Saturday, November 24, 2012
Trades of Hope Styleboards
I made these styleboards for Trades of Hope, a company I co-founded that is creating sustainable businesses for families around the world! My favorite part about it all (in addition to our beautiful accessories!) is that everyone at Trades of Hope is showing Real Love to women around the world!
Monday, November 5, 2012
The Losing Win: Unmasking the Immature One
I really like listening to music written to bring God glory; however, my most favorite exception to "Christian music" are Paramore songs. Oh, they rock my world; and there's one particular line, after a bridge leading into the ending choruses, that sings, oh so profoundly, "why do we like to hurt so much?"
I hear those words and as I'm driving down the highway in a rush -- rushing, always rushing -- they catch me and bring me to a place of personal familiarity. I feel those words because I have, even if momentarily, been gratified by hurting someone else emotionally. I put them in their place, nodded at my job well done, to triumph over the matter at hand.
But the words that pierce and wound have a longevity stretching farther than the matter at hand. I wish I was the only one who did this. But we see the husband and wife who love each other on the inside speak loud, thoughtless words on the outside that quietly, thoughtfully hurt in the smallest places. Oh won't you tell me how can a man love a disrespectful woman? How can a woman possibly respect an unloving man? This is what my friends at Love & Respect call the Crazy Cycle.
But if she hurts him because she is already aching, and he hurts her because of his own pain, how will this cycle end?
The answer is our key to everything, the very song of salvation that our souls sing: sacrificial love. And, like Jesus, you know who is going to throw themselves in the fire as the sacrifice? The mature one. Emerson says it best when he says, "shaming or condemning your spouse for their immaturity is a reflection of your own maturity."
The immature one will use this post to try and change their spouse in order to be happy. The immature one isn't able to obey God's commands for the man to love and for the woman to respect. They will feel momentarily gratified by hurting, by "winning", by what was really their own losing. The immature one will sulk, complain, and groan about their own unhealth and sadness.
However, the mature one will read this in hopes to not change the spouse but change the current Crazy Cycle. They will obey their God. They will not enjoy hurting the other. They will not shame the other for being immature, nor will they say that they are "doing all these awesome things and loving" because they are "the mature one." The truly mature one will love and respect with a God-peace-filled, humble heart -- it is an art that doesn't come from caring about ones own needs, but caring about what the relationship needs to be happy and healthy. This maturity is only reaped from a soil that has been fulfilled by Jesus first.
Jesus is the reason why it's worth battling ourselves to be the mature one, why relationships are worth fighting for, why we know that it's never too late to discover and thrive in the real definition of love.
Learn more about the true definition of love in my book Putting Fairy Tales to Shame at www.ElisabethHuijskens.com
I hear those words and as I'm driving down the highway in a rush -- rushing, always rushing -- they catch me and bring me to a place of personal familiarity. I feel those words because I have, even if momentarily, been gratified by hurting someone else emotionally. I put them in their place, nodded at my job well done, to triumph over the matter at hand.
But the words that pierce and wound have a longevity stretching farther than the matter at hand. I wish I was the only one who did this. But we see the husband and wife who love each other on the inside speak loud, thoughtless words on the outside that quietly, thoughtfully hurt in the smallest places. Oh won't you tell me how can a man love a disrespectful woman? How can a woman possibly respect an unloving man? This is what my friends at Love & Respect call the Crazy Cycle.
But if she hurts him because she is already aching, and he hurts her because of his own pain, how will this cycle end?
The answer is our key to everything, the very song of salvation that our souls sing: sacrificial love. And, like Jesus, you know who is going to throw themselves in the fire as the sacrifice? The mature one. Emerson says it best when he says, "shaming or condemning your spouse for their immaturity is a reflection of your own maturity."
The immature one will use this post to try and change their spouse in order to be happy. The immature one isn't able to obey God's commands for the man to love and for the woman to respect. They will feel momentarily gratified by hurting, by "winning", by what was really their own losing. The immature one will sulk, complain, and groan about their own unhealth and sadness.
However, the mature one will read this in hopes to not change the spouse but change the current Crazy Cycle. They will obey their God. They will not enjoy hurting the other. They will not shame the other for being immature, nor will they say that they are "doing all these awesome things and loving" because they are "the mature one." The truly mature one will love and respect with a God-peace-filled, humble heart -- it is an art that doesn't come from caring about ones own needs, but caring about what the relationship needs to be happy and healthy. This maturity is only reaped from a soil that has been fulfilled by Jesus first.
Jesus is the reason why it's worth battling ourselves to be the mature one, why relationships are worth fighting for, why we know that it's never too late to discover and thrive in the real definition of love.
Learn more about the true definition of love in my book Putting Fairy Tales to Shame at www.ElisabethHuijskens.com
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