Thriving During The Holidays

Raise your hand if you don’t feel some twinge of anxiety about the family dynamics during the holidays. If you’re honest, you feel pretty conflicted about having your parents or siblings over for Christmas dinner, much less visiting your childhood home. And you likely feel somewhat reluctant about going to Read more…

Day 13: Forgiveness

This post is a part of The 15-Day Relationship Challenge. If you’re just now tuning in, click here for the whole series. MORNINGForgiveness. Letting go, holding on.  Good morning. Welcome to Day 13. Imagine dangling from a cliff, you’ve just slipped and caught a tree branch growing from the mountainside with your Read more…

Married Teens

What were you like when you were 13 years old? How were you as a kid when conflict happened in the family? Where did you go and what did you do to feel safe? What was your role in the family surrounding conflict? Sometimes when conflict happens, we can become Read more…

Avoiding Hurt Limits Intimacy

Couples that avoid hurt from happening (or the hurt that has already happened) are preventing intimacy from developing. No one really enjoys being hurt, and being hurt is a part of all close intimate relationships. It’s going to happen. The difficulty is in viewing pain as though it is a Read more…

Grace & Gratitude

Before I release a pre-marital couple to the wild world of marriage, I challenge them to adopt two words (concepts) as cornerstones for their marriage: Grace and Gratitude. Here’s why. Showing grace implies forgiveness, acceptance, and a belief that your spouse is a better man/woman than what the offending action Read more…

Relationship is Conflict

If you want to be in relationships, you have to learn how to do conflict. One of my mentors, Dan Allender, says it well: “All good communication leads to conflict.” Most of us believe that good communication will lead to consensus, not conflict. The word “communicate” comes from the Latin Read more…

Criticism

Criticism without hope will lead to contempt.Criticism with hope will spawn creativity. It’s way easier to give the criticism than to receive it, but we all need helpful, loving, critical feedback in order to grow and change. We can be more receptive to hearing critical feedback if we feel secure, Read more…