this part added by my wife, TBV: Step away from the emotion of the moment. I really struggle to think clearly, reason well, and see things from Brett’s point of view, when I am caught up in the emotion of the immediate argument. I may be hurting, angry, frustrated, sad, feeling sorry for myself, or incredibly teary. I often cannot think straight at all and this results in me “blanking out” – literally shutting out [...]
I don’t think tbV and i are there yet, in fact i know we’re not. It’s definitely a work in progress and there is definitely progress because we are working on it. We argue a lot better (in terms of nicer, friendlier, love-lier) than we used to when we were going out, but we can do even better. But there are definitely some principles we can share from what we do take care to do. [...]
This one goes out to those of you who have girlfriends or wives (and if you’ve been paying attention and using your brains all along this series you will realise that most of what i say would fit into a ‘how to love your man better’ series or be applied to family and friends and work colleagues to differing extents so i hope no-one has been put off by the titles – i am specifically [...]
so i recently was on an orange river trip with a bunch of youth okes linked to a southern suburbs church youth group... two of the guys on the trip wore t-shirts (which i addressed with them both - one directly and one a little more indirectly cos i couldn't remember who had been wearing it) which distressed me a lot [1] cartoon picture made up of two blocks - in the first block a [...]
i do have lots of thorts on this topic and so hopefully i will blog some of them down here as well sometime but the beautiful Val has written a really brilliant blog on 'the honeymoon phase' of marriage so if you are married (and even if you're not and are just taking notes, check this out!) beautiful lady blog on the honeymoon phase
so yes it's lateish thurs nite or feels that way cos i am weirdly quite tired and tbV is upstairs working hard cos she has to get thesis changes to her people before she goes away... which is tomorrow - my lovely wife has a whole weekend of secret plans (at least til sun when we mite be back for the grand prix or at the very least enGAGE church service and world cup final [...]
so in exactly one week's time i will have been married to the beautiful Val for exactly one year - and what a year it's been! as i say often to people - 'marriage is highly recommended... to the right person!' and the 'to the right person' bit is the key - not cos i believe in any kind of God-brings-this-person-and-that-person-together necessarily or that i believe that there is only one 'the one' as opposed [...]
do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good i really struggle to ‘get’ how people have such issues with Jesus-following when the basics of what it is all about is gems like that – love God, love people, look after orphans and widows, forgive those who wrong you, look after the land you’ve been given, share this love message... i do sadly understand how people can have issues with christians and a [...]
i find loving my wife very easy. and i’m not just talking about the flutter flutter feeling “ooh i luv my wife” but love in action i would like to imagine everyone loves their wife as well as i do but i’m sure a lot of people don’t. and i’m not talking from an arrogant point of “ooh look at me, look at how well i love my wife” but just a day to day [...]
so recently my wife - the beautiful Val (because clearly) – was on a camp where we had been asked to speak (actually first time the invitation came to us as a couple) and someone was chatting to her and said something along the lines of ‘so are you the tagalong?’ – hm, strangely that person still lives today, but ja Val was not super amped and looking back at that camp, if you had [...]