Us 2 Plus 3!: 2012

Mandrae and I attended a marriage conference this weekend at Destiny church and it was so enlightening and inspiring and I learned a lot of things that I had not known before about marriage. Here is what I learned:

10 Ways to keep it sweet again:
1.Communicate- make sure you are communicating your dreams, ambitions, revelations and growth to your spouse. Take 10-15 minutes each day to talk to your spouse about things other than your kids and family issues like finances etc.
2. Let It Go and Forgive Regularly- Ephesians 4:31-32
3. Live Selflessly- Be a servant to your spouse, ask how you can pray for them and what they need help with. Find ways that you can serve them, ways that lighten their load
4. Don’t Be Cruel- watch what you say, always show appreciation and uplift the other person daily Matthew 15:11, Jashua 3:6
5. Say "I Love You" often
6. Laugh Often- Spend time together and make date nights, tell jokes, watch comedies, have fun laughing together
7. Maintain Your Focus- the most sexual organ in your body is the mind, make your husband the focus during sex. If your mind is on other things do whatever u can to make sure he has all of your attention in sex
8.Pray Together- spiritual intimacy is more important than sexual intimacy
9. Check Your Expectations- we all come into marriage with different expectations, communicate those expectations to each other, if you are constantly disappointed than you probably have too high expectations
10. Never use the "D" word- This threat causes fear and mistrust in the marriage, just know that divorce is NOT an option, your marriage isn’t only a promise/covenant/commitment to your spouse but also to God.

Marriage is a challenge and most of us have never learned how to fight, we do what we have learned growing up with our parents marriage and if it was a bad example that is all we know. We also tend to fight the same way we did with our friends or enemies in school and that is usually with yelling, fighting, etc. We need to look to God as our example in conflict. A perfect marriage can overcome all obstacles. We tend to bring idealism into our marriages by being unrealistic with spiritual, financial, social, physical expectations. Our images and ideas of marriage come from TV, music videos, movies and the secular world. Marriage is a ministry. If we look at our marriage as a ministry then we will begin to view marriage the way God intended it to be. We are to look at our marriages in comparison to how Christ loves the church. Would Christ ever divorce the church?? No. That is exactly why God hates divorce. A Christian marriage is an example to the world of what Christs love for his church is to look like and when we divorce we send the message that God messed up. We send the message that God cant repair it and we limit his power and his testimony in our lives. When we get married we pay all this money and put great emphasis on the ceremony. We do it in the church and we hire a wedding coordinator but where is our marriage coordinator? Where is the investment in making our marriage work after the expensive wedding ceremony? We get married in front of God but divorced in the courts. What kind of message does that send the world, the courts, the law? We again are saying, God cant do it, God failed. We rely on God to bring us together and we rely on society to separate us. Everythings resolvable. God does miracles everyday. A lot of people say that they get divorced because they fell out of love and because they don’t love the other person anymore. Well that happens! Love is not an emotion, it is a commitment! We cant base our marriage on emotions because our emotions will always waiver and be all over the place. You will love your spouse one day and not love them the next. We are to depend on Christ to help us fall back in love with our spouse if the spark is gone. If you feel that it is impossible, remember nothing is impossible in Christ. Marriage is not an emotion, it’s a commitment. If there is a divorce it is always someones fault. The world tells us that it is no ones fault but there is always someone at fault in a divorce. Now a days we let the world dictate everything in our lives. What God has joined together, let not a man put asunder. Our marriages today are flesh, financial, and secular centered. Put God back at #1 in your marriage. Divorce is saying, God you cant fix this one. We secularize our marriages and marriage is an institution. We read every book and watch every DVD on marriage to save our marriage but never crack open the most important book- the Bible. Impressive people, attractive people, rich people all get divorced everyday. Its not the things that keep us together or that give us great marriages. God hates divorce and it reflects his relationship to us. When we get divorced we are telling God his expectations for us are too great. Divorce is expected and taken too lightly in the world today. You have to work at it. People blow it off like its no big deal but it’s a HUGE deal. Its our covenant with God!

A lot of people do not let their children watch them fight but we need to let our children watch us fight. When they don’t see us fight they never learn how to fight. We will be the only example they will have of what a healthy fighting relationship will look like. We will fight in marriage but we need to learn how to fight healthy and with God at the center of our fights. When you fight ask yourself how can God get the glory in this fight? We need to find out what God wants and not what we want. By default we impose our wants and ideas in the marriage. Our lives are to be a witness and so how can we glorify God in our fights? Your prayers are hindered when you have strife with your spouse. When you close off the prayer lines, you give Satan an open door into your life. God gives us the fruit of the spirit not to deal with God but so we can use them when dealing with people, kids, family, etc. We submit to God so that when other people hurt us, it shouldn’t affect us or our lives because we submit to God only. No one should be able to bring our spirits down because we belong to God and are protected by God. He never fails us. When you mistreat your spouse or dislike them you are doing it to yourself because you are one person and they are a reflection of you. Today people think that when they get married that they are like two fists coming together held by a glue. The glue is usually our kids, money, our image, sex, etc. It is just a social relationship bonded by glue. This glue is easily torn apart and the two hands can come unglued when the glue doesn’t hold up or isn’t as strong as we once thought it to be. But in a spiritual marriage, God’s intention is for us to be bonded together as one flesh like two hands with fingers intermingled together. When you break this marriage apart you destroy both parts, both people. It is held together by God and the two people become one flesh. It is important to remember that a spiritual relationship will be under constant spiritual attack and so it is an everyday struggle to glorify God in our marriage. In all of conflicts we are to find out and decide how God wins in that conflict. When you fight with your spouse, you are fighting with God’s man and with God’s plan. Your spouse can say horrible things to you or not do something for you and we don’t have to react negatively but this is something that you have to learn to do. It’s not natural for us as humans to do this. We can be a HUGE example/influence in the world through our marriages because marriages are failing all around us. When we come into conflict in life and not even only with our spouse, at work, if we get laid off, car accident, are speeding, pulled over, we can use and need the power of God to get through it all. We seem to only use it on Sundays in church when we praise God for everything and sing and worship but when things happen to us, where is the power of God then? When we need it the most we don’t seem to look to God’s power. Marriage is a spiritual ministry. We should respond to our spouse positively because of God, not because they got us flowers or gifts, opened the door for us, took out the trash, cleaned the house, took us on a date but simply just because God has ordained our marriage and God is in that person who is now part of our flesh. We should practice 100% love and gratitude just because. This is how God loves his church and that is how we are called to treat our spouse.

If the world can do it (referring to sex, romance, divorce, etc), then what is Godly about it? We need to be different so that when they come up to us asking what the secret is to our marriage and our happiness we can say- ITS ALL GOD! Spiritual intimacy can make all the difference.

Ok on November 28th I had the heart surgery to close the hole in my heart. It was so scary to actually have surgery but I was excited to finally have these symptoms go away and get my life back. Well they did the surgery and when they were in my heart they could no longer find the hole!!! God healed me. It was amazing. They said that there is a leaky heart valve but that it is somewhat normal. So I am honored and in awe to have been healed by God and at the same time left stunned. All my symptoms are back and in full affect and I'm back to square one iwth no answers as to why I am blacking out, having migraines, back pain, dizziness, numbness, blurred vision, etc..... I gave my body 6 weeks to heal and am still in pain and experiencing alot of blacking out. I am scared to drive and sometimes I have to but I am very careful. I have a stress test with my cardiologist on Friday (in 3 days) and we will see if they can see anything else wrong with my heart because my EKG always comes back abnormal. My follow up is on Tuesday and we will see what they find, if nothing than I will need to find another neurologist or just give up and wait til it gets even worse.