Rock, Paper, Scissors

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Bruce Allen

by Denise McGonigal

Last night our family was laughing over how our three married daughters and their husbands decide who gets their way in household matters. Like, where to store the ketchup – refrigerator or spice cabinet? (Editor’s note: Refrigerate after opening.) Jif or Skippy peanut butter? Kitchen sponge or dishcloth? Powder or liquid dishwasher detergent? Every couple has their list.

Rock, Paper, Scissors surfaced as Joe and Caitlin’s go-to method of arbitration. Meghan and Jeremy duke it out over their favorite video game – winner’s preference rules. And, to no one’s surprise, Erin touted her way of settling domestic disputes with Keven: “I decide, because I’m the boss.” Good grief, how did that oldest one turn out to be so much like me? Forgive me, oh kind and tolerant son-in-law. That apple just didn’t fall far enough from this tree.

Looking back over the past thirty-four years, I wonder just how many times I let insignificant household disagreements get in the way of family and marital harmony because, well, “I’m the boss.” Why did it matter so much that dishes from a dinner party be cleaned and put away before bedtime? And why couldn’t the pool towels hang over the fence to dry a little? And, perhaps to even broaden the scope a little, what really was the big deal about a child wearing the same favorite outfit every week to Mass?

Thank you, dear younger generation, for offering me a much more sensible way of resolving issues that amount to, well, nothing. I have no skill with video games, but I can definitely develop a facility for Rock, Paper, Scissors. And seriously, as “the boss,”why didn’t I think of that?

Do You Need God to Raise Your Kids?

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Here’s another thoughtful post from our favorite guest blogger, Anne Slamkowski. Please visit her Making Room for God blog.

Yesterday, I blogged on a difficult subject: God and Marriage. One of the issues that has comes up time and time again in conversations is how do you balance kids and marriage. Not an easy topic to tackle for sure! Kids complicate and at the same time lift up your marriage. Kids give us joy and bring us turmoil. Kids (and finances) are the first time you learn to sacrifice your selfish desires for your spouse. No kidding.

When you first got married can you remember trying to figure out who was going to pay the bills and how you were going to share the money that was coming in? Can you remember the first time you had to make a decision together about your kids’ future? I would venture to guess that it wasn’t an easy decision. There may even have been some arguing. So when we talk about divorce rates in families today, we cannot help but discuss both financial issues and trouble with kids.

One of the issues with kids is when things go badly. Maybe (like me) you have a child that has medical issues or behavioral problems. Maybe you have a child who suffers from mental illness. Maybe you have a child who is constantly making bad choices. Maybe you have a child that suffers from alcohol or drug addiction. There are so many problems that parents are faced with today. Yet did any of you have training for this during your marriage prep classes? Pete and I sure didn’t. Nobody pulled us aside and said, “Heh, not all kids are perfect.” No one told us the adventures we would be faced with when we started to grow our family. No one told us that our kids could make bad choices no matter how good of parents we are. The problem is we don’t have anything to model our lives after because all kids are different. We cannot look at our own parents and make good parenting decisions because they lived in different circumstances. All we have to rely on is each other and instinct. When things go badly with our kids we tend to point fingers. Have these words ever been spoken (or thought) about in your household:

“If you would have done or said this to him/her, we wouldn’t be in this place!”

“If you would be home more often, then he/she would show more respect for us as parents.”

“If you would have disciplined better when he/she was young, then we wouldn’t be faced with these issues.”

“If you would do your job as a housewife, then our kids wouldn’t make these choices.”

“If only I would have treated my body better during pregnancy, then these medical issues wouldn’t have happened to my child.”

“Maybe I have done something to him/her to make him/her this way.”

“Maybe God is punishing me for something in my past.”

All of these comments go on in our brains. They are doubts that arise during parenting. I know because Pete and I have beaten ourselves up over why Katie has behavioral issues and seizures. We have blamed each other and ourselves. Our doubts could have ruined our marriage, but we chose God over doubt. Thank goodness!

One of the best lessons that I have ever been taught is that my own kids are not my possessions. My kids belong to God. They are children of God. God has entrusted their care to me. I love this because it reminds me that my kids are entrusted to me not because I deserved them, not because I purchased them, not because I own them, but because God gave me the opportunity to raise them for Him. Whether you have adopted your children or given birth to your children, they are not your possessions. Nope. They are God’s children. He gave you this opportunity. What you do with this opportunity is now up to you. You can choose to raise them without asking God for help, or you can raise them with God’s strength. I choose the latter.

If Pete and I were to dwell on all the mistakes we make as parents, I can tell you right now we would be miserable. I make parental mistakes every day. I try to learn from these mistakes. I do my best to ask God daily for strength. I constantly pray to God to show me what He needs me to do.

Kids can be part of the problem in a marriage for sure, but they also can lift up your marriage. If you realize now that kids are not your possessions. Kids are not a way for you to re-live your childhood. Kids are not an opportunity for you to show your own parents what they did wrong. Kids are a way for you to connect closer to God. They are a way for you to see God’s beauty. They are your pathway to a greater faith life. f you are having issues with your own marriage that revolves around your children, ask God for help today. Reconnect individually with your faith. Find a way to keep God first in your life. No one can parent effectively without God. Exhaustion, depression and constant worry are all signs that you have pushed God away and are trying to tackle parenting on your own. Don’t do this! Remind yourself that we all have the ability to be good parents, if we just ask God for help.

More of our favorite people.

Five Dreams for Your Child

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Joe McGonigal has been bugging me to help him post some articles from Tony Dungy’s All-Pro Dad site. (This blog, after all, was his idea.) Yet, his name is conspicuously missing from our list of contributing bloggers. As the fathers of daughters–Joe and Denise have four, Nancy and I three–we share some attitudes and wishes for our girls. This article is a nice compilation of some of my wishes and, undoubtedly, some of his.

(My strategy here is to post the articles that Joe and I talk about, beat him to the punch, and shame him into posting some of his own. It doesn’t appear to be working.)

When our children were growing up, I told Nancy I had four goals for them while they lived under our roof. I wanted them to go out into the world:

with healthy self-esteem. Not OVERLY healthy, just healthy.
with great problem-solving skills. Theirs are better than mine, thankfully.
with straight teeth. All that orthodontia was purchased for a reason. And, finally,
with the ability to operate a manual transmission. This,alas, was our main failing, as only one of the three can reliably operate a clutch. Of the four, however, this last one is silly. But if they had been boys, it would have been at the top of the list.

Speaking of silly, I wish I had found this 20 years ago.

In closing, then, I offer this passage from Matthew 18:

At that time the disciples approached Jesus and said, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.”

Do You Need God in Your Marriage?

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Posted by one of our favorite guest bloggers, Anne Johnson Slamkowski. Visit her blog when you have a chance, please.

I was sitting at a meeting the other night and several of the women were talking about how they were doing this “Husband Project” with their husbands (the book is “The Husband Project: 21 Days of Loving Your Man–on Purpose and with a Plan” by Kathi Lipp). It involved following steps and treating your husband with respect (at least that is what I heard them say). I liked the idea. It certainly sounded like it was working for the most part for each of them. It made me think about my own marriage relationship. I am not sure I need a book to do good things for my husband, but I am also not so sure that Pete wants me to follow a book. I think the premise is wise, but it might just miss the point of keeping your marriage alive. There are varying statistics on the divorce rate in the USA, but it is somewhere between 40-60% depending on the area that you live. That is HUGE – 40-60%. WOW!

Pete and I have spoken at marriage retreats (in fact we are due for a speaking engagement coming up at our own church). We have looked at our marriage from different viewpoints to see how we can make it better (which by the way, you always can improve upon your marriage). We recognize that we speak different Love Languages (“The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman). We also admit readily that children thrown in with marriage complicate your relationship in good and bad ways. In addition, let’s throw in your family of origin (the preconceived ideas that you bring with you into the marriage) and your communication skills, and let’s just say that marriage doesn’t seem to have much of a chance with all the baggage that we overload it with. BUT overall Pete and I both would agree that our marriage has been strengthened tremendously in the last six years because God has become the center of it. We finally realized that God must be part of our relationship in order for it to work. Without God, our love for each other will be nothing but physical. Mentally, we need God to make it all fall together. We need God in our individual lives and our married lives in order for this to work.

No books, no steps, no love languages will ever equal what God does for your marriage. Recognizing that God is part of the marriage will give you the mental and physical passion that is needed within the sacrament of marriage.

Colossians 3:12-19 So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.

If we are going to fight to keep our marriages together in this country, we must find a way to put God first in our own lives. We must find a way to put God in the midst of our marriage. No marriage can survive (at least with joy and happiness) without God as part of it. The Colossians verse above says, in order to be holy and beloved we must put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. How can we do any of that without God as part of our life? How on earth can we forgive our loved ones and not hold grudges if God is not part of our life? It goes on to say, “let the word of Christ RICHLY dwell within you.” Richly gives me the feeling of soil that is ready to farm. Once we let Christ dwell within us and get us ready for the seed of Marriage, then we are ready to produce a beautiful family that will survive anything. If we start with rocky or weedy soil, the marriage becomes a little more complicated. We have to somehow find a way to fertilize our life with God after the fact. When we complicate things with pre-marital sex, co-habitation and multiple partners, it is like starting with rocky soil. I am not saying that if you have made these choices that your marriage won’t last. What I am saying is it will be more difficult for your marriage unless you fertilize it with God in your life.

Throughout my book, “Revealing Faith: Learning to Place God First in Your Life,” I continually stress that my choices were not good ones in my twenties. Pete and I started with rocky soil. Although God was present in my life by the time we married, He wasn’t the main focus of my life. It would take years for Pete and me to build and fertilize our soil so that it would withstand tough struggles that lay ahead. We even added children into our marriage before we had fully fertilized our life with God. It was a struggle. Once we both refocused our life toward God (which we did after a wonderful marriage retreat at our church in Champaign, Illinois), we realized that we were missing a very important person in our marriage: God. As our individual faith lives grew (over many years), our soil became more and more fertile. When we finally gave birth to our third child, Katie, we were faced with a tremendous struggle. Katie suffered from multiple medical problems at the age of one (she suffers from complex partial seizures). Later we would find behavioral issues and anxiety laced with depression to be part of Katie’s life. If Pete and I had not fertilized our life with God, I could see where this would have made our marriage very complicated and difficult (and trust me it still is a struggle), but with God in the center of our marriage it all seems doable. We rely on His strength. Our kids rely on His strength. We thank God to this day that He entered our marriage and let us re-fertilize our family with his Wisdom.

My favorite part of the Colossians verse is that we admonish one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Well, Pete and I don’t go around singing to each other (thank goodness), but we do listen to praise and worship songs together, we sing psalms at church together, and we find ways to love each other by sacrificing our selfish desires in order to place God’s Will first.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz on Love

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Bruce Allen

“Couples, like individuals, acquire virtues through the repetition of particular practices and behaviors. They make the virtue their own by freely choosing to act in certain ways, every day.”

Introduction to the “Marital Virtue of the Month” Series By Archbishop Joseph Kurtz (An initiative of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.)

Archbishop Kurtz continues, “Love, of course, is the more excellent way that includes all the virtues. As a couple grows in virtue they also grow in love. Hand in hand they walk the journey to holiness. I pray that you may persevere in this journey, knowing the love of God, the encouragement of the Church, and the support of the many couples who are walking this journey with you.”

This up-to-date piece continues the conversation we’ve been having on this site, i.e., the responsibility of spouses not to simply strive for perfection on their own, but to bring their spouse closer to God as well. We do that not by encouragement/arguing, active evangelization or subtle pressure, but by prayer, by living a committed Christian life, and by creating a wake with the power of our spirit that eventually overtakes our less-committed spouse and becomes irresistible, a wave that can help him along the road to faith. As usual, we must allow The Holy Spirit to work in our lives and those we love. And acknowledge that these things take place in God’s time. Amen.

Get Connected – Turn Toward Your Partner to Create Intimacy

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Here’s another nugget from John Gottman, courtesy of the Alabama Healthy Marriage Initiative. This piece discusses the specific types of connections we make with our spouses, how some are positive and some are negative. Mastering the art of opening positive connections–leaning in versus leaning away–with your spouse invites a warm, open relationship in which conflicts heal quickly and intimacy is part of everyday life.

Get Connected – Turn Toward Your Partner to Create Intimacy

The story many of us tell ourselves is that our marriages are imperfect, that they are what they are, and there’s no point in trying to re-build them. But what we also see are research reports, by Gottman and others, that suggest practical techniques for improving our relationships. That yours, and mine, is imperfect is due to the fact that each of us is imperfect. We are all sinners. And, therefore, it’s not so much about finding the right person as it is being the right person. If our marriage appears to be failing, we will be taking some of the reason for that with us in the pursuit of a new, improved marriage. Logic dictates that even in the unlikely event that Spouse #2 were, in fact, perfect, it would bode poorly for the success of the relationship.

Marriage literature suggests that most marriages go through three distinct stages. Euphoria, that unmatched feeling early in the relationship when it seems the sun, the moon and the stars rotate around your intended spouse. Disillusionment, when you realize the natural order of the universe and where exactly you and your spouse, and probably children, fit in it. And, finally, That Third Stage, in which the partners either don’t work it out, manage some kind of peaceful coexistence, or, at best, feed and maintain a relationship built upon respect, trust and intimacy, both emotional and physical, and thank God for that person, for the loaning of your partner’s spirit, if only for a short time, that is at the core of sacramental marriage.

The practice of leaning into your spouse when discussing important issues is what the Masters of Marriage do. It allows couples to resolve the inevitable conflicts that arise in marriage quickly and without any need for retribution. It is a skill, and can be developed by anyone ready and willing to try to improve their marriage. The story we need to be telling ourselves is that we can improve our marriage if we want to and if we enlist the help of The Holy Spirit. As Nancy constantly reminds me, “The door is open.”

Faith and Our Families of Origin

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Bruce Allen

I recently shared a witness about conversion with our bible study group, reflecting on how my faith journey got off to such an inauspicious start. In Porta Fidei, Pope Benedict encourages us, in studying the word of God as it relates to conversion, to examine a person’s upbringing, in order to understand his faith or lack thereof.

What about our social context? The conditions of our birth and upbringing? Many believe that, for most people, the die is cast by the age of three. That how we relate to others as adults is determined early in our lives. Those others, presumably, include Jesus Christ.

I grew up in the DC area, the only child of a vaguely Protestant mother and a father who was, technically, a Jew but who had adopted Presbyterianism because he enjoyed the homilies of a Scottish minister in northeast Washington in the 1950’s. Dad’s mother was a Polish Jew, his father one of those guys who wore orange on St. Patrick’s Day. Probably due to the tenor of the times, dad’s parents decided against raising him a Jew, or perhaps his mother did not observe her own faith.

My mother felt I should have some religious training, much as she felt I should attend Cotillion, when I was 13. One had no more impact on my life than the other, although I recall being more traumatized by having to touch girls at Cotillion than I was about having to attend weekly confirmation classes or church. My best friend’s family was Lutheran, and Bobby would routinely pass out in church, being forced to sit in the front row, with its thin air and glowering ministers.

I never had any such angst. My parents were indifferent to religion, and therefore it was easy for me to blow it off. I felt a certain disdain during my confirmation in 1965 in that I knew nothing about my faith, couldn’t recite two lines of the Creed, and yet was welcomed into the fold as a full member. As soon as I was no longer forced to attend church, I stopped. Unwittingly, I had adopted Groucho Marx’s quip that I wouldn’t join a club that would have ME as a member. That club, for me, was the Presbyterian Church.

In a larger sense, that club was Christianity. It took the Holy Spirit most of 30 years to put me on the path to becoming a functioning Christian. It took 30 years of Nancy praying for me, as I was unwilling to pray for myself.

If we are at a different place on our spiritual journey than is our spouse, the strategy is to reach for a place in which each partner is free to observe his or her beliefs with the full support of the other, if not participation. For families with young children in which only one spouse attends church, it should be clear that the loving response of the spouse who chooses not to attend church is to take care of the children—all of the children if necessary—while the worshiping spouse prays for your soul and thanks God for the hour of peace, prayer and solitude that you gladly make possible.

But, as we’ve observed here before, we are called to help our spouses grow close to the Lord, not to grow perfect by ourselves.

I entered into marriage as a spiritual savage, while Nancy entered into it as a closet Catholic. We were products of our upbringing, but we did not think of these differences as issues that would threaten our marriage. I didn’t, anyway.

Nancy’s growth along her own journey has had the effect of lifting me up, without my having felt lifted, feeling instead as if I’ve lifted myself. Whether this was her intent, or whether she simply gave the entire mess up to The Holy Spirit, I don’t really know. But the bottom line is that she has helped me grow closer to the Lord.

If differences like these are causing issues in your marriage, and you are the more spiritual one, it is up to you to pray for your spouse, to pray for your own unbelief, and to pray that God’s will, and The Holy Spirit’s design, is for the two of you to eventually travel on your spiritual path together. In God’s time.

Be clear that you cannot make your spouse more religious. The best you can do is to pray for him, and to help create space for The Holy Spirit to come into his or her life with an elbow or a shove. Providing help in taking the first step toward reconciliation, with you and with God.

Exploring the faith beliefs you and your spouse brought into your marriage is kind of a fun way to spend an evening over a bottle of Cab Sav. Understanding one another, at the most elemental level, is about understanding your spouse’s beliefs about God and Heaven and Hell and good works and tithing and raising kids Catholic and sacraments and religious freedom and right to life and about 100 other important subjects.

Luckily, you need not agree on these issues. It is in your interest, however, to understand your own values and those of your spouse. Unlike on Capitol Hill, where compromise has become a four letter word, in marriage the art of leaning into one another to effect compromise is a grace from God. In sales, the expression is “keeping score raises the score.” In our faith lives, the simple act of asking for God’s forgiveness raises us nearer to Him and brings us closer together as husband and wife.

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