Info & Help

Parenting: Tough Love

Parenting can be the most important and challenging role we will ever have in life. Parenthood takes time, money, love, support, and much effort. With every aspect of parenting there are certain roles and responsibilities that need to be fulfilled by us. What makes parenting such a challenge is that sometimes we aren’t really sure what we should do in certain situations.

At what age should we allow our daughter to date, or should we even allow her to date? Have we ever thought about the consequences of what dating can do to mold a person’s character? What does he or she learn from dating? Should we allow our teenager to have a computer in their bedroom? Are they watching too much TV? Playing too many video games? How will these things affect them later?

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. Proverbs 22:6 NIV

I do know this much, parents have a responsibility to their children, to love them, discipline them, and care for them the best they know how until they leave home. But isn’t there more to the role of parenting than that? Yes, there is! God brings spiritual meaning into our lives so that our purpose of being parents is important and worthwhile to us. It should be a pleasant and honorable task instructing and disciplining our children and teenagers.

Parenting: Tough Love Read More »

Trusting In God For Your Marriage

Who are you trusting in when things go wrong in your marriage? Are you trusting in self, or perhaps you go running to family and friends, explaining your side of the story? Some of us go running to therapists, counselors, divorce lawyers, and strangers on the street. But we seldom run to God.

Many of the people we go running to in times of marital troubles aren’t equipped in giving us proper advice and guidance. Most of them have had divorces themselves! How can someone fix our marital wounds when they can’t fix their own?

Trusting In God For Your Marriage Read More »

Pins and Needles: Chronic Abuse and Trauma

Our formative years present the potential for self-harm to thrive. Our early experiences, for better or worse, shape us. And sometimes, that shaping can take the form of addiction. Hypervigilance often results from certain incidents, in which trauma somehow established our need to self-medicate.

“… When a child grows up afraid or under constant or extreme stress, the immune system and body’s stress response systems may not develop normally. Later on, when the child or adult is exposed to even ordinary levels of stress, these systems may automatically respond as if the individual is under extreme stress… Adults with histories of trauma in childhood have been shown to have more chronic physical conditions and problems. They may engage in risky behaviors that compound these conditions (e.g., smoking, substance use, and diet and exercise habits that lead to obesity).” “Effects of Complex Trauma,” http://www.nctsn.org/trauma-types/complex-trauma/effects-of-complex-trauma

My first memory, a traumatic one at that, was when I was three years old; my parents decided to move the family’s sewing machine from one floor of our house to another. But they neglected to remove its drawers, filled with hundreds of needles and pins. Inevitably, I toddled downstairs, stepping on many of them.

Pins and Needles: Chronic Abuse and Trauma Read More »

What Are Eating Disorders?

What Are Eating Disorders?
An eating disorder is marked by extremes. It is present when a person experiences severe disturbances in eating behavior, such as extreme reduction of food intake or extreme overeating, or feelings of extreme distress or concern about body weight or shape.

Types of eating disorders

Treatment
Researchers are unsure of the underlying causes and nature of eating disorders.

What Are Eating Disorders? Read More »

Practicing Patience and Addiction

What a mysterious thing is this enemy of ours – as mysterious as life itself.

Addiction is sometimes without explanation. However, we are aware of its presence and how miserable it makes us feel. How little we like to speak of it, discuss it, or consider its importance! When cornered, we discuss the thought as quickly as possible. That being said, doesn’t it seem strange that we spend so much time feeding our addictions? Furthermore, when we have finally had enough, why do we not spend an equal amount of time and energy trying to recover from those same addictions.

Practicing Patience and Addiction Read More »

Trying to Find Your Way Back?

Every so often the familiar and even somewhat predictable “amnesia scenario” is resurrected for another made-for-TV-movie or sitcom. The actor stares blankly into once-loved faces and professes no recognition whatsoever. Places, sounds, smells, even names–nothing seems familiar. Memory has been lost; hence, a sense of identity has been lost as well.

And that is exactly what has happened to us–all of us. We have lost our memory. Like the prodigal son’s older brother who toiled endlessly and joyously in the fields, we have forgotten who we are and where we came from. But the forgetting goes beyond the pigsty from which the Father has rescued the prodigals. It extends back to the beginning–to a time when our identity was secure in our fellowship with the Father.
Before the rebellion…
Before the fall…
Before the exile.

As a result, our world is in the midst of an ongoing identity crisis. We walk around, day after day, year after year, generation after generation, trying to find our way back to….somewhere…. hoping that when we get there, someone will recognize us and tell us who we are.

The problem is, even if we figure out where that “somewhere” is, we cannot get ourselves back there, contrary to a song that was popular in the late ’60s and early ’70s that proclaimed the need to get ourselves back to the Garden.

Trying to Find Your Way Back? Read More »

Things I’ve Learned about Masturbation, Porn & Sex Addiction

I thought I’d print what I’ve learned in my many years of studying my own masturbation/porn/sex addiction. I’m no expert, but I’ve spent a lot of time studying how I feel to understand why it is that I do this. This is long. Hope that’s okay. No, I’m not cured, but I get a little closer every time I fail.

Certainly logic and science are not the whole answer, but they can help your understand yourself so you can help yourself by letting God help you. Spirituality and science can work together.

MY BACKGROUND

Things I’ve Learned about Masturbation, Porn & Sex Addiction Read More »

The Value of Trials

REJOYCING
There are those who would consider that going through the recovery process is far from joyful. For most of us there is a great deal of pain along the recovery path.

    James 1:2-4 (Amplified)
    Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations;
    Knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience.
    And let patience have its’ perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.

The Value of Trials Read More »