Praying for Marriages (PfM)

Please join us this week in praying for the marriages of those in pastoral ministry. Because of the various demands of the pastoral role, it is easy for the pastor to become wedded to his ministry, fully believing he is doing good when in fact he is a workaholic, neglecting the needs of his spouse and unintentionally undercutting the very ministry to which he has been called. Also, in the process of being "all things to all men,” pastor and spouse can get so caught up in the busyness of knowing everyone, attending everyone's "special" events and caring for everyone during crisis that they fail to slow down and take the time to build deep, personal friendships and, consequently, miss out on the joy and support these friendships can supply. Finally, marriages of those in the pastoral ministry are lived in a fishbowl.  The business of the pastor and spouse is everybody's business.  This fact can cause those in the pastoral ministr...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages that have grown emotionally cold. Emotional coldness in a marriage can be as destructive as rage and is more insidious. Rage is like a fire that ignites and is immediately recognized as damaging.  Emotional coldness, or emotional distance, as some would call it, is like freezing weather, uncomfortable for sure, but too often not identified as damaging until frozen pipes start to break. The growth of emotional coldness in a marriage can have its origin in any number of situations.  Excessive attention to children to the determent of that to a spouse can cause a marriage relationship to cool.  The same can be said of excessive attention to work, to a hobby or, yes, even to a ministry.  Discounting the need to give and ask for forgiveness to a spouse can also be the seed-bed of emotional coldness. Being unaware of how a spouse expresses his/her emotions can cause one to miss cues that ...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages dealing with the tragedy of breast cancer. Although cancer of any kind can create stressful situations for marriages, breast cancer does so uniquely. It strikes the wife at the heart of her self-image and worth. Many sufferers experience an emotional roller coaster that can cause their spouse to receive conflicting signals. One moment a wife may long to be held and touched yet at another moment, or maybe even at the same moment, withdraw from physical contact. The husband, on the other hand, who does not understand this dynamic, can become confused when his touch is rebuffed or his reserve is interpreted as uncaring. As with other cancers, the physical battle of fighting breast cancer is draining and demanding, on the patient particularly but also on the spouse. Almost without fail, the physical stresses of enduring radical treatments and of caring for the patient create emotional...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages that have suffered the excruciating pain of the death of a newborn baby. In past weeks we have called on you to pray for those who have had a child to die as well as for those who have suffered the painful disappointment of a miscarriage. Many of the issues experienced by couples that have faced those tragedies are also common to those who have lost a newborn. The circumstances of this particular tragedy can be quite varied. In some cases the death has been long expected and to some degree prepared for because of prenatal testing. In other cases the death is totally unexpected and comes quickly after birth. And yet, in still other situations, the newborn’s death, though almost a medical certainty, is delayed for days or even months. One of the hardest things about infant death is the sudden and absolute reversal of emotions. Joyful expectation is usurped by gut-wrenching s...

Please join us this week in praying for couples that have been disowned by their children. The nature and causes of fractured family relationships are varied, complex and rarely one-sided. The division can be the choice of the parents or the child/children. Regardless, the division is always painful to someone, if not to everyone. One variety of fractured family relationships is when children disown their parents. The impetus for this separation can be rooted in bad parenting choices or in the equally bad choices of adult children. In either case, the painful effects the division has on the disowned couple can be a challenge to the very existence of their own husband/wife relationship. If the estrangement from their children is the result of bad parenting choices, particularly if those choices were those of one parent (for example, an absentee father or an overly protective/smothering mother), the other spouse may harbor resen...

Please join us this week in praying for married couples 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, though originally posted in March 2011, still provides insightful information. "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 incarcera...

Please join us this week in praying for marriages in which 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 requiring 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 thei...