Broken Things Speak

“If it’s true you use broken things, then here I am Lord, I’m all yours”
Matthew West – Broken Things

Jere and I spent most of our lives pretending we weren’t very broken. That sure, we had some flaws, but not so much that we were broken.

We had it so wrong, so terribly and completely and utterly wrong.

We could not speak life or love into anyone, least of all, ourselves or our marriage, because we didn’t know life. We were living, constantly, to cover the death that we feared so much. Sure, we believed in eternal life. We believed Jesus died, once for all, for our salvation and that one day, we would be in heaven with Him. And those things are true, and we were right.

But here one earth, in the present and now, we were stuck. Rather than being ALIVE…we were dead. The earth death that subtly covered us was so incredibly overwhelming, we did everything we could to deny it, pretty it up, justify it, or just plain ignore it. The death that was actions and deeds. The death from our lips in the form of lies or pretensions or manipulations. The death that started in our thoughts that was plotting or revenge or untruths. The death that we couldn’t even see because it was so tightly tied on to every part of us. The death we would not have admitted, least of all to ourselves.

Then we just could not ignore it any longer. When Jere’s affairs came to light, I crumbled. I lay in a fetal position at first. He was pierced with his actions for the first time. And we began to move into a process with God, the Triune and mighty God standing firmly and compassionately with us on the journey of stripping and peeling and revealing.

Revealing our brokenness.

Drawing us into the surrender where we could find the balm and healing that would make us whole. Drawing us into the place of our purpose, and revealing to us that we could now speak. Speak of things we knew that only could be through our broken selves and His tender mercy as He healed us.

We have learned that yes, it’s true that He uses broken things. Such a dichotomy – such a mystery! The urgency that He has given us to tell the world what marriage can be is overwhelming. We are desperate to share the ways we have learned to heal. To speak life, to speak love, into our marriages.

Does your marriage need help? Do you wake up every day grateful to be next to your spouse? Do you ache to share your victories with your partner, and feel crazy until you have shared your fears, or challenges? Do you feel safe sharing anything at any time for any reason? Are you bound together as one, with no space between you, yet feel more freedom than ever to blossom as an individual?

If this isn’t your marriage experience – you can have more. Please reach out. We are broken…and want to speak life and love into your marriage.

Living the Unboundedlife,

Susan and Jere

Speak Life

You can have an amazing marriage. An outrageously connected, passionate, caring and fun marriage. The reason we are such proponents of amazing marriage is because ours wasn’t that way for a long time. Now that it is, we live in awe, appreciating every day the beauty of our relationship.

We care how we speak to each other. Whether we are sharing something wonderful and exciting, or scary and overwhelming, we use words that encourage the other to hear us. We understand, now, that our words can shut the other down or stop them from listening. We want to be heard.

We have learned that our words should tell the truth, that they should mean what they say and that we should, and can, say what we mean.

Words are important. They can be used to throw out old pain from inside and fling it on to someone else. They can be used as poorly cloaked daggers to inflict wounds and draw blood. Words can slice and boil and pierce.

Words can also build up. And soothe and comfort and heal.

During this month, we encourage you to love your spouse with your words. Use this month to speak life and vision and future into your partner, personally, and into your relationship. God showed us this in dramatic fashion. He spoke – He used words – to create this world we live in…the sun and stars and seas and mountains. His perfect love spilled out in words to create sunsets and rainforests and all the crazy, diverse animals that cohabitate with us. His words brought us light. His words brought us life.

Your words can do the same. Every day this month, look your spouse in the eye. Speak a dream and a hope into your marriage, into the life of your partner. Try it: I dream we are on the beach and hope we can get there this month, together. Or I dream that it is Saturday and hope we can lay in bed and have a cup of coffee. Or I dream you and I are dancing and hope we can go next week. Speak life, speak love, speak tomorrow into your marriage.

Watch what happens…

Living unboundedlife,

Susan and Jere

Are You Listening?

In 2014 I found out Jere was cheating. I found a letter that explained, in excruciating details, the length, depth and breadth of the affair he was involved in.

There was a line in that letter written by his mistress that is so profound. She writes, “You made me feel beautiful and desirable. I always knew that we could walk into a room full of beautiful women – all tens – and you would make me feel like an eleven.”

You may wonder why I would share these obviously painful words. When I first read this, and probably the second and third and tenth time, the sentences were just a couple of many that devastated and shattered my heart. But Jere and I have healed, and we have the most connected, intimate and beautiful marriage I know, now. A marriage of unity and trust and connection and love.

As we have healed, however, and as we have invested in the lives of other couples in training and coaching, those words continued to haunt me. You see, Jere didn’t make me feel that way for most of our marriage. I had been his wife for 27 years when the words were written…and I felt puny and unloved and undesirable. The majority of couples that we coach don’t feel this way either. They don’t know that they are valued and adored and cherished and beautiful. The words became incredibly insightful not only to our healing, but also in our work with broken couples.

We took note that most of us made sure to help our boy/girlfriends feel that way when we were dating. We were careful to give them kudos for the little and big things. We cheered them on, and we boosted them up. We listened to their fears and let them know how we believed in them. I’ve learned, and Jere admits, that affair partners also take great care to listen, to hear, to utter words and create spaces that they pretend are safe as they live in the fantasy of the illicit world.

Not so much married partners, though. Not so much two people who have pledged to care for each other in all circumstances and to love and honor each other in covenant. Over and over we work with couples who are married, yet hurting and hopeless, and unable to get even basic emotional needs met through the relationship. It seems the only thing rational to do is to part. To divorce.

But God.

But God tells us what is the most important in relationship. In Psalm 139:1-4, He literally writes out what true intimacy looks like: “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.”

God lovingly painted the picture for what an intimate relationship, a covenant relationship, looks like with those words. As you read them, doesn’t your heart crave this? Crave to be known in every part? No secrets, no walking on egg-shells or wearing a mask – and still being ADORED? My husband’s lover felt that way – even though it was false and just the fantasy speaking – seeing those words in print was the start of us realizing huge gaps in most marriages that allow for anything BUT intimacy and connection and love to develop.

God didn’t stop with the picture. He gave us clues how to achieve this intimacy. His word tells us that He listens. To us. He demonstrates that love is active, and listening/knowing is key. In James 1:19, God says we “should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” In verse 22, He adds “don’t merely listen to the Word…do it.” In Jeremiah 33:3, God adds “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”

This is the way we should be within our marriages. We should desperately seek to know each other’s innermost parts and to be intimately connected. Intimacy is impossible unless we are revealed, and as spouses, we learn first through listening. Listening to the heart and the countenance and the responses of our spouse. Then, when we have learned through listening, we can act. We can lean into the things that we have uncovered through supportive compassion, engaging responses and actions that demonstrate we have not just listened…but we have heard. And we know how to respond uniquely and specifically to them – the one we know.

It sounds easy, yet doesn’t come naturally. Listening with no intention to respond is hard work, and goes against our natural human response. Speaking their language, the one they can hear, and to their heart IS the essence of love.

Jere and I demonstrate this to couples, and coach them as they learn how to change the way they communicate. We ask couples to take time, every day,  to practice:  look at each other in the eyes, face-to-face. Touch or hold hands or somehow physically connect if possible, and share. As they do, we help them learn to stop listening with an intent to respond, but rather with a goal to understand. We help them develop a pattern of ensuring they have heard, affirmed, and validated their spouse and are willing and able to demonstrate empathy.

Great and unsearchable things they didn’t know about each other begin to unfold, and the connection they were always meant to have between them is sparked. Couples learn to listen. They experience being heard, and known.

Healing happens, hope abounds, and love? Love wins.

For information on how you can learn to listen, to bring hope to your hurting marriage in a way that fosters intimacy, passion and connection, please reach out to us:
Jere Pitman – jere@unboundedlife.org or Susan Pitman – susan@unboundedlife.org .
We are passionate about living love without limits.
Let everything you do be done in love. 1 Corinthians 16:14

Love Is…

Jere and I were learning about love, romantic love, in the era of Love Story, the novel-made-movie by Erich Segal. Remember that one? Love means never having to say you’re sorry?

So many of us bought that idea, tucked it away in our minds and hearts, and then when we got into our relationships and marriages we were shocked to discover it wasn’t that easy. We struggled…many of us decided that if we did have to say sorry, or our partner needed us to say sorry, then the relationship must just not be right, right?

We believed that somehow love, no,  L  O  V  E  , was only real and valid and sustainable if it just – worked – . Not having to say sorry.

We don’t believe that anymore.

Today, after 30 years of marriage, Jere and I have a love that is incredibly connected and passionate and real. Our souls are knit into one: my heart is pierced when he hurts and he feels joy in my discoveries. We share a heartbeat and a oneness that is tangible, yet we are growing in our encouragement of our individual pursuits. We really live in abundance: as our relationship thrives and grows, so do we personally. It is crazy how crazy-good love can be…

Not so much before though: the first 27 years were spent with us each vying hard for our individuality. Making sure the other didn’t get the better of things. Jockeying in words and money and deeds to take care of ourselves, and contribute to the whole – as long as the whole was giving benefits back. We heard of sacrificial love, and we both paid lip service to that – our sacrifices might be not buying a new dress so I could get the kids fabulous holiday outfits, or giving up one fishing trip so he could go on a week-long fishing trip to Venezuela…always calculated for what we got in payment for the sacrifice.

We looked so good on the outside, shiny smiles and darling kiddos.  We had great jobs and invested in the community and church and school and looked like we had it all. But secretly, we were so broken. Thinking there had to be more and finding ways to fill the holes in our lives…me, with community engagements and Bible studies and food. Him, with hunting and fishing and alcohol and women. Now, we both know that we both wished it was different, that we wanted to really be what we looked like as a couple, and as a family, but we never quite told each other. We went to marriage counseling a few times during extreme crisis moments, and would have flashes of hoping it would be better but  –ultimately, we went back to our corners of quiet despair and just kept getting up every day and doing what we needed to do and wishing it would – it could – change.

Until 3 years ago, when the brave “Sid Breeze” chose to write an anonymous email that uncovered the chip in our closely-held covering. The chip that was a fissure that was a gaping, raggedy crack that really severed us completely. There we were. Him there. Me here. And just a wad of ugliness and lies and self-interest and protection and reaction and pain between us. We could have walked away, and done as we’d done so well to that point with our pretensions and masks. We could’ve turned our backs and headed in opposite directions, making it official, and delved into new people and places and experiences.

Except that is when we learned what love is. What is really is.

What a day to be writing these words. The day that our faith is rocked by the greatest love story of all. The day when the Truth of love is revealed as our Savior chose to walk directly and totally and completely into our filth, to take it on and wrap it around himself. To have it whipped and flogged into his very flesh, and to have it pressed into his head. To have it screamed at him in mockery and threats and anger. To have it nailed through his bones. To have it pierced through his side. He didn’t turn his back and head away – he turned TO our mess and dove in as blood and sweat and tears dripped down his nakedness. As He cried out to the Father on behalf of the very ones who had placed Him there.

So I, so we, could be free. Free to be loved. Free to love.

As Jere and I began to survey the wreckage that was our lives, the pain that had been heaped on us, and the pain we had flung, we saw Christ. We saw Him in the garden, asking and begging for the cup of the Covenant to be taken…but no…He chose to continue what he’d started.  And it was this pivotal moment of our despair in which we saw, with incredible clarity, what love really is.

Love doesn’t mean saying you’re sorry…once. It does mean hearing His words on our behalf: Father, forgive them…Through our healing, we have learned more and more and more ways to feel sorrow for things done to us and by us. And to feel each other’s hurt, and to soothe each other’s wounds. Our lives are now wrapped in understanding the beauty of our pain, the path through sorrow to freedom and the enveloping love of surrender – to our Savior, and to our marriage covenant that is Jere, me and God. Our love, this love, was birthed, and grows, through walking directly into the scary places with vulnerability and transparency. He led us there – to where and what love really is.

“And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12)

 

 

 

Stones That Make a Path

This month, we took a journey, a pilgrimage of sorts, Jere and I.

We left last month from JFK and flew upward and over Iceland, arching down above Europe and crossed several seas. We began to descend and see a stunning coastline…then touched down in Israel.

It was a journey in that we went a long way, and stayed a fairly long time, and shared a combination of tours and private time. We were able to savor sites and moments and food, and to learn about history and current challenges and co-existing cultures. Oh, it was a journey.

It was a pilgrimage in that we went to be challenged in our faith, our calling, and to learn about things of the soul. We found ourselves astounded and tearful, cheering and cursing, wondering and thanking. Oh, it was a pilgrimage.

Israel…the land God gave to the fathers of our faith. The land He declared was holy and set apart, yet over and over and over has been decimated by the actions and consequences of the adulterous hearts of the inheritors. Yet undeniably the root of Truth and the imprint of covenant is marked on her and evidenced in every step and city and face and moment. God speaks through the land of Israel. He calls and reminds and cajoles and encourages through the land of Israel. He loves…oh, how He loves through the land of Israel.

So toward the end of the trip, one of our spiritual leaders challenged us. What was our lesson, our takeaway, our revealing through this journey-pilgrimage? What had God shown us, what had he shown ME?

As I meditated on the challenge, and as God wrote His message to me…I am so humbled. Oh, He had spoken…so gently and tenderly, but with conviction and surety. He had been speaking, and now I could hear. And see.

Ten or eleven years ago, my marriage was not yet revealed to be utterly decimated, yet it was dry and disconnected and really unsatisfying. It was something I cried out to Him about. Please, God…please fix my marriage. Create intimacy and love between us.

Nothing. No amount of Bible study or prayer or me being nice or me being mean or me being detached or me being anything could make my husband care. He was nice enough. Never cussed at me or told me he hated me or treated me openly with contempt. Just didn’t care…enough to ask me about me. Or stroke my heart. Or cup my face and tell me I was beautiful. There was the perfunctory “you look nice tonight” when we headed off to this event or that affair, and there was the routine sex on mutually convenient nights (not to be confused with the other nights when we worked really hard not to touch at all in bed lest something be misconstrued). There was the peck on the cheek as he headed off to work and the I love you occasionally. There were the cards at holidays and the presents at birthdays and Christmas but there was also the subtle passive aggressive comments and the forgetting to share important information and the later than made sense nights and the always-wanting-to-do-something-with-his-friends-but-only-if-it-was-okay-with-me-sort-of. But not wanting-to-do-something-with-me. Maybe I was expecting too much?

I had cried out to God and decided either my marriage was my lot in life, or God just couldn’t…or wouldn’t…hear me. Because I didn’t really, like the rest of His children did, matter. It was just a tiny thought that I let flit through my head but never landed on… Maybe I wasn’t r e a l l y loved by God…my secret…

Then our youngest son, about ten, found a little, baby squirrel. His fresh and hopeful eyes longingly begged us, well, me, to take care of this squirrel who’d obviously been abandoned by his family. So I, well, we (son and I) did. We made him a soft bed and searched the internet for how to care for him. We fed him and stroked him and played with him and for three days he THRIVED.

The fourth day, he was ailing. Son was devastated and brought him to me, asking me to make him better. I searched google, and called a vet friend. The vet was willing to see him, but had to travel back and told us to meet him at the house in the early afternoon. I held that baby squirrel in my hands. I stroked him gently. Sitting in my living room with a great big window looking out at our backyard covered in trees and beauty and many other squirrels, I began to pray for God to save this baby squirrel. I told him I needed Him to show me that He could. That He would. That He heard me. That He cared. For the squirrel. For me. Tears…streaming down my face and I sobbed and cried out to God to let me know that we, that I, mattered.

The squirrel died.

I wrote God off that day. Not G-O-D, but my God. You know, the God that supposedly knew me and loved me. It was clear either He wasn’t who they said He was, or I wasn’t one of His beloved, because what Father could just turn His back on His child, crying out. Sobbing, begging. And what about that scripture that talks about ask, and you shall receive. What about the scripture that declares He won’t leave or forsake you. What about the scripture that says He wept? Yea, well, that God sure wasn’t around for me. Again, I didn’t tell anyone, but I just decided that I needed to take care of things from there on out, because for whatever reason, He wasn’t going to be on my team, or walking with me, or helping me. I didn’t quit BELIEVING, I just quit believing. If I ever did believe.

Fast forward to Israel. And all that has transpired between squirrel death and marriage death when I found out my 27 year married life had been a lie because my husband had entered our marriage lying, and lied during our marriage, and cheated numerous times, and wasn’t ever the man I thought I’d loved, or been pursued by or been pursuing. Fast forward to the healing and the intimacy that I now have both with that same husband who is the most incredibly amazing man and the God who I now know loves me enough that He took a cup that He didn’t want to take and became sin so that I could have life. And freedom. And love.

What was my lesson, what had God spoken to me on this journey, this pilgrimage to Israel?

It was the stones. I saw the stones, everywhere I went. I saw big stones and little stones. I saw roads made of raw stones and hewn stones. Of carefully laid stones and of haphazardly laid stones.

And I saw how God had specifically and intentionally placed stones of all kinds and shapes and sizes on every single step of my life. Stones who were people. Stones of encouragement and truth and love and care. Stones of honesty and confrontation and challenge and faith. Even though I could not see them then, they were there. Laid, no, carefully and perfectly placed, by Him in love and devotion for me to mark and guide and provide on the path of my journey. To make sure that I was not left, or forsaken. To make sure that I got what I needed when I needed it. To give me what I asked for. Stones that have faces and names and hearts and souls and are literally my journey and inextricably His perfect love, for me.

So, my dear faith leader who challenged me to search…I found the answer. Israel, God, showed me with intimate and specific detail that I was loved by Him. Every. Step. Of. The. Way. He showed me His care for me never, ever stopped. I am overwhelmed with understanding and seeing relentless love, for me, by Him, through so many. So grateful, so humbled, and so determined to live the rest of my life being a stone on life journeys at the beckoning of my Father.

Love.

The theme for February is love.

Really cliché, right? Not so fast. We are going to take a look at love in many ways this month. We are going to consider where love got started. We are going to consider how love is demonstrated. We are going to delve into the science of love. And we are going to see how love is manifested – by the giver, and the receiver.

So how did love get started? The love story that we cling to is so big, so beautiful, so awesome that it transcends time and space and eternity. The human love story started with a Triune God, a three-in-one being that is love. Not that was loving, or loved. God IS love. As humans, we struggle to understand this. We struggle to understand the connected intimate, yet fully separate, relationship of the God-head and the love that is. That love was ever present, ever abundant, and ever-so big that it could not be contained.

It spilled out into the creation of us. Of mankind. Of you, of me.

We are created, literally, as the outpouring of love Himself.

Oh, to know and receive and be present and aware of this love. Most of us aren’t. We can’t see beyond the broken images of love that are all around us from our families of origin to our youth and dating relationships. From our own marriages and those we see around us. But this isn’t the real story, the real picture of love and how we can live.

When the Teacher was asked what the greatest commandment was of all, Jesus replied:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

The first and greatest commandment was love.

But He added something else that often gets left off that quote. Jesus also said, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

The very Creator of LOVE told us that without love we couldn’t do any other good things. The ability to be able to not get trapped in images lies in love. The ability to honor other people lies in love. The ability to be kind and faithful and honest and caring and compassionate…all lies in love. In resting in being loved, in knowing we are loved, and reflecting that love.

Without love, we are handicapped, and spin our wheels trying to experience the good stuff of life, but never quite getting there. Everything starts with promise, but ends with disappointment. Because love is the core of who we are, the center of our very being.

Welcome to February. Welcome to love. It is who you are, because it is who He is.

Living Unbounded, Susan and Jere

Possible. Courageously.

January’s theme is possible. If you are just now joining us, WELCOME!

It is possible to live a marriage that is passionate, connected and loving. A marriage of unbounded, limitless, devotion. We didn’t say probable, or likely. Reality is, if your marriage ISN’T amazing, and you keep doing things as you have in the past, it isn’t very probable at all.

So how do you move toward a marriage that will astound you in the constancy and depth and breadth of possibility?

It starts with you, and your ability to see yourself differently within your marriage, to see POSSIBLE. We shared in January’s first post (find it here) about changing your vision to the picture you want so you can break free of the way things are. Create your personal vision statement and embed it into the fiber of your being so it becomes part of your DNA.

Then we encouraged you to quit allowing any of the skewed perceptions of love to shape your understanding of love. Rather than looking to our flawed past, cultural pictures or (fleeting) love stories of stars and celebrities, we guided you to read and consider RENEWING YOUR MIND in Truth about love (find that post here).

Last week, we asked you to CHECK OUT (the post is here) real pictures of real love. We provided several more stories on our facebook page (join us here)…so you can soak in the beauty of love-done-well.

Today we talk about COURAGE. Without courage, it is so hard to dream. To vision a different life and marriage filled with intimacy and passion, fueled by transparency and vulnerability and undergirded with devotion and commitment. Without courage, it becomes almost impossible to walk out of the fog of lies about love and marriage, and to embrace new understanding of love. Courage is needed to see between-the-lines of stories of real love, love that acts and is kind and is others centered and is present and never fails. This week is about COURAGE to vision, to renew, to check-out.

We can learn courage, and here are some tips:

1. Nelson Mandela says it so eloquently: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” If you have fear, that doesn’t mean you don’t have courage. Change your thinking and believe that it is only in fear that you can demonstrate courage.
2. Embrace that courage can be learned. It isn’t just something you are born with and if not, you lose.
3. Courage can become a habit, your habit. But that comes with practice, and courage can, and should, be practiced. Begin today to identify small ways you can act in courage – and then do them.
4. Focus on why you are being courageous. Our why? Astounding marriage, freedom of our souls. But that required new ways of thinking, listening, and responding. It helped us not lose courage in the battle toward amazing marriage to always keep a focus on where we wanted to be.
5. Take note of how you feel you begin to move into courage; your body may be screaming to run the other direction. See that battle, and win it.
6. Bolster your courage in numbers: find other people committed to astounding relationships and speak your hopes, share your fears and encourage possible. Stand together against negative forces.
7. Actively turn away the negative thoughts that creep in, and lean in to the positive realities that are present, even if they are very small.
8. Find role models of courageous people and listen to their stories. Those role models can become the YES in the midst of a sea of no.

When I learned of Jere’s serial infidelity woven in throughout our marriage, I was devastated. At first, it took courage for me to get out of bed. It took courage to go out in public where I now felt like such a fool. It took courage for me to consider myself and to be kind to myself…to allow myself to consider what was best for me. It took courage for me to tell our therapists the truth, and eventually, our children. It took courage for me to take next steps, and most of all, it took courage for me to forgive.

It took courage for Jere to strip away the years and years of lies and deception. It took courage for him to choose to radically change. Every day, this new man calls on his courage to think and hear and be different. It took courage for him to share his story, to change, and to lead others.

It took courage for us to look deep inside ourselves and to dare be vulnerable when we decided to work on our marriage and not just end it. It took courage to walk together through the path of healing that often meant tears and shame and rage and fear. It took courage to heal. It took courage to love.

We beg you become a person with the habit of courage. Passionate, connected, loving marriage is possible. With vision, renewed mind, focusing on evidence of love and engaging courage, the possible becomes probable. Have a courageous week.

Living Unbounded, Susan and Jere

 

 

Possible. Check In and Check Out.

We are half-way through the month of January, so we want you to Check In, and then stay tuned this week and Check Out.

Check in with your heart and mind and soul.

First : Are you any closer to seeing POSSIBLE? Possible for you to be waking up with a heart of hope? Are you able to see, literally see, a different relationship, a different you? The wise author of Psalms 29:18 tells us “that where there is no vision, the people perish.” If we cannot tangibly understand and see what it is we want and our place in that picture, we will have -0- chance of getting “there.” So our first step is seeing POSSIBLE…which you can find here if you missed it.

Next: RENEWAL. The encouragement is to make sure you are getting your vision from a place of life, of health, of hope and future. There are some skewed messages of love and marriage all around us, and it takes work to pro-actively choose to move away from the influences that surround and deceive. Renewing your mind means seeking Truth about love from the Author of love and quieting those influences that damage what love really is. You can read more about it here.

Now: Check Out. This week we will share some astonishing examples of love done Right. Love that is rooted so beautifully in Truth, and is lived out in ways that don’t look much like Hollywood shows, or the marriages that surround us. Savor these…let them permeate your heart and rewrite the Truth of love in your soul. Be sure to check out these stories…you will find them on our FB group every couple days. If you aren’t already a member, click here so we can add you.

Our first story is about a young woman named Mookie. Her growing up years looked perfect until everything was shattered with devastating illness in her family, and overwhelming betrayal. As a bystander close to her family, I watched Mookie press into hope, and find a future despite some pretty big challenges. But Mookie didn’t just make it out of tough situations. She has found life and love in abundance. The story of Mookie and her farmer, in Laos where they live, is nothing short of astounding. Mostly what is astounding is their love – of and for each other, and of and for their Savior who has urged them and taught them about real love. Mookie describes:

“I just had one of those moments with My Farmer…he is really affectionate, always desiring to be near me. But that is SO unlike his people…all of them. They reside together but function just fine without each other, they don’t encourage or compliment each other, you never see them touching or spending time together…ever. So I asked him “how are you this way? If you had married a Lao woman would you be like this” he answered to the first “I’m like this because I NEED it, I need this kind of love. And I would not be this way if i married a girl here.” I was quiet but so confused. Those statements seemed contradictory. He continued. “My people are poor in heart. And this is the way we do. Nobody has shown us any different. Everybody wants great love, but they’ve never been offered it. It’s like a child wanting to eat with their mouth open searching, but since birth they have not been given it, so they close their mouth and never expect food again. Their hearts harden, and I think pieces of it die. I’m like this because you gave me food, and now my mouth is always open.”
I cried. I see what he said every day, but hearing him say it, broke me. He said this to me after I was having a meltdown about wifi and not getting laundry done. It’s like he had to re-channel me to why I’m here. If anything my husband gives me hope that people can change with great love. And we dream of his people’s mouths being full of Holy love and life.”

The farmer.

The farmer, and his wife.

This beautiful young couple has found what we all want so desperately. Through needing and offering. Please read more about Mookie Sayaiphone and her farmer where you can be inspired by love: Life In The Branches.

Do you want a love story? A real love story?

Living Unbounded, Jere and Susan

Possible: Renew Your Mind

January’s theme is Possible. It’s an odd dichotomy…to believe something is possible when it has never been present in your own life is hard. Yet, YET if you don’t believe it is possible, it reduces the probability that it can be possible.

You get it, or we think you do. Last week, we encouraged you to think of possible for your life – how did that go?

So to make an amazing marriage and an unbounded life probable for you, it starts with possible. But how can we even see possible, much less believe it, when all the evidence in our lives and marriages at this point screams otherwise…how do we get there? First…read your vision statement again and again. That’s a good step. But it’s not enough.

God tells us this: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Two steps our wise Creator lays out for us:

• (Don’t) Conform to the pattern on this world
• (D0) Be transformed by the renewing of your mind

We delved deeply into the work of radically changing our broken marriage. But the first step was to realize that our expectations of what marriage was – and fundamentally what LOVE is – had been driven by so many cultural influences. Our families of origin. Books. Movies. Songs. What other people told us, or what we thought we could see as we looked at other people.

Those are patterns of the world. The DON’T be conformed to patterns.

The patterns of our parents. Patterns so ingrained that it was tough to see. All bad? Of course not, but deeply connected and filled with passion and joy marriage? Not even close. With a committed eye and open heart, we were able to see distortions and manipulation and sarcasm and passive-aggressive behavior and self-protection. These things weren’t just present in our parent’s lives and marriages and loves…they were folded into our marriage.

The patterns of books and movies and songs. The chase is awesome, the protagonists have challenges to overcome and “love wins” when they come together to live happily ever after.  Except the story always stops there, at happily ever after which we then assume is how the rest of their lives look. So the shock of real-life after the belief that happily ever after is what love and marriage looked like?

The patterns of what other people told us about love and marriage and commitment…often celebrities and other folks in the limelight. The great love stories of Bennifer: Jennifer Lopez/Ben Affleck. That fell apart and became: Jennifer Lopez/Marc Anthony and Ben Affleck/Jennifer Garner. That have also now fallen apart.

Or maybe you are from the era of Arnold Schwarzenegger/Maria Shriver that are no longer married after a dual life with the nanny unfolded.

How about Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt…that started out as Jennifer Anniston/Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie/Billy Bob Thornton but even before that started out as Angelina Jolie/Johnny Lee Miller?

Who can forget Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes? His love for her was so overwhelming he jumped off Oprah’s couch. Except that was after he was overwhelmed in love as Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman. Which was after he was overwhelmed in love as Tom Cruise/Mimi Rogers. Yea…hard to even explain how these and the hundreds and thousands of other couples in their exuberant-love-that-turned-sour did to our impression and thinking about marriage. About love. Subtly, without us even realizing…we were conforming to what our culture told us.

What God is telling us? Looking at this world and allowing it to impact our mind and thinking about marriage, about love…we can do better than that. He has better things in mind, and in store, for our lives and our hearts and our souls. Love God’s way looks nothing like what we see around us, everywhere.

Renewing our minds is getting into right thinking. That is where the world of possibility lies.

If you want to restore a broken relationship or, as we did, create an entirely new and beautiful and amazing marriage, STOP going to the same sources. Instead, seek counsel and insight that demonstrates what you are looking for. Seek out couples that have an intimacy and consistent care and joy for each other. Couples that demonstrate trust and trust-worthiness. Couples that grieve with authenticity and laugh from their guts…together. Couples that face adversity without destroying each other, rather moving in to their relationship for the strength to get through. The very best place to start is with the Author of love, Himself.

Before we renewed our minds, our sources convinced us that love was about me, not us. We believed love was fleeting, and could end. We perceived that love just plopped down on us, or we would “fall into it.” We understood that love didn’t require anything – it just WAS and when it wasn’t anymore, oh well.

But thing is, none of that is really love.

But oh, what the Creator has to say about love. The story is so much greater. You can renew your mind so your understanding of love isn’t shaped by a crazy world that does anything but love. Instead, read some of the Truth about love. As we have become devoted to renewing our minds and learning about love from the very Source of love, Himself, here are some things we have learned:

• Love is humble and gentle
• Love is sacrificial
• Love covers a multitude of wrongs
• There is no fear in love
• Love binds all together
• Love acts
• Love is brave and strong
• Love is the greatest
• Love cannot be contained
• Love is focused
• Love never gives up

Do you believe it is possible? Possible that you can really experience a heart so knit together with your spouse that you are not sure where you stop and they start? That you honestly feel each other’s joy and pain and anxiety and hopes? That love is so different than the junk you have allowed your mind to perceive, and that through the renewing of your mind and learning about real love, it becomes PROBABLE that you can have an unbounded life? An amazing marriage?

We don’t just believe it’s possible anymore. We know Love, and now, we love.

Living Unbounded, Susan and Jere

2017: It Starts with Possible

It is January 1. 2017. The first day of a new year. Somehow, no matter where we are on the continuum of change: wanting to change, believing things need to change or wishing someone else would change, most of us have that sliver of belief on this day, each year, that it can happen.

We make resolutions and promises in our heads, and if we are bold enough, out loud. Or in our journal. Or, if we are really some kind of glutton, on our social media.

Yet quickly…sometimes within a matter of hours or days…we have forgotten those optimistic moments and beliefs that we can do or be or find or act differently. We give up, give in, and continue to live lives of quiet desperation.

Or maybe we don’t do that, collectively as a people. Maybe it is just us. Susan and Jere.

Either way, we have spent some time considering our vision for this year. Our vision for us, and our vision for those who want to join us on the journey. The journey we are on fire for, the journey that wakes us up in the middle of the night, and causes us to become giddy when we see it embraced in our own lives, and in others.

The vision: Marriages are loving. They are connected. They are passionate. All those things people read about in books and see splashed on the big screen and that we deeply desire yet rarely achieve. Marriage…is amazing.

Each month, we will have a theme. Weekly we will provide insight and ideas for you either as an individual, within your relationship, your spiritual being along with your health and your nutrition (and we will even provide some recipes).

We really are mind, body and spirit. When any of those malfunction, all of it gets a little off-kilter. So this year is going to be about attending to yourself, and investing in your relationship: Mind. Body. Spirit.

January, 2017’s theme is possible. Possible can be an adjective:

• able to be done; within the power or capacity of someone

or noun:

• a thing or a person that has the potential to become or do something

We want to challenge you to spend January believing there is possible. It is possible that your emotional response to stressful situations can be different. It is a possibility that you can identify your needs, and learn to share them with your partner. A possibility that you can experience emotional intimacy on a new level. A possibility that you can rethink how and what you eat and find joy in the process. You know what you are doing? You are

Rather than creating resolutions, we want you to dream. We want you to dare to dream and write it down. Today, January 1, 2017 (or if you read this over the next couple weeks), we challenge you to take ten minutes…ten minutes toward an entirely different life moving toward passion and connectedness and love…and here is how you get started.

Leave your cell phone in another room on silent. Ask your spouse to take care of the kids, or go to a coffee shop or library or sit in your car alone. Then look with honesty at your day-to-day life, right now. We encourage you to write a few paragraphs about any personal emotional changes you want to achieve,and relationship changes. Differences in your spiritual life, and your health and physical being. Don’t allow yourself to think about how or why you can’t do these things…or what it will take. Not yet. Then write a couple sentences about why these changes would matter – what differences they would make in your life.  Just dream, think about what it would be like for you if they happen – what your life will be like…and then write in bold letters at the end:

THIS IS POSSIBLE

You have just written a personal vision statement. It is a HUGE start. Next? Read it. Again. And again. And again and again and again. Every single day. When you get up, and before you go to bed. Don’t worry about your spouse’s vision yet. Just yours. Read it and let it become part of your DNA. Don’t forget, every day, to read the last line: This Is Possible.

Because it is.

Welcome, 2017. Welcome, possibility.

Living Unbounded, Susan and Jere