Access to Intimacy

The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. Proverbs 14:1 NIV
On the telephone recently my daughter and I were talking about my parents, now deceased. We were enjoying our stories about how they loved and cared for all of us. “But, Mom,” she suddenly asked, “why did they fuss at each other so much?” “I think . . . ,” I answered slowly because their behavior had always seemed quite harmless to me, a habit developed over the years, “I think it was their way of staying connected.”

Even as I answered my daughter’s question I recognized I had seen this dynamic many times in my work with families: People needing closeness and using anger to try to get it. Face it: fighting with someone ensures their undivided attention

Over the next few weeks I began to notice this theme in the stories people were telling me: an 18 year old, graduating from High School picks fights with his single mother every chance he gets; a family moving to another city with a 3year old finds her resisting everything; a husband who angrily accuses his wife of lying about her whereabouts when she leaves for work two hours earlier than usual without reminding him about her plan; a 7 year old middle child who persistently opposes family plans. In each case the anger seemed designed to communicate something difficult to express – a need for connection and reassurance.

To test my theory I made the following suggestion. I called it The 3 by 3 Step Solution. When you are approached by a loved one who seems irrationally angry with you take these three steps, while walking the three steps it takes to bring you physically closer to them:
Step 1: Shut down the angry, defensive, critical response forming in your heart. Any real issues connected to this outburst can be addressed at another time.
Step 2: Think of an honest, affirming, loving compliment or comment you can express to your loved one. Your goal is to connect and reassure. (The mother of the highschooler said “I can’t believe I have raised such a hard-working man.”)
Step 3: Reach out and touch. The touch should fit your relationship—a pat on the arm or head, a rub on the shoulder or neck or back, a hug or loving caress -- you will know how to do this.

People craving intimacy may not know how to ask for it. The 3 by 3 Step Solution is working fairly well with the 7 year old and the 3 year old. The 18 year old is beginning to talk (and talk!) to his mother. One woman tried this when her husband said something unkind to her in public (he does this often). She reported that two changes took place. The first change was in herself: on Step 2 she felt her heart soften toward her husband; by Step 3 she hardly recognized her own voice as she spoke him. When she touched him he smiled and put his arm around her, and the anger was gone.

“So it worked?” I asked. “Of course it worked. Didn’t you know it would?” I never know if something will work. I only know it is worth a try.

A kind answer soothes angry feelings, but harsh words stir them up. Proverbs 15:1 CEV

Tina Green 2010

What Can You Do Alone?

Women often ask this question when they are discussing how to improve their marriages. They feel helpless against the seeming lack of cooperation and concern for their husbands. Perhaps he isn’t even aware that anything is wrong. But some things happen only when we are alone.

When I first committed my life to Christ, the most important decision I have ever made, I was alone. Soon after that I felt the urging of the Holy Spirit telling me to “work on” my marriage. I was not aware that my twenty-year-old marriage needed work, but, alone, I determined that I would obey God. I was not instructed to include my husband who seemed perfectly happy with his relationship with God and with me. This was my assignment, mine alone: Learn how to be a wife God's way.

I did not know the way but the Holy Spirit urged and encouraged me: “You have met the King of the Universe, have committed your life to serving Him, have read Matt. 22:36-38 and the other verses of scripture that tell you how God wants to be loved, and how he wants you to love others (including 1 Cor 13:1-8). Now you have to put away childish things (1 Cor 13:11). Alone you have to grow up. Let God make you a new creature: one who is willing to love His way, for His sake.” All this I must do alone – with my Master. Together, we are still working on my marriage.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone,

the new has come!

2 Corinthians 5:17(NIV)

Tina Green ©2010

Choosing to Stay

A new sport has invaded the American culture. We could call it Divorce Watch, or Marriage Destruction. No. It is not a video game, not played on your Nintendo. You play it by accessing televised or print news, collecting the latest story about marital infidelity, then weighing in on what the wife should do and when enough damning data has been uncovered to require that she abandon her marriage. The game players who are assembled in the national arena then issue the “THUMBS UP” or “THUMBS DOWN.” If she fails to appease the players by leaving her errant husband, her children’s father, and quickly filing for divorce, the angry scrutiny shifts from the unfaithful husband to the “foolish” wife. The Players begin to label her, ascribing to her all sorts of sinister motives and emotional inadequacies for not carrying out their mandate. She has let them down by refusing to play the game their way. She is then the loser.

This Game, I fear, may have invaded the sanctity of Christian marriage where only the word of God and the instruction of the Holy Spirit should guide the decisions of injured spouses. At such a dreadful time the wife or husband should not be influenced by the opinions of those who have nothing to lose, no commitment to the couple, and no moral guide for decision-making. The whims of popular culture are far too mindless and quixotic to be part of such a painful and consequential process.

If your marriage has experienced the tragedy of infidelity do not listen to those who encourage you to react out of hurt, anger, pride, or desire to retaliate. Take the time it takes to pray, seek wise counsel, and begin to heal. Separation or divorce may be the proper course for you. It may also be possible that your marriage can be restored and renewed. Just don’t be seduced into playing The Game!

Love Flows Down

My father loved God, but he understood God’s love to be conditional. And, although he loved me fiercely, that love, too, came tainted with conditionality. My husband loves God and, because of his deeper understanding of God’s love, is able to love me unconditionally. By God’s grace and my husbands love I am being healed of the consequences of conditional love and learning to walk in freedom.

As I addressed my issues and grew in my personal relationship with the Father He began to bring me the unlovely to love. One-by-one His children who had been wounded by inadequate love took up residence in my heart and sometimes my home. He taught me to count as progress very small increments of change. He would hear my cries of weariness but offer no release. I have to learn the meaning of long-suffering by suffering long. I count my commitment, not in months, but in decades. But His love flows down.

Sometimes my newly-strengthened loved ones report to me the failings of one of their loved ones, describing in detail how others are missing the mark. I listen patiently to their impatience, but with a saddened heart. Was it all in vain? For they are judging others with the same harshness with which they were once judged.

When the time is right I must carefully remind them of their previous condition. “All you are required to do,” I tell my dear apprentice, “is what was done for you. Bring them before the Father and pray for their deliverance. Cry out in pain for them as though their pain were your own. Love them unconditionally as you are loved. Let His love flow down, through you.”

Occasionally I receive a word or token of appreciation from one I have so desperately loved. They finally get it. Love always flows down. And, once in a while, Love Flows Back Up!

By Tina Green © 2008

Getting Past Your Past

Face it – marriage is not what most of us expected. And we are not well prepared for it. But, we take our vows and there it is-- an unexpected adventure for two novice explorers. Many of us have previously experienced and witnessed only the worst that the marriage voyage has to offer.

Once we are married, we are obligated to commit to God's view of the journey. The dangers of that commitment surround us at every turn, but our relationship with God requires that we trust him "though he slay us". We may not erect walls of self-protection, but must place our lives in His hands as He does what He pleases in and through us. It is the natural thing to try to protect ourselves from the pains we have previously suffered at the hands of others we have trusted. But while we are looking that way, Satan attacks from another direction.

The experiences of our past often inform us in ways that are not useful. We resist trusting in God’s ways because of past hurts. It is hard to recall that it was not God who betrayed us but the "hardness of men's hearts." It is distressing how our past wounds can cause us to "halt between two opinions," trying to decide whether to follow God, who knows the way on this journey, or to resort to our own flawed devices. Some of us have allowed bitter roots to form within us that keep us from committing fully to another human being. These must be exposed for the ineffective protection they are, through prayer, counsel and self-confrontation.

One of the mysteries of marriage is what God can do through us if we follow and obey Him. My prayer for every married woman is that she trust God with her husband and her marriage, and attempt as much as possible to bring her thoughts and behavior into alignment with what the word has to say. As scary as that may be, it is the only way with a promise. .
! Peter 3:5-6 (NIV) . . .like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

@Tina Green 2007

Safe Travel

When you jump in your car to make a trip or run an errand you are trusting that the vehicle that you carefully maintain is in good and safe condition. As you drive down the road you are careful. You make every effort to obey the rules of the road and make wise, prudent decisions. You are depending on the other motorists to do the same. Yet, you have no control over their actions, their decisions, or the condition of their equipment. No doubt, in your prayer time you have placed in God's hands those things that are outside the range of your influence. And so you continue on your way.

I was thinking about this a while ago when I attended a women's meeting. On the subject of submission someone offered that wives are only expected to submit to their husbands as their husbands submit to God. That sounds like a sensible approach to a process (submission) that holds so much potential danger.

And yet, a study of the Word does not support this conclusion. When a wife obeys the instructions of God she is in much the same position as when she drives her car. She can only control the vehicle she is driving. Whether or not the other drivers are being as diligent as she does not change her responsibility to adhere to the rules of safe travel. If "submission" is a rule of safe travel for wives we must follow that rule, entrusting to God all of those things that are outside our range of influence. The condition of our husbands' relationship with God is not a condition of our obedience to the Word. Trusting God, we submit, and continue on our way.

Tina Green, 2010

What's an Older Woman to Do?

What's an Older Woman to Do?

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. Titus 2:3-5 NIV

In the 1960s there were several revolutions that changed American society forever. While I am grateful for many of the outcomes those great movements accomplished I grieve the loss of what I will call “a sense of individual responsibility.” In the marriage relationship, for instance, equal has become same, same has become together, together has become reciprocal, and reciprocity has led to a mandatory fifty-fifty division of labor. Role definitions have become blurred beyond recognition. I am afraid that in that climate individual responsibility can be avoided if “my partner does not do his/her part.”

Before the revolutions, women’s magazines contained articles and stories about how to be a wife that were very useful. They would probably send today’s woman screaming from the room. In 1961 I was given a book titled "The Marine Officer’s Wife" (I was one) that sounded like instructions for a medieval serving wench. But, we may have thrown away some of the baby with the bathwater when we all became more enlightened.

Those books and magazines had helped us understand that “wife” really is, among other things, a job title. There are ways responsible wives should or should not behave regardless of the circumstances surrounding them. We must acknowledge that there is special power in owning your job description and submitting to the requisite training. It is this that makes firemen run toward a fire, makes paratroopers jump out of planes, makes a nurse or doctor touch the patient despite the damage and disease. A wife is a Wife. She needs to embrace the job, the job description, and the training. Since the revolution the training has been a hard thing to come by.

Some of the confusion is understandable. The terms “couple” and “one-flesh” certainly suggest the connection between two people united in marriage. “Marriage counseling” is usually defined as “couples counseling.” How can we work on the marriage if we can’t get both partners to come in? But that is only defines part of the relationship..

A few years ago I gave a talk at a women’s conference and women began to call to talk to me about their marriages. Some of these women were behaving very badly in response to the bad behavior of their husbands. It seemed unwise to allow a woman to believe she could not change her behavior or her circumstances unless she could get her husband to cooperate.

Looking carefully at Scripture I found that there were no provisos, no reciprocity, no quid pro quo. Each person was expected to behave according to the instructions, the job description, written for them in the Word regardless of the behavior of the other spouse

So, a woman would come to see me. She would tell me about her husband’s behavior. Some of these stories were agonizing to listen to, but I refused to be overwhelmed by the tale. (This assumes there is no physical abuse.) Then I would ask about her behavior. We would determine what God wanted her to do, and I would send her off to do that. Invariably, if she persevered with all diligence she would report a difference in her situation. She would have changed the only person on earth she has the power to change. Herself!

This is not a guarantee that all marriages can be saved or even improved. But if a woman takes responsibility for her own behavior something changes. My work at this time focuses on helping women understand how to be a Wife. I try to pass on the training that keeps them from being dragged around by their emotions, their circumstances, or their limitations, or the behavior or shortcomings of others. I would like to begin a new revolution that elevates marriage to its rightful place in our hearts and minds. I am starting with women because I know them best. Besides, I have to start somewhere, before everyone forgets what marriage looks like.