Category: Building Strong Relationships in a Lonely and Painful World

How do we build community, build friendships, and relate well to the people in our lives in spite of the fact that relationships often hurt and bring pain?

Posted on

How to Build a Flourishing Marriage

“Don’t compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday.” What Jordan B. Peterson says in regard to self-improvement applies equally to marriages. No marriage becomes a flourishing marriage overnight. It takes time and work.

So, why put in the time and effort? Because the rewards of a flourishing marriage are innumerable. When both spouses feel deeply loved and cared for, able to share their hearts and minds, and able to help each other work toward common goals, the blessings are great not only for themselves but for everyone around them.

How, then, do we build flourishing marriages? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this question. I’ve read thousands of pages on family therapy. I’ve had the privilege of counseling people inside and outside of my congregation and been able to learn from the successes and failures of their marriages. I’ve also discussed marriage with colleagues, friends, and counselors. I’ve also been married for 18 years to the same woman.

Here’s some of what I’ve learned.

There is one verse in the Bible that encapsulates the heart of how marriage ought to work. It is Genesis 2:24: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

This verse indicates that there is to be a very close union between one man and one woman committed together for one lifetime. This close union becomes the priority for those who are a part of it. The spouses prioritize their own relationship and lessen the importance of other relationships.

Keep that verse in mind, and consider these seven guidelines that I believe flow out of a consideration of Genesis 2:24.

1. Prioritize the marriage relationship over the relationship with your parents. For a marriage to flourish, your relationship with your parents needs to become less important and your relationship with your spouse much more important. Rarely is it a good idea for spouses to seek counsel from their parents when they feel uncomfortable with the marriage relationship.

A friend of mine illustrated this by asking couples in pre-marital counseling, “Where are you going for Thanksgiving and Christmas?” Inevitably, one of them would say, “Going home.” He would then reply, “Where’s home?” He would use that as a hook to explain that home is where your spouse is, not where your parents are.

2. Prioritize the marriage relationship over your relationship with your children. Children easily become allies for one spouse or another in an uncomfortable marriage. It is a temptation to seek the emotional support you were looking for in a spouse in a child. This is not good for the child or the marriage. As one family therapist put it, “Keep the generations in the generations.” He viewed that as the central task in family therapy.

3. Prioritize the marriage relationship over your work. Many men who would never dream of having an affair, end up having an affair with their work. If you want your marriage to flourish, work cannot be a priority over the marriage relationship. Your relationship with your spouse should be a priority over your work.

4. Prioritize the marriage relationship, but don’t isolate it. Every spouse needs friends, interests, and opportunities outside of the marriage relationship. When all your hopes, dreams, and needs are wrapped up in your spouse, you place a burden on them that they cannot fulfill. In their proper place, relationships and interests outside the marriage enrich the marriage

5. Prioritize working on your relationship. It’s one thing to say you prioritize your relationship. It’s another thing to do so. Building relationships takes time. I would strongly suggest some sort of concrete plan to make sure that happens such as a date night or a time where you talk each week or day. Even if it’s just the two of you living at your house, it’s easy to get involved in other things and forget to touch base.

6. Prioritize your spouse’s needs. Everyone naturally begins with his or her own needs and fears. It’s easy to think of your own need for love, companionship, respect, and care. However, if one spouse can have the courage to begin with the other spouse’s needs, then it is more likely that the other spouse will be able to do the same. “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he told wives to respect their husbands and husbands to love their wives: begin with thinking of your contribution to the relationship and what the other spouse needs.

7. Assert your own wants and needs. Some people only think about their own needs. This is the subject of #6. Others never do so. This is not a recipe for a flourishing marriage. As a short-term strategy, you should focus on the other spouse’s needs, but you cannot ignore your own long-term and have a flourishing marriage. You need to assert your own desires and needs.

Note well: this is distinct from telling the other spouse what they should do or rebuking them. Instead of getting angry that your spouse is not sitting in the room with you, tell your spouse that you would like to have their presence and that it would make you feel good. This is risky because it makes you vulnerable. However, without this, other people do not know what you want, can’t easily give you what you want, and feel condemned for not doing something you didn’t ask them to do! This is not a recipe for a flourishing marriage. So, assert your own wants and needs without demanding a response. A gentle assertion of our wants or needs goes a long way.

This may sound like a lot of work. It is! It’s also hard, but a flourishing marriage is one of the best ways to ensure our long-term happiness and bless those around us.

Posted on

Barzillai Willey, or The Unknown Impact of Ancestry

“Do you know who Barzillai is?” I asked my Grandfather.

“No.” He replied. “I don’t believe I do.”

I asked my Father the same thing. Neither one of them knew who the biblical character Barzillai was.

Now, that’s not a slight on my Father or Grandfather. These two men are ministers, and they knew their Bibles. It just shows how obscure Barzillai is in the Bible.

It makes it all the more surprising that the story of Barzillai must have captivated Isaac and Deliverance Willey so much that they named one of their sons “Barzillai.”

For the record, Barzillai was an elderly rich man who aided King David when he fled for his life from his son Absalom who had just carried out a successful coup d’état. King David crossed the Jordan River tired and hungry. Barzillai brought him supplies and encouragement.

Barzillai Willey was born in 1734 in Lyme, CT. He died in 1771. He was a veteran of the French and Indian War, and he had a son whom he named–Barzillai!

The second Barzillai was born in 1764. As a very young man, he became a soldier in the Continental Army in the Connecticut Line and served at the Battle of Saratoga. After the Revolution, Barzillai became a Methodist minister. Eventually, he moved his family to Clark County, Indiana.

He had a son whom he named Barzillai, but my own interest is in his son Dennis Willey, who is my 4th Great Grandfather. Dennis Willey was a Methodist minister like his Father.

One of his daughters was named Margaret Minerva Willey, and she married Jairus McMillan. Jairus had left his home in Oneida County, New York, and traveled on foot from farmhouse to farmhouse to southern Indiana. There, he met Margaret, and they were married in 1855.

Apparently, the ministry was very important to Margaret Willey, and she longed to have a son who would be a minister like her father. Her desires were answered in her son, Clyde Holmes McMillan, who became a Methodist minsiter. Incidentally, Clyde married a minister’s daughter named Florence Mae Maupin, daughter of William Maupin.

Margaret Willey was so excited about her son Clyde being a minister that, according to my McMillan cousins, she would take out ads in the paper any time Clyde would come back home to North Vernon, IN to preach.

Clyde and Florence had several children including my Great Grandmother Roberta McMillan. Roberta developed a love for God and His Word in her early years. As she described it: “My Father would read a passage of Scripture and then our family would kneel at our chairs for prayer. It was here a reverence and love sprang up in my heart for God’s Word in those early years.”

This same devotion led my Great Grandmother to God’s Bible School in Cincinnati and then to a desire to go to the mission field. After graduating, both My Great Grandmother and my Great Grandfather were on their way to serve in Africa–separately.

Clarence said goodbye to his friends and family and headed off to Africa first. During that time, his Father, James Mason Keith, had a dream that Clarence had come back to find a wife. Everybody laughed because they knew that Clarence was off to Africa. Unbeknownst to them, the documents for the trip had not been filed properly, and Clarence had to return home. While he was home, he paid Roberta a visit and asked her to marry him. She assented, and they went to Africa together.

There, Clarence and Roberta had eight children. Their three sons were also ministers, one of whom was David Keith, the Grandfather I mentioned in the introduction to this story. Three of the daughters married ministers.

My Grandfather and Grandmother David and Huberta Carver Keith also met at God’s School of the Bible, and they ended up in Africa as missionaries. There, they had four children, the oldest of whom is my Mother.

When my Mother was 19, she met my Father, Sam White, at what was then Marion College and is now Indiana Wesleyan University. Undoubtedly, part of my Mother’s attraction to my Father was that he was planning on being a minister. From a young age, My Mother had had a desire to serve the Lord and was happy to partner with my Father to serve Christ and His church.

Their son, John Wesley White, never wanted to be a minister. I don’t believe it ever even crossed my mind growing up. I even went in a different direction theologically. I moved away from the Wesleyan Church and went into the Presbyterian Church.

You always think that your destiny and decisions are your own. But here I am, an eighth generation minister. I wonder what good old Barzillai Willey would think of that.

Posted on

10 Ways to Get Closer to the People You Value

A few years ago, a relative of mine, Rev. Russ Gunsalus referred me to a book on connecting with people. It is called The Friendship Factor by Alan Loy McGinness. This book is filled with simple yet profound insights that have given me guidance on how to better connect with the people in my life.

I continue to meditate on its contents, and as I grow, I see the wisdom of its insights. Recently, for example, I heard about two funerals, one for someone’s father and the other for his mother. At the father’s funeral, there were a lot of children of his friends and relatives. At his mother’s funeral was a lot of her friends. What was the difference? His mother kept making friends.

This powerfully illustrated a key point in the book: Friendships are not static. They ebb and flow. It’s not as if we make friends once and for all and then are done with it. We have to keep working at it, or our friendships diminish. This was a powerful reminder to me to keep working at building friendships.

The insight from the book combined with the story that I heard to make the story all the more compelling and illuminating.

Here is a brief sample of the book, though I recommend that you read it all for yourself.

Five Ways to Deepen Your Relationships

  1. Assign top priority to your relationships. Building relationships is work, and we must recognize this.
  2. Be willing to share things about yourself. Cultivate transparency.
  3. If you like something in people, say so. You won’t go wrong in this.
  4. Figure out what people enjoy, and show them love in ways that are meaningful to them. It may not be the same thing that is meaningful to you.
  5. Create space in your relationships. All relationships need a balance of togetherness and separateness. Recognize that relationships have different seasons.

Five Ways to Cultivate Intimacy

  1. Please touch. Obviously, you need to have a sensitivity, but people do need appropriate touch. It’s not for nothing that Paul said to greet one another with a kiss.
  2. Be liberal with praise. Again, if we can see something good in someone, it is worth saying it.
  3. Schedule leisurely breaks for conversation. It’s easy to become too task-oriented. Stop and visit with folks.
  4. Learn how to listen and ask good questions.
  5. Talk freely about your feelings and encourage others to do the same.

What might you suggest for getting closer to the people you value?

Posted on

Why Community? Seven Important Perspectives on Community

It is not good for a person to be alone. That’s what God said about Adam when He created him. So, He created Eve.

God made human beings for community.

It’s easy, especially in this society, to isolate ourselves and think we can make it on our own. The irony is that we use more things that involve more people than at any time in history. The reason we can isolate ourselves is because of a huge amount of cooperation by thousands and thousands of people to give us the conveniences that enable us to “make it on our own.”

However, it’s not merely our physical well-being that is dependent on others. Our psychological and emotional well-being is dependent on interactions with others.

We need community.

Here are a few reflections on what this looks like in light of the biblical revelation.

1. Community reflects the image of God. Each individual is made in the image of God, but God is not merely one. God is three–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is a community, and so human beings in their rational and emotional interaction with one another reflect that image.

2. Community manifests the glory of God when people come together in love, trust, and cooperation. To the degree that hatred, distrust, and tribalism characterize community, to that degree it does not reflect the glory of God.

3. Community that reflects God’s glory encourages diversity without compromising the truth. Truth is the foundation of the community, and humanity in its diversity is what reflects God’s glory most effectively. Both are needed.

4. Community must distinguish between primary and secondary truths. Primary truths are those that are necessary for the essence of the community. Secondary truths are areas where people can disagree and still be part of the community. It’s easy to confuse these things, and this confusion limits community.

5. Community is the only way for human beings to reach their full potential. Humans do not attain their potential without the influence of others, and humans are created for the love and service of others.

6. Community is worldwide but is manifested locally. It’s easy to love humanity in general. It’s harder to love individual human beings. However, it’s in real contact with real people that community is constructed and reflects the glory of God.

7. Community requires short-term and long-term connections. Community is established by thousands of short-term interactions. These are crucial. However, the depths of our hearts can only receive love and give love in long-term interactions. So, it is good to be part of community organizations, neighborhoods, and local churches.

All around us, there are message of self-fulfillment. God’s vision is much larger–corporate fulfillment and worldwide community. That is the heart of the mission of the church, and that is what reflects the glory of God most fully.

Posted on

An Unlikely Friendship

I first met Greg in September 2004 in the small town of Pollock, South Dakota. He was the Pastor of a church in Mankato, MN, in the Presbytery of the Siouxlands, a regional group of churches in Minnesota and North and South Dakota. I was seeking to join this group and become a Pastor in Spearfish, SD.

In the years that followed, I got to know Greg and the other Pastors and Elders in the Presbytery better. We met three times a year, and I always enjoyed those meetings. Greg’s church was a church plant, and, when they needed some extra funds, our church gave to support him.

Then, our denomination got embroiled in controversy over some theological issues known as “the Federal Vision” (If you know what that is, fine. If you don’t, it won’t take away from this story).

I was quite adamantly on the side opposed to “the Federal Vision.” I thought Greg was on the other side, and I called him one day to ask about it. At our next Presbytery meeting in January of 2008, I asked the Presbytery to look more carefully into his views.

When the Presbytery refused, I took it to the higher court of our denomination, and they ruled in my favor.

What followed that was a long series of charges and counter-charges, attacks and counter-attacks. It deeply divided our Presbytery. Sometimes, I felt like Presbytery was more like two armed camps ready to take each other out.

In 2012, while all that stuff was still going on, God did a new work in my heart. God was teaching me something different about local ministry. To make a long story short, I felt like I needed a greater emphasis on the simplicity of the Gospel and a ministry that was more geared toward reaching the lost and working together with other Christians. In my mind, I did not connect this to the ongoing conflict in the broader denomination or Presbytery.

In September of 2012, I shared with the Presbytery how the Lord had been working in my heart and how that had begun to change our church for the better. Many were encouraged, and Greg approached me to say how much he appreciated what I had to say.

I then said to him, “Why don’t we go for a walk and talk about it? At this point, what do we have to lose?” He agreed, and we spent the next hour talking together in a way that we had not done since before all the controversy.

That conversation continued with fits and starts over the next year. As I thought about it, I began to see how some of the issues we had been arguing about could be resolved. He was somewhat skeptical, but he agreed to talk.

Eventually, I concluded that it was important enough for me to take the 10 hour trip from Spearfish, SD to Mankato, MN so we could talk in person. We met at Panera Bread there in Mankato and began to hash out the issues. We made progress, but we still needed to talk further.

Then, something happened that made our conversations much easier. Greg resigned from his church and took a call as a Chaplain in the U.S. Air Force. And to what base did they assign him? Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, SD, an hour away!

This was especially ironic because the churches in our area had been quite opposed to Greg and his “side.” It was probably the last place that he would have wanted to be stationed. But the Lord had his plans.

This move enabled Greg and I to continue to meet and have conversations. Eventually, we came to an agreement on the theological issues. We proposed a consensus statement between us as an alternative to any further charges or counter-charges in our Presbytery.

The Presbytery did not ultimately agree with our idea, but it was still a good and helpful exercise for us. Our relationship also began to change from just reconciliation to friendship.

In another irony, I moved away from South Dakota to Tennessee at the end of Greg’s first year in SD. This might have been the end of our friendship, but it wasn’t. We kept in touch.

I remember one day when I was really struggling with some issues and needed to talk. I went down my list of friends, and I came to Greg. I called him. He answered and was somewhat surprised that I would confide in him with a deep struggle. This really began a new level of friendship. We had moved beyond the theological issues, and we now began to help each other as friends and colleagues.

We now talk to each other at least monthly to help each other think through how we can grow as Pastors, Fathers, Christians, and human beings. I count him as a close friend.

I’ve also walked with Greg on his own journey as he has sought the next step in his life which has taken him all over the country from Colorado to Texas and back to South Dakota.

I’m pleased to report that he has now been approved for a call to a church in Louisville, KY. Louisville is a short four hours away. I get up there from time to time, so I’m looking forward to being able to visit face to face with Greg, my unlikely friend.

Proudly powered by WordPress