8. Intentional Marriage: *Moms daily serenity moments *Val & Rich on redeeming your marriage

Intentional Marriage, 8: *Moms find serenity moments in your day *Single mom's marriage perspective *Your marriage can be redeemed!! *Meet Val's husband as they discuss what principle God used to transformed their marriage, including a short, original marriage song at the end
 Quotes from Episode 8
"Mom, find some serenity spots in your life so that you can have a moment of peace every day."
"Single moms, I know you're probably feeling like tuning out for this episode. I just want to encourage you not to do that. If your child marries some day, you want them to have a strong marriage and a healthy perspective about marriage and you can influence that even if you are not married. No matter your situation with your child's other parent, you can honor them in your attitude, actions, and words.  You may not be able to respect them or trust them or condone their actions, but you can be honoring about them for your children's sake."
"I had to care enough about the strength of our marriage to set aside my emotions that I wanted to have and replace them with what is best for our marriage.  If I do that, then in the end that's best for me too - to be in the middle of a strong marriage is of course more blessing-filled in every possible way than if I just stand on my end of the tug-of-war rope and pull with all my might."
Main Points:
Times away together to re-calibrate on what is important and how are we doing at it?
Praying  with our Creator to show us what healthy marriage looks like.
Keep a notebook - writing down what we were doing right, what we were doing wrong, and what's the better way.
ONENESS, a pinnacle philosophy that shaped several principles that we are very committed to now in our marriage. We'll be sharing these principles with you in marriage moment segments in future podcasts
ONENESS is...
*a mini picture of what the Trinity is (Father, Son, Holy Spirit)  three separate personhoods with unique personalities yet completely one. Nothing separating them. Fully aligned. It's a mystery.
*Oneness is... a healthy marriage, a little mini Trinity, of husband and wife and God all working together to be more than we would be on our own.
*Oneness is a new entity that needs to be nurtured and cared for with intentionality- complete truth, openness, honori

Transcript

Val Harrison: 0:01

Hi my mom friends, this is Val Harrison, the practically speaking mom, you're listening to the podcast for an intentional mom to build a strong family. I hope you're having a great day and staying warm. It is cold over here at my house. I was out all day with co-op classes. We homeschool and so we have co-op school classes and we got home from those and I was cold so I came inside and I put on my cozy clothes and I also put on my slippers because they make me so happy. When I put them on I was thinking to myself, I want all my mom friends. I want them all to be feeling as cozy as I do. I made myself a cup of coffee, decaf that I recently got from my son for my birthday. Thank you Andrew. It's awesome and actually my house shoes are also from my kids for my birthday and I love them. I'm g oing t o share something funny with you today, well, at least I think it's funny. You might think it's really dumb. When I was little, I loved my slippers so much that I wrote a song about them and I decided I'm g oing t o sing it for you today. It is deep and meaningful and may change your life. I'm kidding. It's basically pointless, but actually I am a little bit hoping that your takeaway from this silly song will actually inspire you, mom, to ma ke sure that every day you find something for your life that will bring you a moment of peace and serenity. Li ke my decaf cup of coffee and my slippers, lighting a candle does that for me and also the front porch is a spot for me like that. I don't have a green thumb, but I always try to keep some plants alive and hopefully blooming on my porch and so it's a great God-time spot. You know, a place to meet with God or an alone spot. Just a place to get away for a moment. I also have a another spot in my house, in the living room, that's like that. In the living room, when I sit in my chair, I can look out in my flower bed and it makes me really happy too. So mom, find some serenity spots in your life so that you can have a moment of that every day. So here's my little special beginning to the episode for you today."What should she do? What should she do? Put on your house shoes, watch shit you do.[inaudible] shoes. What should you do? What should you do? Put on your house shoes." Okay, so that's enough of that. Let's move on to the real point of today's episode. I've mentioned to you before that we have the six rooms of the intentional mom's home and today we're going to look at a room that we haven't been talking about yet. The six rooms are the family room, which is all about, and by the way, I will interrupt myself here. I'm good at doing that, arent' I,and say that we have a Facebook group for intentional moms and I would love for you to be a part of it. Intentional mom, strong family is what you would look up on Facebook to be a part of that group. Join us there ev ery d a y. We just take a quick look at a different idea for one of those six rooms of the intentional mo m's h ome. So it's a place to keep you inspired, to keep you focused on the important things, growing our kids and building relationships with our family, things like that. So the six rooms are the family room, which is about relationships and parenting. The kitchen, which is about a healthy family and a healthy mom. The laundry room, which is about household management; the school room, which is about making sure that your child's education is happening in a way that's effective for them and some different tips for helping if they're having some stumbling spot academically. The front porch, which is about your God time and your alone time. And then what we're talking about today and that's the master suite which is marriage topics.

: 4:37

For the single moms that listen to this podcast, I know you're probably feeling like tuning out for this episode. I just want to encourage you not to do that. If your children marry some day, you want them to have a strong marriage and a healthy perspective about marriage and you can influence that even if you are not married.

Val Harrison: 4:56

You know, for several years my husband and I led a parenting group at our church called power house and we ctually had four commitments that we asked parents to make if they were going to be in our group. I'll probably go over all four of those with you at some point, but one of those was for whether you're married or single, this applies. I will honor my child's other parent. You see, no matter your situation with your child's other parent, you can be honoring to them and about them in your attitude, actions and words. You may not be able to respect them or trust them or condone their actions, but you can be honoring about them. Now if you're married, there's a lot of ways you can honor your marriage and we're going to talk about some of those today when we talk about what my husband and I have come to find as the most important principle that we base all the rest of our principals on. As we developed some key things to help our marriage be strong because it did not use to be a strong place A verse that I put to go with that as Romans 12:10"honor one another above yourselves," so I hope that all of my dear mom friends will make yourself a cup of coffee. Put on your slippers or put on your house shoes and join us today for this extra special episode. I'm super excited about today's guest. It happens to be my favorite person in the whole world. My husband rich is joining me today and you've actually met him before because he often plays the role of h ost- doing an intro or an outro, or maybe a segue in between different segments. He also is the awesome producer and editor of this podcast. You wouldn't be listening if it weren't for him. So n ay... Rich. Sorry, I'm calling you by... Okay. I have an older brain and I'm sure that every mom can identify with this. I'm always calling my kids by their siblings names. But now that I get on a podcast th at I'm trying to introduce my husband, I st arted t o introduce my son instead. No, this is not Nathan. This is my husband, rich of 2 7 years. Today we're going to be talking about marriage and really what is our most, what we have come to find as the most critical concept that we are always focused on in our marriage. So welcome rich.

Rich Harrison: 7:48

Thank you. It's great to actually be a real part of the podcast.

Val Harrison: 7:54

Well, trust me, he's the key to the podcast for sure. So this past weekend we went on a weekend getaway, which is something we've come to do, try to do twice a year. Of course, I'd love it to be more if we c ould afford more, but we can never afford the twice a year times either.

Rich Harrison: 8:13

That's true.

Val Harrison: 8:14

We just make it a point to do it. Even though we, we feel like we shouldn't, if we've got our financial glasses on, we just do it anyway.

Rich Harrison: 8:24

Yeah. And it's really something, you know, we'd talked about for the first many years of our marriage, first 12 or so years of our marriage, we really didn't ever take the time to do that. We didn't understand at that time, didn't understand the value in it.

Val Harrison: 8:40

Right. So we just got to enjoy totally stepping back away from life and stayed at a bed and breakfast that was secluded and it was quiet and they fed us yummy breakfast. And it was just a time to re calibrate. which is something we tried to do with these get aways- recalibrate on what is important and how are we doing at it. So because of that, there's so much we want to be sharing with you today, but we're just really only going to touch on our very top thing. And that is the concept of oneness.

Rich Harrison: 9:21

Yeah. Oneness is something that we, I don't know if you'd say we discovered it or really God revealed it to us a few years back. Oh, I don't know, 11 years ago or so. And it's an idea that really has kind of transformed the way we view our relationship, our marriage, our family.

Val Harrison: 9:42

Really before this concept, I would say that I often, and I say this ashamed that I often saw things as kind of a tug of war. I wanted to be sure you saw how much I was sacrificing or what my needs were and how come you're not meeting them good enough. And you know, it just, it was this tug of war and definitely more me than you because you are always... Always is never a good word to use, but you are so much better at being selfless than I am. And so definitely I was tugging m ore, more than you were, but this concept of oneness was really critical for us and changing our perspective. For me, I was tug of warring. For you, you were, I would say kind of checked out.

Rich Harrison: 10:33

Yeah, unfortunately I'd say that's probably pretty accurate. I am a certainly a background type personality. U h, just by nature, t hat's k ind o f what I like. So I was pretty unintentional actually. You, you know, y ou use the term intentional mom and it's good for everyone, not just moms, but dads too, to be intentional. And I wasn't for a long time.

Val Harrison: 10:56

So this was about 12 years ago and we decided that things were going to change and we really began to read a ton of books on marriage. We began to dig into scripture looking for God the creator's truth to us on how to do this right. And we began praying and pleading with God to really show us what healthy marriage looks like. We began keeping a notebook and we would just write down everything we were doing right. Everything we were doing wrong and what's the better way. And that's how we discovered oneness. Along with a lot of other things, changes that we made. Oneness was kind of the pinnacle philosophy. And from that we've established several principles that we are very committed to now in our marriage. You know, it's actually as we sit here, it's pretty funny because, and this almost makes me want to cry because we're sitting here holding hands while we're doing this podcast. And that was one of the principles that we changed. One of the commitments that we, moved towards was that every time we would pray, whether just the two of us praying or whether we were somewhere in public and a prayer was happening or whether it was around the dinner table or anytime with the family, we were gonna hold hands. It was just one little thing we could do to say we're one together. We're in this together. A nd you know, we, we w ere just not big hand holders before that. So it's, it's k ind o f neat to me that 12 years later we're sitting here just holding hands d uring this podcast, not even realizing that we're holding hands. So it's, it's fun to see down the road a little bit with that. But we want to talk to you about what is oneness.

Rich Harrison: 12:55

Oneness is, it really is a different philosophy on marriage. At least it was for us. Uh, it's, it's really this idea that when you get married, the two become one. Uh, and this new one is a new entity. There is still Rch, there is still Val. But there is something more as well. It's this, this marriage entity and we call it oneness. Go ahead.

Val Harrison: 13:23

We've actually really come to discover that this is like a little mini picture of what the Trinity is. You know, the Trinity is God the father, God the son and God, the Holy spirit and they together are one entity. They're three separate personalities, three different beings personhoods but they're completely one. They're separate individuals, but they're one, nothing is separating them. They're fully aligned with one another, but they each have distinct personalities. It's a mystery. and we don't fully understand the Trinity, nor do we understand how marriage, a healthy marriage is this little mini Trinity of husband and wife and God all working together to be more than we would be just on our own. Oneness requires intentionality also.

Rich Harrison: 14:21

Yeah, definitely. i f you think of it as a new, almost like when you have a child, your life changes, your focus changes and you have to nurture this child and give it attention. A nd, and it's, it's great that they're so cute when they're babies because that's, it makes it easy. But at t he same idea in a marriage, you have something new now that must be nurtured and cared for with intentionality. Part of that means I need to deal with my spouse in complete truth and I need to deal with my spouse in complete openness. I need to honor her and I need to honor our oneness as well. I need to honor that relationship. I need to deal with her with tenderness and sensitivity. I need to be a safe place for her to be truthful and open. Not a place where she fears judgment or condemnation, but I need to be, I need to have that tenderness and sensitivity.

Val Harrison: 15:29

Yeah. I really had to develop a vulnerability. I am by nature one who likes to come across as strong and independent and self reliant. And I don't like to need. And so I had a hard time with being vulnerable. But when I discovered how great that is in a marriage to really put down my defenses and really just need Rich, allow myself to really need him, that was really transforming in our relationship as well. And it was all based on this concept of oneness that I wanted to be all in with nurturing oneness.

Rich Harrison: 16:16

And that's, that's a great point. It takes that sacrificial change. F or you it was, it was becoming vulnerable. And for me it was stepping up and becoming intentional about that. I, I still, I still have to work on that. I t doesn't come naturally to me. A nd quite possibly as vulnerability doesn't come naturally to you b ut to see the rewards and the benefits of that is really worth it.

Val Harrison: 16:47

We want our oneness, our marriage to not just survive, but we want it to actually thrive. And so we have to identify, and you're going to have to do this in your marriage if you're married, identifying what nourishes this marriage and what safeguards do we want to have to protect it. It's worth protecting. For us there's a whole list of things that we want to be able to go over with you on different little marriage moments that we will do in future podcasts, I'll just take a few minutes and we'll do a marriage moment on the different p rinciples, the different things that we found that we need to do to protect our marriage and that we need to do to nurture it. But let's just dive into it a little bit more than we have. So when you talk about openness, you said that we need to be open. I know for us that has meant accountability, which accountability is vulnerable for both in the marriage because it's, it's vulnerable for the one who is, who is being honest or sharing something, you know, sharing. I struggled with this today, this came up and this is how I handled it, you know, so accountability will look different in every marriage, but I know for me, if we have an accountability time and Rich is being honest with me about something he struggled with that day, then that's, that also,, is vulnerable on my part too because that can hurt a little.

Rich Harrison: 18:25

Yeah. Let's, let's take just a moment and be clear about what Val means with accountability. Moms as you know, this world is, our culture is not a modest place. Guys are all the time intentional guys, must be very vigilant about their eyes and their minds in our society if they are, if they are serious about remaining faithful, not physically faithful only, but mentally, emotionally faithful. There's a lot of, uh, temptation, a lot of purposeful temptation in our culture and that requires vigilance on the part of an intentional guy. And so I, I've learned to do that again through reading books and studying. And there's, there's a lot of materials out there to encourage and support a guy who wants to become better at that, which we've gone through together. Val and I, and we have developed some plans, some steps that I don't have to think about because I've determined ahead of time this is what I'm going to do. And yet, one of those, one of those pieces is at the end of every day we talk about the stuff that came across my path that day and, and how it was handled.

Val Harrison: 19:45

So one book that we could really recommend on this, what is,

Rich Harrison: 19:51

there's a series by Steve Arteburn called Every Man's Battle. That's the main book that kind of the title book in the series but there's a whole series of books for sons and I think there's even some daughter and wife ones. It started with every man's battle and there's a lot of others now in that series.

Val Harrison: 20:15

Yeah, that was a great book. And we have used the Preparing Your Son for Every Man's Battle and Every Young Man's Battle. Preparing Your Son for Every Man's Battle- the dad reads the first half of the book b y himself and then the second half of the book with his son. And that's a great book on purity and just getting some good habits in place for how to handle this crazy messed up world. Right?

Rich Harrison: 20:43

So that, that idea of accountability, that's, that's just one of the steps that we have implemented when we really started learning about oneness.

Val Harrison: 20:54

So if he is sharing, if he's being vulnerable and, and sharing some accountability with me, you know, that can sting a little bit. And so I had to care enough about the strength of our marriage to receive that through understanding and through empathy for, you know, it would be really hard to be a guy in this society. And so it really does require setting aside our emotions that we want to have and replacing them with what is best for our marriage. If I do that, then in the end that's best for me too- to be in the middle of a strong marriage is of course more blessing filled in every possible way than if I just stand on my end of the tug of war rope and pull with all my might.

Rich Harrison: 21:54

It really is. You talk about the blessing of it. And there are times when you and I have conversations that man, we, we could never have imagined years ago before we knew about all of this, before we really i ntentionally started investing in our relationship and in this idea of oneness, we were blown away, we are shocked and amazed at how wonderful God has made marriage. U h, a nd, and we've, we never knew and we keep discovering newness in it all the time.

Val Harrison: 22:31

So we want to end with one key aspect of this. I have been speaking to parents for decades. One of my main concepts is one called U niquely United, where we look at the different personality types in a family and how very different those are and recognize that that family needs all of those personality types and all of them have strengths that add to the family if we can learn how to deal with the weaknesses as well. But the concept is that we want to be all of those unique entities in the family, but to do it unitedly and that is where I have the phrase uniquely United. Well, here's what we want to say to you all today, that that concept uniquely United in your family, implementing that in your family really begins with implementing it in your marriage. That y es, you want to each have your unique personalities and unique interests and values and yet to be wholly committed to being United with one another. I remember this one conference we went to and they had us do, they gave us these playing cards that were called v alue cards, I think. Yeah. And so you want to describe how a little bit how that works.

Rich Harrison: 23:59

This was I believe that it was a exercise that came from something from John Maxwell's organization, which has a lot of great leadership materials. This was really a leadership conference but it showed us something about our relationship. Each person was given a set of these value cards and uh, wh ich had a whole bunch of different values on them and I only remember a few that really stood out to us. And as you work through them, you work individually.

Val Harrison: 24:30

Well lets go some examples of of values would be"efficiency." I value efficiency,"taking initiative,""hard work," being a"peacemaker""fun" would be a value. So all these different values. Okay. So don't think character qualities, um, or don't think that it's life principles that all should be in a certain order. Just these are the things that intrinsically God made me to really value certain things and God made Rich to really value other certain things. Okay, keep going.

Rich Harrison: 25:04

Right. So the exercise was each person had a complete deck of these cards with all the same values in each deck. And you would go through and you had first pick out your, your top 10, you know, and each individual would pick out their own top 10, and then you'd go back and narrow it down to your top three. And just that alone was, was pretty eyeopening between Val and I. then we were supposed to get it down to our top one My top value was peace and Va l's t op value was truth. Well if you think that through truth and peace don't always necessarily go together. If there's going to be truth in a relationship, th en s ometimes you're go ing t o d eal with some hard things and you're go ing t o h ave some, some uh, s ome rough and raw feelings in dealing with that. And that's necessary. But peace is also an important thing in a relationship as well You need times of peace. So it was really ey e o p ening t o see, wow, we are working toward the same things, but we still have our own uniqueness. And we come at them from different ways and there's different parts of that same goal that are important to Val an d d ifferent parts that are important to me. And we need to figure out a way to be able to come at this together.

Val Harrison: 26:33

Well really what it showed us was that, so let's say I value truth. Well that means,

Rich Harrison: 26:40

w hich is important,

Val Harrison: 26:40

yes, it's important, but it also means that I would go around stomping on people's feelings a nd our family all the time because.

Rich Harrison: 26:46

i t happened sometimes.

Val Harrison: 26:48

because I thought the truth was so important. It needed to get out there, but I wasn't valuing peace at all. So, and I wasn't valuing gentleness or, understanding. So I wasn't careful in how I presented truth,

Rich Harrison: 27:04

but at the same time, if peace was my highest value, then I would let truth slide. Not, I wouldn't lie, but you just, you wouldn't speak up about the truth if it would at all jeopardize peace. Right. It was more about, u h, I didn't lack truth. What I sometimes would lack was forthcoming or openness to where I would not say something in the higher interest of peace t han i n an interest of truth.

Val Harrison: 27:35

So what we discovered from doing this values thing, this little exercise was it showed us that God brought these two people together, this person who most values truth and this person who most values peace. And then he said, now have a healthy family. And he wasn't doing that to.

Rich Harrison: 27:56

It reminds me of those Chinese puzzles that has no solution.

Val Harrison: 27:59

No, he wasn't doing that to be ornery. He was doing that because if we do it together, if we both bring our values to the table in a humble and I'm working with you kind of way, then the end result is so much fuller and healthier than if we were both just truth or we were both just peace. You see your family unit and your marriage needs the uniqueness of the other one, but you need to be United Uniquely, each of you honoring all of the other people's unique aspects. So we want to encourage you today to, to do that, to start making oneness a top marriage priority and discuss what do we need to change to allow oneness to be more healthy in our marriage, and how can we honor one another's uniquenesses and really allowed that blend to produce something we could have never imagined.

Rich Harrison: 29:23

W e are learning a different perspective. Turning our struggles from different directions into striving together We're striving together for more than we could have been on our own before. Still you. Still me with a new entity of one

Speaker 5: 29:56

[inaudible]

Speaker 6: 30:00

[inaudible]

Speaker 5: 30:30

[inaudible][inaudible][inaudible].