CONTENTS

• JUST VISITING
• FEATURE ARTICLE: "IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT MAKE THE DIFFERENCE."
• RANDOM QUOTES ON MOTHERHOOD
• IF I WERE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT, I WOULD...
  THE CHRIST-CENTERED WIFE
  Hope That Transforms - Part 1
  by Mikal Frazier

The longer I live, the more I believe that healthy marriages flourish because spouses make it a point to perform successive, thoughtful acts of kindness. I like it a lot when she turns down the bed covers at night, fluffs up my pillow and sets the electric blanket controls right where I want them. I've tried to put some of my thoughts on the importance of little things in this week's feature article.

Before you receive another newsletter, we will have celebrated "Mother's Day" here in the United States. I'm always a little sad on this day, because my mother is no longer alive to honor. I thought you might like to read a few random quotes on the subject of motherhood that I've picked up here and there in my reading.

I'm so delighted with the series that Mikal is doing on the Spirit filled wife. You've had positive things to say about her writing. Please consider what she has to say. I can guarantee that she has put a lot of time researching and thinking about what to say.

I miss Erma Bombeck. Although she was regarded as a humorist, her practical observations on human life were priceless. She echoed a consistent theme - "little things make a big difference." She knew her husband loved her when he said five simple words, "I filled your tank, today."

Successful marriages thrive on small deeds of kindness and thoughtfulness, mixed with expressions of appreciation. A little over twenty years ago, our marriage was in deep trouble. Any objective outside observer would have concluded that the prospects of salvaging our marriage were no better than those of the Titanic remaining afloat after ramming an iceberg. A marriage counselor got my attention when he asked, "Norman, do you thank Ann for that magic drawer filled with socks and underwear?"

Maybe you're thinking, "That's dumb. Why should I thank her for putting the socks away. I mow the yard; she puts the socks in the drawer. Does she need to be thanked for doing her job?" In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul articulated an important principle in his discussion of church relationships. He compared church members to human body parts, ". . .the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor" (1 Corinthians 12:23). That same principle applies to a marriage. Any husband, worth his salt, will praise his wife when she prepares the perfect lasagna to serve his business clients at a dinner party. But will he notice that she ironed the curtains? A wife will express her appreciation when he takes her out to a special restaurant for a candlelight dinner, but does she say anything about the newly washed and waxed automobile?

Gary Smalley talks about the importance of honor in a relationship. Honor is basically nothing more than thoughtfulness. My wife is the most important human being on this earth to me, but when I fail to notice her expressions of kindness, I'm not honoring her. I may have all sorts of inward feelings of devotion and commitment bottled up inside me, but until I express it either in actions or words, she doesn't know she's being honored. She needs to hear me say, "When I eat lasagna like that I'd think you were an Italian chef, if I didn't know better." That outwardly expresses the honor I feel in my heart. Again Paul was speaking in the context of church relationships, but the principle is much broader in Romans 12:10 - "Honor one another above yourselves" Kitty Kallen's hit from the fifties just about sums it up. "Blow me a kiss from across the room,/Say I look nice when I'm not./ A line a day when you're far away,/ Little things mean a lot."

"Mothering is a very absorbing occupation when little people in a household multiply, and how well a woman handles those demands depends on her sense of personhood." -Gladys M. Hunt.

"Let France have good mothers and she will have good sons." - Napoleon Bonaparte

"What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way to the coffin." Henry Ward Beecher.

"All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother." - Abraham Lincoln

"There are few jobs, if any, that carry as much significance as that of being a mother." - Dick Innes

"When a woman is twenty, a child deforms her; when he is thirty, he preserves her; and when forty he makes her young again." - Leon Blum

"The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and in a sense tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent." - Erich Fromm

"It is . . . sometimes easier to head an institute for the study of child guidance than it is to turn one brat into a decent human being." - Joseph Wood Krutch

"The mother who listens to all the unfunny 'knock-knock' jokes and the vivid description of the student who threw up in the lunchroom is the same mother who will be listening as her teenager tells her about his classmates who are trying marijuana and going to motels." - Sandra Humphrey

"One of the easiest traps for a mother to fall into is that of over-caring for her family to the exclusion of outsiders. To take care of your family is, in itself, a good thing. But it falls far short of God's love, because it can quickly become an exclusive kind of love." - Eugenia Price.

". . . many in today's world are attempting to communicate that having children, being a wife and mother can never lead to fulfillment. This, of course, is in direct contradiction to the Scriptures and it runs counter to God's principles." - Gene Getz

"Children turn into people. They speak rationally if aloofly, lecture you on your manners, condescend to teach you about eclectic criticism, and incline to get married. And there you are, left with all that learning you have so painfully accumulated in twenty-odd years and with no more progeny on whom to lavish it." - Phyllis McGinley

"A woman, who creates and sustains a home, and under whose hands children grow up to be strong and pure men and women, is a creator second only to God." - Helen Hunt Jackson.

"When we soberly face the demands of motherhood, we may well be driven to despair or evasion, nonetheless the creative urge is undeniably there." - Elaine Stedman

THE CHRIST-CENTERED WIFE

He walks frantically, bursts into the patient examining room and demands from the doctor, "Who do you think you are? You think you can take away my hope like that? That's all I have. Got it? That's all I have." Moments before the doctor had told Michael Keaton in My Life he had only a few months to live. Medicine could do no more for the cancer that was stealing his life. When hope is gone, there really is nothing else.

Hope, a powerful motivator, drives explorers to go against all odds and search unknown lands for the fountain of youth, compels athletes to push their bodies beyond endurance, fortifies a parent to stand watch over a desperately ill child, and hope creates the energy which draws a man and woman together into a lifetime covenant relationship.

Research indicates that we human beings require hope to function in a healthy manner. Children with a strong future orientation (hope) make better choices concerning chastity, academic achievement and drugs. Anticipated pleasure (hope) can serve as an antidote for depression. Fathers who have their eyes on the coming of Jesus (hope) more successfully transmit their spiritual values to their children.

Christian Counselor and author Larry Crabb explores this need we have for hope in his excellent book Inside Out. He explains that we were created to live in a perfect world with a perfect relationship with the Father and perfect relationships with one another. We lost that perfect bliss in the garden. We will never have it here. Never finding that completeness leaves us with an ache in our soul.

Mortal beings have always searched for a solution for their ache. Searching for that solution in all the wrong places leaves us empty and hurting. Solomon tells us of his hurt and disappointment in Ecclesiastes As Crabb says, "We don't like to hurt. And there is no worse pain for fallen people than facing an emptiness we cannot fill."

In Jesus time, people had the same ache. In John 7 an occasion of celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles is recorded. Historians believe that out of a misunderstanding of Isaiah 12:3, the Jewish leaders designed a ceremony intended to provide a balm for their aching hearts. In this ceremony, on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, the priest would take a golden vial and fill it with water from the fount of Siloam. With much celebration the vial was carried through the gate of the temple and the water mixed with wine and then poured on the sacrifice on the altar. This scripture in Isaiah says, "With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation." The originators of the ritual were searching for that promised wholeness, salvation, hope. (AAF, Vol 1, No 48)

It could be argued that hope or the lack of it determines every decision we make. What I choose to do today is because of what I am expecting in the future -- hope. If that is not what I base my decisions on, then I have evidently decided I do not care about the future or I have become hopeless.

Hope for wholeness and salvation is involved in our choice to marry. We convince ourselves in those days of courting that we will have the ideal relationship in which we will feel safe, content, passionate, excited, peaceful and totally adored FOREVER. Historian Karen Lystra tells us that beginning in the early 1800's, romantic love became "an intellectual and social force of premier significance." You see romantic love has not always been a prerequisite for marriage. And dear Christian women here is the clincher for those of us who marry with these impossible expectations. Lystra goes on to say, "romantic love contributed to the displacement of God by the lover as the central symbol of ultimate significance."

We marry with high expectations (hope) and inevitably those expectations will lead to disappointment and sometimes total alienation. At the core of these expectations it seems that we expect our spouse to be our god, or our marriage to be our god. If we are displacing God with our lover, then it will be impossible for us to receive balm for our ache. Your husband cannot be everything you want him to be. It is impossible, because he is a mortal man. (Please remember you are not meeting all of his needs perfectly either.)

Lori Gordon in her book Passage to Intimacy delineates three elements of the hope which ignites a love relationship. They are:

1. That all the good things I have had in my life, such as freedom, autonomy and the power to make my own decisions, I will continue to have.
2. That everything I ever wanted but didn't have, I will find with you -- whether it is affection, sex, friendship, loyalty, devotion, trust, a playmate.
3. That everything bad or upsetting that ever happened to me before will not happen with you, such as disappointment, betrayal, fear, misunderstandings, arguments, violence or abandonment.

It is this ache which brings men and women into my office. Someplace deep inside they realize something is not right. The hope of finding a remedy fuels the marital strife that demoralizes marriages and devastates children.

Your first step toward becoming a Spirit-filled wife and adopting the behaviors of the Christ- centered wife is realizing that Jesus is your only hope. If you have been waiting for your husband to soothe your ache, to fulfill your needs, to make you happy, then you have been making him your god. This is not according to God's plan and it is unfair to your husband. Only turning to Jesus as your first love can bring you joy.

In John 7 referred to earlier, Jesus proclaims to the people that He is the only answer for their thirst and ours. And then He promises the Comforter, our complete source of protection, nurture, and care. (AAF, Vol 1, No. 48)

As long as we are here we are going to ache for that perfect union with the Father. Crabb says, "An aching soul is evidence not of neurosis or spiritual immaturity, but of realism."

The transforming power of this hope comes from realizing that any difficulty or disappointment here is nothing in comparison to a future with Jesus and his glorious inheritance.

Ephesians 1:18,19: "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe."

NEXT WEEK'S FEATURE STUDY: "Coping with Time Pressure in the Home"