Daly Focus Blog
It’s not easy for a single mother to raise a son. It’s even more difficult when that son has autism.
Emily Colson can attest to that. Her husband walked out when their son Max was just 18-months-old, saying he couldn’t handle the stress.
And there was a lot of stress. Max’s autism was so severe that, for a time, Emily couldn’t leave home with him – not to the grocery store, not to friends’ houses, not to church.
Chocolate was a symbol of how bad Sandy and Tom’s marriage had become.
They were in a drive-thru ordering food, and Sandy asked for a chocolate shake. Tom said “no” and forced her to reorder. Vanilla, he believed, was the better choice. He was convinced chocolate would make her face break out and cause her to gain weight.
Tom didn’t realize it at the time, but the problem wasn’t chocolate, it was control. To get the marriage he was after, Tom thought he had to rule with an iron fist.
The percentages are hard to know for sure, but research indicates that 50 percent or more of all women feel lonely.
Dr. Joneal Kirby points to several reasons why those numbers are so high. For one, social media has caused an increase in superficial relationships. Some women have dozens of friends on Facebook, but very few with whom they can talk face-to-face. They don’t meet for coffee with anyone, and they have no one with whom they can get beneath the surface, share their hearts, and “do life.”
Women are also busier than ever.
Terrie and Cal’s son is 38. Their oldest daughter is 34. Abbey, their youngest, is 12.
That’s right – 12.
How did that happen? Well, it’s quite a story. It’s something of a miracle, too. Not a medical miracle, but the sort of miracle made possible by adoption.
Before she stepped into Terrie and Cal’s lives, Abbey was removed from her biological mother at a young age, then cycled through a revolving door of adoptive families, foster parents, and residential treatment centers for adolescents.
Mom and Dad, are you a tug boat or a rudder?
You can tell by the way you motivate your children. Tug boat parents pull their children through the water to get them going the right direction. Rudder parents steer them in the way they should go.
We’re all tug boats from time to time. I know I’ve grabbed the rope and started to pull when one of my boys hasn’t made a good decision. That urge to force them in the right direction usually plays upon my concern for their health and well-being.
Proverbs 19:15 says, “Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger” (ESV).
Second Thessalonians 3:10 says, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (ESV).
Those Scriptures and others warn us against laziness. God expects us to work and blesses us through it.
Some of us overcorrect and swing to the other extreme. The busier the better.
If “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” then busyness is his playground.
What do you do when you’re at the top of the world one minute and scraping the bottom of the barrel the next?
Former major league pitcher Brian Holman has had to answer that very question … many times.
In 1999, his son David fell thirty feet from a ski-lift and suffered multiple severe injuries. When he got to the hospital, doctors ran an MRI and discovered David had a brain tumor. They successfully removed it, but David had a post-surgical stroke and needed extensive rehab to recover.
A young man named Billy Riley was in a philosophy program at a small liberal arts college in western Pennsylvania. His Human Origins class offered some of the greatest challenges a Christian student could ever face. Not only was he confronted with opposing worldviews, but his professor was biased in his teaching approach.
Billy was mature enough in his faith that he befriended the professor. They had great conversations and vigorous debate after each class. They eventually put together a school symposium on the existence of God.
There’s a reason so many couples have a hard time resolving marital conflict. When a disagreement erupts, they immediately sit down, start talking, and try to work out their differences.
Kinda sounds like the correct thing to do, doesn’t it? But according to my colleague, Dr. Greg Smalley, that’s the “absolute worst” thing you could do. Working through a disagreement with your spouse is part of the equation, but it’s not the place to begin.
Jesus laid out the proper path of reconciliation in Matthew 7:3 (ESV): “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”
Tempers can flare and hearts can close in the midst of conflict.
What do you do in the car with your kids? What about at breakfast or at the dinner table? How about in the backyard when you’re throwing the ball with your boys or playing “chase” with your daughters?
Scripture provides a great idea in Deuteronomy 6:6-7:
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (ESV).
Jim Daly is a husband, father and President of Focus on the Family and host of its National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast. His blog, Daly Focus, is full of timely commentary and wisdom designed to help you navigate and understand today’s culture. His latest book is Marriage Done Right.
