Do it for the Kids

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Written by Christine Burrows

In this age of divorce, we hear lots of talk about staying together (or not) for the kids. I say we not only stay together, but work on making our marriages true sacraments for our kids’ sake. Each generation deserves an opportunity to be better at Christian living and growing in God’s favor.

So, why not use our own marriages to help our kids make it to heaven? Just as we try to advance a culture of marriage in the wake of a rising tide of divorce and casual sex, we owe it to our children to establish this culture at home so that they see strong marriage as the norm, aspire to enter into a holy marriage one day, and see such a blessed union as a step toward heaven.

How do we do this? While I’m certainly not a pro, I’ll throw out some ideas to ponder:

Make your faith part of your family identity. Go to mass as a family. Regularly receive the sacraments together. Pray together. Read about saints and discuss the mass readings. Make sure your children know what it means to be a Catholic Christian so that they can explain it. And, just as importantly, try to help them see the marriage and the family as the core unit of their faith, and part of the larger community of the Church. This will help them begin to see faith as a central characteristic of their future spouse.
Talk to your children about sex and the church’s teachings on sex. Do not leave this up to others – educators, friends, or the media. You will earn major points with your children even if you simply share with them the biology of their bodies BEFORE they learn it in health class. But, don’t stop there. Teach them about the beauty of marital sexuality so that they don’t become lured by extramarital sex and view birth control as normal. You don’t have to answer personal questions about your own sexuality, but do spin marital sex and the creation of babies as a true gift from God.
Be physically affectionate with one another in front of the children. I’m not suggesting groping in the kitchen and then running upstairs while the kids sit down to eat dinner. But, it’s certainly good for kids to see their parents hug, kiss, touch as a healthy way of being affectionate – versus witnessing on TV or in movies non-married people, sometimes even strangers, jumping into bed with one another and calling that affection or love.
Encourage your children to think about their calling. It’s important to think of marriage (or religious life) as a vocation–something God has a say in– not just an event they get to participate in. Speak openly with your children about why you got married to one another, and on what part of that decision you consulted God. If they think of marriage as a calling (not just a wedding day), they may begin to view dates and crushes as potential spouses who they might want to run by God before moving forward.
Surround yourselves with other married friends. Do this not only for yourselves, but for your children. Feed the culture of marriage so that you feel bolstered in being part of a community of people who believe in marriage and want to see marriages survive. As far as the kids go, they should see that there are plenty of married people whose marriage might look different from their parents, but are still clinging to one another. They also need to believe that marriage doesn’t put an end to friendship and fun.

I have great hope for my children and their generation. While statistics don’t favor their ability to get married and stay married, I see a beautiful trend among them as they seek to find more meaning in their lives. They crave true intimacy and are beginning to see that casual sex isn’t the way to get there. So, let’s all join forces and give them some real inspiration – some hope in marriage that can reflect God’s true love for us through the gift of our spouses.

Let’s do it for the kids!

How Do We Practice Humility in our Marriage?

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Sarah Galvin

What does it mean to practice humility in our marriage? In Fr. Adam’s homily last Sunday he reflected on this virtue and I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week. One of the first thing that comes to mind as I reflect on my own humility (or Iack thereof) as it relates to marriage is that famous letter from Paul to the Corinthians. Love is many things but when practicing humility in our love we must be honest about our own weaknesses. It’s easy to fall into a pattern of judgment within our marriage. For example, he didn’t do that. She is mad at me for no reason. This fight was his/her fault. I think we can all agree that this is not the love and humility that God asks from us when He calls us to the Sacrament of Marriage.

If we are humble, we are more able to love unconditionally. God created us in His likeness and He wants us to be like Him. No doubt I’ve said the term “unconditional love” hundreds of times but not until recently did I really think about what those words actually mean. Oftentimes you hear the phrase that marriage is a “2 way street” meaning that both husband and wife need to give 50% to make a marriage work. There is definitely some truth that this but when we love unconditionally, don’t we love without demanding something in return? Isn’t that the way God loves us? Despite our human frailty and weakness God loves us. Although he desperately wants our love in return, He places no conditions on His love for us. So, in our human attempts to love unconditionally – especially our spouses, we shouldn’t place conditions on our love. In simpler terms, love doesn’t keep score.

Knowing this truth is easy. It’s putting it into practice that’s hard. It is easier to give after we have received, and I guess it’s also easier to give when we know we will eventually receive in return. What about our gift that won’t be reciprocal? Isn’t this an example of the love and compassion that God asks of us? Perhaps, God created us imperfectly so that we would recognize that in practicing compassion we most love as He loves.

During lent as we take the time to discern about our faith and prepare ourselves for Easter, we should also take time to reflect on God’s love for us. For what greater sign of God’s love is there than the gift of His only son to eventually die on the cross and save us from our humanity. While it is impossible in our human frailty to fully love as God loves, we must remember that He created us to Love like Him. It is in giving of ourselves that we receive and what better way to give to our spouse than to love them as Jesus would.

5 Reasons to Speak Positively about your Spouse at Work

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Bruce Allen

This is a nice short piece explaining why it’s a good idea not to speak badly about your spouse at work, by Kevin Lowry at The Integrated Catholic Life.org. Like me, Kevin is a convert. Unlike me, he is devoting his life to evangelization and bringing Protestants into the Catholic faith. Here’s his post from earlier this week:

“Sorry, I can’t do it tonight. The old ball and chain gets ticked off if I’m out late.”

How many times have we heard derogatory comments like this about spouses in the workplace? Even worse, snide remarks can give way to all-out whining: “My husband is such a jerk sometimes” or “My wife completely lost interest in me after we began having kids.”

Sacramental marriage should be in a different league than this, but we all live in a culture that hasn’t done the greatest job honoring the institution. In reality, we also know that even the strongest sacramental marriages sometimes go through serious challenges.

So what’s a good Catholic spouse to do?

Well, brace yourself for some good news. There are things we can do to honor our spouses in the workplace, and not be swayed by the cultural winds that sometime blow all around us. How about this one: always speak positively about your spouse at work. Why? Here are five reasons – and they just scratch the surface.

Complaining about your spouse lacks class. Oh, maybe it’s fashionable to gripe and assume an attitude of superiority over your spouse. But does that make it right, and does it really make you happy? Probably not. Besides, if your spouse is such an idiot, what does that say about you, the person who made sacred vows to him or her?
How you speak can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Have you ever noticed how good spouses make each other winners, and bad spouses make each other losers? Words matter. Speaking with honor is part of acting with honor – even when your spouse isn’t around.
It protects your marriage. Even when things are rough at home, airing your grievances at work is the wrong venue. Co-workers who complain about their spouses open up an avenue for support from other co-workers, including those of the opposite sex. This can progress to inappropriate emotional intimacy, and worse.
It’s good for your career. Many of the virtues that make for a faithful spouse also make for a great employee or co-worker. Besides, getting in the habit of speaking positively about others (including your spouse) behind their backs helps build a better culture for everyone in your workplace.
It’s good for your co-workers. We are affected, for better or worse, by the attitudes and behaviors of our co-workers. Demonstrating charity and understanding towards our spouse might just inspire others to do the same.

We can’t single-handedly change the state of marriage in the world, but we can do our best to honor our own marriage vows – and our spouse. Speaking positively about our spouse in the workplace is a great way to improve our marriage, our workplace, and our walk with Christ.

Valentine’s Day Revisited

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Thanks to WikiPedia for the following introduction:

February 14 is celebrated as St Valentine’s Day in various Christian denominations; it has, for example, the rank of ‘commemoration’ in the calendar of saints in the Anglican Communion. In addition, the feast day of Saint Valentine is also given in the calendar of saints of the Lutheran Church. However, in the 1969 revision of the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints, the feast day of Saint Valentine on February 14 was removed from the General Roman Calendar and relegated to particular (local or even national) calendars for the following reason: “Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14.”

Seems there may have been several St. Valentines, at least one of whom was of some low character. The Church, choosing safe over sorry, has given St. Valentine, all three of him, the boot. Not damaging in any way the onslaught of red-colored confections and fru-fru parked in the center aisles of better discount, drug and department stores near you.

Once again, we Christians have managed to turn what was once a religious feast day into a secular selling opportunity. In the process, we routinely substitute grasping for short-term pleasure for seeking lasting happiness. Marketing types endeavor to raise everyone’s expectations, and we approach February 14th with credit cards extended, to ward off any hint of mediocrity or penury in outward displays of monetized affection we tend not to duplicate for another 365 days. Your basic flash in the pan.

Whether it’s on the calendar or not, Valentine’s Day is, in my opinion, another opportunity to affirm for your spouse that you will love him or her forever, that you are glad you married him or her, and that you would happily marry him or her again on most days.

Heading toward our 38th anniversary, Nancy and I don’t go overboard in celebrating most holidays. We are staring retirement in the face, and big displays of what is fairly obvious anyway only serve to put the day when we no longer have to make the daily trudge that much farther away. Christmas and Easter are still big, but Labor Day–not so much.

On most holidays, a bunch of roses from Costco is received as nicely as an FTD delivery and at a third of the price. A plate of salmon on Friday night is virtually indistinguishable from one on Thursday night when we’re busy anyway. Any intra-marital competition is limited to who can find the funnier card. With joint bank accounts, ostentatious gift-giving is a little silly anyway. “Here’s your fabulous gift, darling, and here’s the bill!! Happy Valentine’s Day!”

My new favorite cliche is, “The best things in life aren’t things.” If you want to talk about gifts that keep on giving, talk about the spouse who keeps The Four Horsemen out of your marriage. The spouse who offers to get up early with the kids while you sleep in on a Saturday. The spouse who shows your son how to ride a two-wheeler and your daughter how to bait a hook. The spouse who does so many things around the house without being asked, or expecting to be thanked. The spouse who cleaved to you to create a family, with whom you can be Nanny and PopPop, watching your kids building families of their own, and who will join with you again to envision the families those grandchildren will have someday. All linked inexorably to two people–in our case, a couple of old hippies who met by accident and quickly sensed a connection that will ultimately have led to generations of descendants. Many of whom will have myopia and teenage acne.

In accordance with God’s will.

Though it saddens me to see how a number of my bad qualities have passed on to my children, and are likely to get passed along again, it is a gift to see them working to be effective parents and good wives, as all three of ours are girls. They all married well, and that, too, is a gift from God. These gifts–gifts of serenity, gifts of progeny, gifts of patience and affection and comfort–these are the gifts that experienced Valentine’s Day celebrants look for.

The fru-fru and chocolates can stay right where they are.

Why Did Paul Write about Love?

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Gary Galvin

The second reading from last Sunday (Feb 3, 2013) was from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians about love. This is the common reading we often hear at weddings, including mine and Sarah’s. I decided to dig a bit deeper into this reading and visited various websites to do my research. I was truly intrigued by what I learned and just how powerful love truly is.

Why did Paul even write to the Corinthians?

Corinth was a bustling port city in ancient Greece where Paul established an early Christian church. Corinth was a tough community for Paul to convert. The Corinthians seemed to have been stubborn and set in their own ways; after 18 months of evangelizing and establishing a Christian community, Paul felt it was time to leave. But many issues quickly arose, and people in Corinth were not living up to the Christian values about which Paul preached. With so many travelers in the area came sexual immorality; the citizens of Corinth were fighting and suing each other, people were drunk, and ultimately everyone was treating each other poorly. The Church in Corinth was in trouble.

In that era, congregations did not gather in assemblies or halls but, rather, in homes. Chloe was a Christian woman, the head of one of these homes. Chloe wrote a letter to Paul informing him about the corruption in Corinth and the fledgling Christian Church there, and asked him for advice and direction.

Paul’s response was detailed in his first letter to the Corinthians that we find in the New Testament. One of the first teachings that Paul brings up is that our body is sacred and a temple of the Holy Spirit. He reminded the Corinthians about the importance of marriage and being loyal and faithful to your spouse. If someone was unmarried, he taught that they were to remain celibate and to refrain from sexual permissiveness.

Paul began to encourage the Corinthians to live as new persons in Christ. To treat people with kindness, help the poor, and respect others – to live a life of metanoia, which is the conscientious turning away from an old life (of paganism) to new life in Jesus Christ.

And so here we are today.

As one reads the First Letter to the Corinthians, we as Christians need to bring the same message to our present day world. Between the conflicts across the globe, sexual immorality, hatred and other sins, we must still heed Paul’s message and apply it to our own situations. But it’s Paul’s big finish that sums it up for all of us – the gift of love. Paul emphasizes that what people want is love, and that love is the greatest gift God has given to us. He wanted the Corinthians to love one other and to make love the reason for everything they did and said. As Jesus taught.

Like most of us, each time I hear the reading about faith, hope and love–“and the greatest of these is love”–I immediately think about weddings and marriage. But after studying more about Paul’s letter to the Corinthians I am convinced that love is everything. And that The Beatles, though perhaps not great examples of how to live one’s life, had it right when they sang, “All you need is love.”

Glimpsing Heaven

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Bruce Allen

Posted by Christine Burrows

Genesis 2:18 The Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make his complement.

I am a woman. My husband is a man. Simple observations regarding the profound reality of God’s plan for humanity.

As a woman, I have my ways… emotional, nurturing, verbal, inquiring, sensitive.

And, he has his…dutiful, strong, honorable, protective, resourceful.

In marriage, these attributes complement one another. Where one is weak, the other is strong. Where one is needy, the other is helpful…. at least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

What is the reality of the male/female partnership? Living with these differences is not always easy. It can be especially difficult at times to balance and integrate them in lives lived at the speed of light. When we are prideful, contentious or harried they can be downright frustrating and painful. But, just as the male and female bodies are different AND complementary, so are our natures, our characters.

When we come together with our very different bodies to create something greater than ourselves, so, too, should we seek ways to integrate our psychological, spiritual, and emotional differences to create something far better than each of us individually – a marriage! A symbiotic relationship, in which the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Just as sexual union involves submission, so, too, does relational union. In God’s plan, both unions are glimpses of heaven. In our mutual submission to one another, we fulfill the divine directive to be fruitful, multiply, and subdue the earth as stewards of our faith and the word of God.

In the reality of our fallen-ness, we don’t always get a full view of this heavenly union. We are humans–prideful, vain, and prone to anger. Thankfully, we are forgiven through reconciliation, and blessed with opportunities to experience this piece of heaven. And, each time we do, we want it more. With great hope, I pray for each of us to savor those glimpses, and to do all we can to sustain them.

Q&A with Lori Lowe, Author and Marriage Blogger

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Gary Galvin

Lori Lowe

On February 9 we are excited to host our next Marriage on Tap event and to have Lori Lowe as our guest speaker. Lori is the author of First Kiss to Lasting Bliss: Hope & Inspiration for Your Marriage and writer for the popular marriage blog, MarriageGems.com. I had a chance to do a Q&A with Lori for our blog. I have been impressed with Lori’s passion to marriages and how she has touched so many individuals with her writings. I know that if you join us on Feb. 9 you too will be impressed.

Gary: Your blog, www.marriagegems.com, states that you are a journalist and not a marriage counselor. So why did you start the blog?
Lori: As a child of divorce, I personally experienced the effects of family division. And as a GenXer, I grew up during a doubling of the divorce rate when many friends and family members were going through a similar division. After getting married myself, I realized due to our life experiences, many married people lacked positive role models for how to work through challenges in relationships and to become stronger. As a journalist, I wanted to capture the stories of great role models and share what they learned. I investigated why some marriages quickly fail, and why others don’t just survive, they thrive, even when they face adversity. In conjunction with writing the book, I also read a lot of research on what makes relationships work well. I decided to share research-based marriage tips at my blog to help encourage couples, even couples who are doing well today. As a Catholic, I believe the state of our marriages and families is critical to our future.

Gary: I see that you have a book, an eBook, your marriage knowledge is published in many popular publications, and your blog is rated as the Top 10 Marriage blog on the Internet. Very impressive! Since this is not your career, then what is your objective with all your wonderful efforts?
Lori: My objective is to strengthen marriages for the benefit of the children in the families as well as the adults. Research is very clear that living with your married parents provides the most stable situation for children in terms of education, faith, physical and emotional safety. Research even says that children of divorce die an average of five years earlier than those from intact families. We’ve learned a lot in the last generation about what not to do when we put children through a divorce. We’ve also learned there’s no such thing as a “good divorce.” But the most important thing we’ve learned is that working on making a marriage better and keeping the family intact is usually the best option. Couples go through ups and downs in their relationships. Many who work through the down period end up with a much more fulfilling marriage and family life a few years down the line. Most unhappy marriages can become happy again if they stay together and work to improve the relationship.

FIRST KISS TO LASTING BLISS: Hope & Inspiration for Your Marriage

Gary: Can you tell us a little about your book?
Lori First Kiss to Lasting Bliss: Hope & Inspiration for Your Marriage tells the true stories of couples across the country who experienced a wide range of adversity and who used those situations as a means to strengthen their relationships. They experienced things like child loss, drug addiction, infertility, infidelity, life-threatening illness and accidents, opposing religions, bankruptcy, interfering family members, stranger rape, separation for military service and more. I learned some important lessons from them, which I share in my book.

Gary: The goal of Marriage on Tap is to make sure couples are making time for their marriage and join us for a date night. While interviewing couples for your book were there any stories you can share that touches on the importance of making time for each other?
Lori: In general, I would say if we are not growing together, then we are drifting apart. There is no middle ground. In addition, if we are not building up our spouse, then we are tearing them down. We need to take positive action to build up our marriage, or erosion will occur. That is evidenced in some of the stories, such as when infidelity occurred. Thankfully, there’s a lot we can do to strengthen our marriages, and it doesn’t require that much time or effort if done consistently.

Gary: Could you give us a trailer of what everyone can expect on Feb. 9 at Marriage on Tap?
Lori: I will share 12 lessons learned from couples across the country that I profiled in my book. These are 12 things that can and should be put into practice in every marriage to ensure that your marriage doesn’t just survive, it thrives.

Gary: In recent years, there has been lots of effort by the Catholic Church to educate Catholics on the importance of marriage. In your opinion what more can the leaders and members of the Catholic Church do?
Lori: I think we as a Catholic community should be doing a lot more to support marriage in general and especially marriages within our Church. While most Catholic churches have active marriage preparation programs, not many offer ongoing marriage education for young and/or mature married couples. Education and skills training has been proven in research to improve marital satisfaction. We also need to become very knowledgeable about what our Catholic faith teaches us about marriage as a sacrament. Couples who are more active in church attendance and practice do indeed have lower divorce rates, despite what you may have heard in the media. Strengthening our faith can positively impact our family lives. It would be nice if trained counselors were in every church, but due to the resources needed, more people need to step in and help. Even those of us without training as marriage counselors should consider getting involved and encouraging one another, even on an informal basis. We need to support families in crisis and help lift up children and families at risk of divorce. We also need more people who are willing to be a positive voice for marriage, which can be a wonderful vocation.

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