Are You Making Your Spouse Miserable?

OK, this list of ten things is certainly not all-inclusive but it definitely has the potential of helping your relationship with your spouse become better. Remember when you first met your spouse and there were things that you overlooked and thought quaint or mildly annoying? Well, with time, those little things can become big things (as all things grow with time) and those massive things can make you forget what is really important. 

It's good to check periodically on the important matters of life to see if something needs to be adjusted and changed. That is growth and maturity. Without a periodic checkup you can become weak, sickly and die. Best not let your relationship get to that point. Take this 10 point checkup and see where you may be needing to adjust you thinking and your life.

10 Things Every Couple Needs To Stop Doing

NOVEMBER 9 BY AMY MORIN IN COMMUNICATION, RELATIONSHIPSMost couples develop some bad habits over time that can wreak havoc on the relationship. Here are 10 things every couple needs to stop doing before they damage their relationship.
1. Giving Your Partner Your Partial AttentionChecking email, texting, or watching TV while your partner is in the same room doesn't constitute quality time together. However, many people have difficulty unplugging and giving their partner their undivided attention long enough to hold a real conversation. Give your partner your full attention so you can truly connect with one another.

2. Skimping on the Compliments

You can never give too many compliments. However, as a relationship matures, compliments often begin to dwindle. Give your partner plenty of encouragement. Offer praise and genuine words of encouragement to help your partner navigate each day with confidence.

3. Keeping Score
Keeping score and trying to ensure that everything is fair can make couples argue more like siblings. Everything doesn't have to be fair in your romantic relationship. Trying to keep a tally of who has done the most or who has earned something will only damage your relationship. Focus on giving to your partner rather than worrying about what you’re getting.

4. Not Being a Person of Your WordYour partner needs to know you are trustworthy. Make promises that you’ll follow through with. Don’t say things that you don’t mean and don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep. Building trust, loyalty, and security in the relationship means that your partner needs to know you are a person of your word.

5. Talking More Than ListeningCommunication should involve listening more than you speak. However, most people focus more on getting their point across rather than truly trying to understand what their partner has to say. Focus on listening to your partner and developing an understanding of your partner’s point of view before trying to express your opinion. Listening to your partner can reduce a lot of conflict caused by misunderstandings.

6. Listening Passively OnlyListening should be an active process. However, many people treat it like a passive activity. Not talking doesn't constitute listening. In order to actively listen to someone, you should ask questions, nod your head, and seek clarification when you don’t understand. Get rid of other distractions and focus on what your partner has to say by showing you are actively trying to understand what is being said.

7. Making the Relationship Lower on the Priority ScaleRelationships often top the priority scale in the beginning but over time, a relationship can slip down the priority list slowly. Kids, jobs, extended family, and friends can all take precedence over the relationship if you’re not careful. The lower the relationship falls on the priority scale, the more likely the relationship will suffer.

8. Offering CriticismGiving too much criticism can break down a relationship quickly. Offering your opinion about what your partner doesn't do right or should be doing differently can create a wedge in the relationship. Offer feedback in a way that is tactful and diplomatic and make sure you are giving more positive feedback than negative.

9. Nagging One AnotherNagging is an annoying habit that can make a relationship become more painful than joyful. It’s okay to ask your partner to do something but avoid nagging if the job doesn't get done according to your time frame. Treat your partner like a responsible adult, not a child who needs parenting.

10. Trying to Change Each OtherTrying to change your partner will only backfire on you in the long-run. You can change yourself only. Focus on changing your own behavior and it may or may not lead your partner to change. Accept that you can’t force your partner to change and accept that your partner does not have to do what you want.

Well? How did you do? Got some thoughts about what you want your spouse to change so your life is simpler and easy? 

I'm sure you do! Better read this again and this time look at you differently. 

It's not all about you! It's about caring for your spouse and making their life richer and blessed by being everything you can be for them. Our lives are not about making our life easier and better by everyone catering to our preferences and wishes. It's about giving up our preferences and wishes and taking care of those that are around us. Not the other way around.

There are some simple things we can do to change the way we look at others. You can get started today by thinking about someone else but yourself and focusing on doing something for that person you live with everyday, or that person you work with, or anyone you might run into who needs a kind word or a helping hand.

Check out this link for another thought about the way you think about the world around you.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/13-things-mentally-strong-people-dont.html

No Surprises….Please

It's been three months since I last shared a post on here. I have not been avoiding doing so but just overwhelmed with starting a new business. Please understand that turning 60 this year and starting a new career has taken most everything I have to keep up. I enjoy the challenges of life and sometimes take on more than I can do at once. I guess that's because of slowing down more. I could blame it on age or I could blame it on the dog but I don't have a dog, so I guess it's cause I'm getting older.

This post is in memory of George Macdonald and the wise contemplation's he has written about over the years he visited this earth. Please tell me what you think of this. I must say I agree with what he has written and feel we need much more of this in our lives.

Have you ever felt like King David…?

“God are you avoiding me? Where are you when I need you? (Psalm 10) “Quick, God, I need your helping hand! The last decent person just went down; all the friends I depended on are gone. Everyone talks in lie language; lies slide off their oily lips. They double-talk with forked tongues. Slice their lips off their faces. The braggart tongues from their mouths. I’m tired of hearing… “We can talk anyone into anything.” (Psalm 12) Long enough, God, you've ignored me long enough. I've looked at the back of your head long enough. I've carried this ton of trouble, lived with a stomach full of pain. Long enough my arrogant enemies have looked down their noses at me.” (Psalm 13) …and are hearing… “Run to the mountains; the evil bows are bent, the wicked arrows aimed to shoot under the cover of darkness every heart open to God. The bottoms’ dropped out of the country.” (Psalm 11) From the Message translation of the Scriptures.

Times like those we wonder …do we really know God? Is He really there? Am I in unreality about all this? Is there a way to eliminate these doubts in such disturbing times? What does a real relationship with Christ consist of?

There are verses of scripture that should make Christians tremble a little….

Matthew 7:21-23…There will be some terrible surprises if what you thought was the will of God turned out not to be. Depart from me!!

Hebrews 10: 30, 31…He will judge His people...and it could be terrible.

2 Corinthians 11:4…If only 30 or 40 years after the church began there was other (false) versions of Jesus, His Spirit, and His message just how many do you think there 2000 years later ? False messages resulting in false concepts of Jesus resulting in false Spirits result in false ideas of the true Christ will. Who knows who the real Christ is? Who can we trust?

Colossians 1:13-20…reveals what God the Father knows about Christ. Are you following this one?

Luke 10:22 … No one can know the Father or the Son unless Christ chooses to reveal Himself to. So who does He reveal Himself and the Father to?

John 14: 21…here is the answer…if we obey him He will show us who He really is.

Ephesians 4: 17-24…But we must be careful ….for that did not come just by divine illumination…it also comes through divine learning as we depart from what we know is wrong and do what we know is right.

“Do you want to live by faith? Do you want to know Christ aright? Do you want to awake and arise and live, but do not know how? Get up, and do something the master tells you. The moment you do, you instantly make yourself his disciple. Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one single thing because he said, “Do it,” or once abstained because he said, “Do not do it.”…It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe in him, if you do not do anything he tells you. If you can think of nothing he ever said as having consciously influenced your doing or not doing, you have no ground to consider yourself his disciple. To such he says, “Why did you not do the things I told you? Depart from me. I do not know you!” Yet you can at once begin to be a disciple of the Living One by obeying him in the first thing you can think of in which you are not obeying Him. 

We must learn to obey Him in everything, and so must begin somewhere. Let it be at once, and in the very next thing that lies at the door of conscience! Oh, do not be as the fools who think of nothing but Christ as a theological person to be discussed, and do not set themselves to do his words. What will they have to answer for, such teachers who have turned the regard of their listeners away from the direct words of the Lord himself, which are spirit and life, to contemplate instead various plans of salvation that they twist out of the words of his apostles! 

There is but one plan of salvation, and that is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ! And that belief is no mere mental acknowledgment about him, but involves nothing more, nothing less than to take him for what he is …our Master, and to take his words as it he meant them, which He did.”

(Knowing the Heart of God, p.30-31 George Macdonald).”