How to Fix a Broken Marriage

How to fix a broken marriage

My wife and I have been counseling married folks for a few years now, and learned a few things about broken marriages along the way.

We’re also married. We’ve made our way through some tough times, but there’s still work to do. Marriage is one of the hardest things I’ve ever attempted, and I’m just now learning, 17 years in, that it’s not going to get any easier.

It gets better to be sure, but it’s never easy.

If your marriage is difficult, or horribly broken, or might end soon, consider the following before pulling the plug.

How to Fix a Broken Marriage Alone

Nothing will make you feel more alone than a tough marriage. Even in a great marriage, when things get tough, as they often do it’s easy feel like you’re floating around in outer-space without a tether.

It’s common for one spouse to be committed to doing the hard work of healing, while the other spouse completely checks out and puts the blame squarely on someone else. I don’t usually buy into stereotypes, but it’s usually the guys who check out when things get hard, leaving their wives to figure out things on their own.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re not a guy, and your husband isn’t too interested in how to fix a broken marriage, much less accepting the idea that things are bad.

But if you try to figure out things on your own, I can all but guarantee utter failure. I know, we don’t like to get help, it makes us feel weak and helpless, but getting help from people who know something we don’t is the only way out. Continue reading How to Fix a Broken Marriage

One Coveted American Pastime that Might Be Eating Your Soul

On Birthday #50 I asked a painful question.

How did I get so grumpy? I wasn’t born grumpy. I wasn’t grumpy as a kid.

Is it something that automatically happens to old men? Sure seems like there’s a lot of us.

I decided to take an inventory of all the activities and attitudes that had changed over the last 20 years. Maybe this was my fault? In my personal audit I noticed 2 things that were all but absent in my younger years.

First, fat. So I made a lifestyle change, bought a fitness watch, lost some weight, slept better, and got a bit less grumpy. But losing weight’s a walk in the park compared to the other thing I noticed – a bad habit that seems to get worse as I get older.

It’s something I didn’t do in my 30’s. I didn’t need it. I definitely didn’t do it when I was a kid; life was too fun to waste time on crap like this.

Now, I can’t seem to go five minutes without paying homage. It makes me feel good, and feeds an emptiness that’s been growing since I became a Christian, oddly enough.

In the early 1990’s I entered the world of Evangelical Christianity and began attending a small church in Texarkana, Arkansas. I was a mess at the time and needed a place to belong, a place where I felt valued. This was it.

I remember sitting in the back row during Sunday morning services, looking at the small gathering of fellow congregants, thinking to myself how good and holy these people were.

They were fighting the good fight, saying “no!” to the evils of the world and “yes!!” to God.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but in this moment, convinced that there was a significant number of people in the world that I saw as “good” convinced me that my world was “good.”

It was one of the most peaceful chapters of my life. Continue reading One Coveted American Pastime that Might Be Eating Your Soul

If You’re a Christian, Feeling Like Your Country is in Ruins, Here’s What God Told You to do about It

If you’ve spent any time on this blog you know that I’m an Evangelical, Bible-believing person. Politically, I lean left on some issues, and right on others. I have friends on both sides, so it’s difficult for me to jump on board with the popular belief that “liberals are trying to destroy our country,” or, “conservatives are under-educated, overly-armed people who don’t care about anything.”

But I’m worried.

So many from my Evangelical camp seem to be losing their minds.

Someone has been whispering that our political foes want nothing more than to take away our freedom. I can take a guess at who that might be – there’s one particular media outlet that’s seen by many as wholesome and mostly aligned with God’s priorities.

I used to have an Evangelical neighbor who had it playing on her TV 24/7.

And it’s just like any other media outlet. It knows its audience and makes lots of $$ telling them what they want to hear. It doesn’t broadcast “fake” news, it simply doesn’t tell the whole story – just enough to lead one to believe that the “other side” wants nothing more than to burn our country to the ground.

Either way, there’s this army of people, all claiming allegiance to God, who are frightened, angry, and view any “liberal” agenda as the Devil’s seed.

And like religious people who see their country in danger have always done, we believe it’s up to us to turn things around.

Jesus dealt with this. Many of His followers believed it was their job to eradicate Israel of the Romans. Bad as the Romans were, Jesus had a different agenda for His people, one that repeats itself over and over again in the Bible.

God knows we get angry and frightened about the state of our country, and the world, so He saw fit to include one simple commandment, something we’re all supposed to be doing, but seem to frequently excuse ourselves from it.

It’s a commandment that forces us to step down from our anger, and stop the finger-pointing, division, and general hatred that has so characterized Evangelical politics this year.

The commandment is found in the Old Testament Book of Second Chronicles, chapter 7, verse 14, and goes like this:

“If my people, who are called by My name, would humble themselves,…”

We all tend to think the problem lies beyond us. Our country’s predicament is someone else’s fault. Our bad marriage is someone else’s fault. Our bad kids are someone else’s fault.

And when we believe other people are screwing things up, we judge them, belittle them, downgrade them. Continue reading If You’re a Christian, Feeling Like Your Country is in Ruins, Here’s What God Told You to do about It