A View from the Summit

I received the following newsletter in an email from a friend. I thought it was a terriffic article. Enjoy.

Love maps

Pastoral ministry can be hard on your marriage. This seems to be the consensus of a number of studies. The pressures on your marriage can come from a variety of sources.

• life in 'the fishbowl'
• too many demands
• too many
• hours on the job, translates into too few hours with her and the kids
• too many bosses
• too little pay
• too little appreciation
• name your own pressures here: ________________________________

Have you noticed that it doesn't matter what the studies say when it's your own marriage that is in pain? Or as someone once said, 'Problems are academic, until they happen to you!'

Some pastors resolve the pain their marriage experiences because of the ministry by
leaving it for 'secular' work. For some, this is a good choice. For others, leaving pastoral ministry is the end of a dream, the end of a calling, and anything but a good choice.

Another choice is to make sure your own marriage remains a high priority within your calling as pastor. It's hardly an overstatement to say that your calling to be a good husband is a higher priority than your calling to be a pastor. A strong case can be made that the more priority a pastor places on nurturing and building up his own marriage, the more spiritual, emotional, and physical resources he will have for his role as pastor. A significant body of research indicates that men who have good marriages are healthier, live longer, state that they feel more effective in their occupations, and experience many other positive effects.

A pastor who places a high priority on his marriage is fulfilling Paul's exhortation for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and give himself up for her (Eph. 5:25). What does that kind of love look like in 'real life?'

Dr. John Gottman has made a career of studying the factors that make marriages succeed or fail. He provides a helpful and very readable condensation of his findings in his book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.

'Enhance Your Love Maps' is the first of the seven principles. Just as a physical map shows the geographical features of a region, a Love Map identifies the important features of your wife's inner world. Gottman writes that 'emotionally intelligent couples are intimately familiar with each other's world. They remember the major events in each other's history, and they keep updating their information as the facts
and feelings of their spouse's world change' (p. 48).

What kinds of things are included on your wife's Love Map? Here are a few of the issues that Gottman has identified:

• Who are your wife's closest friends (excluding you, of course)?
• What are her favorite hobbies?
• What kinds of stresses is she facing now?
• What are her favorite foods?
• What does she fear the most?
• What unfulfilled hopes or dreams does she have for her life?

Knowing your wife's Love Map is a powerful way of showing her you love her. You love her enough to care about the things that matter deeply to her.

How about giving her a different kind of Valentine's Day present this year? Along with the roses and box of chocolates, buy a copy of Gottman's Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. But don't give it to her. Read it for yourself. Then plan a date night - or maybe an overnight at a quiet place alone - where you intentionally focus on becoming more intimately familiar with her inner world.

A View from the Summit. Copyright (c) 2009, Summit Counseling Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Summit Counseling Associates, Inc.
Dr. Craig L. Loving
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
DrCraig@SummitCounselingAssociates.com
303-349-7398