Archive for the ‘Guest Posts’ Category

Guest Post: Better With You, But Fine By Myself

January 20th, 2012

Note from Beth: I’m particularly excited to share this guest post with you because it is the first guest post I’ve had on the blog from someone who I don’t personally know. I enjoyed reading it and there was much in it that I could relate to. I hope the same is true for you.


I love astronomy. The study of celestial objects has always been a source of amazement for me. If you can, for a moment, imagine life before the universe was. God in all his great power and awesomeness, surrounded by angels, looked into the vast blackness of the universe and said “I am lonely”. I sometimes look out at the night sky and wonder, if for just a moment, I could see that. Trust me, that is a terrifying thought.

I have trouble asking God for things, just like I have trouble asking people for things. I have always been independent above all things. I have never needed another human being to do anything for me. This becomes hard for all the wonderful men in my life who want nothing more than to help me when it comes to appliance repair or car repair.

If you have never fixed something, I suggest your try it, it’s amazingly satisfying. When the thermostat broke on my refrigerator, rather than calling in a repair man, I spent a few hours online trying to assess the problem. With all the appliance repair websites online I couldn’t bring myself to call in a professional. Five hours later I found myself the proud owner of a working refrigerator, much to the chagrin of every male in my family who was ready to call up his buddy to fix the problem or fix it himself.

Imagine, if you will, not actually needing anyone for anything. You don’t need your husband to fix your car (this drives men nuts, trust me). That heavy package you just got, you will find a way to get it up the steps all by yourself. Sure no one can help you move your couch up three flights of stairs, but you can do it all by yourself. It’s liberating, but lonely.

Since I moved out of my parents house at 17 (I graduated from High School and moved to my college town that summer) I have never actually needed another human being, except in extreme circumstances, and even then I spent hours trying to find a way to get on by myself. When a bad blizzard hit I drove home very late at night. I made it a large potion of the way through many cars that were pulled over to the side. I was within a few miles of home when the someone in front of me, who couldn’t drive in snow, wrecked, forcing me to stop, leaving me sliding backwards down a hill. I parked my car, climbed out, and was prepared to walk a mile and a half home when an ambulance came by and I accepted a ride, only because it was almost 10pm and I was not prepared to fight wild animals. It’s not within me to need another person. I want people, which is a totally different feeling, and for anyone who feels the same, a lot more intense. “Better with you, but fine by myself,” as a wise friend once told me.

It means my feelings are hurt a lot more and I try twice as hard to hold them in. It means when I love you I really don’t expect you to ever do anything for me, but when you do it’s so amazing and wonderful I can’t help but feel so grateful. When I love you, and I don’t see you I miss you like crazy and want so badly to see my friend, my love, my family, but I don’t want to impose. I think that’s how God feels, but his scale is infinitely larger. Here is this great divine creator who actually can get by without us, but instead, chooses to want people. God created us so he could be with us, not because he needed us, and that is a wonderful feeling.

But here is the catch, we need him. God designed us to need him, and we do, it’s imprinted on our DNA. Everyone is searching for meaning in life, when in the end, being with God is the very reason for our existence. That’s where I have my problem, needing God. I know in the end I do need him, as I am constantly reminded in little ways. I still can’t help my nature, wanting to do things on my own and never ask him for anything. But I need to. I need to ask him to help guide me through everyday and be there with me. I need him to remind me that sometimes it’s okay to be helpless and needy.

God, our great creator, made man, and still man was lonely. Man had God and with all that love man still needed a companion. “It is not right that man should be alone,” as it says in Genesis. So true. That’s why God created woman, and man and woman need each other. We are supposed to need one another at some point in our lives and thus need God. So why is it so hard? Why do some of us fight so hard to be independent from everyone. Most of my closest friends are die hard hermits and it takes an act of congress to get them to go anywhere. I am not the easiest person either. We are self sufficient, and don’t realize that we need to need people. We should go to church to fellowship with people of similar faith, because we need the reminder that God is amazing.

I try. Sometimes I have to let a stranger fix my washing machine because I can’t fix it myself. Sometimes when my car blows up, literally, I need a lift. It kills me to not be able to do things on my own, but it’s just God’s way of reminding me that I need to need people. He made us that way. So I grit my teeth and pray for the patience to be okay with it. God loves to nudge me. Some of the situations I have gotten into have to make me laugh and just prove that God has a wonderful sense of humor. I think sometimes that is the only way anyone can get my attention. I have learned to laugh at a lot of things that would make most people cry. So when life throws me a grenade I simply laugh and throw a sandbag on it.

This year when I made my resolutions, my biggest was to need people more, and here is hoping it works out. I am trying to be more patient. Trying to be around people more often and really enjoy their company. In the end it’s what God wants. We are supposed to be a light spread God’s love to the world, which is hard to do by yourself.

Bio:
Lilly Nelson is a Jill-of-All-Trades. She loves life, and family, and anyone who passes her by. A unique lady by all accounts you are just as likely to see her on stage as you are to see her with her family, or completely by herself. No matter what she takes it in stride and feels so blessed and honored with the life she has been given. She writes regularly for Avant Greensboro but contributes to other blogs.

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Marriage: A Picture of God’s Love

August 30th, 2010

This is a guest post from my husband’s “younger uncle”, Geoff. I haven’t spent as much time with Geoff as I would like, but what little time we have spent with him and his beautiful wife, Devon, has been a deep pleasure. They are a wonderful couple who are deeply seeking God and I am excited for the future that lies ahead of them. Geoff is also sort of special to me because my wedding and the people he met there had a profound influence on his heart and were indirectly involved in leading him to make some major life changes and get into ministry. I always prayed that my wedding would be life changing for someone and Geoff was that someone. Thanks for sharing this post, Geoff! I pray that my own marriage as well as yours would always be a beautiful picture of God’s love for all who encounter it.

4155_86597503094_627823094_1842071_7986138_nI have to start off this post by saying that I am not necessarily writing out of experience. Because I have only been married a little over a year, and do not have the luxury of a 32-year marriage like my wonderful sister and previous blogger Lisa Stedman, I decided to share some thoughts that I have on the purpose and function of marriage, and the hope for my own marriage

What is so intriguing to me about marriage is what it is. There’s no doubt that if you asked 10 people what marriage is, at least 9 of them would say, “A commitment”. This is absolutely true. However, as beautiful as a lifelong commitment is and can be, if we reduce marriage down to only that, we miss out on the depth, beauty and purpose of marriage.

So if marriage is not just a commitment, then what is it? Well, to get the answer we must go to a source that defines what marriage is, the Bible. Probably one of the clearest definitions of marriage is found in Ephesians 5. Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus and speaking about this topic, and quoting the Creator of marriage Himself, he pens these words:

“’Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”’ (Eph. 5:31, 32)

Whenever God creates something, He does it with incredible purpose and marriage is no different. In fact, I believe that marriage has one of the greatest purposes in the world. And that is to be a picture to the world of what God did for us through Jesus on the cross, and our response to that.

Stories and pictures are tools used by teachers to help the listeners understand, with even more clarity, the point of the story. God is no different, and when thinking about how to clearly portray4155_86597533094_627823094_1842077_7995748_nhow fulfilling and beautiful a relationship with Him could be, He decided to use marriage. That’s why a couple verses before Paul gives his explanation we just read, he instructs husbands to “love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”. And that the wives, in response to the sacrifice of their husbands, should “submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” If this is happening in a marriage, it is functioning as a picture to the rest of the world of what being in a relationship with God is like. I can’t help but think of Jesus’ words in John 17 when He says,

“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

If nothing else, I hope this post serves as a reminder that there is such a beautiful purpose in our marriage that goes beyond ourselves. That if we fulfill our God-given roles in our marriages, the world might know that God sent Jesus and loves them even as He loved Him. In my opinion, there couldn’t be a more fulfilling or rewarding purpose for our marriages than this.

4155_86597133094_627823094_1842003_6622457_nGeoff Francian was married to his wife Devin in 2009. They currently live in San Diego, California. Geoff has spent the last 5 years in ministry at a local church. His passions outside of ministry include, in no particular order, both playing and watching basketball (Go Lakers!), golfing, reading, and movie nights with his wife, complete with a bottle of wine and a plate of assorted cheeses.

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Helpful Marriage Resources

August 20th, 2010

This post is a guest post from my friend, Joanna. I really don’t think I could say enough good things about Joanna and her husband Mark. They have become like family for us here in Prague and I am so blessed and honored by my association with them. One of the things I love most about them is that they have really so openly invited my husband and I into their lives. They have shared with us so honestly about both the good and the difficult in their own marriage and given us space to do the same. Thank you, dear friends!


Mark and I were married almost eleven years ago. It is hard to believe. We have lived together on three continents and have weathered many storms our circumstances (and our fiery tempers) have thrown our way. There are stories of our life together that we’ve named “the-third-time-we-almost-got-divorced” and literally times (especially when we were working in a boarding school in rural Uganda) when we weren’t even on speaking terms. We’ve had good advice (“listen to HOW you are saying that, not just what you are saying”) and bad advice (“just have more sex”). But advice doesn’t really work for us, we kind of have to walk through it ourselves, groping our way along this beautiful, but rocky path.

So the best thing we can share about marriage is where to go for HELP. We went through pre-marital counseling with our beloved Pastor Howard using Dan Allender’s book Intimate Allies. Our Pastor warned us that it is designed more for people who have been married for five years, but he liked to do it before getting married so you know what you are up against. Not only is marriage the most intimate relationship you will ever have, and the most reflective of God’s great love for you; it is also the most damaging relationship you’ll ever have, and your spouse is capable of wounding you far deeper and far more quickly that anyone else. This book recalls an image from The Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo et al are up on Weathertop preparing to hold off the Nazgul, and the party turns their backs in toward each other and their weapons out, protecting each other. (There is a similar scene in Mr. & Mrs. Smith!) Each year that we are married we turn our backs in a little quicker and with less inadvertent damage by unwieldy swords! (The tongue is a double-edged sword, btw!)

We found ourselves at an impasse about five years into our journey. Living in rural Uganda, working in a very tough environment, with no one around with extra energy to help us work out our junk. We really couldn’t say anything to each other without taking it the wrong way and turning into another fight. We remembered Howard’s counsel that this book (Intimate Allies) was better for five years in, so we pulled it off the shelf, blew off the dust and started reading again. We made intentional space to work through it together. We would go away for a long weekend once a month, and read through one chapter, talk through the issues and questions and spend some time really praying together. And it really helped us to START communicating better again. (Of course there’s no book that can “fix” our marriage…but we appreciate the direction this one has given us.)

Now we are in Prague, with two kids. We do life together a little bit better now, but really we just have a lot more space and excuses and other things going on, so we HIDE our junk a LOT better. We’ve hit another rough spot these past few years, so naturally, we were EXCITED to see Dan Allender published a whole marriage SERIES. The Intimate Mystery and the bible studies that spring from it called Intimate Marriage Series, have been fun and insightful. So in our TENTH year of marriage, we decided to rally together a Marriage group (which Bethany and Bryan also attend) here in Prague. This marriage group has been fantastic. We are building intimacy and communication in our marriages, but also in this small community. We are building some accountability and trust. We share the hard stuff and the victories. It’s kind of like a holy group therapy. I am so thankful for the encouragement and the hope that these other four couples bring to us. And it is perfect timing for us.

So take these resources and explore them for yourselves, or tuck them in the back of your mind for someday when you need a little nudge toward loving each other better. Mark and I find, that in our marriage, when we love each other better, it multiplies how much love we can extend toward others.

IMG_5085Joanna Stewart works with World Harvest Mission. She and her husband, Mark lived and taught in rural Uganda for three years; and they are now living in Prague. She is the mercy coordinator for Faith Community Church and spends her time trying to learn how to serve people in the city in the name of Christ. Her hobbies are cooking, knitting, and trying to keep her sons Sasha (4) and Izaak (1) from bleeding.

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AND

August 11th, 2010

This post is another guest post from my dear friend, Tara. I love this concept that she shares about living in the AND in marriage – recognizing both the similarities AND the differences. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts with us Tara!

AndPictureIn the beginning, God created the “and”. He created the heavens AND the earth, the sun AND the moon, the land AND the seas, creatures in the ocean AND in the air. It is as though for each thing He makes, He also fashions a counterpart….He does not choose one OR the other but creates with an all encompassing AND.

As a crowning glory on His of work of art, the scriptures tell us, “male AND female He created them”. He sets up a holy, beautiful tension between these two like-yet-different creatures and we have had to live with it ever since!

See, when we first got married, I am not sure we knew how to live in the “AND”. I really thought my husband and I were so much alike. As we dated, the similarities were striking and I was amazed at how his view on life was so much like mine!! We liked the same things, thought the same thoughts, believed the same things…and there was some truth to that. However, there was some truth to the fact that “either/or” thinking was deeply engrained in both of us. It was either what he wanted or what I wanted; someone would have to switch their ways. It was a small world to live in. There was only room for one kind of something – 1 answer, 1 truth, 1 person. It was a world that valued a soulmate who was made out of the same substance rather than a counterpart who was quite different.

We got married in this paradigm and now it makes me laugh. I think it was God’s way of (lovingly) tricking us into getting to the alter! They say love is blind and covers a multitude of sins, to which I respond “yes, but the length of marriage not only heals our eyesight, but proceeds to uncover all our dirt!”. For us, God had us come together in the safety of marriage so then He could break down our “either/or” thinking in order to lead us into His large and sometimes paradoxical AND.

(I wrote this a few years ago as I was wrestling through being different from my husband…)

Are David and I soulmates? No. Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote “whatever the stuff souls are made of, ours are the same substance.” Not so with David and I. Our souls are made of different stuff but they do need each other – to find completeness in the other.

Take sodium & chloride – individually, they are toxic, dangerous elements but together they literally become salt to the world. We are like that. I need him, he needs me. I have a mystic bent; he is a systematic theologian. He wants labels, categories, governing dynamics; I thrive within inexplicable events. He is the voice of reason and logic; I am the voice of imagination and emotion. He is paralyzed by fear, but when fear comes I am ready to pick up my sword and fight. I am paralyzed by being overwhelmed, but in the midst of that he gets calm and becomes an anchor embedded in rock, not tossed by the turbulent seas of emotion.

No, David is not my soulmate – for that would be far too small and easy. It could not stretch my faith or provide the practice field for increasing strength, endurance, and honing the skills given by the Creator. No, he is not my soulmate; he is my completer.

So what does this mean in marriage? It means I do not live in the fantasy of being the same nor in the aloofness of being different. I stand in the reality of our differences and learn to embrace the largeness of male AND female. I learn to share my perspective knowing that it is necessary but not complete. I know I do not need to diminish who I am but do not need to defend it either. And I bring all I am to the table of marriage and he does the same AND somehow in the feasting we become more than what we were.

PictureofTaraForSiteTara Malouf makes her home in the Seattle area with her husband and two kids. She loves images and words, quiet and beauty, walking and prayer. She sees with “connectedness” eyes and thinks life is lived in story. She aspires to be a professional friend.

You can check out her photography at www.redthreadphoto.blogspot.com and her occasional musings at www.stroyformed.wordpress.com

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Ingredients for a Healthy Marriage

August 5th, 2010

Todays guest post was written by my sweet mother-in-law, Lisa. I have been blessed with incredibly caring in-laws who love my husband and I very much. Lisa has always been very open with me about her own marriage and I appreciate all of the wonderful talks we’ve had about life and marriage over the past few years. I hope you all enjoy this post and the beautiful prayer that she shared as much as I did. Thanks again, Lisa!

I have found in my 32 years of being married, that marriage can be an incredibly wonderful experience as well as a hellish one, and that there is no such thing as a perfect marriage because it consists of two imperfect beings. I do believe that marriage is a gift from God, one that should not be taken for granted, and that it is worth all the time, work, and effort it takes to build. There are many ingredients to a healthy and successful marriage.

The first one being Trust. We build trust by allowing ourselves to be accountable to one another as well as surrounding ourselves with those who will ask us the hard questions and keep us accountable. We can create and nurture emotional intimacy by being transparent with one another in a loving and accepting way. As we build trust, it breeds security and respect for each other, which allows us to know that our partner has the health of the marriage as the main priority in everything he or she does.

Forgiveness is essential to a healthy marriage. I have learned that forgiving someone that has wronged you, is not forgetting or even condoning the behavior, but showing grace and choosing reconciliation. It has taken my husband and me many years to bring our two very different ways of conflict resolution together to make them work. Rather than ignoring the situation with cold silence, we’ve learned to talk about the issue as soon as we were able. Sometimes it took awhile to cool down, gain perspective and think clearly, but we learned that resolving it as soon as possible was best for the health of the marriage.

Effective communication means verbalizing needs and listening carefully. We can not expect to go through our marriage without having to face conflict. God made us different, both with faults and strengths, however made to help each other grow spiritually. Learning effective communication skills will certainly help your marriage grow. We learned that “reflective listening” helped us hear what the other was trying to communicate. When one of us would relay a message, the other would repeat back what we heard. We were surprised to find out that many times we heard something that was not even said. This allowed us to clarify what the true issue was before jumping to wrong conclusions and responding prematurely.

One ingredient that is very important to me is Laughter. Humor keeps our marriage fresh and fun. Laughing together has the ability to form two people into kindred spirits, soul mates. Studies have proven that laughter is good for your health and can relieve stress and even pain by producing a natural tranquilizing effect on the body. Laughter can only take place when you spend time together. When you laugh together, the result is bonding and friendship. Laughter, and the resulting friendship, is comfortable, enjoyable and deeply satisfying. Laughter is about connecting. Finding a way to laugh about difficult issues helps you take yourself less seriously, and helps you put problems into focus.

Love and Romance are wonderful qualities to a healthy marriage. In the beginning, it seems to come more naturally than as time goes on, but it is crucial to put effort in keeping this aspect of your union alive. We have found that keeping a “date night” at least once a month is a good way to accomplish this. Once kids enter the picture, it becomes even more important to put the time and effort into keeping the love and romance alive. We have found that the best thing we can do for our kids is to love one another, have a healthy relationship and be a good example for them.

Ultimately, a good marriage is built on a foundation of love; but the bricks-and-mortar that rest on that foundation, such as communication, respect, and spending time together, take some effort. I would like to end with a prayer that I wrote down many years ago, and go back to many times: Lord, you truly are the giver of gifts and the author of marriage.

Lord, thank you for the gift you have given me in my husband. I know in the depths of my soul that you are trust worthy, faithful, all knowing, caring and loving and you knew what you were doing when you gave this gift to me. Help me receive this gift as you intended, help me cherish the differences and see how our gaps fit together instead of resenting them. Help me take on your character to enable me to participate in this union as I truly was meant to. Amen

myspace photoLisa Stedman is a wife of 32 years to Blake Stedman, and a mother to Bryan Stedman(age 26) and Tamara Stedman(age 23). She is a business owner of “Philo and Honey”, a company she founded to keep her family’s time honored tradition of making baklava alive. Lisa is also an artist, and especially enjoys painting watercolors. She also enjoys working out at the gym as well as hula hooping, entertaining, spending time with family and friends, and reading. She has felt very fulfilled in these many roles and feels very blessed.

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