Marriage Material: Stress to the Structure | Part 3

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Well, good morning.

Welcome to Awakening.

Great to be with you.

Happy Father's Day.

Um I don't mean to brag.

You probably can't read it, but it says, number one, dad.

And uh, well, I mean, I I guess that means other dads.

Sorry, sorry.

I I didn't mean to bring that up.

It's it's supposed to be special for all of us, not just one of us.

But, anyways, happy Father's Day.

Great to be with you today and to our dads, especially.

Uh, we're really grateful for you.

Uh, and we're in a series called Marriage Material, where we're really just asking and answering this one question.

How do you experience a strong, vibrant marriage that lasts a lifetime?

And the big idea of the entire series is simply this a strong, vibrant marriage uh doesn't just happen, it's built.

And it's really confronting some cultural lies that like love should be easy, and and if it's not, then maybe you're in a bad relationship or it should just automatically happen.

And and the reality is a strong, vibrant marriage takes time and intentionality.

Anything, we know this, anything worthwhile takes work.

And especially strong, vibrant marriage.

And one one of the things I wanted to do with our time was for you to not just hear from me, but to get a chance to hear from my incredible wife.

We've been married 21 years, and so at the beginning, just give you a little conversation that we had together.

So why don't you take a look?

Alright, you ready, Glenn?

We're rolling.

We're all on.

In our first five years of marriage, we we went through some of the more stressful events of life.

We moved three different times to three different states, um, crossed the country, had two kids, bought and sold a house, a couple different jobs, um, fast forward, three kids, watching and planting a church.

What were some of the things when we think about our relationship, looking back over the course of all those different things that uh you're really glad we did, that we put into practice.

Um, I am always gonna be a broken record with just connection.

I think that's the most important thing in a marriage.

I think it's most important things with the kids, even when they're teenagers, like whenever you can get time to connect, I think that is really important.

I don't remember at what point we actually started going out on dates, but it was a big deal and often a big bust.

A big bust.

So quite a few times we would be like on fumes getting the kids set to like leave, paying for a babysitter, yeah, and we'd get there and we're just like exhausted.

Zombies and cranky.

And then get in a big fight, and then get in a fight, and then go home feeling further from each other, and then having to pay for it.

That was the worst.

I always counted how expensive was this was this fight.

I know.

Um and part of it we started to recognize was because we were trying to do so much in so little of a time.

But regardless, we're coming into a day just disconnected, running, you know, and tired, and there was there was no point to kind of like almost like that.

Um like, you know, the static release.

Like you needed something to kind of like release the static so that then you can actually have that connection.

Yeah, yeah.

So we finally started calling it date and details that we were gonna do both, but it was gonna be gonna start with the details, and then we'd transition.

Yeah, but it was different than a normal day.

Yeah.

So it wasn't just like we would do this, because I, you know, as a pastor, I got Fridays off.

Right.

So um work Sunday through Thursday.

So we would start um Friday morning, and whether it was at home or we in the early days we split a breakfast burrito at um Whole Foods and sat there with our calendar and talked through it.

Because a business meeting sounds really boring and lane and doesn't sound very connecting, and so you called it date in details, but it wasn't necessarily just that, like that was our only date.

It's like we have all these things that we need to talk about, we don't create time to talk about them.

How do we make it more fun and consistent?

Yeah, I always have this visual of us like lean leaning in, like we always have to lean in because it can be easy to just not be dependent on someone else and just you know go side by side.

But the more that we lean in and actually need each other, you know, in a good way, is actually bonding and and really powerful.

Yeah.

Today the sermon title is called Stress to the Structure.

Why don't you go ahead and say to your neighbor, stress to the structure?

And then go ahead and say to your other neighbor, stress to the structure, but like it's a good thing, you know, there's a positive.

There you go.

Um the reality is no matter how good or godly you are, every single marriage will experience stress and strain.

Every single marriage will experience stress to the structure, and and it goes something like this you know, you're um you're kind of doing your thing, you and you're single and you have your stresses that you're carrying, and you go like, okay, yeah, at times, sometimes you feel like you got it handled, at other times you don't, but you're like, it's manageable, and then you get married, and then you bring uh another person's stress and relationship and dynamics and and all the other things there.

And then some people get married.

I I I I researched this uh because they want to uh have financially financial gain.

It's a financially better thing, and yet the reality is uh there's financial strain, isn't there?

Most many people cite financial issues for why they get uh divorced, and then you have, oh god lord, uh they are good in-laws, uh, but you know, um they add that to the there, and then maybe you have kids, oh five, and and and all of a sudden you don't realize this you start adding.

And what we fail to realize through all of this is we start carrying more.

There's more weight on us than ever before.

And then you're like, oh, you know what?

I need to take care of myself.

Okay, squat day, uh, care of myself as well.

And and what happens is we've added, but we haven't adjusted.

And so our structure, if we're not careful, if we're not wise, if we don't pay attention, if we don't change, what will happen is this will become too heavy.

Not that it was bad, but that we just didn't adjust and change in light of the added stress and strain.

In fact, as we're talking about uh date and details in that video, that was us realizing life had changed.

We were no longer able to connect in the way we always had because we added three kids to the mix who are little and we didn't have any time to connect.

And so the only time, and I can't tell you, I hate it.

I and I should probably clean the bricks before I take them from my backyard.

I hate pain for a fight, it's the worst, and yet we did it.

And if you're not careful, if you don't make an adjustment, that stress and that strain can cause such erosion and damage.

Uh, what I want to talk about today is actually a principle that we stumbled upon early on and have found it to be consistently true through the course of our marriage.

Just this is one of those things that if I sit down with whether you're a single person or married couple, for any length of time and we're talking about life, um, we're gonna talk about this principle at some point.

And what I love about it is I stumbled upon it because of pains in our life.

And I'm like, oh, and and you probably have thought this, so this is probably not a new even thought to you, but I hope a reminder and helpful to you.

Um but then what's amazing is we stumble upon these things and then later find out that, like God said them thousands of years ago.

In fact, like 3,000 years ago in the book of Ecclesiastes, God wrote something that was so incredibly helpful that if we have ears to hear, it can help us navigate the stress to the structure of our relationships, of our personal lives, of our marriages, of our families.

And so if you got your Bibles, would you open up to Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 1?

Ecclesiastes 3:1

Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 1.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

In it, uh Solomon writes this very famous passage.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.

A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to uproot, a time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.

Before I give you the principle, I just want to make a couple observations from what Solomon tells us here.

First, uh, we are all subject to time.

We get this.

We forget this though.

We're all subject to time.

Here's what's amazing it doesn't matter what's in your bank account, we all have the same amount of time, the same amount of hours in a day.

Time is your most valuable, our most valuable resource.

You cannot make more time.

You do not get time back.

And so it's a really bad idea to kill time, which we do all the time, right?

We're all subject to time.

And in fact, this word here for time means a proper and suitable moment for an event.

Here's what Solomon's saying there is a proper time for everything.

So it means that there are times when it's not the right time.

We don't have to do it all.

In fact, we can't do it all.

And just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should.

Not every opportunity we come across is the best opportunity or the right time.

I can tell you, I know a number of friends who have gotten promoted and promoted and promoted.

And yet what happened was when you get promoted is it adds stress to the structure, doesn't it?

You're like, amazing, I got more money, and then they give me more money because they're adding more stress, more responsibility, more oversight, more nights out.

And unfortunately, if they could go back and do it again, they would choose maybe not that promotion and more time with their kids.

You know, uh this the whole idea that the you know, when your kids are young, it feels like the days are long but the years are short, right?

It's really true.

And you don't get that time back.

In fact, what's interesting is um research tells us marital satisfaction follows this U-shaped curve.

Um in it in the Journal of Marriage and Family say marital satisfaction often follows a U-shaped curve with high satisfaction at the beginning, honeymoon stage, a dip during the child rearing years, shocker, uh, and an increase in the later years as couple adjust as couples adjust to new phases of life.

And here's what he's saying there's a time for everything.

In fact, this was a piece of advice during those early years that was so helpful for me.

I remember an older man said, Ryan, you need to learn to love the mundanity.

I'm like, what do you mean?

Well, when your kids are small and toddler in grade school or big infant and all that sort of stuff, life's pretty mundane.

It's not sexy, it's not adventurous.

You wake up, you work, you wipe butts, you go to bed exhausted.

That's life.

And yet everything that's sold to us about what's life is like you should be living your best life out there, and you're watching on social media, everybody do the most amazing things, and you're like, whatever.

And he says, learn to love the mundanity, learn to love the mundane.

Because life, life is not just, you know, we're subject to time.

Life is seasons.

That's what he said.

There's a season for every activity.

Life is seasons.

Season here is an appointed time, a specified time.

Something will happen.

Life is seasons, meaning everything only lasts so long.

Especially, guys, if you have newborns, you feel like this is your life forever.

You'll never sleep the same.

Well, you never sleep ever again.

It feels like it's gonna last forever, and yet the reality is it's a season.

We have the honeymoon season, the career building season, early parenthood, midlife season when you're maybe having teenagers or walking along, aging parents, empty nester season, retirement.

Life is season.

Everything lasts so long.

So we gotta understand life is not static.

Think about it.

In the macro of life, you can break down your years from the spring to the summer to the autumn to the winter years.

And you can even look at that in the micro side of it of what season am I in?

And so as a result, marriage is a series of seasons.

It's not one season.

And I know we get this, but we have to remind ourselves.

It's a series of seasons.

Uh in fact, uh Dr.

Lewis Smead wrote this.

This is so good.

Uh, if you've never read anything of his, I'd encourage you.

He's a brilliant mind.

He said, When I married my wife, I had hardly, hardly a smidgen of sense for what I was getting into with her.

How could I know how much she would change over 25 years?

How could I know how much I would change?

My wife has lived with at least five different men since we were wed.

And each of the five has been me.

The connecting link with my old self has always been the memory of the name I took on back there.

I am he who will be there with you.

When we slough off that name, lose that identity, we can hardly find ourselves again.

Marriage is a season, a series of seasons.

We are so we become different people.

We are changed through all the different years.

It's not static, it's dynamic.

In fact, when we think about the seasons of marriage, did you know that most divorces occur within the first seven years, between year three and year seven?

And couples who are married 10 years, there's only a 4% rate of divorce.

And here's part of the reason why.

Two-thirds of unhappy marriages will become happy within five years.

Why?

Because life and marriage, it's seasonal.

There's seasons that we go in and go out of.

And so here's the principle.

Here's the principle.

Every new season of life almost always requires a new rhythm for life.

How are we going to manage the added stresses to the structure that we're starting to carry and we step into a new season that adds probably a new stress?

Maybe it's the kids' season, maybe it's career, maybe it's a move.

Whatever that season is, what we have to realize is every single new season of life.

Maybe it's moving from high school to college, college to career, single to married, married to kids.

Maybe it's moving into retirement.

Like, well, could that add stressor?

Talk to some retired people.

Absolutely.

Every single season in life almost always requires a new rhythm in life.

Now here's the issue: we get into a rut when we bring our old rhythms into our new season.

This is where we try to we try to address life and we don't change the things we're doing.

We don't address the structure, we don't address the rhythms, we bring those old rhythms into the new season.

That's where we get into ruts.

I'll give you just a silly example.

When we first got married, um, so I grew up uh really predominantly in a household of boys.

It was basketball driven, boy driven.

I have a little sister, she's amazing, but she's six and a half years younger than me, you know, and so uh twin older brothers, and and and then you know, go off to college, my roommate, we played college volleyball together.

We're uh we just we talked boy.

We just talked boy.

Um, and so uh I remember the first year of being married to Jenny, I I talked boy to her.

And and I I didn't know I talked boy, I just I I I I just did it.

And so, you know, for example, if the trash needed to be taken out, I I said, hey Jenny, take out the trash.

Yeah.

And then she was mad.

And I don't know why.

I'm like, she's like, oh my gosh, don't tell me like you're commanding me.

That sounds so harsh.

I'm like, what do you mean?

I just said, take out the trash.

Like, like me and Steve, my roommate, we said that stuff to each other all the time.

I didn't care.

I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, you're right, I'll do that.

Or no, man, I need you to do that.

And then here's what she would say to me, Brian, would you like to take out the trash?

And then I'd say no.

Because I don't like taking trash out.

That's never been a thing.

I'd never woken up once in my entire life and said, Wow, what do I want to do today?

I'd like to take out the trash.

I will do it, but I don't like doing it, and there's a difference.

But I just didn't know how to talk, and I brought my old ways of communicating.

Oh, we do this all the time, don't we?

Our old ways of communicating, our old ways of relating into this new season of marriage.

And then when we have kids, we can bring the old ways maybe of parenting or the way we are parented into that new season.

We get into ruts when we bring our old rhythms into our new seasons.

Now, here's what's interesting.

Um Dr.

John Gottman, he's a prominent marriage researcher, found that couples who can adapt to life changes and maintain a positive perspective during different seasons tend to have a stronger, more resilient marriage.

His research emphasizes the importance of being attuned to the changes and challenges that come with different stages of life.

Every new season.

This is what I want you to walk away.

I want you to remember, every new season, am I entering into a new season?

I need to ask: does my rhythm help me or hurt me in this season?

What rhythms do I need in light of the season I'm in?

So let me give you, and we'll just go through maybe three seasons to strengthen the structure.

Solomon and Ecclesiastes gave us these seasons.

The first one is beginnings and endings.

Beginnings and endings.

Beginnings and endings, these are major meaningful transitions.

He says there's a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot.

So anytime you step into something new, new marriage, new career, a new move, kids.

And the reality is you can often see these seasons on the horizon.

They rarely come as a surprise.

You can see they're coming ahead, just like we're stepping into the summer season.

You know, summer's coming.

We know that our kids are going to have three months off.

And as a result, since you can see them on the horizon, what do you say?

There's a time to plant, there's a time to sow, and there's a time to uproot.

One of the sowing things that my wife started doing in the summer season was we would take this passage, Luke 2.52.

It says, uh, and Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and with man.

And I love it.

She's gone, like, think about this.

This is mind-blowing.

That if Jesus grew, like he grew, he learned, he developed, how much more should we?

And do we need that?

And so we just take a simple thing as a family where wey, we see the summer season, the time, summer's a time of development and growth.

It's it's you got some extra time.

You have extra daylight.

There's things that you can do in the summer that you can't do in the winter.

And so we just go through kind of four areas together.

We we do it, uh Jenny and I, we do it with our kids.

Like Jesus grew in wisdom.

Okay, so personally, where do you need to grow?

What do you want to develop this summer?

He grew in wisdom and stature.

That's physical.

Like, physically, what do you need to do?

He grew in favor with God, well, spiritually, and then favor with man relationally.

And we just look at those four areas, and as our kids get older and have gotten older, they're now teenagers, they work on that.

We're actually in process.

So it's not like we have this all figured out.

We were gonna do it this last week and uh it didn't work out, so we're gonna do it this next week because that's life, right?

But we're going through this process together.

You have these different seasons, beginnings and endings, major seasons of life.

Um, and he says there is a time to plant.

That means to establish or to sow.

We sow today to reap a harvest in the future.

You never reap in the same season that you sow.

Do you see a new season on the horizon?

Is there some things that you need to sow right now?

You know, the season that we're in uh in our marriage is we're in the launching season of our kid.

Our oldest uh has completed her first year of college, our middle, a year from now, I'm gonna be crying my eyes up on the stage here as I send him off, you know, again.

And then our middle or youngest is starting uh high school.

We're in this just launching phase, so we can see on the horizon, we can see ahead that there's a there's the ending of a certain parenting stage that we've been in for the last almost 20 years, and there's a beginning of an empty nest stage, potentially there is a boomerang effect that happens quite a bit, but potentially there's the ending of that parenting phase.

At very least, it's a changing from parenting kids to parenting adult kids.

And so we looked at some sewing now.

What does our marriage need now?

Because of how much focus and time and energy that we have given, and rightfully so needs to be with our kids.

And then it says uproot.

Is there anything that you need to uproot?

Like just get rid of in your marriage or in your life?

Maybe it's bad habits, maybe it's past wounds, unhealthy patterns.

The first season, the strength and the structure, beginnings and endings.

The second is like it, but a little different.

It's stopping and starting.

Stopping and starting.

It says a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build.

Uh, this is stopping and starting.

If beginnings and endings are major transitions that you can see on the horizon, this is you are in a season for a time.

And you recognize that, oh, this season isn't a season anymore.

This is a cycle of life.

I'm actually not in a season, this beginning and ending.

I'm actually caught in a pattern, a habitual pattern of life.

And I need to stop some things and I need to start some things.

I think one of the great questions, am I caught?

Am I in a season or am I caught or stuck in a cycle?

One of the things that we've talked about before for my wife and I is one of the big areas we found is we are fantastic doers, we get stuff done, and we we're just like, go, go, go.

And what we want to grow in is to be better beers, to be present, to not be so task-driven and and and caught up in the tyranny of the urgence, but investing in different areas.

So here's where we go.

Like, there's some things we have to stop, and it's really hard.

In fact, my word of the year, this sounds so lame.

My word of the year, every year I do a word of the year.

Sometimes we've done it as a church, but my word of the year this year is boundaries.

I know, cool, right?

You're like, that's amazing.

And I reread the book by Dr.

Henry Cloud and John Townsend, Boundaries, because like boundaries is that guardrails around your life that you, you know, you have a gate and it keeps the bad out and it lets the good in.

I'm like, where do I need to set boundaries so that we can be better beers instead of doers?

Because this is not a season.

This has become a way of life that is not good for us.

Is there something for you that you need to stop?

Something for you that you need to start?

It says it's time to kill.

And you're like, well, that's pretty intense.

You might want to jot down 1 Timothy 6.12.

And in it, the Apostle Paul urges Timothy to flee from some things.

In fact, the scripture will tell us flee from sexual immorality.

So let me ask you, what do you need to run from?

We run from the things that if they catch us, they'll overtake us.

That's why the scripture tells us to flee from sexual immorality.

You let that in, it's gonna don't resist it, run from it.

Do you need to run from something?

Then later on in the passage it says, fight the good fight.

There are good fights to fight.

There are not good fights to fight as well.

But let me ask you, what do you need to fight for?

Certainly, there's times where we fight in our marriages.

But do you need to fight for your marriage?

Maybe you've become apathetic.

This is just the way it is.

Just kind of settle instead of fighting for your marriage.

Then there's a time to heal.

Let me ask you, where do you need to repair and restore?

Where you go, you know, there's some harm that I've done.

Or potential.

I think as dads, especially, we have to be aware of that.

To say I'm sorry is one of the best practices a dad or a mom can do for their kids.

To repair.

Where do you need repairing and restoring and the healing grace of God?

And it says to tear down and to build.

Like this is this demoing some things.

Like there's some stuff that is just hard work.

You gotta demo to rebuild to have new construction.

What are those rhythms?

What are those things?

Maybe you set out with a dream for your marriage, and you're five years down the road, maybe you're seven years down the road, you're ten years down the road, and you're so far from your dream, and there's so much drift, and you're like, that could never happen.

And you're right, under the curtain circumstances and the way you're going about it, and what you're carrying, you're right.

And so, would you take some time and would it be so good for you if you allow some tearing down and going, we gotta demo some stuff, some ways of being that we've we've just accepted this is the way we're gonna respond and treat one another and act, and the way we're gonna just hold one another in our hearts and our minds, and actually begin to go, you know, let's intentionally begin to build something back afresh.

It takes hard work.

It often takes outside help because if you're gonna do that on a home, you're gonna get a what?

Contractor.

What do you need to build or tear down?

First season, beginnings and ending, second, stopping and starting, third, sorrow and celebration.

Because life is a mixture.

A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.

Sorrow is often the unwelcome companion of life, isn't it?

And both are important.

By the way, with celebration, never think of celebrating as unspiritual.

Both are needed.

Sorrow and celebration.

Uh, some of the rhythms that we've adopted, we don't we no longer do the Dayton details because we have more time to connect on those areas, but some of the rhythms now with teenage kids is we try to connect daily.

It doesn't happen daily.

Right?

So, first I want you to, I'm gonna share some things that we try to do as consistently as we can, and we don't do it as consistently as we'd like.

That's life.

But what I don't want you to hear is like, oh, well, they do this and we're sucking.

No, we're we're all growing.

We're all growing.

So we try to connect daily over the summer because it's nice out.

We're we're just hanging out in the backyard.

We sit in the backyard.

So you know what I call it?

It's terrible.

I call it sits.

Yeah.

I'm like, hey, you want a sits?

You know, I know it sounds terrible, but it's fun to say for me.

And so my wife thinks it's dumb.

And I'm like, that's kind of fun for me too.

And so I say sits, and so and we try to connect daily and just sit and talk about our day.

We didn't do that yesterday.

We try to sit with our family around a meal daily, but we don't do it daily.

In fact, this week we did it last night, and I can't remember the rest of the week.

I don't know how many times we did it the rest of the week.

I just remember last night.

It was a crazy week.

I think we did it a couple times, but we try to sit together as a family.

When we sit around the table as a family, we often just go, uh, ask what's your high and low?

Just to hear from everybody a part of their day.

Jenny and I, we try to date weekly.

We try to go on a date every week.

We didn't this week.

But we did last week.

But we try to just get a day intentionally together.

We try to get away a couple times a year, just the two of us.

When they're small, kids are small, it's almost impossible.

One night away will do wonders for your marriage.

And God will multiply.

I've just found this to be so true.

We get away from one night, and it feels like God multiplied the time, like he extended it somehow.

And she's like, wow, it was incredible.

Um, one of those times we got away a couple times uh a couple days.

It was for my 40th few years back.

And so we got away for two nights, and then one of the practices that we've adopted in the last three or four years is Jenny Allen.

She has this resource.

You can look it up, Jenny Allen uh Dream Guide.

And she has this resource she publishes every single year.

It's called a dream guide.

Uh, the front page just simply is a page and it says things to grieve from the past year, things to celebrate.

The first year we did that my 40th birthday is uh 2021.

We didn't get past the first page.

And we kind of started out and like, oh, we got nothing to grieve.

And we started talking about it, and all of a sudden, see the thing is if you don't create the time to grieve, you carry things you don't even realize you're carrying, and it's a weight, and God wants to heal it, and he wants to use you together to bring healing and wholeness with each other, but we just carry it because we keep ourselves so busy in life, don't we?

And we we spend hours and we're crying together, and we just grieved.

We grieved some loss of friendships, some people who moved, some things that had happened, some wounds that incurred.

And it was powerful, and it just was a rhythm that we embraced, and now we do it just annually.

We get time away, we get away from the hustle and bustle, we do get out of the house and we spend a night somewhere and just create that time.

Sorrow and celebration.

There's a time for it because life is a mixture.

It's interesting in our world because with sorrow and grieving, we try to avoid suffering, don't we?

We try to ignore it.

And yet suffering is inevitable in life.

Grieving is a part of the fabric of our lives.

And so we have to learn to suffer well and we have to teach our kids how to suffer well.

Three seasons beginnings, endings, stopping, starting, sorrow, and celebration.

Let me ask you what season personally are you in or entering?

Have you thought of it?

What season are you in presently or are you about to enter?

And then as a result, what rhythms do you need to embrace or replace?

And then for your marriage or for your family, what season are you in?

By the way, personally, you can be in one season and your marriage in another.

You need to answer both of them.

What season are you in?

What things are you carrying?

Have you made any adjustment along the way, or is the weight just getting heavier?

And sometimes the weight is just getting heavier for one spouse and not the other.

And that's a conversation you need to have of like, you know what, I'm carrying all this and it's getting too heavy.

We need to change some stuff.

And what rhythms do you need to embrace?

Or replace.

Because every new season of life almost always requires a new rhythm for life.

And we get in ruts, not because it's just like inevitable, you just bring the old rhythms into our new season.

And so I'm going to invite the band to come on up.

And as we close, I just want to invite you.

Would you take a moment?

And if you're taking notes, you can write it down on your notes.

If you want to, you can jot it in your phone.

But would you take a moment and identify what season you're in?

Is it a beginning and ending?

Is there sorrow and celebration?

Is there some things you need to stop?

Or start?

What rhythms do you need to embrace replace?

I today I just wanted to give you ideas.

Not to copy or do anything that we're doing.

These are just things that we've learned and practices that are helpful to us.

If it's helpful to you, wonderful.

If it sparks a new and better idea, even better.

Okay?

But take the time, process with the Holy Spirit, and allow him to guide you.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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