Month: March 2010

For the past few days, not only have I been explaining the title of our new Live Event that Paula and I have created called “Making Marriage Fun Again,” I’ve attempted to give some insight into branding and marketing so you could understand that your title needs to tell people what you have to offer.  It must be a solution to a need that is widely understood and desperately wanted.

So we talked about the importance of “making.”  We have been handed the resources of life, but we alone are responsible to make something of them.  Making marriage a covenant between two lovers that takes a lifetime to grow, not build.

The third word in that title is Making Marriage Fun.  And before you dismiss that as a silly idea, think about the different levels of success in life.

Anytime you hear someone interviewed about high achievement: business, sports, music, entertainment, one word continues to come up again and again.  “We were having fun.  It just felt like fun.”  And when you’re having fun, guess what?  Everyone else around you is having fun and there is something good going on at your core.

I will never forget last year when Coach Fisher, the coach of our Tennessee Titans, was asked to give an explanation of Vince Young’s performance.  He said, and I quote, “Vince was just out there having fun.”

Marriage should be fun.  That’s the highest level of human enjoyment and achievement – fun.  That’s when you learn to dance; when you learn the keys to growing relationships over time so well that they become natural, symbiotic, and intuitive.

I want my marriage to be fun. That doesn’t mean it’s frivolous.  But it means when my wife Paula and I are having fun, that we have the fundamentals covered.  We’ve got the strong foundation.  Our core beliefs and behaviors are strong.  We understand that our mission, vision, and goals are clear in our minds.  We have zero excuses for our behavior, particularly when it’s bad.  And we have absolute trust in our motives.  And when that happens, and you couple that with intelligent, high-octane, loving conversation and talk about the future, and add to that the philosophy of W.W.O.N.D.A. – win-win, or no deal always, when it comes to my marriage, you have two people who can do almost anything together.

When marriage goes wrong, it goes very wrong.  And the first sign is, we’re not having any fun – at all.  I’m the first to understand that life can be hard, but it also ought to be fun.  That’s one of the crusades that Paula and I are on for the rest of our lives.

The word again simply means that no one, I mean no one, marries a boring person not having fun.  We got there at one time, and we can get there again.

This is a passion, a mission, something that must be done. Help us.  If you know someone who could benefit from this live event on April 30th, whether they live in the Nashville area or even in the state, invite them.  At least give them the opportunity to make the decision on their own. We’re going to have plenty of room.  We’re going to be meeting at the Financial Peace Conference Center.  It’s going to be fun, you’ll laugh, and you’ll start on the road to something special.  This could be the night that your marriage and your relationship, that your children, your family, your career, and your future changes forever.

I am absolutely positive that Paula and I can help anyone save their marriage if they’ll show up and give us a chance.

In Wednesday’s post I talked about how to write a good title and why it’s important that the title not be catchy or clever, but it should communicate the essence of what you have to offer.  Case in point: “Making Marriage Fun Again.”

As I said Wednesday, life is about making something of yourself; of your resources, talents, gifts, opportunities.  Marriage is the same way.  Marriage is something that you make over a lifetime. Making marriage is about relationships; relationships that grow deeper, richer, more intimate and profound over time, not overnight.

In the past I’ve made the mistake of talking about building relationships.  As a matter of fact several years ago I did a whole series on “building relationships that last.”  Here is the problem with that paradigm: relationships aren’t built; relationships grow.  Unhealthy relationships are diseased and die.  Healthy relationships grow and multiply.

Here’s the problem with thinking about your marriage as a building.  Buildings are linear; they have a process.  If you do certain things in a certain way you get a certain result.  For example, there are only so many ways to lay a foundation.  Walls have to be straight and they have to support the next floor above them.  The idea is that buildings are mechanical.  No matter what the facades may look like,  on the inside all good strong buildings are the same.  And that may be true of marriages as well, but that’s where the analogy falls down.  Marriages are grown.  Relationships grow.  The dating period is the time when we get together to figure out whether or not we have enough compatibility and connection to enter into a covenant as lovers who learn how to love each other well over a lifetime.

One of the problems we see married people getting into constantly is they try to treat the marriage like a contract: two partners coming together doing certain things and drawing out of the relationship certain benefits.  The problem is, marriage is not a contract between two partners.  It’s a covenant between two lovers. When I say lovers, I am not talking primarily about sexual contact, though that’s included.

My job as a man-up man is to love my wife well.  That doesn’t just include the bedroom.  It includes the kitchen, the living room, the garage, and every other part of our home.  To love her well is that I have to know her, be a student and understand her.

As her husband I help her grow.  As a matter of fact, that’s what the word “husband” means in its root.  Husbandry is the art of growing things and knowing how to make them healthy.

Back again to “making marriage.”  Marriage is something that is created, fashioned, and made between two people.  So when we chose the title, “Making Marriage,” we were pointing exactly toward the nature of what two people do over a lifetime.

If you think when you said, “I do,” you’re done, you are in deep trouble.  “I do” just starts the growing process that lasts a lifetime.

What are you making of your marriage?  As a matter of fact, what you have in your marriage today is what you have been making of it in the past.  Now if your marriage is miserable, you can change it today by beginning to make of it something very different.  That’s what we’re going to be doing at the “Making Marriage Fun Again” Live Event on April 30th.  We’ll be giving people seven super keys toward growing an amazing marriage over time.

For a long time Paula and I have been burdened with the state of marriage in America.  Not only have we seen young married people walk away from their marriage covenant, but what’s alarming is seeing people after 25, 27, 30, 35, 38, even 40 years walking away from a marriage that had been hell for so many years but they had put a happy face on.

In response to that, we’ve written a Live Event program that will be launching on April 30th here in Nashville.  You can check out the MakingMarriageFunAgain.com web site to find out information and sign up.

The point of this blog, though, is not to let you know about that Live Event, but to let you know about the name, “Making Marriage Fun Again.” As a writer and a copywriter, as a person who has ideas that he wants to communicate, help that he wants to offer, I’ve worked hard over the years at writing titles and copy for books and articles that create an essence of what I think people need.

“Making Marriage Fun Again” isn’t just a clever title.  And when you write titles to communicate your brand, your offering, your service, your organization’s mission, you need to understand that “cutesy” is not that important.  Communicating the essence of what you’re trying to do in the fewest words, is.  Creating energy and movement is important.  Let me give you an example of why each word was chosen.

The title begins with the word, “making.”  Making is important because that’s what we do.  That is our task on the earth.  That is what God has put us here to do; not to endure, but to make something of ourselves, make something of our lives.  And when two people come together in a covenant of marriage, they are making something new.  They are commencing on a brand new, not just venture, but a brand new family.  A new family is formed and it is not yet made; it is formed.  And there is a big difference between forming a thing and making a thing. “Making” is really important. So when you get married, you understand that’s a brief amount of time – courtship, dating, or whatever.  But the being married; that’s the years, and the decades.  That’s the ups and the downs, the apartments, the houses, and the moving across country.  It’s the children and sickness and illness and fights and making up, and anniversaries, and Christmases, and putting things together, and mowing yards, and hello’s and good-byes, and deaths and births.  That’s the making of the thing.

And maybe “making” is the most important word in this title.  It shows action and something to put your hands to.  Paula and I meet so many people who have just given up on making anything of their marriages
and even their own lives.  When you are in the “making” mode, creating, innovating, working, fashioning, forming, decorating, planting, growing, then you are about a good thing.

So let me just stop here in this blog post today and ask you, “What are you making of yourself? What are you making of your life, of your marriage, of your opportunities, of your education?  What are you making of the advantages that you’ve been given?  What are you making of the help that’s been offered?”

Remember, you have no control over what you confront in a 24-hour period.  But you are ultimately in control of what you make of it.  If you don’t like what you’ve made so far of your marriage, you can make a brand new start – today! It only takes one of you – the husband or the wife – to choose.

Remember, we call God our Maker.  We are the made. We were made by a Creator, so therefore we are creative; we’ve been commissioned to use the abilities and the life that we’ve been given. So make something beautiful.  Make something bold.  Make something that will endure and last.

If there is one thing that proves that all men and women are created equal, it is the issue of problems.  We all have them.  They come to us regardless of who we are, what station of life we occupy, what we own, what we control, how much we’ve been educated, or who’s on our family tree.

The problem with having problems is failing to see the purpose.  If I’ve learned anything in my life with God, it’s that God does nothing without a reason.

I’ve discovered in all phases of my life – private, personal, professional – that God uses problems for at least these five reasons.

1. God uses problems to stop me. Oftentimes the problem is to stop me from going down the wrong road, to stop me from getting settled deeply into self-destructive behavior; behavior that not only hurts me and the people around me, but the God who created me and has redeemed me.
2. God uses problems to inspect me. By that I mean problems become like mirrors, often showing us how inadequate our training, or our strength might be.  It allows us to know where we are.
3. God uses problems to protect me. Oftentimes a closed door or the end of the road is more protection than correction.
4. God uses problems to perfect me. Let’s be honest, it’s the bumps in life that allow you to start climbing. Given our own devices, most of us seek comfort in taking the easy road.  Yet this is not what God has planned for any of us.  So problems are ways to make us uncomfortable; to get us out of the comfort zone into the crisis zone where the action is really happening.
5. God uses problems to promote me. In the movie, “Alice in Wonderland,” one of the key moments, White Queen says that in the moment of crisis a hero must step forth.  In that story it was Alice.  In your story, where is the crisis, the problem, the wrong that needs to be righted, the load that needs to be lifted, or the injustice that needs to be corrected for which you need to step forward and be the hero?  Without problems and the ability to win over them, there would be no higher level to which each of us desires to ascend.

Remember, the more you become, the more problems you will likely attract.  If you think for one minute you can avoid problems by successfully maneuvering the ones you have now, you are kidding yourself.  You, like everyone else on the planet are in one of three places: either going into a crisis, in a crisis, or coming out of one, all of which God has a purpose for if you’re willing to embrace it.

I’m getting ready to say something that no one wants to hear, particularly those who have gone to marriage counseling.  But I’m saying it based on my experience not only in sending people to marriage counseling, but doing my fair share and having to navigate my own marriage in which I myself have cause my wife no small amount of pain.

Marriage counseling in America sucks!  Yeah, I said it.  It sucks.  People are paying good money, lots of money over a long period of time, getting advice that leads them absolutely nowhere.  I am appalled at some of the advice people get when they go to marriage counseling.  I am not even going to list it because some of it is so vulgar and nonsensical.

It is so bad, that after being in the Nashville area for over twenty years, I am down to one person I can recommend with any sense of confidence and integrity. You know who he is?  I’ll tell you.  He is David George.

Paula and I have dealt with many couples and it seems we continue to deal with the same thing over and over again.  And people are absolutely shocked by the advice that we give.  But if followed, it’s amazing how it works.  That is the genesis of Making Marriage Fun Again.

We’ve simply decided that we’ve learned enough through our own mistakes and shortcomings, and the lives of others who have both failed and wonderfully succeeded (and there are many) at their marriages, to this offer Live Event.

One thing you won’t get from us is marriage advice that is over-spiritualized, Biblically inaccurate and brutal, and tries to convince you that BS smells sweet. We have found a way to get on the same page. And without getting on the same page, your marriage is doomed.  There are an amazing number of people who get married without getting on the same page.

So here is why I wrote this blog: to at least help those of you who need marriage counseling (and there are many of you).   It is very difficult.  And if you have found yourself frustrated, join the club.

Here is my advice to you.  Instead of going out and paying an exorbitant amount of money to sit month after month after month in a drab office, listening to people ask you about how you feel, why not do this?  Why not devise your own marriage-saving back up plan?  There are three parts.

1. Find some advocates (people who love you) and get around them.  They’ll support you emotionally.  Tell them as much of the truth as comfortable and let them understand and walk with you through this hard place.
2. Find some advisors. These are people who are ahead of you.  They are making marriage work.  It could even be your pastor, or a grandfather; someone you both respect and look up to, far enough removed from the event they can give you objective advice.
3. Find some arbitrators. You need to find a place where, if your marriage has deteriorated to the point that you can’t talk with each other without going into the emotional stratosphere, then you need arbitrators who can sit down and listen to both sides without emotion and help you come to some conclusion.

I am amazed at the number of people who get married and who are married without a back-up plan. They move to “conflict island”,  all alone, living with their pain and secrets.  And even when they try marriage counseling, it falls woefully short.

Hey, how about this?  How about going back to church?  How about finding yourself a good place that welcomes in the beat-up, the broken, the betrayed, and the bored; gives them a seat at the table, and walks with them to a place of healing?  There are far more out there than you’ve been led to believe

Paula and I went live today with our MakingMarriageFunAgain.com site, announcing our Live Event coming April 30th, here in the Nashville area.

As we thought and prayed over three years about what we could do in response to what we’re seeing, we think this is the very best thing we can do.  And that is, to sit down and put together a program that will present information, entertainment, and inspiration all in one place.

Here’s what we’ve learned… (continued below)

As marriages go, so goes our society.  America’s ills are ills that begin in the home between husbands and wives, and the breakdown of their relationships.  We’re convinced that the best way to save our country is to save her marriages; to bring back the belief that a man and woman loving each other for a lifetime is the very best way to build wealth, stability, and raise children to adulthood who can take us into the future with confidence and goodness.

The question is, if your marriage is in trouble, where do you go? You can go to church and very seldom hear about marriage in American churches.  I know this because surveying the podcasts for years and it’s rare that there is a marriage series taught.  And even when it is, it’s so spiritual, it lacks any practical application.

You can go to marriage counseling, but our experience is, most all marriage counseling is next to worthless. Why?  Well, usually in marriage counseling the couple is not counseled together.  They are separated.  And even when they are, they deal with their problems in secret; no support, no help, no understanding of those around them who love them most.  In America you get married and move to “conflict island.”  You don’t let anyone know you have any problems until your marriage is over and you’re headed for divorce court.

Not only is marriage counseling in the main, not effective, it is incredibly expensive. And let’s be honest.  A lot of times counselors have a vested interest in keeping you coming back because this is how they make their living. That’s not to dump on all marriage counseling.  I know some who are very good.  But for most people, there just aren’t many places to go for help.  Thus, the birth of the Making Marriage Fun Again Live Event.

Paula and I truly believe that this is going to be a transformational night for a lot of people.  We’re working hard and we believe we have something really new, fresh, and exciting to present. We’ve really made sure that guys are going to love this night too.  We’re not going to break up into small groups and talk about our “feelings.”  We’re not going to guilt people – men or women.  This is going to be an inspirational night where you’re going to see practical training, and you’re going to have really good people grow great marriages over a lifetime.

Check out the web site makingmarriagefunagain.com. Share it with friends.  This could be an evening that could turn our life, your family, and your future around.  We truly believe this is going to be the best thing you have ever done for yourself.  We can help you save your marriage, but you have to meet us halfway.