Praying for Marriages (PfM)

Join us this week in praying for marriages in which communication has broken down.  By all accounts the lack of effective communication is a frequent and devastating dysfunction in marriages.  The break down in communication can occur for a wide range of reasons.  Communication can grind to a halt if one’s words or body language suggests disinterest in or contempt for a spouse’s input.  Sometimes the desire to communicate can dry up if a spouse feels the other’s words are never followed up with action, in other words, if lightly made promises are never kept.  Nagging can also cause communication cease. When effective communication stops, all sorts of misunderstandings and false assumptions are likely to spring up.  The resulting cascade of trouble and stress will then be difficult to reverse since the very tool needed to effect this change, good communication, is already impaired. Pray with us this week that couples having communication is...

Please join us this week in praying for married couples that are parenting their grandchildren.  In preparing for this blog I came across an article issued by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.  This article, which is reproduced in full below, states the challenges of this life situation exceptionally well.  The article was originally posted in March 2011 at http://aacap.org. "Grandparents are an important resource for both parents and children. They routinely provide child care, financial assistance and emotional support.  Occasionally they are called upon to provide much more including temporary or full time care and responsibility for their grandchildren. An increasing number of children in the United States live in households headed by a grandparent.  This trend is due to: increasing numbers of single parent families the high rate of divorce teenage pregnancies incarcerations of parents substance abuse by parents illnes...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages that are in deep financial debt.  Debt is a life-situation pervasive in our American culture.  When this debt is excessive, it can lead to numerous problems for a married couple.  First, it can lead to a blame game in which spouses expend their energy assigning blame for their situation instead of working on a solution.  Second, deep debt can create crippling stress as the couple tries to maintain life and limb while fending off creditors.  Third, debt can lead to hopelessness, since escaping debt is most often a long road many couples see as beyond their ability to travel.  And finally, even when a couple commits to escaping debt, they face the difficulties of changing long established habits, of giving up things precious to them, and of learning to say “no,” or at least “not now,” sometimes even to good and worthwhile things. Please pray that couples in this situation will Be granted gr...

Join us this week in praying for marriages in which the couples are involved in foster care.  Couples who choose to be foster parents are choosing an honorable endeavor, but, like any worthwhile endeavor, foster parenting can bring significant challenges to a marriage.  One of those challenges is the demand on time.  Most foster parenting situations require meetings with counselors, agencies, teachers, birth-parents etc.  These requirements take time and necessarily cut into the time a couple may be accustomed to spending with each other.  Making the most of this decreased couple time is a challenge that requires creativity and commitment. Another challenge is the emotional investment required to parent a child who likely will be experiencing some level of dysfunction because of his/her previous home situation.  Dealing with the child’s biological parents, who likely will not be satisfied with their child being removed from their care, may als...

This week please remember in prayer those married couples who have experienced a job loss.  In addition to the financial pressures a job loss can bring to a marriage, it can also cause the one who has lost the job to question his or her self-worth.  If a new job does not materialize quickly, hope can be lost and, when hope is lost, inertia can set in and eventually lead to deep depression.   If both spouses have been working, the spouse who is still employed will often attempt to make up some of the income loss by working more hours.   This response, though helpful in closing the income gap, can inadvertently create a feeling of guilt in the life of the spouse who has lost the job, while at the same time exhaust the spouse who is taking on the extra work, particularly if the situation continues for an extended time. P ray that these couples who have lost a job will Remember that their standing before their God has not changed; they are still His beloved c...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages that are living through the chronic illness of an adult child.   Just tonight we have become aware of a situation in which a couple is dealing with one adult child who has cancer and a second who has a chronic gastro-intestinal disease.   The emotional stress of such a situation is not lessened because the children are adults.   Parents don’t cease to be parents because their children are grown.   For a number of reasons the stress can actually be greater.   Usually adult children and parents live in separate households and often are separated by a geographical distance that makes care-giving difficult and just staying informed a challenge.   The fact that adult children typically have established a level of independence can cause parents to question what care is expected or what care would be accepted. If the child-parent relationship is good, the parents’ marriage can be challenged as they take on ca...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages in which couples have offset work schedules.  In a very large number of marriages today, both spouses work.  This situation has its own challenges, but, when the spouses’ work schedules off-set, that is, one works days and the other works evenings or midnights, the challenges become even greater.  Just carving out time to see each other can be difficult.  Sleep schedules can create conflict, and intimacy can be curtailed because both spouses are not rested at the same time. The social life of the couple can be affected.  Events both would enjoy attending are often scheduled at times which will keep one or the other away.  When the events are for couples, even the spouse who could attend will often opt out because he/she doesn’t want to feel like a fifth wheel.  The snowballing of this situation can cause the couple to become isolated from others who could contribute an added level of joy to their ...