The Best Present is to Be Present

Oh the bustle, the hustle, the absolute craziness of this holiday season!

There are so many things to do and people to remember! There are decorations and food and arrangements. And the easiest thing, the easiest person and relationship to put on the back-burner is your spouse.

We have some tips for a fabulous, less-relationship-stress, loving holiday season so that along with the pretty wrapping paper and beautiful lights, you can also experience connection and joy with the one whom your soul loves.

The very best present is to be present: Not just physically there in the room while decorating the tree, or pushing the cart while looking at your phone. It is intentionally setting all else aside and being in the moment at hand. Jere and I can’t do this all the time, but we have found that a small amount goes a long way. Be sure…this is one present that is absolutely priceless and only YOU can give your spouse. Keys: no electronic distractions, eye contact, rid yourself of other thoughts and concerns, gentle touches

Work out the details: Right now, today, make sure you two are on the same page. Is it important to go to all the school things together? What about family parties and office parties? Is buying a tree, cooking meals together important? Do you divide and conquer on gift buying…gift wrapping? Share your expectations and agree to what works between you…and remain flexible in the case of last-minute change! Keys: be honest with your needs and expectations, allow for negotiation, remain flexible and communicate proactively

The dollars and cents of it all: We recommend that you agree on what financial investment you are going to make this holiday season. Try to consider all the expenses: travel, food, decorations, presents…your list may be far bigger. And along with the budget, talk about who will take on those purchases. Set expectations before the moment gets heated! Keys: allow for each other’s money stories (debt averse? Big spender?), google and online shopping can be a third partner, remember that grocers now deliver, and keep your sense of humor

Fight for the margins: We all need margins. We need some white space around the edges of our really crowded lives so we can breathe, and renew. Help each other find those margin moments, and determine that you will have a few together, too. Keys: take a few minutes EVERY DAY to look at schedules – and schedule in margin moments, be fierce about self-care and couple-care, say NO and stick to it

Keep love front and center: You two are together because you love each other. Even if that is hard to see at times, it is why you decided to become an us. Dedicate this season to loving well. Leave a note for your spouse under their pillow. Send them a Christmas card, in the mail. Offer to take one of the jobs they agreed to (see above) off their list. Speak to your partner in their love language. All of these things…they pay off in spades. Actually, they payoff in love, intimacy, passion. Keys: when you feel the prompt – DO IT, stay kind, be generous and speak to them in a way they can hear

This is the season of wonder, joy and delight. It is the season that we celebrate a miracle fulfilled despite all odds. It is when we recognize that God loves beyond reason or imagination and He took on humanity – all for us. We invite you to reflect on this internally, and then reflect it in your heart and actions. We are pretty confident that if you do, you will experience wonder, joy and delight. Here’s to living a connected, passionate, loving marriage!

Living the Unboundedlife,

Susan and Jere

Integrity Speak

Our speech, our talk, has integrity. Or it doesn’t.

How many times has your child, or your spouse, uttered a begrudging “I’m sorry” in a tone that is anything but sorry, bearing a stance of engagement and a look of disgust?

When that happens, the listener can hear the words, but immediately struggles to decode the real message. Sure…the words say something, but nothing else about the moment supports what the words say. Doubt arises in the listener and most likely, tense moments, and possible tense words, follow.

Matthew 15:18 says “…what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart.” When we speak without integrity, we really have a heart issue, yet think that between the heart and the words traveling up through our throats and exiting our mouths we can cover up the real feelings, but our tone and body language give it away. Or at least give away that there is incongruity between the words and how we feel.

There were many times that we had buried the heart issues so deeply – news flash, they can hurt – that we would insist the incongruity was on the part of the hearer, rather than us, the speaker. We were wrong.

Today, we work hard in our marriage to use integrity speak. To make it easier on each other – relieve them from having to decode or figure out what we really mean. Today our words reflect our heart, and our tone and body language match.

Before we were willing to see this, and be open to learning new things and new ways, life in our home was much more unstable at best…toxic at times. Today, it is safe and encouraging. To use integrity speak, it has meant dealing with our heart issues, learning to care enough, to receive His love with so much abundance that it spills out in our speech and is carried through our tone and our gestures. It’s not something that just happens magically…it is hard, vulnerable work that takes bravery and perseverance. Oh…but the rich reward of living in a connected, intimate relationship with each other and our God is sweet. We want this for you, too, and are willing to show you the way.

Living UnboundedLife,

Susan and Jere

 

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.

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

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

 

Good is the Enemy of Great

It is true. In my life as a parent. In my life as an employee. In my life as a Christian and a friend and community member.

And it is utterly evident that good is the enemy of great in my marriage.

Jim Collins wasn’t talking about marriage when he coined this compelling truth, rather he was speaking to a business audience in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t. I read the book many years ago, years when I thought I had a good marriage. Years when having a good marriage was okay by me, and I passed over any chance to work on great because there were lots of other things in my life to attend to…like kids…and current happenings…and laundry…and what was for dinner that night.

I didn’t even have eyes to see that my marriage wasn’t really even good.

It was good enough for the moment to hang on. It was good enough to make it through that next period of time when I vaguely, in the back of my mind, thought I’d pay it some attention. It was good enough to get through the next holiday or birthday or graduation.

But it wasn’t really even that good.

Now that I have great…and I mean really, really, great…in marriage, I can remember and see and feel from my gut how a not-great marriage is not good, and mine was not good. I can see now that when two are meant to become one they either are that. Or they are not. And if they are not, it certainly isn’t great, and we may tell ourselves it is good, but it falls well short of even good. We spend time jockeying for okay, and filling spaces that shouldn’t be, and convincing ourselves that the alone feeling we know is deep in our soul isn’t really there. That days or weeks or months of no sex are just because we are busy with the children and that snappy discussions in the kitchen over who forgot to make the coffee are just because we are tired. That long stretches of silence in the car or at the table at a restaurant are just  because we are preoccupied and not sharing our fears of finances or illness or growing older are because that is really love, right? Not burdening our partner.

No, that isn’t good, but it is how so many of us live day-in, day-out, in our marriages. Telling ourselves we don’t need, or want, gentle touches and soft words and intimate glances across the room and feet entwined under the sheets.

We found great in our marriage. It is indescribable. It launches both of us every day to do our best. To be our best and to care for others. To lead well from a place of servanthood. It compels us to kindness and generosity. Great marriage lived out has resulted in a relentless pursuit of intimacy and passion. Of joy. Every day.

Great doesn’t just happen, and now that we have learned the path…we are dedicated to it, together. One step and then the next and so on…

Susan

Really really thankful

We are so thankful.

We are thankful for our marriage. Our tattered and weathered and amazing marriage that is more beautiful today than we could have ever dreamed.

We are thankful that we wake up every morning more intimately connected than the day before. That we understand now how to navigate the tricky waters of conflict in a way that not only solves the problem, but results in our individual growth. We are thankful that we have learned an incredibly complex dance and we practice it together, getting it mostly right but even when we step on the other’s toes, the new language of our marriage brings determination and laughter rather than disdain and hurt.

We are thankful that we hear each other from the very core of our hearts, and that our souls are bared completely…and they are safe…completely. We are thankful that we have a place where we can do more than dream together, we can urge each other to new heights and hold each other in authentic and open despair if we fall.

We are thankful that we have the chance to walk alongside couples who have gotten out of step, who are drawn to the hearts of others or who have grown cold to their partner…and often even to themselves. We are thankful that we have seen brokenness turn into beauty and sadness turn into sweet love, and that we will continue to take opportunities to speak hope into desolation.

We are thankful for the God that is limitless in His love for us, and in his vision for our US. We are thankful that He showed us the way to freedom is not through avoiding our pain but rather by taking it on directly and fully and that it is in that very journey that we find our own holiness…so much more than what we hoped or dreamed for. We are thankful that He is faithful and long suffering and compassionate, and brings us new mercies every day. No. Matter. What.

We are thankful…like never, ever before.

Susan and Jere