The dream is still alive and very real
This week in the Dispatch:
I'll tell you about a book that tackles one of the most common problems I see in the counseling room.
As Awesome Marriage heads towards its tenth anniversary, I take you all the way back to Day 1.
This week’s Challenge is designed to move your marriage closer to Awesome.
A final thought to get you thinking.
Books:
Marc Brackett is an emotional scientist and a professor at Yale University's Child Study Center. In this book, he helps us understand our emotions so we can wisely use them to help our success and well-being instead of letting those emotions hinder us. Marc writes from his own life experiences beginning with an uncle who gave him permission to feel at a young age. He learned it was not wrong to feel scared, isolated, and/or angry. This helped Marc realize that what he was going through was temporary and now he could do something about it.
As a counselor, I feel many of us fall into the trap of ignoring our emotions and not giving ourselves permission to feel emotions we do not understand. This book is for adults and for those who want to help children understand and master their emotions. There are a lot of interesting stories from Marc’s studies. From a Christian perspective, I would add that there is a freedom in knowing that God gave us all of our emotions and He also gave us the ability to understand them.
Dr. Kim’s Rating: 9/10. This is a fascinating read!
Blog:
In 2010, I sat around a small conference table with three other men. Our topics were marriage and how to reach people with God’s plan for marriage. We knew that people could learn at church but we found very few churches that had vibrant marriage ministries or even did marriage sermon series. We knew people could go to a seminar or weekend marriage event but the number of people reached through those versus the number of married people would be very small. We then looked from our viewpoint at what was working to help marriages and what wasn’t, and found much more on the “not working” side than the “working” side.
In 2010, the divorce rate was high. Way too many people were giving up way too easily on their marriages. Couples were drifting apart and they were not doing anything to address their problems. All of this brought us back to square one. What can we do?
Then someone said, “Where are all of these people we want to reach? Where do they spend their time? What if we find out where they hang out and go to them?” Our answer was social media and in particular this new thing called Facebook. In 2010, Facebook was seeing rapid growth. People were there. Facebook was the new hangout. Yet, some people were speaking out against Facebook, especially when it came to marriage. Stories were surfacing about people connecting with old boyfriends and girlfriends on Facebook. There were some who even saw Facebook as the demise of marriage. Their reasoning was that finding someone to have an affair with just got a whole lot easier. The question now was, “Should we go there?” We took a quick vote and over the next hour we built the “I Want An Awesome Marriage” Facebook page. We were taking God’s plan for marriage to Facebook and we had no idea what might happen. November 1, 2010 became our launch day and I started working on content for the page. By the beginning of 2011, we had over 20,000 followers and from people’s responses, we were making a difference. We were where we needed to be!
As we ended 2010, I shared my dream of “a divorce-free world” with marriages that would not just “exist” but be awesome! I borrowed an idea from John Lennon and the song “Imagine” as I looked at what life could be like in a divorce free world.
No children without both a mother and a father under the same roof.
Couples that have learned to resolve differences in a healthy way.
Couples that work together for a healthy family.
No pornography.
No affairs.
No lies.
No deceit.
Couples cherishing the time they have together.
Couples living unselfishly each day.
A divorce free world is still my dream. Are we there yet? No. But the dream is still alive and very real. And guess what? You can help. A divorce free world happens one marriage at a time. Why not start with yours?
Challenge:
Here are three challenges for you:
Take the option of divorce off the table for your marriage - and leave it off!
Rate your marriage today on a 1 to 10 scale, with 10 being Awesome.
Now, what can you do today to begin moving your marriage from where it is to “awesome?” That is your next step.
Final Thought:
As we enter into the second half of this interesting first year of this new decade, write down three things God has taught you so far in 2020 and three things you are thankful for!
*Some links are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Every dollar made goes directly to the ministry of Awesome Marriage to help couples build awesome marriages. We only promote products we truly recommend.