 FixerUpperMarriage.org/Conflict Jason@FixerUpperMarriage.org Like us on Facebook Summary Marriage conflict is a terrible thing. Or is it? Maybe the conflict is really about something entirely different than what you think it is! Find out what marriage conflict is all about and how it can change your marriage for the better. How Does Conflict Change You? 

Fixer Upper Marriage

How Conflict Can Change You and Your Marriage

 FixerUpperMarriage.org/LostLove God’s creation of love is one of the most amazing things in life. He created people with the urge to love and be loved by someone. People dream about love, read about love, and wish for love to find them. Love is the “big bang” of life. It’s when two people collide in a way that fundamentally alters the course of their lives. Love is a feeling, an emotion, a commitment, a longing, a desire, and a desperate need. Once you have fallen in love with someone, it doesn’t matter what happens, that person is always with you.  I remember the moment I let go of everything; my past, my fears, my hopes, and my dreams. I let myself fall. The only things there to catch me were an overwhelming force of love or a devastating mire of hurt and defeat. But love caught me and held me tight, now I never want to let it go. When I look into the eyes of my lover I see everything I ever want and everything I have in this life. If you have found love, believe in it, nurture it, and fight for it because if you let it slip away you may never find it again. Ronald Reagan the 40th president of the United States wrote the following to his wife Nancy: “I more than love you, I’m not whole without you. You are life itself to me. When you are gone I’m waiting for you to return so I can start living again.” But love is not without its risks. There is a long trail of lost love, broken hearts, and deep regret. What do you do when you feel your love slipping away, or you wake up one day and realize you’ve lost it? How do you get it back? How do you put two broken hearts back together again? What can you do when you’ve lost that lovin' feelin'? Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. Revelation 2:4-5 

Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’?

 FixerUpperMarriage.org/Prayers Read I Peter 3:1-12 

Six Prayers that Could End Your Marriage Problems for Good

 FixerUpperMarriage.org/money What is Money? Money is this powerful, mysterious force that controls and changes your life. It divides people into classes (the haves and the have nots). And nothing makes people more jealous than money. Money is an intoxication. Having it makes you feel powerful, independent, and free. Not having it makes you feel weak, helpless, and bound. It is like an addiction to a powerful drug. It controls you. Money is an abusive master. It manipulates you with fear and hopelessness. It beats you down, stresses you out, and dictates what you can or can't do. Money is an elusive substance- a mirage in the desert of life. When you find it, it is never really there. It’s a dream that never lives up to reality. It is never enough. Money is a terrible lover who steals your heart and never loves you back.  Money is a god who demands your worship at all costs. It takes your soul but only gives superficial things back. In a poll of divorced people conducted by MagnifyMoney, 21% of divorcées cite money as the cause of their divorce. Of course, we all know that money problems cause a lot of stress. And that stress can destroy your relationship. How crazy is it, that little pieces of paper can have so much power. But money only has the power that you give it. There are ways to keep it from hurting your love. Most money problems are self-inflicted but other times things happen, like injury, death in your family, sickness, or job loss. But regardless of how you get into financial hardship, that hardship doesn’t have to mean the end of your love. “Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”--Norman Vincent Peale As a disclaimer, I am not a financial expert or advisor. My focus is on how money impacts your relationship. And as a confession, I am working on these things in my own marriage. So maybe this whole thing is for me! But I think you will definitely find this episode helpful. I will leave the links to any of the resources in the comments below. 

11 Ways to Keep Money from Destroying Your Marriage

 8 Ways to Find and Develop Things You Can Have in Common in Your Marriage FixerUpperMarriage.org/Common Jason@FixerUpperMarriage.org 

Help! We Don’t Have Anything in Common Anymore!

 FixerUpperMarriage.org/Wrong email: Jason@FixerUpperMarriage.org 

Did You Marry the Wrong Person?

Three Thieves of True Love

 FixerUpperMarriage.org/vanilla Plain Vanilla Ice Cream I just want plain vanilla ice cream. I am in our church fellowship hall, it’s a large multipurpose building with a dining area, kitchen, and serving area. I am walking up to the table to place my order of ice cream. I really don’t care for ice cream, but occasionally I will just randomly crave it. I usually don’t even finish it. But my pastor had bought a commercial-style ice cream machine for our church and was obsessing over it. It even somehow found his way into sermons and he was constantly tinkering with it. So I guess all that talk made me want to try some.  Now I am at the table where my close friend is serving. I say to her, “I just want plain vanilla ice cream.” Of course, she tries to talk me into extra toppings. Because want kind of person just wants plain vanilla ice cream? “No, I just want plain vanilla ice cream”, so she rushes to the machine, but hands the bowl off to a stranger. This stranger walks up to the table and gives me the ice cream. She is beautiful. She has long auburn colored hair and green eyes. But when she smiles, it’s like the world stops spinning. I’ve liked some girls before but never had a person captivate me like this. So I give her my awkward introverted smile back but I am speechless. I want to ask, “who are you?”, but I just can’t get the words to come out of my mouth. I didn’t know it at the time, but one year later at the same place, we would be formally introduced by my pastor, eventually fall madly in love, get married and raise a family together. It’s a journey that started with plain vanilla ice cream. A moment that is frozen in time. The moment when I saw her for the first time. Our journey together is not over, but hanging over me is this dark cloud of dread and fear. It’s the unknown. The moment when I will see her for the last time. I don’t know when it will be, who will go first, or whether it will be unexpected or not. But I am hoping that I will look into her green eyes, hold her hand, and see her smile one last time. Because, after all, I just wanted plain vanilla ice cream, but she has given me so much more.  “To love is to be afraid. You are frightened, deathly terrified, that something will happen to those you love. [...] And love enslaves us all,

Fear, Love, and Plain Vanilla Ice Cream

 R-E-S-P-E-C-T FixerUpperMarriage.org/respect Friday, December 1st, 1978 I am 3 years old and I am looking out the side door of our house into our massive garage. My dad and mom are pulling up in our red Pontiac sedan. It was built like a tank and it felt like riding in a boat. Sitting in the back seat when my dad mashed the gas, was like riding a wave or something. I think every car was like a muscle car back then. So my dad parks the car in the garage and I am watching my mom gingerly get out of the passenger side. Soon, they are both huddled around the back seat looking at a pile of blankets. My dad carefully carries the pile of blankets up the steps in the garage that leads to the door where I am standing.   They seem excited as he gently places the blankets on the kitchen table and starts peeling the layers back. As I stretch to look at what was inside the blankets a stunning realization hit me. I am a proud big brother to little baby girl. As it turns out, being a big brother is harder than it looks. We did everything together but fought a lot. One year at Christmas there was a big gift under the Christmas tree. So looking at the tag, I realize that is for both of us. We both open it together and just like a big brother I am helping my little sister with her part. Inside, there’s this grey box that smells like new plastic. On the front in big letters, the words printed say, “NINTENDO”.  It was the popular video game console of the 80s. It came with a game called, “Super Mario Brothers”, and of course we fight about who would get to be player one. Only one person could play at a time, so you had to wait on player one to mess up! It is not like video games today where you hit the “save” button and come back later. You have three lives and when you died, you started from the beginning. So it would take a while for player one to finish sometimes. But I am a big brother, so I let her be player one because that is what big brothers do, they let their little sister go first. Then one day, she meets this “guy”, and I am asking lots of questions because that’s what big brothers do,

Seven Ways to Spell Respect in Your Marriage Respect- Seven Ways to Spell it in Love and Marriage

 FixerUpperMarriage.org/me Newsletter A Me 1st Story I dropped the phone on my bed. It was late and something had just snapped inside of me. I am letting go of my phone, but actually I am letting go of something much bigger. And it feels good. It had taken me almost a year to get to this point, but I am here now trying to make sense of how I feel.  I had just said something that at one time I wondered if I would ever be able to say. I didn’t know what would happen next, but it didn’t matter right now. Everything had just changed.  I buried the hurt from everyone, and now it was coming back out. I knew once I said what I was going to say, I would never be able to take it back. So I paused for a moment, took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and just let the words come out. It took all the courage I could muster but I finally did it. At that moment I let go of me. I let go of my past. I let go of everything that I was holding on to that made me feel safe. It was like stepping off a cliff not knowing where I would land.  Just a few minutes earlier I had slowly picked up the phone and punched in the number. My heart was racing and my hands were sweating as I listened to the ringing tone on the other end. The conversation wouldn’t really matter this time, only the last phrase. I kept repeating that phrase to myself in my head the whole time. When her voice picked up, I stumbled through the conversation for a while. Then I just said it. It was three little words that I knew would change me forever. I said, “I love you”.  And the response on the other end still echos in my mind 17 years later, “I Love you too.”  I gave in to love, and love gave in to me. 

Why and How You Should Have a Me 1st Marriage

 FixerUpperMarriage.org/messy August 5th, 2004 around 9 PM I am curled up on the cold, hard floor in the corner of a hospital room. And I am crying. The thing is, I don’t cry. I am like Clint Eastwood in those old spaghetti westerns. I never flinch, never panic, and I always have a plan. But not today. Instead, I am sobbing and hoping that no one sees me. It all started a couple of months after our wedding day. I had married the woman of my dreams. We loved each other madly, kissed passionately, and did everything together. When she told me I was in complete shock. It was late at night and I went outside, in the dark, to water the bushes I had planted a couple of weeks before. I was gone awhile before I was able to come back in and deal with the news. From that moment on, our lives changed forever. We spent money that we didn’t have preparing for a baby- our baby to come. Then the most incredible thing happened one night on the way home from church. Amber felt the baby move! It made everything different. Our excitement hit a fever pitch! Soon that all changed early one morning when she woke in intense pain. After a frantic drive to the hospital, we found out she was in labor, but it was way too early. I held her hand for hours until she finally had the baby. He was a perfect little boy, but he was lifeless.  In the days, weeks, months, and years that followed we dealt with the pain, grief, and sorrow that accompany that kind of loss. It still hurts when I remember the cruel words of well-intentioned friends. It is the kind of loss that people just don’t know how to respond to. Somehow we made it through but not without scars and moments of complete frustration. We found out that life and love is messy. And it’s the mess that has defined our relationship over the years. The truth about love is that it is messy. So why is love so messy?

Why Is Love so Messy?

 FixerUpperMarriage.org/mindful Newsletter It was late one Saturday night when I left my wife’s house. We had been seeing each other for a while but were not yet engaged. We were falling in love and it was hard to leave her, so I stayed as long as I could. The hardest part about long-distance relationships is saying goodbye. So we reluctantly lingered on her front porch, and I finally faded back to my truck. I had at least a 3-hour drive home, so I put on a CD to listen to. The player was set to loop, and in the end, it would just automatically start over. She lived in a small town near the Virginia/ North Carolina state line. It was about 40 minutes through tiny two-lane country roads to the interstate. When I got there, I settled into the leather seats of my truck and activated the cruise control. I could hear large transfer trucks passing by and could see the endless headlights coming at me from the other lanes. It would be like this for hours as I barrelled down Interstate 85. Everything looked the same, except the numbers on the mile markers went down and the inevitable construction zones just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. I think the road crews have been working in about the same spots for like 30 years. About an hour from home there was a Kangaroo gas station/truck stop. I had stopped there before to get gas or a sida to keep me awake. But tonight I just kept going. That sign was the last thing I saw. The next morning I woke up fully clothed in my bed. My suitcase was outside at the front door. To this day I can’t remember what happened for the last hour of that drive. Somehow I made it safely home, but I completely lost an hour of my life. I just missed whatever happened.  

5 Ways to Become Relationship Mindful

 FixerUpperMarriage.org/Rx No one would argue that the institution of marriage is in trouble today. The divorce rate is off the charts. Couples married for years are getting divorced or separated. I am even shocked at the number of couples in the ministry who are struggling with their marriage relationship. Most of the time you don’t see their problems until it is unavoidable in becoming public.  And that is just in what we can actually see. I think that there are many more marriages struggling that we don’t know about. Maybe a couple stays together because of a church position like a pastor. Or maybe they stay together to protect their pride and reputation. Regardless of the actual reasons for keeping a marriage together in public, they are broken and hurting in private. Eventually, those problems come out of hiding, whether it is to the children who are close to it or the general public in an explosive reveal.  It’s the heartbreaking loss of a beautiful love that becomes a news cycle within the circle of people that we know. Have you heard that they are no longer together? No, wait, you mean that couple? You can’t ignore marriage problems and expect them to get better on their own. Nor can you neglect your marriage relationship and expect to stay happily married. You may be happy for a time, but that neglect will show itself. Obviously, God didn’t intend for your marriage to just exist. No, God means for your marriage to thrive and for you to stay madly in love for a lifetime. So let’s find God’s prescription for a hurting marriage. Table of Contents God’s Prescription for a Hurting Marriage Laugh Often Together Give Good Reviews Make Your Marriage a Ministry 1. Laugh Often Together I have to admit that this is a prescription that has been har...

God’s Prescription (RX) for a Hurting Marriage

 FixerUpperMarriage.org/soulmate The search for your soul mate is promoted everywhere. Dating websites promise to find them with compatibility tests. Even the premise of many fairy tales is to find your one true love. Young people daydream about finding the perfect one for them. So the soul mate idea becomes a fantasy. And your expectations for your potential spouse skyrocket to the moon.  The pressure mounts to find that one person out of 6,840,507,000 in the world. So you develop a wishlist for a potential soul mate.  In your mind, a fantasy of the perfect marriage partner evolves. This fantasy becomes the object of your search. Then comes the romantic notion that destiny will lead you to the one. The stars will align and the universe will put you together. How to Find Your Soulmate Stop Looking for Your Soulmate Look for Someone You Can Build a Lifetime Relationship With Find Your Soulmate in the Spouse You Already have. 1. Stop Looking for Your Soulmate The problem is in the fantasy part of a soul mate. There is no one that fits the fantasy that you have developed in your mind. Every person is flawed including you. The soulmate ideal that you have conjured in your imagination is not real.  Do the Math If there is only 1 perfect person for you. You have a 1 in 10,000 chance of finding them, that’s a .010 percent chance. Still, according to a 2011 Marist Poll nearly 3 out 4 people believe they will find their soulmate. So you come up with the perfect person, and destiny puts you together. If the numbers mean anything, it's not going to happen for you.  According to National Geographic, there is 1 in 3,000 chance you will be struck by lightning during your lifetime. So, if I am doing the math right,

How You Can Find Your Soulmate

 FixerUpperMarriage.org/leave Learn some Bible principles for divorce and separation. As a note, if you are affected by this I would advise you to counsel with your pastor before you make any decisions related to this. You have to live with the consequences of this decision, so you should seek godly counsel.  Also, if the story of your life has been touched by this, it is not my desire to hurt you or put you down. God works in your life where you are at right now, He doesn’t hold your past against you as far as your relationship with Him is concerned. God will not treat you differently because of mistakes in your past, I will not either. However, this is an important issue that needs to be dealt with.    Table of Contents:  What Does God Think About Divorce? God’s Principles for Separation. Value of Staying Together. 1. What Does God Think About Divorce? Everyone has an opinion these days, but what about God who invented marriage? It all started with the first man and woman when He put them together and created the covenant of marriage. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.  Genesis 2:24 In the marriage ceremony, a vow is made between husband and wife. When this vow occurs God puts these two people together in the covenant of marriage. This is not just a legal matter of the state, but a matter of faith. Two become one in the bond of marriage. A man and woman who enter into this covenant are made one flesh by God. We all come together with family and friends to celebrate this union.

Should You Leave Your Spouse?

Because Marriage Without Maintenance Will Break

hubhopper

Fixer Upper Marriage

hubhopper