You’ve got a friend in me

You’ve got a friend in me

When the road looks rough ahead

And you’re miles and miles

From your nice warm bed

Boy, you’ve got a friend in me

Yeah you’ve got a friend in me.

You got troubles

I got ‘em too

There isn’t anything

I wouldn’t do for you

We stick together,

We can see it through

Cause you’ve got a friend in me

You’ve got a friend in me.

In marriage, there is great value in mutual couple friends. A healthy married couple can be a wonderful support and encouragement when we’re going through some of the rough patches in life. It can be easier to talk to mutual friends than to family about some of the struggles that occur in marriage.

One of the benefits of mutual couple friends is their ability to remind you of what’s normal in a relationship. Sometimes we feel we’re the only ones going through a situation, that no one else would understand, but when we have healthy married couple friends, conversation with them can reassure us that every marriage goes through difficulties and there is hope and help. They can provide a safe place to vent and work through marital frustrations. When you have another couple in your corner, urging you on and encouraging you to keep going,  they can help you develop healthy habits, attitudes and activities that will enrich your marriage.

Friends bring new ideas for strengthening, improving, and revitalizing your marriage as well. They can offer opportunities for fun social interaction. This can be especially important for husbands. In order to understand why this is so, we need to grasp one significant difference between men and women. When women are stressed they want to talk…and talk…and talk. Talking provides a shower of oxytocin in a woman’s brain helping her to feel better. Husbands can easily feel overwhelmed by all that talk, and if there is nothing he can do to solve the problem for her, he can end up feeling like a failure. Men are wired to be problem solvers and being unable to protect his wife and solve all her problems can be stressful for a husband. Men handle stress differently than women. When a man is stressed, often he doesn’t want to talk about it.  Talking only serves to shine a spotlight on the problem he can’t solve, or the situation he can’t fix.  Instead, he needs to do something physical to relieve his stress. Going for a walk, taking a drive, watching a ball game are all ways men deal with stress. Physical activity produces testosterone in men and testosterone is what will make a man feel better when he’s stressed.

So what does all this have to do with friends? Having mutual couple friends can give a wife an outlet for talking through her stress, and a husband a physical outlet for working out his stress. Getting together with friends for a fun activity can help everyone.

That’s why marriage mentors can be an invaluable resource for married couples. Being mentored means you have another couple to walk along beside you on your marriage journey, someone to talk to, to ask advice of, and a couple to build a friendship with that can have lasting benefits. Are there trained marriage mentors in your church or community? If not, call us at Heart  to Heart Marriage & Family Institute (905) 693 1129 or log onto our website at www.h2hinstitute.com to enquire about starting a mentorship programme where you live. You’ll be glad you did.

Spending time together in an intentional and deliberate way is a good method of building a stronger marriage.  When you are planning to spend time together, just the two of you, try to think of something that will enhance your relationship, something that will keep on making your marriage better rather than something you might do only once.  And, of course, choose something both of you agree on.  It would be counterproductive to plan an activity that your spouse doesn’t enjoy or would never agree to do.  For example, it would never be a good idea for me to plan a day of wallpapering the bedroom with my husband in the hopes that our relationship would be enhanced by time spent together working on a project.  That would end up driving us further apart rather than the desired result of drawing us closer together. Wallpapering is a recipe for disaster in our marriage!  No, a better plan would be to arrange a day-long outing with a picnic lunch of his favourite foods in some scenic location. That’s the kind of activity that would enhance our relationship because we would be together, away from the distractions of our home office and all the responsibilities it represents and we would have an opportunity to talk without interruptions from email, the phone and work.  We’d come home at the end of the day feeling relaxed, happy and closer to each other and that’s the result you should aim for when you plan time together.

Here are just a few ideas to get you thinking about what you might do together.  There are lots of others, of course; you are only limited by your imagination:

• Plan regular dates.  Set aside a time each week or every second week if every week is too hard to arrange.  It doesn’t have to be an expensive date.  Rent a movie, make popcorn and curl up together on the sofa. Or go for a walk along a nature trail. Talk over coffee at a local coffee shop. Make a picnic and sit in a local park to eat together.
• Set aside talk time every day.  Plan a time that works best for you. For example, at the table over supper, after the kids are in bed but before you get too tired to talk.  Maybe talking before leaving for work each morning would be ideal for you.  Talk about the plans you have, your hopes and dreams.  This is a great opportunity to really get to those deeper levels of communication where you feel close to each other. Use this time to connect emotionally and spiritually and leave talk about the mundane everyday things to another time.
• Eat meals together.  Have whatever meals you can with each other.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s breakfast, lunch or supper.  Turn off the TV, unplug the phone and make meals a time devoted to you and your relationship. Of course, if you have little children, it’s hard to focus on each other when little ones demand your time and attention so plan one or two meals each week where it’s just the two of you.  We know one couple who have a late breakfast together somewhere out of the house one morning a week when the kids are in school.
• Pray together.  Set aside a time to pray together every day.  Spiritual oneness is essential for a strong marriage.  Praying with and for each other can draw you together in ways other activities can’t.
• Make a point of saying hello to each other when you come home and saying good bye when you leave.  This seems like a small thing but it shows your spouse that you care about them.  If you have an invited guest in your home, you would show them the courtesy of a greeting when they arrived and you would make a point of saying good bye when they left. Your spouse deserves the same courtesy. It takes little effort and reaps great benefits. And to make it more beneficial, add a kiss and a hug when you leave and another when you return! It doesn’t matter if you’ve only been gone a few minutes to run a quick errand. Saying good bye with a kiss and hug and hello with another when you return will create closeness and intimacy in your relationship.

Whatever you do, make sure you set a pattern and establish a habit. Soon you’ll find yourselves looking forward to these times together. Any time you spend together doing pleasurable activities will make your marriage stronger. It’s worth the effort and the rewards are great.

Empathy is somewhat different from sympathy.  Empathy is the vicarious experience of feeling what someone else is feeling by putting yourself into the place of that other person.  It is the practice of imagining what someone else thinks and feels, and respecting those thoughts and feelings, even though you may not share the same views.  Atticus Finch, the father of the narrator of the classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird says it best: ”You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”  Atticus is trying to teach his young daughter to have empathy for others and to try to understand what they think and feel as a way for her to grow into an adult of character and integrity.  The ability to empathize with another person is the mark of a mature person.

Compassion is different yet again.  Compassion is the ability to have deep sympathy for someone else and have a desire to do something to alleviate their suffering.  This is the pinnacle of these three attributes.  Sympathy says “I feel sorry for you” and, if not expressed sincerely, can sometimes come off as pity. Empathy says, “I understand your point of view even though I don’t share it” but compassion says, “I grieve with you and I want to do something to help you feel better.”  Compassion has a goal in mind and always results in restorative or reparative action.

The attributes of sympathy and empathy have a place in marriage but above all we should strive to become compassionate partners in our marriages. Compassion is the noble attribute that allows us to understand what our spouse is experiencing and to do something to improve the situation.  At the heart of every disagreement and conflict in marriage are two people who have vulnerabilities that create fear or shame deep within them.  These vulnerabilities show themselves as frustration, defensiveness, anger, resentment and even abuse and violence.  Compassion has the power to defuse those vulnerabilities and to help a couple realize what is important to each of them.  Any strong emotion clouds our judgement and keeps us from logically assessing what is happening.  When we are driven by the toxic emotions of hurt and anger, we don’t respond to situations or to other people in reasonable ways.  We allow the emotion to drive us and inevitably we do and say things we regret later when calm rationality returns.  Compassion says, “I feel your frustration and I want to do something to make this situation better.”  Compassion doesn’t strike back, doesn’t keep accounts, doesn’t try to get the last word or to prove who is right and who’s wrong.  Compassion is the love the Apostle Paul talks about in I Corinthians chapter 13.  And compassion is a powerful antidote to any conflict.

Learning to be a compassionate spouse takes time and deliberate practice but being compassionate is the hallmark of a strong relationship. Nothing but good can come from learning to show compassion to our spouse.  Sympathy and empathy have their place but nothing competes with compassion.  When we are moved to do something to improve our marriages through compassionate action we are showing we are mature people with character and integrity.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” I Corinthians 13: 4-8

Don’t Wait For Marriage

Young adults should start searching for a spouse sooner rather than later.

By John Van Epp, PhD, President of LoveThinks, LLC and author of How to Avoid Falling for a Jerk.

It was the end of my junior year of college and I was considering marrying the woman of my dreams. My father questioned the wisdom of marrying so young (even though he was even younger when he married my mother) but I reassured him that we had come to deeply know and love each other over the last two years and that we wanted to go through life together, starting right away. I explained that we did not want to become “established” and then get married; we wanted to go through that adventure together. And so we married the summer before my senior year with little money, a tiny apartment, and endless dreams of our future. Thirty years later, my wife and I are still thankful that we made the decision to grow up together through our twenties.

But my father’s apprehension in 1980 has become the trend of this new millennium. In fact, a recent Wall Street Journal article pointed out that some sociologists argue that “early marriage” is the number one predictor of divorce. They encourage young adults to explore their identity, work, and love by delaying marriage and parenthood until their later 20s. They warn that those who fail to postpone these family transitions miss out on better career opportunities, make poorer choices on partners, and develop more marital problems. Today the perception is that marriage takes more than it gives with a good chance of ending in divorce. So, it shouldn’t surprise you that the median age for one’s first marriage has shifted from the early twenties in 1980 (my decision was the norm at that time) to 28 for men and 26 for women today.

It seems intuitive that age would bring maturity, stability, and better decisions which would result in more lasting marriages. However, there are a number of risks that work against these later marriages and question the wisdom of this social trend to delay marriage into your 30s.

The starting point is a reconsideration of the claim that early marriages contribute to higher divorces. There was a study conducted in 2002 by Tim Heaton that did find high rates of marital instability associated with young marriages, but the risks were with teen marriages. The impact that age had on predicting marriage outcomes leveled off around age 21 with age making little difference for those who marry between 21 and 30.

Furthermore, there may actually be increased risks associated with delaying marriage to the end of your 20s or into your 30s. In another study conducted in 2004 by the University of Illinois, Evelyn Lehrer suggested that the risk of divorce decreased with each year from the teens to the early twenties, but then the risk reversed and began to increase with each year after the mid-twenties, offsetting the benefits of age and maturity with the accumulation of harmful dating and sexual experiences. For instance, both Heaton and Lehrer found that waiting to get married often leads to more premarital sex, premarital cohabitation, and premarital births, which are all associated with higher rates of marital instability. In addition, there becomes a smaller selection pool as you reach your early 30s (e.g., by age 30, 75 percent of the population are married). At that point, the chances of achieving a quality relationship lower because of the difficulty with finding a suitable partner.

These risks are often overlooked because of a prevalent attitude today that is quite dangerous and misleading: What you experience in one relationship has no bearing on what will happen in a subsequent relationship. You could call this relationship compartmentalization, where each relationship occurs in its own compartment without any effect on another. I like to refer to this attitude as “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Obviously, this cannot be true because what occurs in relationships, no matter how insignificant, carries some measure of influence on you, the way you think, and what you take into your next relationship. As scripture says in what is both an encouragement and a warning, “You reap what you sow.”

A sobering example of this was found in the research on women by Jay Teachman from Western Washington University. He showed that premarital involvement with just one sexual partner other than the person you marry tripled the risk of divorce as compared with those who had only had sex with their husband. A second example of present relationship decisions affecting future relationship practices was a study that found a clear connection between the number of sexual partners before marriage and the likelihood of marital unfaithfulness-each additional sexual partner before marriage resulted in a significant increase in the risk of having an affair after marriage.

These are just two examples from an extensive body of research that supports the continuity of relationship experiences. And yet, these research findings seem to get lost on library shelves without reshaping the current practices in our dating culture.

Several researchers examining the attitudes toward first marriage of 800 young adults ages 19 through 26 use the term marital horizon to talk about what young adults think is the ideal age for getting married. They found that having a more distant marital horizon was directly related to more risky premarital beliefs and behaviors.

For instance, today more than 65 percent of married couples say they cohabited before marriage. Yet there is no evidence that living together before marriage will improve the quality of your marriage or lower your odds of divorce. However, most do not realize that those who live together with just one partner other than the one they marry increase their risk of divorce by 15 percent.

The point is that one’s attitude toward marriage during the dating years will affect relationship practices­. And what happens in relationships today will affect any future marriage. For better or for worse, the principle that “you reap what you sow” holds true.

How can we support marriage and stop the rising age of marriage? Societal attitudes will have to change, but that starts with individuals deciding to date in ways that will honor their future spouse and marriage.

Reggie walked into my counseling office when he had just turned 23 years old. He was the personification of the current dating attitude that marriage was nowhere in sight and hooking up had no future consequences. However, the accumulation of his highly accelerated and sexually charged relationships had left him feeling empty and alone. After several months of exploring his past relationship patterns he decided to delay sexual involvement until he married and build more serious friendship/romantic relationships with his goal of having a fulfilling marriage on his horizon.

When we met again four years later, he had just become engaged to Renee and thought it would be good to meet together and make sure their relationship was ready for marriage. However, they were not the typical couple in their late 20s because she was a virgin and he had not been sexually active in his dating relationships for the past four years-and they were obviously not going to move in together with each other or anyone else before marriage.

In one of our sessions Renee asked me if I thought Reggie’s past would affect him in their marriage. In other words, was it too late for Reggie? I told them that we are creatures of habit and Reggie made changes in his romantic relationships that created new habits and patterns. He “sowed” four years of new habits that will reap better results in his future marriage than if he had continued his previous lifestyle to the edge of his relationship with Renee.

Romantic relationships before marriage should be enjoyed-but this can be done in ways that benefit a future marriage. There is hope, promised in scripture and backed by research, for both the Renees and Reggies in the world. But it takes a commitment to attitudes and behaviors beneficial to marriage long before the wedding bells ring.

Identifying and defining what your various disagreements are will allow you to develop coping strategies to survive, and even thrive, in spite of the conflicts. Honest couples who have been happily married for years report having the same conflicts year after year but the successful couples are those who have learned how to deal with the problem without letting it overwhelm and destroy them. These are the perpetual problems for which there may not be a resolution. Some of these issues may be whether or not to have children, frequency of sex, sharing of household responsibilities, religious views, discipline/parenting issues. And the list goes on. The question becomes, “Will you manage the problems or will the problems manage you?”

The startling truth is that you don’t need to resolve every marital problem for your marriage to thrive. Marital conflict is just as inevitable as some of the physical ailments that life throws at us. We don’t like illness, physical disability or pain but these things are a fact of life. We learn how to go on living in spite of these inevitabilities. There are things we can do to mitigate the effects of an illness, or to help us remain mobile in spite of physical limitations and we gladly embrace these “helps”. In the same way we need to learn how to cope with the conflict that will be part of our married life. We don’t give up living because we have pain; we shouldn’t give up being married because we have conflict. So why is that some marriages thrive in spite of conflict and others don’t? The difference is the stability of the marriage beneath the conflict.

A strong, stable marriage doesn’t happen by chance. It happens by work and determination and commitment. It happens when two people decide, no matter the cost, that they will do what is necessary to build that stability and strength into their relationship. There is cost attached, both emotional and financial. It takes a sheer act of the will to work through things that are unpleasant, hard and downright painful. But the eventual gain far outweighs the immediate cost. And the good news is that it doesn’t matter how “far gone” you think your marriage is. A good, even a great marriage can be built out of the rubble of destroyed dreams and hope. I know – I’m living, breathing proof that it can happen. In fact, without the disaster we crawled out from under after the first 10 years of marriage, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Even if you are the only one who wants to work on your marriage, you can make a difference. It won’t happen in a day; it may not even happen in a year. But it can happen.

Categorize your conflicts. Which are solvable? Find ways to solve those. Which are perpetual? Find ways to deal with them that won’t destroy you and your relationship. It is doable. And if you’re looking for some guidance and help in doing that, call us or send us an email. You can contact us through our website at http://www.hthfamilyministries.org

Fast forward seven years.  Strife, anger, hurt, disappointment, betrayal, abandonment.  Half of all marriages will end in divorce in the first seven years.  That is a sobering statistic.  It doesn’t seem to fit with the storybook beginning.  How can something that seemed so perfect, so right at the start turn out so badly? Where did the prince and princess go wrong? John M. Gottman in his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work says, “One of the saddest reasons a marriage dies is that neither spouse recognizes its value until it is too late. Only after the papers have been signed, the furniture divided, and separate apartments rented do the exes realize how much they really gave up when they gave up on each other.” (4)

The cost is high for taking each other, and the marriage, for granted.  And the financial hit is only one part of that.  An unhappy marriage or divorce can increase your chance of illness by about 35 percent and can even shorten your life by about 4 years.  And although researchers don’t know exactly why that is, it stands to reason if you are in the midst of a divorce or struggling with an unhappy marriage, you’re going to feel stressed, and depressed.  Unrelenting emotional distress can bring on physical illness. If this is true, then the opposite must also be true: people who are happily married must be 35% less likely to get sick and may live 4 years longer on average.

Sobering statistics.  It should give every one of us who is married reason to pause and consider the cost.  Jesus said, in Luke 14:28, “Which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost.”  When a young couple plan to get married, they are full of excitement, plans, hopes and dreams.  All seems perfect.  They can’t imagine anything changing the way they feel about each other; they can’t conceive of a situation so dire that it could bring their marriage crashing around their ears.  “Can’t happen to us,” they say. “We’re in love.”  Well, love is grand, but the idealistic distortion a young couple displays in the beginning soon gives way to the realities of life.  There are bills to pay, the car breaks down, someone loses a job, there is a miscarriage, illness, death in the family; suddenly they don’t see everything in the same way they once did and they wonder, “What happened?”

Life has happened and they weren’t prepared for it.  Now if we could go back to that starry-eyed couple prior to their wedding.  Imagine that they did what Jesus advised in Luke 14: they counted the cost before they got married and they recognized that the cost could be overwhelming if they didn’t prepare properly.  So they attended marriage education courses, took a relationship-analysis inventory and learned important things like communication skills, how to navigate male/female differences and the importance of planning and growing together for the vagaries of life.  They understand that dating shouldn’t stop after they say their vows and that there are ways to handle conflict that can actually strengthen, rather than destroy, their marriage.

In short, this couple really got to know each other.  They developed what Gottman calls “love maps”.  Here’s how he describes this concept:

Emotionally intelligent couples are intimately familiar with each other’sworld. I call this having a richly detailed love map – my term for that part of your brain where you store all the relevant information about your partner’s life.  Another way of saying this is that these couples have made plenty of cognitive room for their marriage. They remember the major events in each other’s history, and they keep updating their information as the facts and feelings of their spouse’s world change. When she orders him a salad, she knows to ask for his dressing on the side. If she works late, he’ll tape her favorite TV show because he knows which one it is and when it’s on. He could tell you how she’s feeling about her boss, and exactly how to get to her office from the elevator. He knows that religion is important to her but that deep down she has doubts. She knows he fears being too much like his father and considers himself a “free spirit”. They know each other’s goals in life, each other’s worries, each other’s hopes.” (48)

If a couple doesn’t learn to know each other in this way, they can’t possibly say they love each other.  The Bible describes sexual love as “knowing” someone.  That can’t be a coincidence.  And that kind of knowing love cannot grow simply because two people live in the same house together.  It won’t happen by accident, or by chance.  Only deliberate, intentional action will create the “love maps” necessary for a successful, happy, stable marriage.

But don’t be discouraged. This kind of knowledge is not just available to newlywed couples.  No matter how long you have been married, you can “learn” your spouse.  It’s never too late to start studying, never too late to start drawing your maps.  Look around your community for marriage education classes.  And if nothing is offered, consider bringing marriage education classes and activities into your area or your church.  You’ll be glad you did and you’ll help strengthen other marriages in the process.  Remember, working on your marriage even a little bit each day will do more for your overall health and wellbeing than a workout at your local gym.  What have you done for your marriage today?

We learned a lot last year and made some very valuable contacts. And we’re excited to go back. So you might be wondering, “Who can attend?” Well, the answer is simple – anyone who cares about marriage can attend. The conference attracts doctors, therapists, psychologists, coaches, mentors, marriage educators, clergy and lots of people who care about and want to strengthen marriages within their sphere of influence. If you’d like to know more, go to the SmartMarriages website and check it out. There you’ll find information about conference speakers, exhibitors and even download a brochure. And if you’d like to go and be part of the Heart to Heart Family Ministries group at the conference, send us an email at info@hthfamilyministries.org or via our Facebook group.

Hey, maybe we’ll see you in Orlando at the SmartMarriages conference in July!

The same is true in marriage.  If we are looking at the behaviours and actions of our spouse with a critical eye, we will see only negative things.  One of the biggest ironies of the marriage relationship is that the very thing that attracted us to our spouse initially becomes a source of irritation later on.   For example, his happy-go-lucky spirit may have been hugely appealing to you when you were dating but in your marriage you become annoyed that he can’t seem to take anything seriously.  The spontaneous, living-in-the-moment girl may be fun to date, but as a wife she may drive you crazy when she can’t seem to think ahead or organize anything.

While the irritations may be real enough, we can choose how we respond to them.  No matter the circumstance, we always have control over our reactions.  In fact, it may be the only thing you are certain of having control over.  Here’s a suggestion for changing how we see those annoyances and irritations:

Draw a line down the centre of a sheet of paper from top to bottom. On one side of the page, make a list of everything that annoys and upsets you about your spouse.  On the other side, make a list of all the good attributes your spouse has.  Include things like her beautiful smile, or his positive outlook on life.  Don’t forget to add items such as the fact he makes a killer spaghetti sauce or her ability to give a fabulous shoulder rub at the end of a long day.  Once you start listing all the positives, you may find you need another sheet of paper!

Once both lists are done, take a pair of scissors and cut the paper along the centre line.  Crumple up and discard the list of irritations.  Post the list of positives someplace where you’ll see it every day and add to it from time to time as you think of other things you love about him or her.  Not only will the list remind you of the wonderful things you love about your spouse, it will also serve as an encouragement for your husband or wife to continue to “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative” to quote the words of an old song.

You become what you put your focus on.  If you focus on the aspects of your marriage that are less than perfect, you will spend precious time fretting about how to change your spouse so he or she suits you better.  And yet surely you didn’t marry that person so you could change them?   A solid marriage doesn’t come from finding the right person; it happens when you become the right person. Look for the good and you’ll find it.  The more you focus on and appreciate the good in your spouse, the better your relationship will become.

The heroine of the story, Pelagia, learns much about love from her father who is the local doctor.  Dr. Iannis teaches Pelagia what lasting love is, and how essential both the man and the woman are in a successful marriage.  Listen to what he says:

“Love is a temporary madness.  It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides.  And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.  Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love” which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is…an art…Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”

“The man is a tree. He’s big, he’s beautiful, moves leaves, makes the shadow. The roots of the tree is the woman. Without the roots, he won’t survive, but it takes two together to make the tree healthy. The man can take the spotlight but only with the woman behind him.”

In all of literature there isn’t a better description of mature married love; these two quotations express so eloquently what Heart to Heart Family Ministries strives to help couples identify, nurture and develop in their relationships.  Breathless excitement and “promises of eternal passion” cannot possibly be sustained indefinitely.  None of us can live in a state of high emotion for very long.  Eventually, life takes on a rhythm, a pattern and that’s when it becomes dangerous for a marriage.  When we start to lose that initial burning passion, we can be fooled into thinking that love is dying when what is really occurring is a natural deepening and maturing of the relationship.  If we recognize this stage of marriage for what it really is, and don’t immediately call it the end, we can begin to create something much deeper than anything we have previously experienced.

So how does a couple do this?  How do you take a ho-hum marriage, or a relationship that is on pretty rocky ground, and grow it into a solid, mature marriage that is supported by deep roots?  There are several ways to approach this:

• Become connected with a church that cares about your marriage and your family
• Find a mature married couple who are willing to mentor you, to be your “guide on the side” as you strengthen your own marriage
• Take a marriage inventory survey such as PREPARE/ENRICH to discover the strengths in your marriage and the areas needing growth
• Sign up for a marriage enrichment course in your community
• Attend a marriage workshop or retreat weekend
• If you have serious issues in your marriage that cannot be solved on your own, or with mentoring, seek professional help from a trained marriage counselor/therapist

Heart to Heart Family Ministries can help you with all of these suggested steps.  We train marriage mentors, offer the PREPARE/ENRICH inventory online through our website, facilitate and present marriage preparation and enrichment seminars, workshops and retreats.  We can also help you find a counselor who is right for you if professional counseling is required.

You marriage needs “roots [that are] so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part”.  Once you develop those roots, you’ll discover that you are “one tree and not two”.  Let us help you grow!

I couldn’t help but think of the family.  Hard enough to have someone you love overseas fighting at Christmas, a time when family should be together and enjoying each other’s company but to receive that call that every military family dreads defies description.  We can never truly know the agony of that unless we have experienced it.

Lt. Andrew Nuttall was 30 years old.  He was killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb, while on routine foot patrol. He is the 134th Canadian solider to die in Afghanistan.  His parents were at CFB Trenton from Victoria B.C. yesterday as his body arrived back in Canada.

How often we have heard those words: “killed by a roadside bomb while on routine foot patrol”.  And yet the impact is still strong.  May we never get used to hearing them.  May we always follow the impulse to gather on overpasses to wave flags, and hold banners that express to all who see them, in some small measure, how much we appreciate the sacrifice of our soldiers.  “Support our troops” is not a cliche.  Showing our support for them also shows our support for Canadian families.  Regardless of the various opinions about the conflict in Afghanistan, and about Canada’s involvement in it, we do well to show that we care about families and we can share in a small way the grief they feel when a member of a Canadian military family dies serving our country.  Let us never forget.