4 Foundations for a Marriage that Endures

I have a great wife and a wonderful marriage. This is not an accident, Lisa and I have worked on our marriage and our relationship continuously, striving every day to make it better. Reading through the Biblical book of Proverbs recently I was reminded of some of the things we have done that have resulted in success-

1- We have resisted the temptation to look anywhere else for encouragement, respect or love. Every marriage has ups and downs. In tough times it is easy to let your thoughts or eyes wander and think, “If only He/she was was more like them!.” Don't do it. God gave you your spouse, and he or she needs to remain your only source for this kind of love.

2- We keep our secrets secret. There are things, in addition to sexual intimacy, that we have shared only with each other, including our deepest thoughts, worst fears and greatest hopes. Some things should never be shared outside of marriage.

3- We are sexually faithful in our thoughts and actions. When you set your spouse up as not only valuable, but as your sexual ideal, embracing the truth that he or she is the absolute best for you and that no one else can compare, your bond is strengthened. We practice purity, avoiding movies and media that contain inappropriate content, and reject the lie that it is okay to look but not touch.

4- We understand that the love we share is an amazing gift and treat it as such. We thank God for it, nurture it and value it. We spend time together regularly. We address outside threats and distractions and deal with them. We have made up our minds that NOTHING in this life  is more important than our relationship. 

Consider the advice of King Solomon-

"Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well.

Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares?

Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.

May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.

A loving doe, a graceful deer — may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love."

Proverbs 5:15-19NIV

4 Rules for True Friendship

Sometimes it is hard to know who your friends really are. You think someone has your back and then when circumstances get tough, they disappear. Who do you trust? Who are your true friends? A better question- what qualities define true friendship? Here is a short list-

1- A true friend runs to your side when times get hard. "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity,” is how it is described in Proverbs 17. When the going gets tough, great friends don't even wait for you to call. They come.

2- Friends tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. “Wounds from a friend can be trusted,” says the proverb, and it is true. Years ago a colleague called me at home and told me that my aggressive attitude was offending some of the other doctors. He encouraged me that a softer approach would serve me better. He was right and in correcting me he showed he was a friend.

3- True friends are committed to the friendship. Neither time nor circumstances should diminish the bond, which is why the Proverb says we should not forsake our friend or the friend of our father. I think of Daryl, a friend of 40 years. We have laughed together, played together and prayed together,even hurt one another, but we have never quit.

4- True friends know when to keep their mouth shut. “Gossip separates close friends.” says Proverbs 16:28, and boy does it. The writer expounds on the principle in the next chapter saying “He who covers over an offense promotes love.” Close friends know how to hurt us. True friends protect us.

What kind of friend are you? I know I can do better!

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Broken Face, Broken Faith

Faith can be fragile.  The speed bumps,  potholes and detours on the road of life can cause it to shatter.  For one patient, the questions that came with her fractured face resulted in a loss of faith.

Who could blame her? The accident was pretty severe. She had multiple fractures in multiple places, including a shattered nose, along with severe facial lacerations and internal injuries. She was okay now, but it had taken months to recover. Physically she seemed fine but I wondered about emotional scars. I asked about her recovery and how she had handled the stress. She shared that it had been difficult, but she had dealt with it as best she could. I asked about her support network, about who she had been able to  lean on and whose shoulders she could cry on and inquired as to whether she was a part of a faith community.

She wasn't. In fact she did not really believe in God much at all. When I asked her why she gave a very common answer, “I used to believe, but then I decided that if God was there He would not allow all of this bad stuff to happen.”

I thought about what she said. Like so many it seemed that what little faith she had was dependent on how her life turned out. God was supposed to be good, so if He was real then her life shouldn't be bad. Her life had not been very good so God must not be real.

“I can understand that thinking, and in a way it makes sense," I replied, "You were led to believe that God would act in a certain way, and He didn't. Saying He isn't there is one possible explanation. There is another possible explanation. Maybe what you were taught about God was incorrect.”

Christian theology makes many claims about the nature of God. One claim it never makes is that God's ultimate purpose is to protect us from bad things!

Her story causes me to wonder... How much of what we have been taught about how God works is just plain wrong?

When it comes to suffering and blessing, it may be more than we care to admit. There have been so many times in my life when I looked at personal pain and asked “Where was God?” The truth is that He was where He always was, working to make me the person He wants me to be, the better person I need to be, and working for His ultimate plan. The truth is that sometimes this process is painful.

Those who have known me for a while will attest to the fact that I have changed significantly over the years. I am kinder, more gracious, more compassionate and more understanding than I was before. Those who know me best can also testify to how this change has occurred. God has used suffering, pain and loss to mold me into the better man I have become. I have learned that instead of pain being a sign that God has abandoned me it is much more likely a sign that God has not given up on me.!

If you are struggling through hard times, share it with someone. Message me through this website (use the contact link on the menu bar) so I can pray for you and encourage you. Have your own story of how pain worked in your life? Please share it in the comments, someone out there may need to hear it! If you think this post, or any post, might be meaningful to someone else please share it by clicking a button below. 

The Day My Dad Disowned Me

Most parents would do anything to be close to their kids. My father is not like most parents. He values power and control more than relationships, something that became painfully clear 20 years ago when he disowned me.

“Take your $100,000 salary and go to hell!” he said as he hung up the phone. With those angry words our relationship ended. I had dared to question him, dared to suggest he had done something wrong, and to Wayne Barrett that was an unforgivable sin.

Several months earlier, on Christmas of 1992, he decided it would be funny to play a joke on my son. He wrapped a large empty box and brought it in on Christmas Eve. When Nate opened the empty box, Grandpa declared that Santa had decided he was a bad boy. Nate didn't get the joke and stood in the living room with a puzzled look on his face. My dad laughed and then brought in the child-sized bicycle, thinking it all quite funny. It may have been slightly humorous to pull this prank on a teenager, it was cruel to do it to a child who was not quite three-years old.

I did not say anything that night as I did not want to further ruin the holiday, so I waited until a better time. That time came, I thought, the following summer. I do not remember how the conversation turned to Christmas but it did, and I seized the opportunity to address the topic. I gently told him that his empty box joke was not such a good idea and that a child so young could not comprehend that kind of humor.

“You can't tell me how to be with my grandson!” he quickly replied.

“Actually, I am his father, and I do get to tell you how to be around my son,” I calmly explained in as soft a voice as I could manage, “Not everyone is good with young children, and you may not be.” I went on to say that this was okay and understandable but that I may on occasion need to point this out to him so could be aware and adjust. The conversation ended soon after as no amount of critique or suggestion was acceptable to him.

I knew when I hung up the phone that in all probability I would never see him again. Wayne Barrett never apologizes, and he never accepts any terms other than his own.

I have thought about him often in the last 20 years as I have watched my son grow up to be a man and the granddaughter he never met develop into a beautiful young woman. I have often wondered, “How could a man purposely choose to lose his grandchildren?” The only answer I can come up with is that a normal man can't. Only a man with some sort of mental illness could do such a thing.

While painful and sad, my father's rejection has motivated me over the years. I have dedicated myself to being different from him, to being a better person and to being the best father I can be. It is a reminder to me that no thing is more important than people and that no people are more important than family.

Some who read these words can share their own story of relationships lost. As a family doctor I have seen and heard many stories over the years of parents who have rejected their children and children who long to be loved by a father or mother. Every one of these stories is a tragedy. 

You may wonder how it is that I have handled the loss of my father and succeeded where he failed. I was able to cope with this for two reasons- First, because I have embraced the reality that my Heavenly Father loves me and will never leave me or forsake me. Second, God blessed me with a surrogate dad in the person of my father-in-law, who for 23 years loved me like I was his own son.

If you have been rejected by a parent, my heart goes out to you. I pray you will know the love of the Father whose love is eternal and the hope that such love brings and find someone who can give you the support you need. If you are estranged from your children as a result of your own doing, I beg you to reconcile. Swallow your pride and reach out.

- Bart

If you know someone who may need to hear the message of this post, please share it. It's the only way they will know about it! Also, if you want to receive future posts by email, click the button to subscribe, on the web below my photo, scroll down on a tablet or smartphone. I can be followed on twitter @bartbarrettmd. For more on the topic of dealing with dishonorable parents, I invite you to listen to my talk on the topic "Honoring the Parents God Gave You" on my Vimeo page- https://vimeo.com/142703584

The Three Most Annoying things Christians say to each other

We can all be annoying at times (I for one have been told I am annoying most of the time!) While we all have our off-putting moments, we typically save our jerkiness for special occasions. It seems that it is in times of suffering and loss, those times when people are most in need of encouragement that we say the dumbest things. With this in mind I give you the three most annoying religious phrases ever spoken to me.

In reverse order:

3- “Just have faith, it will all work out.”

2- “Just trust God.”

1- “Let go and let God”

I hate cliches like this, primarily because they imply so many falsehoods about how God works.

“Just have faith”- Really? Exactly how are we supposed to do this? This is the spiritual equivalent of telling a morbidly obese patient that they “Just need to lose some weight.” The phrase implies that faith is a switch that we can flip on a whim, and that once we do, life will be unicorns and rainbows. Baloney. Faith is hard. It is hard because it requires us to believe in someone and something we cannot see and cannot feel (See Hebrews 11:1). It is hard because faith requires that we have faith in God with no clear concept of what that will mean in this life. This is why the “it will work out” part of the phrase, while an eternal truth, is a short term lie. Countless martyred Christians testify to the truth that their faith did not work out so well in the short term, as can the millions of oppressed and persecuted believers around the world. This life does not work out for everybody!

“Just trust God”- For what exactly? I have heard this said to people who have lost jobs, relationships and their health. Often what is implied in this cliché is that by trusting God or having faith we can be sure that a better job is around the corner, our spouse will soon return or our health will me instantly restored. I don't see these things promised anywhere in the Bible. Yes we need to trust God, but so often we are being encouraged to trust Him for the wrong things.

“Let go and let God”- I have NO IDEA what this is supposed to mean. I think some people say it to imply that we should quit worrying about a problem and that once we let go of our worries it will all be better. As an individual with anxiety disorder, let me just say that this is not that easy! It also implies passivity, that we need not work or expend effort resolving our issues, which is simply false.

So what should people say instead? Like so many misstatements, the truth is just a few words different from the error.

The truth is:

1- God has an eternal plan that is never changed by our earthly circumstances. When something bad happens we can be reminded, “This is terrible, but our faith in God's ultimate plan allows us to endure.”

2- We need to trust God, not that He will rectify every wrong in this life and bring health and prosperity, but that His love for us never changes and that He will give us strength to deal with our pain and loss.

3- When we see someone struggling with fear and worry, instead of telling them to “let go”, let's give them something, and someone, to hang out to. We can share how we have seen God sustain us and others through hard times, and we can reach out and “grab” them, literally with a hug, and figuratively with support, time, and encouragement.

The apostle Paul told us what we need to do- “Share each other's burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2 NLT

We need to get involved in the pain and suffering of others, to take some of their pains and struggles as our own. Cliches actually do the opposite, serving as a distancing and degrading pat on the head. Let's bury meaningless cliches and work to truly encourage one another.

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