A Marriage Blessing

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by Jonathan

This post was originally written for my little sister and her new husband. With all my heart, I wish these things for them and for all married couples.

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May your marriage be beautiful. May it remind you often that God gives good gifts. Very good gifts.

May you remember that God didn’t put Adam and Eve together to give them holiness, but a companion, a comrade, confidant, and friend.

May people look at your love and see that there is a God and he is awesome.

May you show the world – and the Church – that it’s not about submission or obedience or “who’s in charge.” That in your love and mutual submission, you will race each other to the bottom. And when you get to the bottom, may you find love, wholeness, joy, peace, and life. In other words, Jesus.

May you laugh often. At each other, with each other, because of each other. And if and when God fills your home with children, may you sit around the table and laugh and laugh and laugh.

May you taste heaven when you taste each other.

And when you walk through the shadowlands, and you will walk through the shadowlands, may the One who led you together continue to lead you together. He is the Creator of the soaring mountaintops and the scary valleys. May he sustain you and remind you.

May 2014 be the best year of your marriage. Until 2015. And may 2015 be the best year of your marriage. Until 2016. May you experience the intense joy of being known, deeply, and the great honor of knowing another.

May your love, promised and given on this day, echo into eternity. May people hear your stories, witness your love, and say from now until forever, “Look at what the Lord has done!”

Run Away! Run Away! (And Other Conflict Styles)

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Today Elizabeth is over at A Life Overseas, talking about conflict:

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I don’t like conflict. I’m scared of it. I don’t want people to be upset with me; I don’t want people to think I’m upset with them. Conflict is stressful and instills in me a strong desire to RUN AWAY. I shut down both physically and emotionally, and I fail to deal with the issue at hand.

I want everyone to be happy. I want this to happen without actually having to talk about the things that make me, and other people, unhappy. But I can’t avoid unhappy situations indefinitely. With 7 billion people on this planet, and no two of us alike, conflict is unavoidable.  I can’t hide away forever from my emotions and the emotions of others.

In mission training I learned that my approach to conflict has a name: I am an Avoider, or Turtle. Turtles believe that any conflict, regardless of what it is or how it is handled, will inevitably harm relationships. We thus avoid conflict at all costs. We hide in our turtle shells and refuse to come out to talk. However, when cornered or forced into conflict we aren’t ready to deal with, some Turtles (like me) might lash out in anger. The typically conflict-avoidant Turtle has now morphed into a Snapping Turtle. Ouch!

Continue reading here.

Anger Abroad {A Life Overseas}

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Today Jonathan is over at A Life Overseas, writing about anger:

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What do you think of these statements?

“Missionaries are some of the most peaceful people I know; they really seem to have figured out how to seek peace and pursue it.”

“Overseas workers are good at letting the peace of God rule in their hearts.”

Has that been your experience? Yeah, me neither. I think we’d NEVER use the word “peaceful” to describe ourselves or our coworkers. And I think that’s really, really sad. But anger’s not the problem. Anger’s the symptom that points to the problem. So I’d like us to pause and ask, “Where is our anger coming from? What’s going on under the surface of our souls?”

Often, the ones who don’t show anger just bury it. And then, like other negative emotions we’re not too fond of, it bubbles up. Like the deepwater oil rig in the Gulf, something blows, and black tarry stuff explodes from the deep and ruins paradise (or Florida).

To read more, click here.

Seizure, Coma, Death

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by Elizabeth

Jonathan and a friend, on his last day at the hospital.

Jonathan and a friend, on his last day at the hospital.

Seizure, coma, death: the end process of all diseases. My husband Jonathan discovered the end results of disease in nursing school, where one of his instructors made the phrase seizure, coma, death somewhat of a joke. Me? All I had to do was be born the harm-avoidant, overreacting hypochondriac that I am. I can extrapolate any symptom or situation all the way to end-of-life processes. And I don’t need the help of nursing school to do that; I can do it all by my lonesome self.

Seizure, coma, death: it’s the place I always go. For me, the worst option is always the first option. Case in point?

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The Tropical Seasons Paradox

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by Elizabeth

“If you cannot think of anything appropriate to say, you will please restrict your remarks to the weather.”

–Mrs. Dashwood to her youngest daughter Margaret in the 1995 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility.

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Flooding in the streets during rainy season

Today’s post is about the weather. This should be an exceedingly appropriate topic, if a certain esteemed fictional character has anything to say about it (though I’m not sure she does). Instead of four seasons, those of us living in Cambodia have only three — all of which fall within what I would call Midwestern American “summer.” That means that to the outsider, all of life here is just plain HOT. After living in Cambodia awhile, though, I’ve learned to discern the subtle differences between the seasons.

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