As with all things evil, the origin can be found at the fall of Eden. We see there our father and mother, Adam and Eve, deciding to take what they believed they deserved instead of trusting God to provide. COVID-19 has only exposed this problem. It turns out that the virus among us isn’t simply biological; it’s a virus of the spirit and heart as well.
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Growing up in the United States, I learned that a “real man” was supposed to be tough, self-sufficient, strong, smart, rich, and desired by women. “Real men” don’t lose fights or sporting events. The Old West portrayed men as not needing much for themselves, but willing to die for justice and truth. Good guys were never bad and bad guys, in the end, always lost. On the other end of the spectrum, our present-day culture portrays a very different view of men. Men are often viewed as selfish, sexually charged, uncaring, stoic, and controlling. At the same time, they are
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It was Socrates who famously said that the “unexamined life is not worth living”. Many of us get to a season in life where we begin to struggle and question everything—who we are, why we’re here, and how to create a life worth living. And while some people think that mood and perspective are all a choice, perhaps sometimes we are at the mercy of life’s natural phases and chapters that are, believe it or not, seemingly hard-wired into our biology. During certain times, we are almost forced to go deeper to find our truth in order to move on
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Our culture is a hard place to be a man, and even harder for men who are abused. The models of manhood we hold up are more caricatures than truth. On the one hand, you get TV shows like Raymond and King of Queens where men are clueless, large, children who have to be nagged into responsibility and adulthood by their wives. At the other end of ridiculousness is the picture of the action hero who gets shot twice, stabbed 4 times, thrown off a building, and pummeled for 10 straight minutes only to get up and save the day.
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Want to grow? Try marriage. No, seriously. Marriage is the absolutely best place to grow. I know some of you may think I’ve lost my mind. “Marriage,” you say, “is the last place I grow. It’s the place I cope, struggle, work to recover from.” I understand that. But let’s begin with a quiz. Just give the first answer that comes to your mind. Who knows you better than anyone else? Who has seen you at your absolute worst? Who knows your darkest secrets? Who knows your worst character traits? Who has the greatest power to help you heal from
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For many of us, life is usually such a whirlwind of activity that there isn’t room or time to really get things in order. We’re too busy, too rushed, overcommitted, and stretched thin. But what if someone called a big time out? What if life slowed down? What if I got stuck in my house for a few weeks because of a worldwide pandemic? And what if, just maybe, this big time out actually contains an invitation for us? What if it’s an opportunity to look at how we live, what we value, and where our priorities lie? Maybe it
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The couples that come to us for help have often landed in a random, dysfunctional, unhealthy place. Frequently, one of them believes the best hope for change is an intervention. They’re at their wits’ end, having repeated a million times in ineffective ways what they are unhappy about. But they’re also not yet ready to walk away from the relationship. If only their spouse could be awakened to the harm and pain and dysfunction! That’s the desperate plea behind the desire to do an intervention. And it’s true that an intervention can be effective in bringing such an awakening. It’s
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“I blew it again this week,” a man said to me recently. “What happened?” I asked. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he continued. “My wife reminded me of something she wanted me to do for her and I forgot all about it. Big mistake.” “But, was it a ‘mistake?’” I asked. “Or was this the kind of ‘mistake’ you make on a regular basis?” “Well,” he continued sheepishly, “it is something she has called me on a number of times before. It’s a pattern, I suppose. I just can’t seem to help it.” “So, it’s not really fair
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Coping is always a good thing, right? No, not necessarily. We’ve always been taught that coping with difficulty is a sign of strength. But what if coping with a temporary stressor turns into a way of accommodating and adapting to longer term stress?
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You may never have looked at it this way, but relationships have personalities, just like people do. Some are calm, durable, steady, and comfortable; others are fiery and full of ups and downs. Some marriages contain partners who are joined at the hip and who live most of their lives in each other’s company, perhaps even managing to work together as well as live together. Others function better with more time apart, where each person pursues individual interests while still being able to come together over shared enjoyments. When you take the personality of the marriage and combine it with
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