Marriage Seminar

Joel and I were blessed to be able to go to the Focus on Marriage simulcast. I thought we weren't going to be able to because Abby got a stomach bug on Thursday night. As I was wondering how we were going to be able to leave sick kids to go- it came to me that Satan doesn't want us at the seminar and knowing that made me want to go all the more. I just prayed that they wouldn't get it very bad and Joel and I would stay fine. Well, we are still fine. Abby never threw up just had diarrea and Emily also only got diarrea. It was a very livable stomach bug. I wish all of them could be like that. Although, Abby is still today, monday, walking around with a bucket she still hasn't thrown up. Yeah!!!

The seminar was so good. I really enjoyed Gary Thomas the author of Sacred Marriage. God has really been speaking to me alot through him. I have come to the realization that once you have made the marriage covenant there is truly no leaving it. The romantic feelings will fade but what you still have is the commitment you made to one another and to God. You can still love the person and not have the romantic feelings. The feelings are to be head knowledge that God has given you two to one another and that commitment is life-long. Even if the other spouse isn't treating you as he/she should it is still our responsiblity to treat them the way God wants us to. I have always made an allowance for thinking, well Joel doesn't do this for me, or why does he deserve such and such. I have been so wrong. I am to please my Creator, my Heavenly Father, in all I do and that includes the way I treat my spouse regardless of the way I feel I should be treated. It is amazing how something as simple as that is truly a revelation for me.

Also, Beth Moore really spoke to me too. She talked about women and their idealism and it is so true. If asking couples how they feel their relationship is a woman will give it lower points than a man. A man thinks things are fine. That is the idealism we as women tend to give things. I have always had this fantasy in my head of how things are supposed to be. Well guess what, they are not the way I always had imagined. But that isn't bad. Like Beth said, "Can't good just be good." I do have a good marriage and a good man. Not always great, but good and with that realization the greatness will come.
Gary Smalley made some good points on how it is what we think it to be. Our thoughts are so powerful and if we are telling ourselves we have a crappy marriage then we will. On the otherhand if we tell ourselves that marriage is God's gift to us and we are to please him through it and he has given us our spouse to make us more holy, a whole new light is shed on our marriage and the purpose of it.
I like what Del Tacket said about the creation and how everything God made was good until he made the man and then everything stopped and God said, "It is not good for man to be alone." That was the one thing God realized wasn't good. It is in God's plan for us to have one another.
It was all really good. As I type I keep thinking of more and more good points. The one main thing I really came out of there with is this; I want to love Jesus Christ more and more each day and become so much like him that others can see him in me. Now it is just figuring out how to do that exactly. I have so many areas of my life to work on. It isn't going to be easy but it will be great!