I am going to take a risk and say that Part 5 of our series will not illicit as many questions, responses and emails as Part 4. We have been so grateful and consider it a huge honor to receive your emails and your questions. The level of honesty and transparency that so many readers of RefineUs...
Before we move on to Part 5 of our series tomorrow, I feel like God prompted us to pause and bring clarity to some things Trisha talked about in part 4. Her post last Friday was the most viewed and raised the most questions of anything we have written so far...which is awesome! We want to be...
The X Factor - "An unknown or hard-to-define influence; a factor with unknown or unforeseeable consequences."
I would venture to say that the “X Factor” could easily be changed to the “seX Factor” in most marriages today. Sex seems to be the “unknown or...
I am pretty sure that this post is going to tick some people off. I am confident that there will be some people that read this next principle and think that I am being legalistic; that I am going to extremes and that I am not in touch with culture. Some of you will read this post and you will say...
Trisha and I just returned from five nights and six days at an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean. It was an incentive trip I earned through my job. It was such a blessing to have some much needed time away with the love of my life. God gave us this trip at just the right time. Our batteries...
Valentines Week we put together an 8-Part series of blog posts entitled 8 Things that Destroyed Our Marriage. God showed up in some very cool ways and has used that series to reach into people’s hearts and marriages and the response was awesome! We did have several people say to us...
I have to be honest and say that I have wrestled with this final post all week. Trisha and I have intentionally saved this final mistake for tonight. I am not a psychologist and I am not a counselor…heck…I am not even a pastor at this point in my life. But here is what I believe...
As we come to this post, I am so thankful for my wife sharing her heart in Part 6. Forgiveness and reconciliation are a process, and this has been a 3 year journey to get to where we are today. There have been so many highs and lows, but through it all God has sustained us and hasn’t just...
One would have to question as we dive into part 6 of 8 how in the world Justin and I made it past #5. What is scary about 1 through 5 is that all of them are or can be very subtle! For me it went something like this: “So what… if Justin prayed for everyone in our small group and...
8 Things that Destroyed our marriage part 5
After reading the first four mistakes and knowing that there are four more mistakes coming, one might think “Man, your marriage sucked! No wonder you almost got divorced.” The irony is that we had a good marriage. We had the best marriage we...
The picture to the right is from 2005. It was our 10th Anniversary. We spent money we didn't have (see mistake #3) :) and went on a cruise. Don't we look happy? Wouldn't you say from this picture that our marriage was in good shape? Three month later, we imploded. How do you go from a 10 Year...
A few weeks ago I had lunch with a good friend of mine. He and his wife had a major argument the night before and he needed to talk. As he began to share what was going on, it was pretty clear that in almost every single area of their relationship, they weren’t on the same page. He felt...
Spring break 2007 was the best family vacation we have ever had. We loaded up the mini-van and took off for Destin, Florida. Every time we went somewhere in Destin I said to Trisha, “This looks so familiar.” She kinda laughed it off, which was weird, because I wasn’t joking. We...
For most of our marriage I looked to Valentine’s Day to make up for a lot…I wanted Valentine’s Day to put some romance back in our marriage. I wanted Valentine’s Day to make up for how much time I spent at the church and not at home. I thought Valentine’s Day could...
