Marriage

I have a blessed opportunity to share in day to day operations of a union with my wife. We are not only married, parents but we share our business together. Some would say this is not good to be this close, for the marriage sake. I profoundly disagree, see we are forced to know about all the areas of each others lives. We have lived through difficult times personally and professionally. The inevitable ebb and flow of life, our marriage is built on the foundations of communication. There are difficult times, yes, such as coming home from work and continue conversation of work, finances after hours if you will. Life does not stop at 6:00 p.m. and begin a new, it is all a part of the journey together.

When we were married about 6 months we took a bible study written by some friends, "Two Becoming One." We became very involved in this ministry, leading groups over time on this study. In the process of our involvement we have been exposed to many marriages, best of all marriages based in Christ centered marriage, set up for success. This was a saving grace in our lives, as we came from 2 very different backgrounds. Conflict resolution would be the first of the examples, when something was wrong, Sandra's approach was direct, face and discuss. Mine was a 180 degree difference, I need time to process before I respond. A couple of factors for my approach were, somehow in my life I developed the insulation factor of wounds, if I ignore it may go away. The other was I rarely would say something I would later have to apologize for, restraint of pen and tongue. We learned to work together understanding our differences and respecting the fact that we have 2 very different approaches. By no means mastered this, but we had begun steps in the right direction which have lead us to better communications. Still to this day, we approach with similar boundries, she is not frustrated by my process and I am not threatened by hers. The change for me is I am not prolonging or avoiding because of the scars of yesterday, no more maturely, I am processing. So this foundation is not to change the other, it is setting us up for success in understanding.

What I have begun to understand over time is that, this is what our children see, we are a union. Together we stand strong, we are breaking the bonds of generational sin. We are setting our children up for success in their relationships, more importantly showing them how marriage and communication works. It is not only the outward they see, but the inner working they percieve. Our marriage is a more cohesive foundation offering security, itegrity and stability based on Christ as the center of our marriage. To borrow from Pastor's message yesterday "if we never show Him, they can never know Him..." (http://www.stevenfurtick.com/, "my generation") I did not grow up in the understanding of security, my energy was spent insulating myself from the pains of what I saw, heard and percieved. We can not pass this on to our children, together Sandra and I have to focus on the fundamentals of Faith in our marriage. The first is the fundamental of communication.
I started this blog thinking my focus was how we work together, how working together offers us a deeper understanding of each other. Through writing I have found a deeper meaning of "how we work together..." the reasons in which we must grow closer to Him, more focused in our relationships with Christ. Two becoming one in Him.