Author: Jack

Is Your Behavior Sabotaging Your Marriage?

My dream was to be married for life; I had made that life decision when I was thirteen years old. Yet, I kept finding ways to sabotage my dream. My behavior toward Janet and toward our marriage was destructive.

I remember once when I was seeking the Lord in order to save my marriage and I heard the Lord remind me in a gentle way, that I had reaped what I had sown.

I knew right away that He was not putting the blame on me for anything Janet was doing wrong. He was simply letting me see how I had destroyed our marriage with the hurtful ways I had treated her.

Those words broke my heart and gave me hope at the same time. I needed to know that our marriage problems were not all Janet’s fault. Just because she had chosen to give up on our marriage, the Lord would not let me get away with pointing all the blame at her. And at the same time, I felt hope, because I knew that sowing and reaping could work for my good as well if I would start sowing good seeds of love. Read more

What if You’re the Only One Holding On?

If you are in the lonely position of holding on to save your marriage while your spouse says it’s over, then there is a good chance you’re seeking some help. But, you’re feeling frustrated with your desire to get help while your spouse doesn’t want to participate.

You asked to see a counselor together, attend a marriage class or a marriage retreat. But, your requests are met with cold hard rejections. And you probably heard some cruel words like “I don’t love you and I have never loved you.”

There are times when you can’t sleep and there are times when you want to sleep all day. There are times when you’re alone and you feel desperately lonely, and there are times you are thankful to be alone so you can fall apart without your spouse knowing it. And then there are times when your spouse is near and yet the loneliness you feel grips your heart so tight you find it difficult to even breathe. Read more

Becoming Best Friends for Life

How did we go from having a really bad marriage for twenty years to a marriage that has become everything we had hoped for? Well first of all, it took God’s grace, some counseling, and a lot of work. But along the way we discovered something very powerful, something we had lost through all of the fighting and communication breakdowns, we discovered how to be friends again. And the truth is we discovered how to be friends in a way we had never been before.

A funny thing happened along the way as we were making plans to split up for the last time. It was the night before Thanksgiving when we had our last big argument that ended with “we will just get a divorce.” But by the next day as we worked on the details of what we would do, we made a plan to wait until after Christmas and our son’s birthday in late December. It was then that we started behaving like mature adults. We were both hurting and we were sad, but we started to cherish our last remaining days together.

A Wrecked Car and a Valuable Marriage Lesson

There is something special about a first car, especially if it was a car you could be proud of.

My first car was a 72 Plymouth Duster with a V-8 engine and a stick shift in the floor transmission. It was sky blue with two flat black hood scoops and white racing stripes on each side. It was not the fastest car around but it sure was fun to drive. It was the only one around and anyone who knew me knew how much I loved it. The car seemed to be made for me. My car didn’t look as good as the one in this picture. But to me it was real close.

I was sixteen when my Mom bought me that car and I was still driving it a year later when Janet and I started dating. During the eighteen months we dated I even taught Janet how to drive it. She had always been afraid of straight drives.

9 Ways to Keep from Losing Hope

We all need hope. No one wants to live life without it. Anyone that has it, tries to hang onto it. Anyone that has lost it, wants to get it back.

When we want to do anything significant in our lives we have to have hope stirring in our hearts. That includes having a great marriage. And if we want our marriage to overcome all of life’s struggles, we have to have hope for what our marriage can be and hope for where our future will take us.

Hope is something we are naturally inclined to. We just have it without any effort to create it. It is formed out of our desire for something and our belief we can have it. It’s the image we carry in our hearts of what life should be and what life could be. Read more

Life Decisions

The decision was made. I was only thirteen years old, but it turned out to be one of the biggest decisions of my life. At the time I didn’t know how important the decision was. I wasn’t aware I had made a “life decision,” but I did. I had made a decision that would set the course of my life. A “life decision” that would determine who I was and how I would live.

As I watch my mother lie in bed for two weeks overwhelmed with grief because her world had just fallen apart when my dad left, I knew right then when I married, my marriage would be for life. I knew I never wanted to hurt the way she was hurting and I knew I would never be the one to hurt someone else that way. Right then and there I made one of the most important decisions of my life, I made a “life decision.”