CONTENTS

• JUST VISITING
• FEATURE ARTICLE: "EMERGENCY ROAD SERVICE FOR YOUR FAMILY"
• IF I WERE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT, I WOULD....
  THE CHRIST-CENTERED WIFE
  JUST HOLD ON
  by Mikal Frazier
  

JUST VISITING

I look forward to reviewing each episode of Mikal Frazier's continuing series on "The Spirit Filled Wife." I have an advantage over you. Not only, do I get to see the copy before you do, but I have the opportunity to discuss the content with her. Although Mikal aims her articles at the Christian wife, most of the principles are equally applicable to the Christian husband.

That's especially true in today's offering titled, "Just Hold On." Reading over the copy for this week's article brought back memories of a time twenty years ago when Ann and I were struggling to see if we could put back together the pieces of a shattered relationship. It was impossible to predict whether our relationship would remain intact. I was frustrated because I couldn't control the amount of progress Ann was making. For me a major breakthrough took place the day I realized that my first priority was to concentrate on my own relationship with the Lord. I believed the scriptures and I knew the Lord promised the "peace that passes understanding." The Lord's promise of peace was not contingent on Ann's response to me. I decided that my number one goal was to be a Christ- like person (the male equivalent of Mikal's "Spirit filled wife.") When I did that (and really meant it), I took a tremendous amount of pressure off Ann and our relationship began to improve rapidly. Mikal has done a remarkable job of explaining the nuts and bolts of that principle. I highly recommend it to you.

Norman

A few months ago, I called the motor club to ask for emergency road service. I would have preferred not to need the service, but I'm extremely grateful that it was available. I was 200 miles from home at the time.

Sometimes, we need emergency road service for our families.
Family harmony can break down in normally healthy homes. When that happens, you may need a major overhaul, but if your relationship is basically stable, some of these emergency road repair suggestions might help.

Take a stand for your family when other pressures would compromise your home.
In Des Moines, Iowa, a company executive informed a worker, "You are being transferred to Detroit." The worker valued his wife and children more than he did his position. He said to his superiors, "I'm not moving to Detroit. I'm not going to put my family into that situation." Was it costly? You bet it was. He had to take a cut in pay and probably doomed himself to a life of lateral moves within his company, but he told his family, "You mean more to me than my job does."

Take time to talk with your spouse and children.
How well do you know your wife? Your husband? Your children? The Bible speaks of a husband living with his wife "according to knowledge" (1 Peter 3:7) I didn't do that very well in the early years of our marriage. For fifteen years, I bought my wife carnations every time there was a special occasion that required flowers (They were cheap). One day I learned that she loves yellow roses and adores orchids, but she doesn't care for carnations all that much. It's amazing how much we can learn about those who are closest to us simply by asking them to tell us about their likes and dislikes.

Play together.
According to Proverbs 17:22, " A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones." A family that never laughs together and never enjoys anything together is probably a family that's headed for some serious trouble down the road. Laughter is an expression of happiness and love. When I recall the fondest memories of my children's years of growing up, I'm inevitably drawn to the times when we had fun together.

Does your family need emergency road service? The most important ingredients in my road service tips involve time and genuine caring. If you've been neglecting those ingredients, you need to stop and reassess your priorities. If you don't, you may need a major overhaul.

When we do not "hold onto ourselves," we sacrifice our own integrity. Integrity has to do with being able to make choices for my own behavior and the state of my emotions in the context of a relationship with my partner, without having to control my partner's behavior or emotions. I have integrity when I am filled with the Spirit, when I am choosing Lordship faith in Jesus, because then I have a changeless internal core. (Remember the changeless core which is necessary for real change? AAF Newsletter, Volume 2 Number 11 ) Because of my changeless core, the Holy Spirit, I now have integrity which Webster calls "wholeness, the state of being unimpaired, soundness." Therefore, from my integrity ("wholeness, state of being unimpaired, soundness") I can choose to make Christ-like choices for my behavior and emotions in the midst of whatever kind of behavior or emotions my partner is "choosing."

When in conflict, if I allow my husband's behavior to determine my behavior or my emotions, then I am becoming unsound, not-whole, and impaired. My integrity is diminished. To begin building integrity or to center oneself in Jesus, the following actions are essential to the process.

I must recognize there is an action between stimulus and response. I am not like Pavlov's dogs. Between any stimulus (my husband's behavior) and a response (my behavior) to that stimulus, I have a choice. Because I have integrity or wholeness given me by Jesus Christ I do not have to react out of a survival instinct. I am filled with the Spirit which gives me power to make a choice, a Christ-like choice.

I must take responsibility for myself. To "hold onto myself" I must first take responsibility for my own well-being, my own contentment, my own joy. Remember, God has told me to choose joy, and to do so unconditionally, particularly when I am in the midst of a trial (James 1:2). Therefore, when a trial of conflict arises in marriage, the wife can choose to activate her Lordship faith in Jesus which will result in her being filled with the Holy Spirit. She must remind herself of her identity as a child of God. She must remember that her worth comes from God. God gives her value and validity. From this position she is ready to choose a response which will first glorify God, and then strengthen her relationship with her husband.

I will now operate from my fullness and not my neediness. When I am needy, I must have my husband's validation. When I believe I MUST have my husband's validation, then I am totally dependent on him. When I need him to validate me then he must agree with me. He must say what I want to hear or I am not validated. He must do what I want him to do or I am invalidated. When he will not validate me, I feel unloved. Since I have married him out of my neediness, and now he cannot validate me and assure me of his undying love, I feel hopeless. But if I am operating out of my fullness in the Spirit, my identify is not dependent on my husband's validation. He is no longer my god to whom I am looking to fill me up and satisfy my every need. God, the Father, has already validated me.

Blame must end. When I "hold onto myself" and I am taking responsibility for myself, then blame cannot exist. This pseudo-luxury goes out the window. I cannot hold my husband responsible for my state of being any longer. Remember we are filled with the Holy Spirit and will therefore have "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." When I am choosing to be filled with the Spirit, my well-being is my choice. No one can take it from me. I refuse to give anyone else that kind of power over me. To blame others is to act from a stance of fear.

I must choose to not give way to the sinful condition of fear. As an adult I can now understand that I cannot be destroyed, obliterated, or reduced to nothing as I mentioned in my last article. I have the promise of Romans 8 that nothing can separate me from my lifeline. Therefore I do not have to react out of fear as if my existence were dependent on the outcome of the conflict, but I can choose a spirit-filled response, because "perfect love casts out fear."

I can choose to be still and know that He is God. I can choose to stand still in the midst of conflict. I can "hold onto myself," calm my spirit by choosing to keep in step with His Spirit, and choose the response of a Christ-centered wife.

I will no longer choose frantic, reactive pursuit or distance. Reactive pursuit and reactive distance are couched in fear. These behaviors are discussed in greater detail in the AAF Newsletter of July 13, 1997, Volume 2 Number 25 . The Spirit-filled wife, who has been the pursuer, does not feel so needy that she must make contact with her spouse to be validated. Or if she has been the distancer, she can now recognize the process of distancing she has been participating in and choose to stay with the interaction, "holding onto herself" without the fear of losing herself. (I have heard the pursuer referred to as the Pacific Ocean taking in and engulfing any other body of water with which it comes into contact. The distancer was pictured as a tiny pond which could be swallowed up by the greater mass.)

I will now operate from an "I" position. Because I am a child of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit and centered in Jesus, I can now operate from an "I" position. I now have an identity dependent on nothing else except Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. This is where I am. This is what I am feeling. This is where my reality is, and now that I am operating out of my fullness, I can listen to and consider your reality without fear of losing mine. I can consider your reality and compare it with mine. I can modify mine if necessary realizing I am not diminished in doing so. Nor am I diminished if I choose to stay with my reality and you choose to stay with yours.

I can become the transitional person. Satan will have lost his hold on my relationship with my husband. Satan's greatest work is in disrupting relationships, whether it be a relationship with the Father, or a relationship between brethren, or a relationship between husband and wife. Because my power is coming from His Spirit I can now state my concern, or my hurt, and then move toward my husband in a positive manner. I possess the capacity to become what Paul Faulkner calls the "transitional person." I can decide that my relationship with my husband is more important than the issue that would divide us. This is what Jesus did for us while we were yet sinners. He said, by his behavior, that his relationship with us was more important that the issue of our sin.

"What's fair" will no longer be a criteria for my decisions. At the times I have thought my circumstances in my marriage to be most unfair, I was shocked to learn my husband also felt mistreated. Strange! Choosing to become stuck in what is fair and what is right delivers a death knell to a relationship. The messages, "That's not fair" or "That's not right" and then a need for validation of that position are instrumental in all relationship difficulties. You remember Jesus was often told, "That's not right." It was not right for the little children to come to Him. It was not right for the woman to pour out the entire jar of expensive perfume on His head. It was not right to talk to Samaritans. The most unright and unfair episode in all of human history was the cross, and Jesus chose submission rather than "stuckness" in what was right and what was fair. Again, state your position to your partner and then move toward him in a positive manner.

If Elizabeth or Vivien or Kathleen could have turned loose of molding their husbands to suit themselves, which was really a cry to be loved, and out of their fullness, integrity, and ability to "hold onto themselves" had moved in a positive way toward their partners, what would they have lost? If they had turned loose of having to win the battle, how would any of them have been diminished? Elizabeth might have found joy, peace, and sobriety. Perhaps Vivien would not have had something to worry about tomorrow. And Kathleen, her life really would have been spared, along with the beautiful chandelier. The process toward fullness, integrity, and holding onto yourself is literally losing your life to find it, because what we consider life saving is too often destructive, especially in relationships.

(Note: Using the terms "integrity" and "holding on to self" to denote healthy functioning of the individual in the context of relationship comes from David Schnarch's book Constructing the Sexual Crucible and Passionate Marriage.)

Mikal Frazier, MA, MMFT, is a licensed family therapist with a practice in Minden and Bossier City, LA. She is a wife, mother of three children and has two grandchildren.

NEXT WEEK'S FEATURE ARTICLE: "WHEN IS SELF DISCLOSURE HEALTHY?