Family

Healing From Addiction: Where Does Our Marriage Go from Here?

Ask Angie: My heart aches. I’ve been married 16 years. We have 6 children. My husband got out of rehab for alcoholism, but also worked on his sex addiction. I feel as though I can work through the alcohol part but the trust with the sex addition is not happening. I have been supporting my family for over 2 months with daycare I have in my home. Questions of leaving my husband are a daily struggle. My church has helped with what they can with my bills while he was away. Where do we all go from here?

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Gentleness: Can Real Men Co Gentle?

What do you think? Can real men do gentle?

For most of my life, “gentle” described one thing.

Toilet paper.

Toilet paper was supposed to be gentle, and we all know what happens to toilet paper.

I grew up in a blue-collar family. The adults in my life scrapped and fought their way through Depression and war. The values were hard work, self-reliance, sacrifice, and hard work. You made your own breaks and earned your own way. You got what you wanted by working harder than everyone else. If someone stood in your way you shoved them aside.

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Dealing with an Offensive Husband

Ask Angie: We have been married only 4 months and my husband engages in bash sessions with his family, friends, and grown boys about me and all the details of the marriage we are trying to build.  How can I feel safe, loved, and protected in this?  We are going to counseling…I just don’t think he is willing to see this behavior as abnormal.  I think it is just what his family does.  Negative and tearing us down at every turn.

Marriage Guidance: If any of your friends, family and grown boys have any sense they will surely see right through your husbands criticism. We should never allow what others say about us control our own behavior, even if it is from our loved ones. Many times it is our loved ones that will be the most disagreeable.

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How To Change Another Person

river runs through itWhy is it the people who need the most help… won’t take it? Norman Maclean (A River Runs Through It)

Who’s that person in your life who needs to change?

Perhaps a boss bullies and controls or fosters chaos through indecisiveness. Maybe a coworker refuses to communicate or a friend follows a self-destructive path. Possibly a child breaks your heart with obviously bad decisions or a spouse drifts silently away.

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Discord in Relationships

Proverbs 6:16-19 NRSV
There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that hurry to run to evil,
a lying witness who testifies falsely,
and one who sows discord in a family.

It’s interesting that Solomon begins with “there are six things . . . seven . . .” Matthew Henry notes, of this beginning:
“and the last of them (which, being the seventh, seems especially to be intended, because he says they are six, yea, seven) is part of his character, that he sows discord.”

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Losing Trust in Spouse, Regaining that Trust

Ask Angie: My husband and I are not on the same page when it comes to trust issues, today something came up that hit a button that really showed me how I don’t trust him. He did something I felt went behind my back. When I found out about it, I was very upset. I felt he was being dishonest with me and I then realized why I don’t trust him. See he is done these things most of our married life. When I comforted him I let him know that his behavior is what I don’t trust. That this kind of behavior cannot go on. That is this kind of behavior that is the reason I don’t trust him and that it is his job to restore my trust in him.

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