My Advice To Married Couples After Divorcing My Wife Of 16 Years By Gerald Rogers.

http://afterjujuman.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/my-advice-to-married-couples-after-divorcing-my-wife-of-16-years-by-gerald-rogers/

Obviously, I’m not a relationship expert. But there’s something about my divorce being finalized this week that gives me perspective of things I wish I would have done different… After losing a woman that I loved, and a marriage of almost 16 years, here’s the advice I wish I would have had

1. Never stop courting. Never stop dating. NEVER EVER take that woman for granted. When you asked her to marry you, you promised to be that man that would OWN HER HEART and to fiercely protect it. This is the most important and sacred treasure you will ever be entrusted with. SHE CHOSE YOU. Never forget that, and NEVER GET LAZY in your love.

2. Protect your own heart. Just as you committed to being the protector of her heart, you must guard your own with the same vigilance. Love yourself fully, love the world openly, but there is a special place in your heart where no one must enter except for your wife. Keep that space always ready to receive her and invite her in, and refuse to let anyone or anything else enter there.

3. Fall in love over and over again. You will constantly change. You’re not the same people you were when you got married, and in five years you will not be the same person you are today. Change will come, and in that you have to re-choose each other everyday. SHE DOESN’T HAVE TO STAY WITH YOU, and if you don’t take care of her heart, she may give that heart to someone else or seal you out completely, and you may never be able to get it back. Always fight to win her love just as you did when you were courting her.

4. Always see the best in her. Focus only on what you love. What you focus on will expand. If you focus on what bugs you, all you will see is reasons to be bugged. If you focus on what you love, you can’t help but be consumed by love. Focus to the point where you can no longer see anything but love, and you know without a doubt that you are the luckiest man on earth to be have this woman as your wife.

5. It’s not your job to change or fix her… your job is to love her as she is with no expectation of her ever changing. And if she changes, love what she becomes, whether it’s what you wanted or not.

6. Take full accountability for your own emotions: It’s not your wife’s job to make you happy, and she CAN’T make you sad. You are responsible for finding your own happiness, and through that your joy will spill over into your relationship and your love.

7. Never blame your wife if you get frustrated or angry at her, it is only because it is triggering something inside of YOU. They are YOUR emotions, and your responsibility. When you feel those feelings take time to get present and to look within and understand what it is inside of YOU that is asking to be healed. You were attracted to this woman because she was the person best suited to trigger all of your childhood wounds in the most painful way so that you could heal them… when you heal yourself, you will no longer be triggered by her, and you will wonder why you ever were.

8. Allow your woman to just be. When she’s sad or upset, it’s not your job to fix it, it’s your job to HOLD HER and let her know it’s ok. Let her know that you hear her, and that she’s important and that you are that pillar on which she can always lean. The feminine spirit is about change and emotion and like a storm her emotions will roll in and out, and as you remain strong and unjudging she will trust you and open her soul to you… DON’T RUN-AWAY WHEN SHE’S UPSET. Stand present and strong and let her know you aren’t going anywhere. Listen to what she is really saying behind the words and emotion.

9. Be silly… don’t take yourself so damn seriously. Laugh. And make her laugh. Laughter makes everything else easier.

10. Fill her soul everyday… learn her love languages and the specific ways that she feels important and validated and CHERISHED. Ask her to create a list of 10 THINGS that make her feel loved and memorize those things and make it a priority everyday to make her feel like a queen.

11. Be present. Give her not only your time, but your focus, your attention and your soul. Do whatever it takes to clear your head so that when you are with her you are fully WITH HER. Treat her as you would your most valuable client. She is.

12. Be willing to take her sexually, to carry her away in the power of your masculine presence, to consume her and devour her with your strength, and to penetrate her to the deepest levels of her soul. Let her melt into her feminine softness as she knows she can trust you fully.

13. Don’t be an idiot…. And don’t be afraid of being one either. You will make mistakes and so will she. Try not to make too big of mistakes, and learn from the ones you do make. You’re not supposed to be perfect, just try to not be too stupid.

14. Give her space… The woman is so good at giving and giving, and sometimes she will need to be reminded to take time to nurture herself. Sometimes she will need to fly from your branches to go and find what feeds her soul, and if you give her that space she will come back with new songs to sing…. (okay, getting a little too poetic here, but you get the point. Tell her to take time for herself, ESPECIALLY after you have kids. She needs that space to renew and get re-centered, and to find herself after she gets lost in serving you, the kids and the world.)

15. Be vulnerable… you don’t have to have it all together. Be willing to share your fears and feelings, and quick to acknowledge your mistakes.

16. Be fully transparent. If you want to have trust you must be willing to share EVERYTHING… Especially those things you don’t want to share. It takes courage to fully love, to fully open your heart and let her in when you don’t know i she will like what she finds… Part of that courage is allowing her to love you completely, your darkness as well as your light. DROP THE MASK… If you feel like you need to wear a mask around her, and show up perfect all the time, you will never experience the full dimension of what love can be.

17. Never stop growing together… The stagnant pond breeds malaria, the flowing stream is always fresh and cool. Atrophy is the natural process when you stop working a muscle, just as it is if you stop working on your relationship. Find common goals, dreams and visions to work towards.

18. Don’t worry about money. Money is a game, find ways to work together as a team to win it. It never helps when teammates fight. Figure out ways to leverage both persons strength to win.

19. Forgive immediately and focus on the future rather than carrying weight from the past. Don’t let your history hold you hostage. Holding onto past mistakes that either you or she makes, is like a heavy anchor to your marriage and will hold you back. FORGIVENESS IS FREEDOM. Cut the anchor loose and always choose love.

20. Always choose love. ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE. In the end, this is the only advice you need. If this is the guiding principle through which all your choices is governed, there is nothing that will threaten the happiness of your marriage. Love will always endure.

In the end marriage isn’t about happily ever after. It’s about work. And a commitment to grow together and a willingness to continually invest in creating something that can endure eternity. Through that work, the happiness will come. Marriage is life, and it will bring ups and downs. Embracing all of the cycles and learning to learn from and love each experience will bring the strength and perspective to keep building, one brick at a time.

These are lessons I learned the hard way. These are lessons I learned too late. But these are lessons I am learning and committed in carrying forward. Truth is, I loved being married, and in time, I will get married again, and when I do, I will build it with a foundation that will endure any storm and any amount of time.

If you are reading this and find wisdom in my pain, share it those those young husbands whose hearts are still full of hope, and with those couples you may know who may have forgotten how to love. One of those men may be like I was, and in these hard earned lessons perhaps something will awaken in him and he will learn to be the man his lady has been waiting for.

MEN- THIS IS YOUR CHARGE: Commit to being an EPIC LOVER. There is no greater challenge, and no greater prize. Your woman deserves that from. Be the type of husband your wife can’t help but brag about.

(From the Editor: We wish  to thank Joachim Cabanyes for sending it  to us for publication,   Joachim Cabanyes is an honorary member of Authors-choice blog.)

 

UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN

Few things strike me like this particular devotional did. "Unto US a child is born."  I have never viewed the birth of Jesus as if The Child had been born TO ME! The very thought has had a profound and sobering effect on me this morning. I have been given a Life to nurture, care for, nourish, protect, love and launch into the world. It is a perspective I have never entertained.  I am awed, rebuked, humbled, challenged and inspired by this thought. "Unto US a Child is born..."

(Thank you, Christine Wyrtzen!)

The following is copied from the daily email by Christine Wyrtzen (Daughters of Promise) and can be found online at this link:

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HE'S NOT JUST MARY'S BABY 

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders.  Isaiah 9:6 

    "Congratulations, you have a son!" are words to celebrate.  Life will never be the same for those who hold their newborn child in their arms and set out to parent him for the rest of his life.  The weight of responsibility is both frightening and wonderful. 

      Isaiah made it clear that Emmanuel was coming, that He would be born to 'us', not just Mary.  Yet, many will treat him casually, walk by the manger and shrug their shoulders in indifference.  They do not know that He is theirs to embrace, to love, to know.

      I encourage us to pray creatively this Christmas.  In the stillness of some stolen moments, let us close our eyes and pick up the baby in the manger.  Let us exclaim in wonder, "You were given to me.  Oh, you're beautiful.  You're my Emmanuel.  My Savior.  I'll do everything I can to really know You."  Lay His head against your cheek and rock Him gently.

    Such ownership and investment will, most likely, awaken our heart to the reality that faith is about relationship, not ethics and education.  Affection for the Savior can grow stale in the halls of institutions.  Seminary studies promise nothing more than intellectual prowess if not rooted in the sweet embrace of the Christ-child.  Let's blow the dust off the padlock that guards our hearts.  Let's speak to our fear that causes us to study rather than love, ponder rather than embrace.  Mary gave her heart at the manger and it was still engaged at the foot of the cross thirty-three years later.  She never lost her first love and wonder.

 

"You have been born to me.  I want to experience You like never before this Christmas.  Amen"

 

Journal Question:  Describe the last time when you were overwhelmed by the gift of Jesus.  When was it?  What was happening at the time?  How did it affect you?  What needs to happen for you to feel this again?  Ask God to remove the mountain that separates you.      

Christine Wyrtzen

    Daughters of Promise  

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN’S BRAINS REVEALED?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/02/the-difference-between-men-and-womens-brains-revealed-in-this-photo/

In an attempt to better understand the differences between the brains of men and women, scientists scanned the brains of 949 young men and women in the biggest investigation of its kind thus far.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that the female brain is “hard-wired” to be better at multi-tasking, while men are better at concentrating on single, complex activities.

Undated handout photo issued by National Academy of Sciences of brain networks showing significantly increased within hemispheres in males (upper) and between hemispheres in females (lower). (Caption via the Daily Mail)

Women everywhere are probably nodding their heads in approval and muttering “I told you so” under their breath, but there is also some advantages found in the male brain.

Using “hi-tech diffusion MRI imaging,” scientists mapped the connections between different parts of the brain and discovered that women have much better connections between the left and right sides of the brain. However, men showed more activity within the brain’s individual parts, particularly in the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls motor skills.

Motor skills would include things like parking a car, learning to ride a bike and reading a map.

More from the Daily Mail:

Men also have better connections between the front and back of the brain, giving them a better ability to quickly perceive information and use it immediately to carry out complex tasks.

This means they are better at things such as learning to swim or, as the old bone of contention has it, parking a car. Women are better at, for example, remembering a face, which means making connections between different parts of the brain.

The results are likely to be seen as  supporting the theory behind best-selling pop psychology book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus – that the sexes are as different as alien races.

Of course, no study is perfect and there will certainly be individuals whose brain functioning appear at odds with the findings of the research.

Dr. Ragini Verma told the Daily Mail that she and her colleagues wanted to see “what would the male brain look like and what would the female brain look like” if 1,000 people were analyzed.

“The research shows that if women and men are given a task that involves both logical thinking and intuitive thinking, women will do it better – they are better at connecting the left and the right sides of the brain,” she added.

The study included 428 men and 521 females between the ages of 8 and 22.

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