Looking for Love

Our society is obsessed with the notion of romantic love.  Little girls are mesmerized by the Disney princesses who find their Prince Charmings and live happily ever after. By the time they are eleven or twelve they begin to dream of the day when their own Prince Charmings will come along and take them to that magical place where they will always be loved and cherished, and, they, too, will live happily ever after.

I, for one, do not think that waiting for Prince Charming is a bad thing. A young girl should believe that God has made one special man with whom she can happily spend the rest of her life. The problem arises only when she believes that somewhere there exists a man who can fulfill all of her needs. He will always protect her, always take care of her, and always make her feel loved.

As parents, it is our responsibility to teach our little girls that a Christian husband will contribute much to our sense of well-being, but he is not the answer to all of our problems. Unlike the charming princes of the Disney stories, real men have needs too. They sometimes become ill; they sometimes die; they sometimes lose their jobs, and they sometimes lose their tempers. The real-life princess will need to take care of her prince and meet his needs too. When faced with this reality, many women feel cheated and disappointed—not because their husbands are not fulfilling their duties but because they are not fulfilling their wives expectations.

I came face to face with reality soon after I was married. Although I was madly in love with my husband, the lonely void that I had expected him to fill remained empty. I always felt lonely. Whether in a crowd or surrounded by family, I felt an enormous sense of loneliness. As a result, I felt sad a great deal of the time. I did not tell my husband about my feelings because I was afraid that he would think I did not love him or that the sadness and loneliness was somehow his fault, but I was never free from that ache in my heart.

Then, seven years into the marriage, I came to a point where I wanted a change—not a change in my husband—a change in me. I would come home from work every evening and go into our guest bedroom, drop down on my knees and begin to pray. I told God that I felt dead and empty inside. “I want to feel you,” I said. Night after night I prayed that prayer. I longed to feel alive; I longed to feel His presence in my life.

At the end of the summer a man came into our lives who had an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. His name was Ed, and he began to teach us the Bible and tell us how we could come to know Jesus Christ—not just as our Savior but as our friend. John and I spent the next nine months with Ed as our Bible teacher and friend. We were growing and learning, but we were depending on Ed to bring us into fellowship with Jesus so when Ed told us one evening that he was leaving El Paso, we were very upset. We told him that we needed him to continue to work with us, but he replied, “You’re ready to move forward, but if I stay here you will continue to depend on me. I have done what I came here to do, and I have to go.”

Ed was right. When he left, we began to rely on Jesus as never before. I opened my heart, and He came in and filled that void. Since that day I have never been lonely. I have often been without human companionship, but I have never been alone. Whether surrounded by loved ones or shut off from everyone, my heat is filled with the only love that satisfies completely.

We must teach our daughters that Jesus is the only one who never fails us. He never disappoints us; He never forsakes us; He never ceases to love us. A Christian husband is a gift from God, but he is not the answer to the longing of our hearts. Only Jesus Christ can fill that void, and when we open our hearts and invite Him in, we will begin to live happily ever after.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.

Can Your Marriage be Saved?

This past weekend I watched Fireproof on television. In this movie Kirk Cameron plays a fire chief who has been married for seven years to a woman who is the public relations person for a large hospital. When the story begins, their marriage is in shambles, and the wife tells him that she is filing for divorce.

As we get to know these characters, we find out that the husband is a good guy in almost every way. He puts his own life at risk time and time again to save people who are trapped in burning buildings, trapped in cars on railroad tracks with fast-moving trains bearing down on them, and, we assume, trapped in various other situations to which we are not made privy during the course of the movie. This guy loves his wife, but they are no longer close; perhaps, because he also has an internet porn habit that takes up most of his free time.

The wife cries a lot and is angry a lot because she is disgusted by his porn habit. She has, however, met a doctor at the hospital where she works whom she believes to be everything her husband is not—gentle, sweet, loving, and intensely interested in her. She believes that after she dumps her husband she will marry the doctor and live happily ever after. The only problem is that the doctor is married—a fact that he keeps hidden from everyone at the hospital.

The movie deals with how through agreeing to complete a forty-day exercise in working to win back his wife’s affection, the husband comes to understand his own shortcomings and strives to become the godly husband that she deserves.

The underlying theme that struck me as the story unfolded was that if any troubled marriage is to be saved, at least one partner must accept the responsibility of doing everything in his or her power to repair the damage. Although the husband did have a porn habit, which was a major contributor to their marital problems, he did not want his marriage to end, and he had not stopped loving his wife. He was the one, therefore, who had to take the lead in working out their problems.

Each day for forty days the husband is required to perform some act of kindness and thoughtfulness for his wife as instructed by the Love Dare manual, and each day his efforts are met with rejection and anger. Encouraged by his father, however, the husband continues until he is finally on day 43 of a 40-day exercise.

As I watched Fireproof, I began thinking about how we deal with problems in our own marriages. The party who is mostly in the right tends to take the position that the party who is mostly in the wrong is the one who needs to change. While that may be true, the fact is that the party who is mostly in the wrong probably has no desire to change or to work on the marriage. Any steps taken to repair the marriage, therefore, will fall on the shoulders of the spouse who is mostly in the right.

I believe that the Bible bears out the thinking that the spouse who is mostly in the right is the one who will take the lead in repairing a broken marriage.  I Corinthians, chapter 13 says, “Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong….If you love someone you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost.”

In American culture we are taught to stand up for ourselves and demand that we be given all that we believe to be rightfully ours. We are told that we should never allow anyone, especially our spouses, to “run over us” or take us for granted; “Don’t get mad; get even.” If your spouse fails you, “throw the bum out!”

While this kind of advice makes us feel empowered, it has also led to a divorce rate that is the highest in the history of our country. While we are demanding our own way, holding grudges, and bringing up every wrong that our spouse has ever done to us whenever we have an argument, our marriages are falling apart.

I want to say that there are some circumstances when divorce is, absolutely, the right course of action. However, most divorces occur because the spouses refuse to live by the principles outlined in I Corinthians 13. Most divorces could be avoided if we showed our spouses the kind of love described in “the love chapter.”

Today I want to challenge anyone who is experiencing trouble in his or her marriage to take the Love Dare. Rent the DVD and watch Fireproof. Buy the book—the Love Dare is available in bookstores, at Sam’s Club, and on Amazon. Take the dare, and even if you find that you have gotten all the way to day 43 of a 40 day challenge, keep on loving your spouse and applying the principles of love that the Bible has given us because, in the end, love is the only thing that lasts.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.

When Date Night Becomes Double Date Night

My husband and I were married for seven years before our first child was born. One perk of those childless years was our freedom to do pretty much whatever we wanted to do whenever we wanted to do it. Making plans was not necessary. If we wanted to eat out on the spur of the moment, we did so. After a week spent working at our respective jobs, if we wanted to sleep away most of Saturday morning, we did so. Most Saturdays, after we finally crawled out of bed, we had lunch at a Chinese restaurant and then spent the afternoon shopping or taking in a movie. We did not need a date night because every night was date night.

On September 30, 1970, our first child was born, and everything changed. In less than thirteen years we had ten children—all single births. Life was no longer about what we wanted to do and when we wanted to do it. Our lives were suddenly focused, almost completely, upon the children and what was best for them.  At that point, we felt that instituting a date night might be a good idea.

For the next few years John and I met for dinner at an Italian restaurant every Friday night. Because he came straight from work, he was always dressed in a suit and tie. I spent a lot of effort dressing and doing my hair and makeup so that I would look my best for our date. And it was a real date where we could talk and eat uninterrupted and enjoy one another’s company in a romantic setting.

Of course, it was necessary for me to prepare dinner for the children before I left. Because I wanted them to have a special evening too, I made tacos or pizza and left candy and soft drinks for them to enjoy while they watched television. Since these were once-a-week treats for them, they looked forward to date night as much as I did, but that additional work of cooking and doing dishes took some of the fun out of going out to eat.

In 1985, after five years or so of date night, my husband lost his lucrative job and we suddenly found ourselves struggling just to keep a roof over our heads. Date night was, of course, the first thing to go. At that point I was forced to re-examine my thinking about keeping the romance in our marriage. Until then I had thought that romantic evenings helped keep our marriage special. I soon learned that our marriage was already special, and that the relationship that my husband and I shared made everything else special too.

Watching television and eating popcorn with all ten children was a wonderful way to spend Friday evenings. They had television shows that they had watched for years while John and I went on our dates, and they soon introduced us to Perfect Strangers, Family Matters, and Who wants to be a Millionaire?

I found that I did not really miss date night. While it had been a fun way to end the week, nothing in our lives depended on it. What mattered was being together.

In 1998 we opened our mortgage company, and by 2002 we were doing well financially. Date night, anyone? Since John and I worked together every day, it was easy to begin going out for a nice dinner together on Friday evenings. There was, however, one major difference. Three of our children worked full-time in the company and we usually baby-sat for our three-year-old granddaughter and kept her overnight on Friday evenings. Thus, date night became double date night. My daughter would drop her little girl off at the office about 5:30 and we would put her in the car and drive to our favorite steak house. The three children who were our co-workers would meet us there.

Those evenings were some of the most enjoyable of my life. My sons Stefan and Judah told stories that, literally, made us laugh until tears ran down our faces. My little granddaughter enjoyed every moment of being out with her favorite aunt and uncles, and John and I had an opportunity to enjoy our grown children in a relaxed setting with delicious food cooked, served, and cleaned up by someone else.

In 2008 the housing market crashed, and we had to, once again, adopt a lifestyle of extreme frugality. No more Friday nights out. We began eating every meal at home and taking our lunch to work. Each year since then the market has gotten worse, and we have had to continue our austerity program. However, Friday night is still as special as ever. My husband and I now go home together and have something for dinner that is not too difficult to cook. We watch television together and enjoy one another’s company. It is a time to look back on the week and look forward to the weekend.

Paul writes, “I have learned how to get along happily whether I have much or little. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of contentment in every situation, whether it be a full stomach or hunger, plenty or want; for I can do everything God asks me to do with the help of Christ who gives me the strength and power.” (Philippians 4:11-13)

When we learn to find contentment and purpose in whatever situations we find ourselves, we will have stronger families and stronger marriages.  The Bible tells us that the only thing that lasts is love. When we believe that our spouses are gifts from God and make up our minds to love them in every situation, we have taken the first step in creating marriages that will last a lifetime. The love and romance in our marriages will not depend on whether we have date nights, or double date nights, or no date nights. It will depend on our commitment to love each other in all circumstances, because love lasts forever.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.

How to Stay Married--Part II

In June of this year it will be forty-nine years since I promised to honor my marriage vows “in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” This portion of the wedding ceremony is particularly dramatic and brings to mind numerous stories of tragic young lovers who chose death rather than separation from the objects of their love—hapless teenagers drinking poison, falling on their swords, and driving off cliffs to avoid the pain of enduring an existence without their true loves.

After nearly half a century of marriage, however, I can tell you that “in sickness and in health” seldom carries with it the kinds of dramatic elements that the phrase implies. Having a young spouse succumb to a fatal disease is rare. Experiencing health problems that bring pressure to bear on both spouses and test a marriage will, however, sooner or later, play a role in nearly every married couple’s lives.

For instance, it is not uncommon for healthy spouses to remain with their mates while they are battling cancer, recovering from an accident, or struggling to regain their health from any number of illnesses. Too often, however, when the ailing spouse recovers, the healthy spouse files for divorce.  Even in our permissive society, anyone is considered to be a really bad person if he chooses to leave a spouse when that spouse needs him the most, but he can be forgiven and, perhaps, even admired if he waits until his spouse has recovered before ending the marriage. Furthermore, it may be a little easier to care for a sick husband or wife when we have already made up our minds that this situation is not going to last “forever.”As soon as they are well—or at least better—we will move on without them and without regrets.

“In sickness and in health” does not always apply to one’s spouse. The health of a child can also have devastating consequences on a marriage. In 1986 I met a woman who gave birth to a Downs Syndrome child. He was her fourth, and the doctor assured her that his particular type of Downs Syndrome was not genetic and that it would be perfectly “safe” for her and her husband to have another child.

The woman did not follow the doctors’ advice to abandon her newborn son, leave the hospital without him, and go on with her life. Instead, she opted for the heart surgery that was necessary in order for him to live, took him home, and began to study the disease so that she would have a better idea of how to best raise him.

Two years later she gave birth to a second son who was also born with Downs Syndrome—although it was the other type. Again, she authorized the heart surgery that would allow her child to live and took him home.

Having five children, the youngest two of whom were severely disabled, put a strain on the marriage. The husband finally gave the wife an ultimatum: She would either institutionalize her two youngest sons or he would divorce her. She could not even consider abandoning her children, and the husband left. When I met her in 1986, she was completing her degree and working as a social worker for the state where she lived helping families with Downs Syndrome children find the training and services for their children that would prepare them for adulthood.

The illness or death of a child often brings so much stress that neither partner is willing to continue with the marriage. When so much suffering occurs, it is natural to want to get away from everything and everyone who is connected to the grief and feelings of helplessness that become a part of every day life. In times like these we need to remember that we have made a commitment to stay with our spouses “in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” When we remind ourselves that we cannot leave during the sickness, and we cannot leave afterwards when things are better, we take away the options that end our marriages.

Many years ago I read a story in the Reader’s Digest about a man who received a notice from the city where he lived that his house was going to be taken under eminent domain. Unlike most people who receive such notices, this man was delighted. The city quoted him a price for his house that he believed to be above fair market value, and he looked forward to being able to buy a better property for his family.

The children were not as enthusiastic about the impending move as their father so he decided to do something really “fun.” He bought cans of brightly colored paint and went outside where he began covering the house with graffiti. He painted pictures of trees and flowers, clouds, and stars, and anything else that struck his fancy. The children soon joined him, and he handed them paint brushes so that they could add their own artwork to the outside walls of the house. For several days they worked, and when they had covered the outside walls, they painted the doors and even the windows so that not one speck of the original paint showed, and no window was left unpainted.

The father was not concerned about the damage that he and his children were doing because the city was going to knock the house down anyway. They could simply spend the next week or so doing whatever damage they wished—without giving a thought to any possible consequences.

About a week before the family was to vacate the house and receive their check, however, a second notice arrived. The city had decided to reroute their road project, and they would not be taking the house after all.

The father was stunned! The day that he had made up his mind that he was going to be vacating his house, he had ceased to maintain it and had even done things that made it absolutely unsellable. When he realized, however, that he was “stuck” in that house, he went out and bought enough white paint to repaint the entire exterior. He also spent many hours scraping the paint off the windows and repainting the trim.

I think that this is a good illustration of what happens in our marriages when we take divorce off the table. The day that we commit to remain in our marriages “until death do us part,” we begin to look for ways to make our marriages better. We work to maintain them and also to restore them when damage has been done. 

I will end this two-part series the way I began it, “If you want to stay married, never get a divorce, and you’ll stay married.” After you commit to honor that portion of your vows, begin to find ways to make your marriage a place where both you and your spouse will want to spend a lifetime.  

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.

                         

How to Stay Married--Part I

A brilliant attorney who was experiencing marital problems with his third wife once asked me, “How do you manage to stay married?”

“It’s simple,” I replied. “You just never get a divorce, and you’ll stay married.”

Clearly, he thought that I was being sarcastic, but I was completely serious. I have always maintained that the first rule in staying married is to take divorce off the table as an option.

On June 15 of this year my husband and I will celebrate our forty-ninth wedding anniversary. When you have been married as long as we have, people tend to congratulate you as if you have won the lottery or, at least, gotten lucky enough to avoid the pitfalls that cause other couples to file for divorce. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

I was only seventeen years old when I stood in that small Texas church and took my vows. Like most brides, I was happy and optimistic. I knew that life would be wonderful, and that we would love each other forever: “For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.” As I repeated those words, I had no idea how many times those vows would be tested during the course of our marriage.

As I look back on my own marriage, I believe that couples need to re-examine their vows and think about what they really mean in practical terms. I will, therefore, discuss those vows in light of what I have learned about staying married.

First, in spite of what the old song says, love will not keep us together. Love is crucial to a successful marriage, and if we look at love in light of I Corinthians, chapter 13, we will understand that it goes far beyond romantic attraction. Nevertheless, the marriage vow does not leave love hanging out on a limb like a lone apple. We vow to “to love and to cherish.” Cherish is defined as, “to hold or treat as dear; to care for tenderly, to nurture.”  If our love is to last, we must cherish our mate. We must believe that our spouse is special, and that he is worthy of our love. Even when we find it difficult to hold our spouse as dear, we must believe that God has joined us to him because He holds him dear and He knows that we are the right mate for him. Then we must care for him tenderly and nurture him. We usually apply the concept of nurturing to children or young plants or animals—things that need special attention and constant care. Marriage is a joint effort to give one another the special attention and constant care that each needs to grow and to flourish so that when life is hard, we can turn to one another and find a safe place where we can grow and flourish.

During the first year of our marriage, a family friend who was a successful doctor in his mid-fifties took John and me to dinner and remarked that he “envied” us because we were just starting out. He assured us that the best time of our lives would turn out to be the years when we were struggling to succeed. He went on to say that after we reached “the top” we would find that we were lonely and disappointed.  

At the time, I was certain that he only said those things because we were really struggling, and he had more money than he knew how to spend. As I look back, however, I believe that his remarks were sincere. At the time, he had two failed marriages, and he rarely saw his grown children. He had nothing more that he wanted to attain. His only interest was his medical practice, but even that did not satisfy him. Before he died in his nineties, he went on to have a total of seven marriages—all of which ended in divorce.

That brings me to my second point: We must be prepared to stay together “for better or worse, for richer or poorer.” When we recite our vows, we do not consider that it may be more difficult to stay married during the times that are “better” and “richer” than during those that are “worse” and “poorer.” In the case of the doctor, he did not divorce his first wife until he was in a successful practice and his children were grown.  He had come to a point where he was no longer struggling; he had no more dreams to fulfill, and he was prepared to do something very reckless in order to make his life more exciting. At that point he simply threw his life away and hurt his wife and children in the process.

Proverbs 5:13 admonishes men to “cling to the wife of your youth”. Anyone who has been in a long-term marriage has learned that the excitement and romance of new love cannot begin to compare to the years of shared experiences, shared victories, and even shared disappointments of a life spent with the person you love. It takes a lifetime to create a marriage that can withstand the test of time.

Next week: “In sickness and in health, until death do us part.”

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.