that God has given me a good talking to over the last couple of weeks and I'm starting to find my balance.

Silent Sunday

Expectation and Fulfillment

Andy told me earlier this week he was going to a Desktop Virtualisation Seminar. To the IT geeks out there I presume this is something to get excited about. He loves all things tecchie. I'm pretty hopeless in that department and as long as something can be turned on, used and turned off again, I'm happy. I won't even begin to try and understand what this seminar is about. 

I had visions of him being stuck in a stuffy airless room, surrounded by technonerds all speaking in trainspotter voices, rapidly blinking as they manually downloaded the information to their brains.  I felt a bit sorry for him.

Until he sent these pictures to my e-mail account at work.  Venue:  Kensington Rooftop Gardens.  Complete with four flamingoes named Bill, Ben, Splosh and Pecks.  He hasn't mentioned the seminar at all, but he's enjoying the surroundings.  It's just a shame the sun isn't shining more for him as it looks a beautiful place.







When I was pondering my expectations of his day out of the office, my thoughts were brought to Hebrews 11v40.  When God's faithful people of the Old Testament stood firm in their hope and faith that He would fulfill his promises of something better, they lived in expectation that God would send their saviour.  In the New Testament Paul speaks to the Hebrew Christians exorting the fact that what they have received is the fulfilment of those promises in the form of Jesus Christ which is so much better than the unfilled covenant of their forefathers. 

So expectation of something good is one thing, but receiving it is quite another.

Grasping independence

My eldest son, Joshua, 12, is a smart kid.  Having gone online last week and wheeled and dealed his way around the Internet finding a mobile phone contract deal that would undercut the current ones I held for him and his sister, he managed to find a way of getting them both a brand new smart phone each that had all the gadgets they desired, for less than I was currently spending each month.  Having previously told him that an upgrade was out of the question as I was not prepared to spend more money, I found myself having to concede to his request as he quite rightly pointed out my fears were unfounded and that I'd actually make a saving.

As a parent I could have reacted two ways.  One is that I could have got angry that he continued to pursue something I'd originally said no to and punished him.  Or, as I chose, I could have held back and allowed him to rise to the challenge and make his own discoveries.

I'm glad I did.  With his perseverance and for being sensible, gathering the facts in, making sure the tariffs were correct, working out Internet bolt ons, researching through the current provider what his current text and talk usages were, he could compare differing offers and make an informed choice about which level of contract would suit him.  He wasn't greedy, he didn't demand extra applications and he even made sure he stayed with the same network so calls between family remained free of charge.

The money issue itself was not my main concern.  My children know we have limited budgets for some things, tight budgets for others, miracles in waiting for some things and variable budgets for others.  We've tried over the years to be honest with them about money and spending and to search for good deals, not to be tempted into impulse buying, not to be sucked into the latest craze and to analyse whether they'll really use something. So to see my son actively and quite naturally using these criteria for obtaining something he desired was wonderful to see.  It showed me he's growing up wisely, that he's thinking things through analytically before making decisions and it's confirming to me that he is listening to us when we try to advise him.  As a parent it's uplifting to see your child make wise decisions, not just because a yes or no option has been put before them, but because they've taken an idea and developed it.

There are times he does things for me because I don't understand how to use them, or he explains how something is made or how it works.  Usually with a big cheeky smile on his face and a roll of the eyes because my level of ability is at 'muppet' level.  There are a lot of times he's just the boy he is, but I'm confident that as he grows, and as time goes on, I'll have to let go a little more each time and allow him to take hold of opportunities.  This week it was just a mobile phone, but it won't be long before those choices become more complex and he'll be able to take life with both hands and get the best value out of it he can.

Oh, and their phones arrived yesterday.

What if ...?

So much of life is full of what ifs?  Usually coupled with regret and missed opportunity, leaving us swimming in a soup of disillusion and peering ahead with little hope for the supposedly great thing we missed.  I try not to have too many what ifs now.  Well, not backward, hopeless ones, but more forward thinking, opportunistic ones.  I suppose it could be viewed as risk taking rather than optimistic what iffing.  So, where's the harm in a little risk taking?  Does taking risks expose you as a flippant, nonchalant and spontaneous person with little regard for responsibility and consequence, or does it generate an inner core of you that expels great confidence, hope and trust in those things to come?

I often think about why people just don't believe in Jesus and His resurrection.  Look at all the cuckoo crazy stuff some people are passionate about.  Diversity awareness and acceptance of all modern quirks and idiosyncrasies are drummed into us, so why are people so cautious and sceptical about God, Jesus and all things in the Bible?  What are people REALLY afraid of?  I'd like to think the real reason they're hesitant or dismissive is that they have the little what ifs floating around their head.  What if people think I'm a loony believing in somebody that you can't see?  What if evolution is the source and destructive force of the Earth?  What's the point in me believing I'm going somewhere better if there's nowhere else?  What if I'm not good enough? What if I'm beyond saving?  What if I fail and muck things up?  What if my family disown me or my friends tease me?   So, here's my limited take on a sample of little, but obstructive what ifs that people have posed to me over the years when they've questioned my faith.

What if God really does exist?  What if we're so restricted in our intelligence that we simply just can't comprehend the notion of omnipresence?  When new species are found, we see them and accept they were always there, so why is the barrier of sight and proof so prevalent amongst us?  What makes some of us blind to Him, and what opens the eyes of others?

What if God really did create man and woman?  Scientists can now grow body parts from stem cells.  We know they can do it.  They can create a whole out of a part.  So what stops us believing that God created a whole man from the parts of the world He'd already created before that?  Who's to say that the vital components of a human being weren't already part of creation and that God just put them together?

What if Eve was really tempted and really did eat of the fruit and there really was a serpent possessed by Satan?  If we're taking a risk on believing in God here and God is love, it stands that we have to accept the presence of an oppositional force - evil.  How is that evil represented?  If good and love are represented in the form of a being, then evil must be too.  We know that good and evil exist. Doesn't it stand to reason that at the first sight of something good, evil will try to find a way in?  We see Satan at the beginning of the Bible, he doesn't wait around before having a go.  In the same way now, Satan uses deceit and lies to deceive people into believing God isn't real.  Isn't it strange that Satan's existence itself is invisible, yet people are ready to believe someone can be possessed by Him, yet struggle to believe and accept that somebody can have the spirit of God living in them? 

What if God did part the Red Sea and lead his people out of slavery?  If God made the sea, then He surely has the power to rule its tides, motion and current.  If He can suspend Sun in space and orbit planets perfectly around it, then holding a bit of sea back is not too difficult.  We've seen the devastation of a tsunami.  We know the sea can draw back on itself and then surge.  So why is it hard to believe that God drew the sea back in order to save His people?

I could go on forever with my what ifs.  So really what I'm saying is to look closely at the reasons many people struggle to accept the presence and love of Christ and to delve into what's REALLY holding them back.  All too often there is an answer and one that's simpler than we thought.

Silent Sunday