faith – Page 4 – Ramblings of a Christian Father

Married Mondays — Busy

Happy Monday everybody. We have just come out of some very crazy times with the Holidays. Many of us spent many days or hours on the road. Many may have wished to go back to work, or just to get some place quiet.

busy

busi·er busi·est

1a : engaged in action : occupiedb : being in use <found the telephone busy>

2: full of activity : bustling <a busy seaport>

3: foolishly or intrusively active : meddling

4: full of distracting detail <a busy design>

So many times, when someone asks how things are going, the go to answer is either good or I’ve been busy. Being busy becomes our excuse for not doing somethings. Being busy becomes our normal, we rationalize our busyness, and let it over take us. We get to the point in our days and our lives that everything is scheduled. We plan out our meals, our days, our weeks, we work around practices here, concerts there, events, meetings, etc. But at what point have we become too busy for ourselves and our loved ones. Out of the 24 hours in a day, if you are asleep for 8, at work for 9, and traveling for 1, you have 6 hours left in the day for eating, showering, chores, events, classes, and family.

You have to make sure that the your busy life, is proper activity. Are you just busy to be busy? Take a deep breath and make sure that your priorities are in line.

If you are finding yourself not knowing what day or time it is, finding your self not knowing the last time you took 30 minutes to talk to your spouse. Don’t get to the point that you are so busy that you become strangers. Make sure to take time EVERY day to catch up with each other. There are some days that some things just don’t get done, and they will be there tomorrow.

Don’t let yourself get too busy with all of the noise in life that you miss out on who is right in front of you. Go to bed 30 minutes early, but stay off the internet, keep the TV off, and put the book away, and be there with each other. Be present, take the last 30 minutes or more of your day to slow down. At the end of the one thing that you can’t get back is time with family, time with your spouse, time with those you love.

January 12, 2016 by corymcglone

Married Mondays – Guarded

Happy 2016 everyone. It was a great break and opportunity, to reflect, recharge, and refocus. As I was going through what to post this week, I had a couple things kind of pop up and smack me in the face, leading me to this post.

To me Guarding your marriage, and guarding your loved one, is as DJ Khaled would put it, A Key to Success.

I won’t post the image here, but I saw a Facebook post last week that depicted the story line of an affair using stick people. Everything started out great, you got married you had kids, one person went to work, one stayed home, a friend comes over for coffee, one thing leads to another, and shortly after there are divorce papers, child support and additional house payments. All because someone else was there to listen and make the other person feel special.

It is your job in your marriage to make you spouse feel wanted, feel special, to feel appreciated. If you are having problems at home, don’t talk to someone at work about the issues that isn’t your gender. Problems and “friends” of the opposite sex, will cause you 99 more problems. If your having problems, Facebook, Twitter, (Other social media site here), is not the place to air your dirty laundry. This just opens the door for someone to come in and be the sympathy card. Cheating and affairs don’t always start physical. Guys, we unknowingly flirt, ladies you will unknowingly flirt. No I’m not saying that you can never talk to a person of not your gender, but be careful your vocabulary. Be careful of your body language. Be cautious of your time.

Guard your words, your actions, and your time. Your words of encouragement should be for your spouse first. Your actions, you helping out, should be for your spouse first. Your time, make sure your spouse, and your family come first. Your marriage is sacred. If you aren’t paying attention to your spouse and holding each other accountable for all of their actions, you are not guarding your marriage.

You have to talk and communicate with each other. You also need to be sure that your not keeping things bottled up inside waiting on them to ask you. Yes, “We need to talk…” is scary as anything, but without facing reality, you will never have a successful and vivbrant marriage. If there is one person in the world that you can be truly real with, be your honest to goodness real self with, it is your spouse. Walls should be around your marriage not through it.

Your marriage is a living thing, it is the two of you. If you don’t take care of it, if you don’t nurture your relationship with each other, of course it’s going to die. We have to guard against complacency and the myth of that could never happen to us. We just entered a new year 4 days ago, do you remember what you were doing this time last year? Do you remember what you did together last week?

As we get moving into this new year, I want to challenge all of you, to not worry about your resolutions, don’t worry about losing the 20+ pounds, don’t worry about stuff. Focus on making each day the best day of your marriage. Focus on being fully involved in each others lives. Guard against the things that take your focus off of each other. Guard against complacency. Guard against any thing else that can and will attack your happy life together. There is nothing that you can’t get through together, as long as you stand strong and stand guard together.

January 4, 2016January 4, 2016 by corymcglone

Married Mondays – Thankfulness

All over social media the past couple weeks, people have been posting days of thankfulness. It’s this time of year that people are focusing on what they are thankful for. It’s this time of year that we are spending more time in the next 45 days with family than many of us have all year. But holidays aren’t what I’m talking about this week. I truly hope that you aren’t only expressing your thankfulness for your spouse this time of year and just because your friends on Facebook are saying what they are thankful.

As life catches up with you, days, weeks, months may go by without you telling your spouse that you are thankful for them. You probably tell them you love them every day, but are you saying this out of habit and are you just going through the motions of marriage. It is easy over time to become complacent and accidentally start taking each other for granted. We must daily and whole heartedly make sure that our spouses know how much we love them and how thankful we are for them.

Taking each day, making it special, and recognizing the good things that happen every day. Even the worst days, have a bright moment. That moment of thankfulness in the day might not come until you get back home, or until you get that phone call right at the perfect time. No matter how bad you think that your day has been, there is always someone who has it worse. We live in a nation of “First World Problems,” we live in a time that has forgotten how to be thankful. We live in a time, that we easily get lost in wanting.

So this week, my challenge to you, is to take the time to stop and look around at what you have, who you have in your life, and reflect on your blessings. Each day find at least one thing to be thankful for, and share it with your spouse. Find something everyday that your loved one does that goes unnoticed and make sure that you recognize it. Take time together to write down things that as a couple you are thankful for, write down what you are thankful for in your relationship, and remember each day that you have someone that loves you, and that is at least one thing to be thankful for.

November 24, 2015 by corymcglone