How comfortable are you with your spouse?
This week in the Dispatch:
March facts, trivia, and days to celebrate!
Books: Does God have a place in science?
This week's YV plan - Part 2 of “Sex in Marriage: The Basics”
“Moving and Marriage” on the AM Podcast
We Define emotional intimacy in Insights!
A Challenge to look at emotional intimacy in your marriage!
Moving towards “naked and unashamed” in Next Steps!
This Week’s Quick Hits:
March brings us Daylight Savings Time (which I am so pumped about!) and some other interesting facts, trivia, and holidays to celebrate!
March Random Facts:
Benjamin Franklin came up with the idea of Daylight Saving Time...but it was a joke! In 1784, Franklin penned a satirical letter to the editor of the Journal of Paris outlining how many pounds of candle wax the city would save (64,050,000 pounds, according to his calculations) if only its clocks were better aligned with the rise and set of the sun.
The idea wasn’t taken seriously until 1907. More than a century after Franklin’s letter, British builder William Willet, became the champion of Daylight Saving and lobbied Parliament to adjust the time in April and September in order to take full advantage of the day’s light.
Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. On this day in 1973, Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of The Moon” first hit the Billboard Top 200 chart at number 95. A mere 14 years later (736 chart weeks, to be exact), it finally left the top 200 for the first time, setting a still-unbroken world record.
March Trivia: (Answers Below)
The March Hare is a character from which book?
What is most commonly considered the flower for March?
True or false? March has more than one birthstone.
There are several other sayings about March, perhaps the best known is 'March comes in like a lion and goes out like a ----?
When are the first three days in March considered unlucky?
Celebrate:
If you are looking for something to celebrate in the last part of March, here are a few March holidays:
Red Nose Day: March 19
National Corn Dog Day: March 20
National Chocolate Covered Raisin Day: March 24
Grass Is Always Browner On The Other Side Of The Fence Day: March 30
World Backup Day (I need to do this everyday!): March 31
BOOKS & MORE:
The Art of Impossible by Steven Kotler and Shook: Science and Faith a YouVersion plan by Dr. Ard Louis
This week I read “The Art of Impossible” by Steven Kohler. In this book, Kotler articulates very well his belief that there is a formula for “impossible” and then gives us the tools he believes are necessary for someone to accomplish impossible dreams. The core message is that we are capable of so much more than we know. Through his knowledge of neuroscience and over 20 years of research, Kotler lays out a blueprint for extreme performance improvement whether you are an athlete, artist, scientist, CEO, or whatever.
This week I also read a short YouVersion Reading Plan titled “Shook: Science and Faith,” by Dr. Ard Louis as he describes how he married his love of physics with his faith and gives us the scripture that “shook” him. This was an awesome plan. The short videos that combine Dr. Louis’s teaching with creative animation are outstanding.
It was entirely a coincidence that I picked both of these to read at the same time, or maybe not. Maybe it was God’s way of giving me His perspective on science and faith. As interesting as Kotler’s book is, there is no mention of God in the book. So as a Christian I had to insert my faith in many places. For example, my meditation focuses on God and what he wants to say to me instead of a more eastern style of meditation. On the other hand, Louis had such a refreshing take on how his strong faith and science could go hand in hand. It made so much sense to me to know faith and science are not enemies! In fact, since I believe everything was created by God, science is just another piece of that creation.
YouVersion Plan:
Sex in Marriage: The Basics - Part 2
Last week in part one of this plan, we looked at some common problems and hurdles that couples face in their sex life. This week’s four-day reading plan looks at procreation, enjoying sex in marriage, sex as a way to communicate, and a game plan to take what you have learned and apply it to your marriage. This is a great way to work on your sex life and embrace it as the gift God intends it to be.
Podcast:
Awesome Marriage Podcast: Moving and Marriage Episode 461
In our culture, people move. Some people move often. Moving can be - and usually is - stressful, and it can take a toll on your marriage. In this podcast, Christina and I talk about these stressors, how to reduce them and how to deal with them. We will look at needed conversations and how to work together so your move grows your marriage instead of tearing it apart.
Insights
5 Types of Intimacy in Marriage: Emotional Intimacy
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how the words “sex” and “intimacy” are often used interchangably although they are not the same thing. Sure, intimacy can lead to sex, but there is a distinction between the two. To help us better understand this concept, we will look at five types of intimacy in marriage. We will begin today with emotional intimacy, and we’ll look at the other four over the next few weeks.
How comfortable are you and your spouse with each other? Are there any walls between the two of you? Is your spouse your go-to when you have something to share? Most of us married with the idea that our spouse would be our best friend for life. They would be our first go to and we would be theirs. Certainly friends can fill that role but that can also become negative if our spouse is on the outside looking in.
In life, we will all have things we want to share that are hard to talk about. We want to know that if we share them we won’t be judged. When I share something very private with Nancy, I know she will listen and come alongside me. I do the same for her. That is emotional intimacy. For us, it took trial and error to work that out. Sometimes we nailed it and were absolutely on the same team. Other times we were wearing different jerseys. But we learned from those times because we saw how they pushed us farther away from what we really wanted in our marriage. It motivated us to have more of “same team” and less of “different jerseys.”
When Nancy and I married, we thought we knew everything about each other. We did know a lot. In the two years of dating, we spent a lot of time talking and that drew us closer to each other. Looking back over our marriage, I can see that on day one we knew about 10 percent of each other, but we thought we were close to 100 percent! Today we are closer to 100 percent. How did we get there? A combination of life experiences and lots of talking. The more we went through things together and learned about how our early life experiences shaped us, the more connected we were. Probably the real turning point was when we stopped trying to change each other and left that in God’s hands. As a side note, He has done a much better job that we did! Embracing each other “naked and unashamed” took our emotional intimacy way up the scale.
Challenge:
How do you define emotional intimacy in our marriage?
How does that differ today from the early years of our marriage?
What has made the difference?
Next Step:
I used the words “naked and unashamed” today. Discuss together what those words mean to you in your marriage. Is there anything that inhibits this? If so, what is your first step in dealing with it together?
Answers to March Trivia:
Alice in Wonderland
Daffodil
True (chalcedony (bloodstone) and aquamarine for courage)
Lamb
When rain falls
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