Healthy Relationship - Sign #3

In a healthy relationship you not only know your thinking and words will be valued and respected, but you also have the freedom to share your feelings.

An example of this is if someone shares their feelings and the other person states, " I can't believe your saying that! You are always so sensitive!" or one person says, "I'm worried about how this is going to work out" and the other person says, "Come on lighten up! You're making such a big deal about this!"

This is belittling the persons true feelings. As I'm sure I have stated in this post before we have to realize that feelings are real - they may be wrong but they still are real to the person experiencing the feelings. It doesn't mean we don't deal with our feelings but if a spouse is going to create a safe place in the relationship they have to validate that those feelings are real.

So how do we do this? We listen to the feelings of the person without making them feel like their feelings are not valid. We listen to the feelings of another without criticizing or belittling.

Most of the time we do these thing with out thinking. In a marriage it many times becomes a habit.
So today be aware of what you are saying to those closest to you. If they express they are feeling a certain way do you affirm those feelings or do you discredit those feelings?

This freedom to share feelings is one the clearest indicators of the health of a relationship.

Healthy Relationship - Sign #2

The second sign of a healthy relationship is "Everyone is encouraged to talk and know their words will be valued."

In a good and healthy relationship, you have not only the freedom to think, but you also are encouraged to talk and to express yourself.

When you talk the other person listens with the attitude that what you are trying to say is greatly valued, even if the two of you disagree.

Note: this does not mean it's OK to speak disrespectfully. With freedom comes responsibility and everything we say should be honoring to those we are talking to . Even strong opinions can be stated in a respectful manner.

Whatever type of communication was used in your family of origin that's usually the pattern of communication you will tend to use as an adult. Did you have a distant or controlling parent? Were you never allowed to speak candidly? Were the words, "I love you" seldom heard in your home? If you as an adult are now repeating some of these unhealthy patterns here is an idea of how to begin a new way of communicating:

Go to your spouse, children or close friends and say, " I wish I were talking to you more and listening to what you have to say but I wasn't raised that way, so it doesn't come naturally to me. In fact, it's hard for me. But I want to break these habits and do things differently in this area of my life. WILL YOU HELP ME?"

This does two things
1. Conveys that you are working on this issue and aware that it is a problem
2. Gives permission for the other person to let you know when they feel they are not being listened to respectfully
3. It makes us accountable for our actions.

It will take time and effort but the end result will be worth it. The pull of our past can be broken.

This is an area I struggled in for years. I had wonderful parents but they came from very dysfunctional alcoholic homes and passed many of those unhealthy communication skills to me - I picked them up and tended to be a controlling parent that would not always allow my family to express opinions that were different than mine. I wish I would have learned this earlier but I did learn it and I can tell you from experience you can reverse these habits and patterns we bring from our childhood home. Admit what they are and begin today!

*Take a few moments to think about the patterns of communication you had at home when you were growing up........

*Now ask yourself how are your current patterns of communication at your home different or the same to when you grew up......

What is one thing in communicating with your spouse that you need to ask their help in doing?

Next post: Sign #3 - Everyone has a sense of safety and value in sharing their feelings

James 1:19 "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry."

5 Signs of a Healthy Marriage

Are my relationships healthy? What does that question mean? What does "health" mean in terms of relationship?

A healthy relationships is one that each person feels valued, cared for, safe, and loved. Each person is relatively content with life and is growing toward maturity.

In every relationship and especially marriage there are at least 5 generally accepted factors or sign of health in that relationships.

Sign #1

1. Each person feels safe to Think for Themselves

If they are told when you say something that "that's a stupid idea" or Just do what I say, stop asking questions!" the spouse will soon learn they are not safe to think for themselves or express their opinion. If this continues it can wear down the persons self-esteem and allow resentment to grow.

Some spouses make it very clear that if you don't think things their way there must be something wrong with you. Bottom line it is communicating to your spouse that their thinking is flawed.

On the other hand in a healthy relationship we encourage others to think. We want our spouse to use their creativity and intelligence, their God given personalities to compliment our own. Someone once said, " If both of us think exactly alike; one of us in unnecessary"

I hate to have to admit this but in my early years of marriage I was guilty of this and so was my hubby. We are VERY different people and really for years had a hard time understanding that the other person perspective could actually enhance our decisions and our lives. We spent many years arguing about things because we each thought our way of thinking was superior.

The truth of the matter is we both had good ideas and we both brought our own individual strengths into the marriage. Now we listen to what each of us has to say and if we don't agree totally many times we will come up with a compromise.

Today, think about the times when your spouse's ideas or counsel blessed your life, your marriage and perhaps even saved your from a big mess. Thank God today for the gift of your spouse.

Next Post: Sign #2 To be Encouraged to Talk and Know Your Words will be Valued

3 A house is built by wisdom
and becomes strong through good sense.
4 Through knowledge its rooms are filled
with all sorts of precious riches and valuables.

5 The wise are mightier than the strong,[a]
and those with knowledge grow stronger and stronger.
6 So don’t go to war without wise guidance;
victory depends on having many advisers.
Proverbs 24:3-6 (New Living Translation)

How to Honor Your Spouse

We talked about honor 2 posts ago and today I wanted to give you some ideas on how to honor your spouse.

We talked about how "honor" creates safety and security in your marriage, that it is a 'gift' we give our spouse not something that is deserved or earned and that honoring each other is a "Choice"

This hard stuff if you have a difficult spouse or you have had years up built up resentment. First you probably need to clear out some of that resentment - I talked out that in my FORGIVENESS blog. If that is a problem go to that post and work through that process.

We also talked about - what we believe we will find evidence to support that belief - so we need to start by building the belief that our spouse is a great person and we are extremely blessed to have them!

Here are some things you can do to begin the process: (it would be great if you both do this)

1. Make a list of your spouses positives - what you admire about them - their personality, their values, their talents, their character, the way they do things - then post it somewhere you can see everyday.
If you place high honor on someone they will justify it!

2. Become a student of your spouse - What are their preferences? favorite food? favorite date night thing to do? How do they like to relax? What is their love language?
Do things they like, make your spouse feel valued.

3. Remember it's the small things that matter the most - Guys - fix things that need to be fixed, open the door, what ever small things that make her feel valued. Girls- clean something that he would usually have to do, make his favorite food, take the old t-shirt off before bed and put something sexy on :)
If you have been a student of your spouse you will know what makes them feel special!

4. Seek Forgiveness - A heartfelt apology without excuses. Being humble makes your spouse feel honored.

5. Stop being critical, judging and condemning - God is safe, merciful and doesn't judge.
Work on changing you not your spouse.

Ending thought:
You have the freedom and responsibility to change yourself but you do not have the responsibility to change your spouse.


13 For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.

Galatians 5:13 (New Living Translation)

Honor in Marriage

Last post we talked about creating "security or safety" in marriage.  One of the keys to creating safety within a relationship is something that Gary Smalley calls, "Honor."  So what does "honoring" someone look like?  To honor your spouse or anyone else is:

• to value a person highly
• to treat them as a treasure and treat them with respect

Honor is like many things - A Choice.  We can choose to honor our spouse whether they deserve it or not.

This is the hard part - when you do not feel your spouse deserves to be honored.  But the way you have to look at it is that honor is not earned - it is a gift.  It doesn't depend on your feelings or your spouses actions - it is something that you choose to give.

Just like many things in life, once you begin to honor your spouse, you will actually begin to see the good things that you couldn't see before.  It changes our thought process from a negative to a positive.
What we choose, creates how we feel.  So if we choose to honor someone the feeling of honor will follow over time.

You make the choice to value that other person, you choose to look beneath the behavior to find the value inside, you decide to treasure them and look at their pluses not minuses.  You keep in this frame of mind and your emotions will begin to fall in line.

Our feelings always follow our beliefs......

This is called, "Confirmation Bias"  (look it up)  Confirmation bias means that what we believe about someone whether positive or negative, we will find evidence to support that belief. 

If you focus on the negatives of your spouse, it is inevitable that you will treat them accordingly.  On the other hand if you look at the positive side and see your spouse as a wonderful treasure you will begin to place high value on them and your feelings of affection will grow.

Dr. John Gottman, a relationship expert, found that he can predict divorce by 99% accuracy just by observing whether couples honor each other.  Without honor you can not attain intimacy or security in marriage.


Next post: Some ways to honor one another...

"Be devoted to one another in love; give preference to one another in honor"  Romans 12:10

Creating Security in Your Marriage

I've been reading some books about marriage recently, specifically some Gary Smalley books, and the main concept of these books on marriage is the idea of "security" within a marriage.

"The foundational component of an excellent marriage is a truly secure environment-one that is secure physically, intellectually, spiritually and emotionally."

He states in his books that this is the key components to a happy fulfilling marriage.
The concept is that a deep, emotionally-based, intimate, best friend type of relationship can only happen when you feel safe and secure in the presence of the other person.

Many times in marriage we try so hard to create intimacy through, learning each others love language, emotional needs, being romantic, date nights, even attending church and conferences but still none of these methods will work if you do not have the foundation of safety and security in your marriage.

I do have the opportunity to work with couples in couples and marriage counseling often and I have found this to be true. All these methods are great at enhancing your marriage relationship but if you do not feel emotionally safe with that other person these methods will fail to bring true emotional intimacy into your marriage.

So what is “security” in a relationship? I define this as the level of comfort both people feel with each other. These are some aspects in which to assess the safe place in a relationship. They are:

• respect
• feeling heard
• understanding
• validation
• empathy
• love
• commitment

In your marriage do you feel safe enough to open up and share who you really are, your deepest thoughts, hopes, and dreams without feeling you will be criticized, blamed, condemned, or judged? Do you feel you have to hide and protect your innermost self because your mate will not give you the safety of being open? Do you feel completely secure in your spouses love?

Well, because this is " A Seed of Hope" Blog we are going to take a few weeks to look at what it takes to build security into your marriage and create 'HOPE" that your marriage can achieve a greater level of "security" even if it's all up to you.

Butterfly Garden

The Butterfly Garden

Continuing to post about Spring things at our home, last post was about the play set we put up for the grand kids and today will be about my "Butterfly Garden"

Now, if you have followed my past posts for any length of time you know I AM NOT a gardener. In fact, I don't enjoy digging in the mud and getting my hands and feet all dirty and I hate the heat. I am surrounded in life by friends and family who LOVE gardening and planting stuff, I am constantly amazed at how they talk about how relaxing it is, peaceful and something they can do all day. I just don't get it, but then most of them don't get how I can spend hours on my computer either so..... :-)

So you may ask, why do you have any kind of garden? Well, I have found I do like to have very simple type gardens that take very little effort and have some sort of quick reward. I have discovered two of those kinds of gardens.

One, is an herb garden - a couple years ago my friend Cindy (also known as meems) at Hoe and Shovel went to Home Depot to help me create an herb garden and it is still growing and producing wonderful herbs to this day. This is truly a miracle. Link to that post

So, my sweet daughter Debbie, was doing some volunteer work at her daughters school and it entailed creating a butterfly garden. So she enjoyed it so much she decided to created on in her yard. She went to the store and bought milkweed plants and they had Monark Butterfly caterpillars on them and cocoons. The next day one of the cocoons opened up for a beautiful butterfly to emerge.

Well, I love butterflies and all they represent (change, transformation and freedom) so of course I was inspired to start my own butterfly garden. So here are a few pictures of it and my wonderful daughter also bought me a couple milkweeds with caterpillars on them. I have already lost a couple caterpillars to the birds but I have 3 more that I hope will make it.

The Baby Butterfly - Isn't it cute!!

The sibling

what used to be a failed veggie garden now is full of butterfly friendly plants

So to all my gardener friends and family I do now understand just a "little" bit of why you are so enthralled with gardening but I really like the end result much more than the process! :-)