Taking a Pinterest Approach to Marriage (and why it bogs you down)

mediamerging.com

Yes, I have a **Pinterest account. It's a girl thing, from the looks of most of it.  Like a "forever" shopping cart.  

It's right up my alley, Pinterest is. I'm an idea girl. If I see it and like it, I can usually reproduce it. I'm a terror at craft shows, not usually making purchases but deciding how to make an item myself and laying plans for it as I peruse the tables full of handmade wares. Pinterest lets me shop, take notes, find directions and add to my list of things to do.

Pinterest plays to the "I want" feature in each of us, even if we have it under a fair amount of control and have learned to admire rather than to envy. Pinterest allows me to find things I never knew I needed, similar to what happens when I shop. I can fill my cart with items, but I don't have to commit to any of them. And, with Pinterest, I can keep the items forever and not have to put them back on a rack before I leave. The best of both worlds.

It's hoarding with followers. As in my real-life recipe collection, in which I have more recipes clipped and meticulously crammed in a binder than I will ever cook or bake, I have pinned 119 dinner recipes, 169 "sweets" recipes (you see my focus, eh?), and 90 recipes in smaller categories. I have actually used 10 or 12 of of these. In 18 months.

This activity hurts no one. I don't throw money away on any of it. But, I don't make good use of it. That's not good stewardship, in my book ... in God's book, either. He calls us to use what we have, and to use it wisely and properly.  When we have placed the ideas in a folder, on a stow-away board or in a hidden shopping cart, we get them out of sight ... and out of mind.

Remember Peter's words:

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace:
 ~1 Peter 4:10

Where I'm going here is here. If you have found yourself in the middle of a muddled marriage, you know you need something. You probably want a fast fix, but the possibility of that seems slim to none. The mess didn't happen overnight and the clean-up will take some time and hard work.

You can handle that.  You begin to search sources of help, whether on-line or real-world.  You begin to shop for assistance.

What makes the muddle more muddled comes is the multitude of ideas, suggestions, helpful books, insightful articles and terrific Bible studies that make you feel motivated to make changes, to try a particular way of addressing an issue you have with your husband. You feel a rising hope inside you after discovering what feels, in every way, like the perfect avenue to take in order to get you and your spouse on the path to oneness again. You read articles and book reviews that give you some great steps to take to make the changes happen and to direct your path more surely than you feel you can do on your own. Even the photos and graphics motivate you to try.

And then you wait.

Several articles, suggestions, ideas and studies later, you continue to wait. This is the Pinterest approach to marriage. Collect it, and it ... may ... happen.  You may forget about that hope-filled idea or that oneness-growing strategy as you bury them in a slew of other "looks good" affects that you will get to one of these days.

Do yourself a favor and do your marriage a service -- pick out the most eye-catching, do-able tidbit from the mass of your collection and act on it today. No more collecting.  Sift your ideas through a God filter ... match them with scripture.  If they don't match, toss them.  If they do match, prioritize them.

Make yourself a short list of quality possibilities, and then do something!

**Disclaimer:  I really like Pinterest.  I find it very useful for collecting ideas for remodeling we want to do at our house, for terrific recipes (my goal = trying one or two each week, successful so far!), and for some terrific Bible verses/quotes that have helped friends, relatives and myself with struggles.  I like Pinterest, and have no intention of relinquishing my membership!  This post does not effect a bashing of the Pinterest model in its truest form -- a place to share and glean ideas.  I hope only to compare the storage method with our marriage needs.  Thanks for understanding!

P.S.  I know commenting is hard, especially if you think you're "talking" in front of hundreds of people.  Please don't feel intimidated -- I'd love to hear from you.  Your experiences, thoughts and hopes motivate me.  You give me ideas both for my own marriage and for writing.  Thanks to those of you who have commented and e-mailed.  Contact information is always available in the tabs at the top. Thank you for your willingness to correspond!

The Text and "App"lication Parenting Dilemma

Do you hear the chitter-chatter of little voices.  "May I call a friend to come to play?"  "May I use the phone?  I need to ask about a homework assignment."  "Let me call Grandma to tell her about my report card!"

Do your children have cell phones? If they do and they're modern kids, they text more than talk.  The banter above happens very rarely in today's homes.  A mother of one of my daughter's classmates exclaimed in frustration over her 14-year olds inability to figure out how to leave a phone message on an answering machine ... she felt ill-equipped and too embarrassed to do so.  The mother wrote her a script to get her through the fearsome event!

The child is an honor student,  reading at college level.  But she's missing a link in communication.


Children (including teens here) text more than we realize, both in number of messages and in content.  Used in secret, used independently, used without our knowledge, cell phones in "silent mode" vibrate in pockets all over the globe and allow kids to connect when the adults around them go about their business, ignorant of the activity.  Kids have codes to alert each other that an adult is in the room, they use ring tones at higher pitches on low volume so that older people can't hear the alerts pinging.

  

No more paper folded into tiny, tight football shapes for clever, discreet passing across desktops or in the hallways at school.  Kids pass notes via the ether, send photographs without consideration for content, or for the fact that the pictures and words can travel endlessly, cell phone to cell phone and even onto the Internet for wider distribution.  Forever.  Many adults have trouble with this concept, too.

Kids have unlimited talk and text because adults can't seem to keep the usage down to a minimum and don't want to pay by the minute or by the text.  Providers know how to draw in the customers with bundling and family plans.  "Family" is an operative, psychologically sensitive word in the marketplace and it works.  Many children don't have limits on the time they spend either online via Smart Phone or in the number of texts they send, or when and where they may use their technological devices.  They communicate at all hours, in all venues, and even when societal rules tell them they shouldn't (church, classroom, at the dinner table, in the middle of a social event). 

Kids -- and people in general -- wouldn't pick up a phone to verbally share the information they're texting.  They wouldn't pick up a book to find out the information they "Google" or Bing".  How many of us would interrupt in the middle of a social gathering to say, "Excuse me.  I'm going to use the house phone for a minute."  Would anyone really interrupt a dinner conversation to say, "Let me look that one up in the encyclopedia ..."   Would you?  No.  But many of us text it and surf for it.  Seems less invasive, huh? 

How does this differ from your early years of learning about communication?  Talking on the phone meant you were tethered to a wall with a cord that stretched only so far, possibly in a central location in the home, and within earshot of family. You had rules, time limits, calling zones to consider, thought to others wanting to use the phone, and thought to the importance of making the call at all.  Many families didn't take calls after certain hours, and never during dinner time.  We did not have answering machines, and we learned a sensible use of time and importance in making any calls at all.

The phone habits of our children don't provide these parameters, or at the least, very many that resemble them.

Today's children have grown up in an era of secrecy and self-direction against the grain of familial preference.   Parents feel their hands are tied by invisible cord -- with a known inability to corral their kids in their communication pursuits. Cell phones allow for hidden conversation, deceit, learned habits from unknown sources, and changes in attitudes that we would never support as parents. How much do you know about your child's cell phone habits?  Records.  Sure.  You can check them, but how do you manage the behavior that builds those records?  Do you know who they have on their Contact Lists, whom they contact most often, what types of information they send and receive?  You may have an angelic child who uses her phone only when necessary?  I do.  Yet the information that comes to her via the device is out of my control and most likely, without my knowledge. 

Do we, as parents, truly understand the freedom we give our children just by providing them a cell phone?  When we provide Internet access, we provide them the world.  In view of faith, what amount of good does providing our children with the world  ... without limits ... do for them?  The family computer resides in plain sight, but the cell phone lives on their hips, ushering in parts of life we may not know or expect.

"And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?"

Mark 8:36 

From before their birth we protected them by eating right, getting medical care, staying fit, preparing all the needs for their arrival to nurture them without room for error.  We boiled their pacifiers when they fell to the floor. We made sure the formula or baby food was the proper temperature. We provided healthy foods and we limited their television viewing from toddlerhood onward, and what they did see helped them learn, not just entertain.  We read to them, encouraged their creativity in art and song.  We enrolled them in classes for enjoyment and to grow their natural talents, checked their homework, and packed healthy lunches.

And then we bought them cell phones and found out what "lack of control" and "independence" really means.

Some parents, and my husband and I belong to this group, held off on the cell phone purchase for much longer than most.  Our daughter received her phone 2 months ago, and probably really was the last kid in her class to get one (she claims this is true).  The longer we held out and observed her peers and the general population -- and ourselves -- the more we wanted to avoid the reality that this phone would introduce:  more independence and participation in the outside world than we would allow in a physical, observable, tactile existence.  We are not overprotective parents, but we do believe that children need boundaries and strong guidance, rather than direction in navigating GPS. 

Do we want our children to Stumble Upon it when we have avoided skinned knees and trips on the curbs all their lives?  Do we feel that  taking a chance in Tumblr fits our moral compass?  Do they really need to Pin It?  Must they Find it on Facebook?  Does it really enhance their experience to compete in Four Square online rather than a face-to-face game of the real thing on the playground?

Does the good outweigh the bad?  When did we lose the spirit and the need to teach morals and ethics to our children, not only in word but in deed?  When did we leave so much to them, a world full of unchecked information, when in a few years we will want to carefully guide their practice sessions in an automobile and make sure they have excellent control before allowing them to drive alone?

Cell phones are not bad.  The Internet has tremendous usefulness to us.  They are tools that have amazingly good uses.  What self-control, limits and lines to we put on that usefulness, and how do we teach it and model it?  How do we direct it for our children's benefit?  How do we go about protecting them and guiding them and providing the best examples and experiences for them to take into their futures with these devices available for their use ... at their discretion?

They can't look up when they're so drawn to looking down, into the screens of their phones.  Can they feel the Holy Spirit's guidance more strongly than the vibration of the phone in the pocket? 

What do you think?

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Ten Ways to Love: Listen without Interrupting

This lesson in love, Listen without Interrupting, falls first on the list and lets me know God has His hand in everything, even to the order and wording of a Christmas gift my husband chose to create for me via Pinterest! 

Listen without interrupting.  SMACK!  Right between the eyes.   I have grown impatient through the years, which does not surprise me, but it does disappoint me.  As a person with a teacher's temperament and view of life, I have patience for children.  Maybe not mine, but those of others. When it comes to adults -- poof! -- no patience left in the coffers.  Gone.  Kaput.  Zero balance.  Let's call it a deficit, for the sake of accuracy.

The first instruction for "Ten Ways to Love" speaks loudly to me.  How about you?  Do you feel a nudge?  I have to stop and remember how hard a lesson this is for me,  having succumbed to finishing sentences for the man who shares life with me -- an endearing thing in the courting phase, but really, when does it stop?  When does the man have a chance to think and feel for himself without his wife nodding and chomping at the bit to race to the finish line of his thoughts ... his contribution? 

I review this lesson often.  I have not mastered it, nor have I earned more than a "C", I think.  It might be the one thing God knows I need most, and that I will have to put forth great effort to persevere and maybe -- I hope -- overcome.  I imagine how it feels for God to watch one of His children finally get it.  To have the light bulb finally burn brightly and stay lit for a change, rather than watch that child returning to the darkness to continue struggling.  As a parent myself, I know how this feels.  When I see that glimmer of hope drowned by a return to the norm -- the thoughtless, easy, habitual, learned way, I feel troubled and confused by my child's inability to see and feel the difference -- the good -- in turning in the right direction.

The verse corresponding to this Love Lesson lives in Proverbs 18:1, and I have added two verses to round it out and, I hope, give clarity.

Proverbs 18:1-2  An unfriendly person pursues selfish ends and against all sound judgment starts quarrels.  Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.

 Add to these Proverbs 18:13:To answer before listening — that is folly and shame.

Bam!  Bam!  Bam!  Square on the head.  That's what these verses did to me.  Foolish, opinionated to a fault, quarrelsome, full of folly and shame.  I didn't have a leash on my desire to guide and assist.  Instead, I appeared as Controller and Dictator.  Never good descriptors for oneself.  While I denied fitting those definitions, I also did not see how my goals of retaining status quo and smooth sailing (which eluded me, of course) affected my family negatively. Along with that, as with any other bad habit, my inability to listen without interrupting fed itself.  The more I did it, the more I did it!

To listen to a spouse, a child, a relative, a friend, or a stranger, and to give him the respect involved in getting thoughts out of his brain and into the atmosphere through the human act of speech seems simple enough.  The difficulty enters when that speech involves the listener in ways that make her uncomfortable, either because the words point out flaws (eek!) or because they do not align with her perception of peace and harmony.  I had a hard time seeing my errors because I did not adopt a "my way or the highway" stance, and so I deemed myself flexible.  I had no hard line, I did not crack the whip or require anyone to toe the line.  Yet, I had answers even when no one asked a question and suggestions when no one offered a box for collecting them.

I was a wreck, but couldn't see the damage I caused.  Seeing myself through another's eyes did not happen for me for a long time.  Through the grace of God and with my husband as his messenger, I see now.  A person must break down her own barriers of self-perception and take a long, hard look at the reality of her life in order to see herself -- to really see herself.  We like to paint ourselves differently, even in our own heads.  However, when the dream world of the painting infringes on the reality of life, a girl has to snap to it.  Come to terms with YOU, deal with YOU, and stop putting your needs or wants ahead of the rest. 

Listening without interrupting creates harmony.  It showers others with respect.  It brings peace.  It probably will not maintain status quo because it will allow for new ideas and will bring depth to "the usual".   As for smooth sailing, the waters run deeper and wider when other people have a voice, when I stop trying to think for everyone and stop deciphering what someone might have said, meant to say or didn't say correctly. Listening without interrupting brings intimacy between people, allowing the flow of thoughts and feelings, and the sharing of opinions and perceptions.  It allows for truth instead of guesses, for facts instead of suppositions. To listen without interrupting allows for real life to take place. 

Listening without interrupting opens deaf ears and also gives clearer vision.  The foolish may find wisdom, and their folly may turn to success when they open their ears ... and their hearts ... to others. Remaining stolidly on the path of "having a say" leads to more destruction and disappointment.  Anger and struggle take prime positions instead of peaceful interaction and cooperation winning the top spots in relationships.

Let us have lots of listening.  As the saying goes, we have two ears and one mouth so that we will listen more than we speak. 




Other posts in this series:

• Ten Ways to Love: An Introduction
• Ten Ways to Love: Answer without Arguing
• Ten Ways to Love: Enjoy without Complaint
• Ten Ways to Love: Give without Sparing
• Ten Ways to Love: Listen without Interrupting 
• Ten Ways to Love: Share without Pretending
• Ten Ways to Love: Speak without Accusing
• Ten Ways to Love: Forgive without Punishing 
• Ten Ways to Love: Pray without Ceasing 
• Ten Ways to Love: Trust without Wavering