Creating a Home Together

Many human relationships are like the interlocking fingers of two hands.  Our loneliness makes us cling to each other, and this mutual clinging makes us suffer immensely because it does not take our loneliness away.  But the harder we try, the more desperate we become.  Many of these "interlocking" relationships fall apart because they become suffocating and oppressive.   Human relationships are meant to be like two hands folded together.  They can move away from each other while still touching with the fingertips.  They can create space between themselves, a little tent, a home, a safe place to be.   

True relationships among people point to God.  They are like prayers in the world.  Sometimes the hands that pray are fully touching, sometimes there is distance between them.  They always move to and from each other, but they never lose touch. They keep praying to the One who brought them together.

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Loneliness can really make people depressed. In the past, I might keep mourning and even crying when I felt lonely. Loneliness is not equivalent to solitude. Loneliness is about the lack of real connection with people around. When we feel detached with people who once we had connected with, the sense of loneliness just grown so hard in one's mind and heart. Let's learn how to point to God in each of our relationship.

True Intimacy

Human relationships easily become possessive. Our hearts so much desire to be loved that we are inclined to cling to the person who offers us love, affection, friendship, care, or support. Once we have seen or felt a hint of love, we want more of it. That explains why lovers so often bicker with each other. Lovers' quarrels are quarrels between people who want more of each other than they are able or willing to give.

It is very hard for love not to become possessive because our hearts look for perfect love and no human being is capable of that. Only God can offer perfect love. Therefore, the art of loving includes the art of giving one another space. When we invade one another's space and do not allow the other to be his or her own free person, we cause great suffering in our relationships. But when we give another space to move and share our gifts, true intimacy becomes possible.

Giving and Receiving Consolation

Consolation is a beautiful word. It means "to be" (con-) "with the lonely one" (solus). To offer consolation is one of the most important ways to care. Life is so full of pain, sadness, and loneliness that we often wonder what we can do to alleviate the immense suffering we see. We can and must offer consolation. We can and must console the mother who lost her child, the young person with AIDS, the family whose house burned down, the soldier who was wounded, the teenager who contemplates suicide, the old man who wonders why he should stay alive.

To console does not mean to take away the pain but rather to be there and say, "You are not alone, I am with you. Together we can carry the burden. Don't be afraid. I am here." That is consolation. We all need to give it as well as to receive it.

Care, the Source of All Cure

Care is something other than cure. Cure means "change." A doctor, a lawyer, a minister, a social worker-they all want to use their professional skills to bring about changes in people's lives. They get paid for whatever kind of cure they can bring about. But cure, desirable as it may be, can easily become violent, manipulative, and even destructive if it does not grow out of care. Care is being with, crying out with, suffering with, feeling with. Care is compassion. It is claiming the truth that the other person is my brother or sister, human, mortal, vulnerable, like I am.

When care is our first concern, cure can be received as a gift. Often we are not able to cure, but we are always able to care. To care is to be human.

6 Relationship Resolutions for 2013

BY DEBRA K FILETA

JANUARY 2, 2013

Debra K. Fileta is a Licensed Professional Counselor specializing in Relationship and Marital issues. She, her husband and two children live in Hershey, PA. She is currently writing her first book, True Love Dates (Zondervan, 2013) on dating and finding true love. Visither blog, follow her onTwitter, or join her True Love Dates Facebook page to learn more!

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It's that  iconic moment, marking the end of another year: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ... The clock runs out, the ball drops and the confetti swirls through the air. But what I find to be most ironic about this universal experience is that it's marked by a very isolating act: a kiss.

All over the country, men and women are leaning in, marking the start of a new year with a long smooch.

What is it about the New Year's kiss? It seems to signal an annual reminder that relationships are all-important. Well, that may be well and good for those lip-smackers out there, but what about those who are alone?

I remember those New Year's Eve nights as a single young woman. I remember reflecting on the year that had passed and looking to the year ahead, hoping and praying this would be my year for love. Though there were many things I couldn't control when it came to finding true love, there were certainly some things that I could.

If you found yourself alone at midnight for New Year’s, my challenge to you is to see this year as something new. Don't let the isolation, fears, failures and loneliness of your past define you. Don't let these things dictate where you are going or who you are going to become. It's time for something new, and the change can start with you.  

Take time to really think through your goals and vision for this upcoming year. You can’t control when and how you fall in love, but you can resolve, this year, to choose a few steps that will lead you closer to healthy relationships and a healthier you. Here are a few dos and don'ts to help you along the way.

1. Do renew your focus.

When you’re single, it's easy to focus on what you don't have rather than what you do. It’s difficult to shift that focus in a culture in which the very nature of the word "single" is defined as incomplete. Do yourself a favor this year by redefining singleness as a chance to invest in yourself, an opportunity to refine your character and chart the course for who you want to be. As marriage and parenting come along, this opportunity becomes more and more difficult. Take this time alone to get to know yourself, your habits and your hopes.Pursue your passions, your goals and your dreams. Shift your focus to what you have rather than what you don't have, to who you are rather than who you're not with.

2. Do get out of your comfort zone.

My comfort zone almost got me into lifelong trouble during my dating years. So set in my ways of thinking and living, I almost missed the opportunity to date, fall in love with and eventually marry the man of my dreams.

This year, take some time to really assess your lifestyle. Are you missing opportunities because you’re defaulting to what’s comfortable and easy? As Christians, we sometimes fall into the trap of excusing our lack of action as faith, but faith was never meant to be passive and stagnant. Be open to new opportunities and experiences. Start saying yes to things that seem uncomfortable or challenging. Faith that is alive requires movement, growth and action. Trust in God, and then allow Him to move you forward into the plan He has for your life, one step at a time.

3. Do set boundaries.

They say the definition of insanity is someone who does the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Many men and women fall into the same unhealthy relationship patterns year after year because they fail to correct their mistakes.  

Let this year be the year of new beginnings.  Look out for unhealthy patterns of behavior and seek to change those patterns in your life. Start saying no to the kinds of relationships that continue to drag you down. Set emotional, physical and behavioral boundaries for yourself that determine where you are not willing to go—and then don't go there. Take charge of your relationships rather than allowing them to take charge of you.

4. Don't rush.

It's tempting to jump into the arms of the first opportunity for a relationship. Though this tactic may work for the lucky few, the majority of men and women who rush into relationships end up with a broken heart and a wounded spirit. Don't let the fear of singleness lead you into a relationship you were never intended to be in. As contradictory as it may sound, time will always be on your side. Take the time to build a friendship, and allow your relationship to grow as naturally as possible.

5. Don't settle.

When it comes to relationships, have a list of majors and minors—major items in a relationship that take top priority for you, and minor things you'd prefer but aren't deal breakers. Some of the most difficult relationship problems come when people settle when it comes to the major items, despite their importance. It's essential to know what's important to you. Take the time to think through your majors, and commit to keeping them at the forefront of your relationship no matter what (or who) comes along. God knows what is important to your heart. Trusting Him with your relationships means believing He will bring you what is best—not what is OK, not what is pretty good, but what is best. Minor on the minors—but be sure to major on the majors.

6. Don't despair.

No matter where you may be on your timeline of finding the person God has for you, don't be discouraged. For those who are believers, God promises that even in the most difficult and lonely times, He has a plan that is good (Jeremiah 29:11). Part of what it means to have faith is to trust in God and then go out and live with confidence, knowing He holds the future and also sustains your present. Don’t long for the future at the expense of missing the here and now. For the believer in Christ, life was meant to be full (John 10:10)! Take heart, have hope and enjoy the ride.

(http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/6-relationship-resolutions-2013)

How Should Christians Date?

Written by Nicole Unice at Relevant Magazine

A wise man once told me that there were only two outcomes for dating relationships: getting married or breaking up. “The secret,” he said, “is knowing how to handle a dating relationship so you know if the other person is worth marrying or he or she is honored in the breakup.”

Unfortunately, it seems like many young singles struggle to figure out just how to handle dating–and I’m not the only one who’s noticed how weird the Christian dating scene can be. As my friend Lindsey, married and in her thirties, recently remarked, “I’m sure glad I wasn’t much of a Christian when I started dating my husband!”

WHAT IF CHRISTIANS JUST BEGAN TO DATE LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE—NOT DATING TOWARD IMMEDIATE MARRIAGE AND NOT “HANGING OUT” IN NO MAN’S LAND?

Whether over coffee in my kitchen or on the hallowed ground of women’s small groups, I hear these murmurs constantly. “My daughter was interested in this nice Christian boy, but he strung her along for a year and a half. The next one did too.” Or, “Jeremy acted like they were friends but she told me later that they were hooking up on the side.” With that kind of dismal dating culture at play, let’s consider the options:

First, there’s “Duggar Dating.” Duggar dating is the modern-day form of arranged marriages. I don’t have first-hand knowledge, but thanks to reality TV, I believe it appears to involve asking the woman’s dad if she is available to date, and possibly not kissing until the actual wedding.

Outside the Duggar-verse, there is the less overt but just as prevalent “ideal spouse” dating. This involves judging a potential guy or girl for the 38 qualities you are looking for in an ideal mate—before even grabbing coffee together. It’s like arranged marriages where no one is making the arrangements, and it doesn’t seem to work very well.

At the opposite extreme, there is “Faux Christian Dating”—in which young Christians have no idea what to do with dating, so they avoid it. Instead of dating, lots of “hanging out” occurs. “Hanging out” leads to all kinds of mixed feelings. Does he like me? Is she flirting? What does this text mean? Why did he sit next to me at church? Did she want my sweatshirt because she was cold, or because she likes me?

Sometimes the “hanging out” leads to hooking up, sans dating, which is another uber-confusing side effect of the Faux Christian Dating cycle.

But what if there was another option? What if Christians just began to date like normal people—not dating toward immediate marriage and not eschewing dating for the less-desirable “hanging out” no man’s land? Here’s what I think it would require:

1) Date Indiscriminately

Stop evaluating whether the guy who’s taken an interest in you is strong and tenderhearted enough to raise your future kids. Stop evaluating whether the new girl at church is hot enough and “low-maintenance” enough for your liking.

THE GREAT THING ABOUT CHANGING EXPECTATIONS IS THAT IT LOWERS THE PRESSURE ON GRABBING DINNER TOGETHER AND FIGURING OUT IF THE TWO OF YOU EVEN LIKE TALKING TO ONE ANOTHER!

If you take notice, if you are intrigued or interested, make a date! Get together—one on one. We are talking about one afternoon or evening together, not a lifetime. And unless someone’s making arrangements for you, it’s worth spending at least a little bit of time with the person before you decide if they are worth marrying.

2) Date Casually

Not every date needs to be a total success. But it’s foolish to think that the way a girl or guy acts in a group of friends is the same as how they’ll act one on one. Dating helps two people sort out what it would be like to be together, to be in a friendship. Most of marriage involves time together, one on one, in a friendship. And spending intentional one-on-one time—not too serious, just time—allows both parties to experience what it would be like to continue in the relationship.

I can’t say it clearly enough: Hanging out in groups will not be enough information to determine who is worth marrying. Everyone is different when you get them one-on-one.

3) Date Often

When we were still in college, my husband had 38 first job interviews before he landed a second one. He was horrible at interviews, but by the 38th one, he had learned how to engage with good questions, talk about himself an appropriate amount and gauge interest from himself and the interviewer. He didn’t get necessarily smarter–he got more experienced. Dating can be like that too. Sometimes we all need a little practice with figuring out what we really want–not in terms of our “ideal spouse” but a real flesh-and-blood human.

4) Date Toward Interest, Not Toward Marriage

“Do you think Christian girls make dating too serious?” I asked several guys recently. “I need a buffer of at least five dates before I’m thinking of any future at all!” said one young man.

What if you completely jettison the idea of finding your husband or wife via dating, at least for the first five dates? What if dating is about getting to know someone and gauging interest, not lifelong compatibility?

The great thing about changing expectations is that it lowers the pressure on grabbing dinner together and figuring out if the two of you even like talking to one another!

Of course, one of the biggest obstacles toward casual dating is the inevitable “ending.” So many of us equate kindness with never saying anything hard to anyone. In truth, kindness is not about passivity. Kindness is honoring someone in your treatment of them, but kindness is also honoring them by ending a dating relationship if needed.

If you’ve maintained boundaries and treated your date with respect, you’ve protected him or her from false and premature intimacy. Will it be awkward? Sure, it will! But the purpose of dating isn’t to just accumulate boyfriends or girlfriends—it’s to find a best friend and partner for life. And when you find him or her, chances are, none of those other guys or gals you’ve casually dated will matter much in the light of your spouse.

The reality is that you can’t have it all. You can’t have the attention of multiple dates and still be pursuing a God-honoring relationship with one. You can’t maintain 10 flirty friendships and expect to make space in your heart for one awesome husband or wife. But you can start somewhere—slowly, and casually—and trust God to lead you into more.

(http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/how-should-christians-date)

Making Too Much of Marriage

The problem is not God's good gift of holy matrimony—it's when we desire it above all else, forgetting the Christian virtue of self-denial. ~ Claire & Eli

Editors note: In Altared: The True Story of a She, a He, and How They Both Got Too Worked Up About We (Waterbrook), Claire and Eli (aliases) reveal themselves as a couple who "met," "dated," and "broke up." Sure, that sounds like the predictable story of innumerable other couples. But Claire and Eli went further. They took stock of their relationship, considered why things had gone awry, and awakened to "the possibility that marriage was less of linchpin to Christianity than we initially thought." And they collaborated on this book, a joint memoir of their courtship spliced with theological reflection on the dangers of allowing blissful anticipations of marriage to distort our understandings of love and discipleship.

"God gave me a desire for a husband or wife, and therefore I know he'll provide one."

Heard this before? We have, countless times. Whether in small groups, post-breakup consolations, late-night talks with roommates, or any number of conversations with other Christians, there was often the sense that our desire for a spouse meant that God would provide one. We're not sure we ever heard it from the pulpit, but quite a few of our friends, and even ourselves at times, thought that longing for a spouse meant marriage was imminent.

But if we desire a husband or wife, does that always mean God will provide one? We can't answer one way or another, of course, but the breadth of the statement and the conclusions drawn from it make us uncomfortable. We ourselves often don't know the difference between our own desires and desires from God. And even if we are sure a desire is from God, can we be sure He'll be faithful in the way we think He will? It would seem that if our desires always translate into a particular outcome from God, then God becomes something like a puppet.

God clearly can and does lead us through our desires, and desires from Him can illuminate, inspire, or provide a loving reproach. At times, holy desires are just the spark we need to orient our lives away from something destructive. And yet it seems there is also wisdom in not being overly sure that God will fulfill our desires in the time and manner we expect. Any time we're positive God will give us something, we must remind ourselves that His ways are above our ways (see Isaiah 55:9), and that our desires should be humbly considered in view of who He is.

As we thought about this in light of marriage, we wondered what Christ's teachings meant for our desires in the average search for a spouse. To be sure, we need to remind no one that the desire for intimacy is a good and God-given gift, a pillar of the created order and God's beautiful design. And yet we can sometimes forget our human potential to distort that design. Sin stalks and stains the beauty of how things might otherwise be.

As we reread the Gospels, we kept stumbling upon a recurring thread of self-denial, the idea that following Christ requires us to let go of the things we have and want. Try as we might, the theme could not be dodged: everything is to be given to Him, and that includes our desires.

A.W. Tozer described the situation this way: "The roots of our hearts [grow] down into things," and this is a danger because "God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the…substitution." Nature is upset not because the gift is bad, but because we make too much of it, because we treat it as a god rather than a gift from Him. And this is no less true for relationships, one of God's most beautiful gifts. Even marriage can risk replacing God in our hearts (see 1 Corinthians 7). So long as our hearts grow into it instead of God, the gift threatens to replace the Giver.

The more we wrestled with this, we came to see how self-denial is helpful and particularly Christian counterpoint to this, whatever our marital status may be. If self-denial means the letting go of what we want and surrendering it to Christ, as we explore below, and if intimacy is one of our greatest cultural desires, then our desire for relationships seemed like a natural starting point for active surrender to Him. (By this we don't mean a surrender of its importance in our hearts to Him, of our tendency to replace first loves with seconds.) If denying ourselves is a part of following Christ, as the Gospels imply, our deepest desires should be viewed as opportunities to lay down what is dear to our hearts at the feet of Christ. The deeper the desire, the greater the risk we will give it all our allegiance.

But oddly, it seemed self-denial was rather absent from our discussions on romance and love.

Let Him Deny Himself

Jesus often describes following Him in abrasive terms: leaving your father, taking up your cross, selling all you own, losing your life, and so on. We, meanwhile, as modern evangelicals, tend to associate these losses with extreme situations, Job-like spells, or times of great martyrdom. They are not what comes to mind when we describe the typical Christian's life. The fact is, we seldom think about Christian identity in terms of living without or denying ourselves. Rather, we think about denials or deprivations as things inflicted upon us, forgetting that taking up our crosses is an act done willingly, just as Christ did. "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me," he said. "For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 16:24-25).

Even as we write this, we know we've been guilty of not allowing the fullness of Jesus's words to sink into our hearts. We have looked away in order to avoid any upheaval in our lives—any disruption to our plans, schemes, and desires; we have found excuse after excuse. Perhaps intellectually both of us know that we are to deny ourselves, but in the daily practice of our lives, denying ourselves easily morphs into a convenient slogan rather than a reality.

The giving up of self is an immensely important part of Christian love. In fact, we can't even talk about Christian love without a discussion on self-denial. Frankly, we didn't realize this until we had already begun to formulate our thesis [that in seeking marriage, we had neglected Christian love], but as soon as we picked up the thread of self-sacrifice throughout Christian history—tentatively—we were startled to find that in addition to Jesus, many of the most influential minds in our tradition described following Christ primarily in terms of self-renunciation.

Indeed, as we mulled over the writings of past Christians, our understanding of love grew vastly larger as our understanding of self-denial grew more challenging. The more we read works about the early church—Acts, the Desert Fathers, the lives of the saints, some of the monastic traditions—and the more we read a range of older Christian writers—Augustine, a Kempis, Calvin, Pascal, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Bonhoeffer, Tozer, and Lewis—the more convinced we became that Christian love and self-denial are often two sides of the same coin. We cannot expect to love our neighbor as Christ did until we lay down our lives and the preferences that rule our loves. We cannot place God wholly first until we uproot our hearts and forsake the pronouns my and mine.

Excerpted from Altared by Claire and Eli. Copyright ©2012 by Claire and Eli. Excerpted by permission of WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Further Reading: http://www.scribd.com/doc/92096722/AltarEd-by-Claire-and-Eli-Chapter-1-Excerpt#.USGYSR2nCa8