all you need is...respect??

So it's almost Valentine's Day, girls! I guess we all already know that. Our house was a flurry of foam hearts and glitter glue (I'd like to blow a big raspberry in the general direction of the person who invented glitter glue! What an obnoxious mess that my children adore...) on Friday as we tried to get a head start on class valentines. Ads for roses and chocolate are everywhere, and hearts are plastered on everything standing still...

So it made me think a bit. I kinda tend to blow off Valentine's Day...it's fun for my girlies, but it irritates me a little bit. A contrived holiday to force guys to try to get something perfect and thoughtful and sincere for their beloved? Or something else altogether? I don't know...

BUT I have been reading a very interesting book called Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, and I've been really intrigued by it. It's nothing I've not heard, but it's put in such a way that I can't help but think about it. I'm not finished with the book, but so far Eggerichs' basic premise is that, in the same way women are wired to need "unconditional love" from their husbands, so too men are wired to need "unconditional respect" from their wives. He states that couples enter a "crazy cycle" in their relationship when they interact without the love and respect they both need so desperately: "without love, she reacts without respect. Without respect, he reacts without love" (p. 16). A really interesting point he makes is that we need to always keep in mind that, for the most part, our husbands (and wives) are acting in "basic goodwill" toward us. Now, he's not talking about sin nature stuff here, but just thinking generally in terms of communication. I really see that with honey; too often I completely forget that he truly loves me, and wouldn't ever do something purposefully to hurt me. He's a wonderful man! I too quickly forget that truth when communication difficulties come, and I react with contempt to something he's trying to tell me...

Anyhow, interesting stuff! Very good for me to think about, especially as our church has been guiding us in a study of James, and we've recently touched on the "tongue" passages there. Here's a quote from something one of our pastors wrote:

James has quite a bit to say about the tongue. In 1:19 he tells us to be slow to speak. The majority of ch. 3 is devoted to taming the tongue. In this section he states that the tongue is able to corrupt the whole person. Then there is James 1:26 that says that a person’s religion is worthless if he cannot keep a tight reign on his tongue. James isn’t the only one who talks about the tongue. Ephesians 4:29 commands us to not let ANY unwholesome talk come out of our mouths. Jesus himself says in Matthew 12:34, “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

Here’s the deal: the Bible has a lot to say about the tongue, so what has your tongue been saying?

So it's been good for me to think about how I communicate respect to my sweet dear honey. It's my sincere desire that I'll be doing a lot better with that come Valentine's Day next year... Happy Valentine's Day girls! Hope everybody gets to enjoy some favorites (chocolates and fountain coke for me, thanks!).