WHERE ARE THOSE OLD WEDDING PICTURES, NOW?

When was the last time you looked at those old wedding pictures? Blow off the dust and take a look at them again. They transport you back to a time when you celebrated something wonderful, your marriage with each other and your reliance on Christ to help you grow in wisdom and meaning together.

Over the years, like everything in the physical and mental universes, reality rusts, gets old, has adjustments, shrinks in some values while enhancing other new ones. In marriage, you continue to grow older, but with a caveat–you do so with a significant other. The good time and bad times, sickness and health, the times you grew apart, then back together, only to repeat the cycle over and over. It is in living with the emotions and personality quirks of the other person that defines the quality of your relationship. A few quick reflections before we look at what it means to be legally married but physically and mentally divorced and five remedies.

THE SIXTY SECOND CATHOLIC: Marriage

• Marriage is one of the seven sacraments Christ gave us to help us grow in grace through and with each other. These gifts are ministered through the Church to help sustain you through the ups and downs of Original Sin.
• In marriage, your ministry is to each other primarily, then to your children.
• This ministry means you are committed to helping spouse and children to discover the purpose of life, then to identify their purpose in life.

• Marriage means you have stability (you stay with your spouse in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, until death ends your vows.)
• Marriage is a voluntary commitment, just as is Baptism.
• Marriage is based on love, but not just any love. As a Baptized Catholic, love is defined by Christ’s loving us first. He is the norm against which we measure what love is. Love is helping each other grow in caring, respect, knowledge, and sharing, all while becoming fulfilled as a human being.
• Like faith, love can wither on the vine if not cultivated and protected. Love needs the nourishment of Christ in the Eucharist and the elimination of waste through the forgiveness of sins.
• Like sustaining your Faith, Marriage can grow apart through boredom, neglect, not sharing anything with your spouse, verbal, physical and spiritual abuse. I term that “Legally Married, Physically and Mentally Divorced”, based on my book of the same title.

THREE QUESTIONS

I. WHAT DO YOU SEE? When you look at those old wedding pictures, what do you see? Just write down what you see physically in as much detail as you can. Just write down what is in those wedding pictures, don’t interpret what they mean to you.

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II. WHAT DO YOU SEE? Write down how you felt during the time you first took those wedding pictures? This is the mental universe, the place you find meaning and measure your achievements against values. What were two of those values you share with your spouse about marriage? What two values did you want to have in your marriage that you could not live without? Do you still have those same two values? If not what other values have replace them? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

WHAT DO YOU SEE? When you look at those old wedding pictures this time, notice where you are now verses where you were when you got married. What is the value of the time you spent in your relationship? Where is your treasure? What part does love play in your relationship with each other. You are looking at the wedding pictures, you do so from the viewpoint of loving others as Christ has loved you. Does that make a difference in what you see?

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PRIVATE RETREAT

If you are legally married, but, when you look at your old wedding pictures, mentally and spiritually divorced, what can you do? What follows is a retreat that the both of you can make in the privacy of your home. It is contemplative because, with Christ, you can move from your old self to your new self. Remember, it takes two.

What follows is an excerpt from my book entitled, Legally Married, Mentally and Spiritually Divorced. http://www.amazon.com/books/ then type in Dr. Michael F. Conrad.

THE TWELVE GIFTS OF RELATIONSHIP

Twelve Gifts God Gives You to Help You Get to Heaven

When God gives a gift, it is not like receiving some delicious fudge at Christmas, or a pair of exquisite Steuben swans for a wedding anniversary. http:// steuben.com God gives from the depth of who God is. That gift is always given with unconditional love. Once more, God always gives us a part of who God is, as a gift. That is our template. God allows us to participate in his own energy, off-the-scale knowledge, love, and service. When you read about these twelve gifts,

THINK SPIRITUALLY! Read Galatians 5:16-26.

• Love Joy  Peace Patience Kindness Goodness
• Trustfulness Gentleness Self Control
• Food for the Journey Drink for the Journey Faith, Charity, and Hope
  

Lesson Twelve

Make A Twelve Gifts Retreat With Each Other

You are in a marriage which is legal, but somehow your relationship leaves a lot to be desired. Right? You have just read this book which provided you with some thoughts for spiritual food. Right? You have just completed the exercises to heighten your sensory and mental awareness of relationship. Right? So, what is left? You need closure with the past, and a recommitment to the future…together. No one will be telling you what to say or how to think in this retreat. It is self-directed. My suggestion is that you take the themes on page 208 (in the book) and develop a program for your partner. Take turns being the leader.

1. Agree to set aside some time for your spiritual development. If the children interrupt, tell them this is very important, that it is about spiritual development. Two hours minimum?
   1. Agree on a time frame in which to hold these private meetings.
   1. Each time you meet, read the two pages for each of the themes. Add your own comments. Talk to each other about the most intimate parts of your self. Remember to face

each other.

Lesson Twelve THE FIRST GIFT LOVE

Love is the first gift you will give one another…For- ever. At Christmas, you give gifts to symbolize the love that is behind it. Love may be the most important gift you give to your spouse. Share God’s love with each other.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. Look at each other, even if  it seems awkward and uncomfortable. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do so by facing each other.
2. Talk with each other about the meaning of love. Each of you tell a story from your past that illustrates the meaning of love.
3. Talk about physical love and intimacy, mental love and intimacy, and spiritual love and intimacy. Share what intimacy means to you.
4. What do you want the rest of your lives together to be like? What part does love play in your vision for your future together?
5. Look at your wedding pictures and share your feelings now, compared to when you first saw them. What has changed? Is that good or bad?

Lesson Twelve

Your Very First Meeting

Share the love that leads to authentic relationship.

Without trying to sound too simplistic, the relationship is doing activities together. It means sharing your- self with another person, in this case, your spouse. It means facing your spouse and talking together. This relationship is different from that of you and your children. If you are legally married, you can also be sexually distant, yet still, be spiritually united. You can be mentally and spiritually joined together, yet have little or no sexual intercourse. You can be romantic without having to perform sexual intercourse. Most importantly, you can have sexual contact, using all your senses and your mind, and still not experience the physical act of intercourse. What is essential is love that leads to a relationship. Your norm in finding authentic love is the love that God has for each of us. Read John 3:15-21 together. What does love mean in terms of your relationship? Spirituality helps you grow towards each other by sharing the gift of love. You only have the gift of love because God saw fit to share it with both of you. God shares, not from the excess of love, but from the very center of who God is. That love is pure energy.

Lesson Twelve THE SECOND GIFT JOY

Joy is the second gift you will share with one another. At Christmas you give gifts to symbolize the love that is behind it. Giving produces great joy. Sharing joy with your family is what life is all about on earth, but also in Heaven. You can share joy together every day.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do that by facing each other.
2. Talk with each other about what gives you great joy.
3. Talk about your relationship and how giving joy to your spouse make you feel.
4. What do you want the rest of your lives together to be like? If you don’t have joy together because you are legally married, but mental and spiritually divorced, how do you change that?
5. Make a pledge to each other to do things together, such as taking walks, and cooking together. Facing each other produces great joy.

Lesson Twelve  Your Second Meeting Just Being There.

Because Josh couldn’t stand his wife’s nagging about his personal habits, he gradually became alienated in his affections towards Beth. Both Josh and Beth were like their parents. Josh’s father was easy going and slow to anger. Beth was like her mother, tactless, opinionated, and a faultfinder. They both did well for the first three years of marriage, but the last twenty were without job, without sex, and without hope. Josh would read his Scriptures every day. That did not seem to help his situation, but he never gave us hope. He did not believe in divorce, and Beth was too insecure to want a separation, despite her pseudo bravado. As the years rolled by, including the birth of two children, Beth began to mellow a little. In everyone’s life, there is a critical moment that can lead to a dramatic change in behavior. Beth and Josh attended a Marriage Encounter retreat at their church. It was the first time they had faced each other in years. They accepted the opportunity to share with each other. This retreat turned them towards each other. They began to listen without fault-finding.

Lesson Twelve THE THIRD GIFT PEACE

Peace is the third gift you will share with one another. Peace does not only mean you know how to hold your temper when you are aggravated.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do that by facing each other mentally, as well as spiritually.
2. Talk with each other about what gives you the gift of spiritual peace.
3. Talk about your relationship and how it feels to experience the peace of The Master within you.
4. Share the peace of The Master with each other. You can give the peace of The Master to your spouse only when you, yourself have received it from God. How does this peace change how to solve conflicts of ideas?
5. Make a pledge to each other to enhance this spiritual peace and make it flourish. This is the peace that will dissolve your legally married, but mentally and spiritually divorced relationship. It does not happen overnight, but it will happen.

Lesson Twelve

Your Third Meeting

Use the energy of God’s peace to face each other mentally and spiritually.

Peace is not just the absence of conflict or war, as darkness is the absence of light. Rather, peace is a gift that provides sustenance and the ability to gain perspective over your life. Peace is a gift that causes you to face God, your spouse, your family, and most importantly, yourself. When you empty yourself of hatred, jealousy, envy, lust, mean-spirited, self-indulgence, fill the vacuum with the gift of peace. For spiritual relationships, peace is the gift of God’s own energy to fill the darkness of your animality. On a human level, you can have peace, which is the lack of stress, or the absence of conflict, but it is not the same as spiritual peace. When God gives you a gift, it does something wonderful within you both, and between you. God is pure energy. That means the power of God is available for you to help you face each other. What may be difficult on the human level is possible on the spiritual level. Did you understand that statement? You can be living independent lives, yet still, be facing each other mentally and spiritually. That is much different than being legally married, yet mentally and spiritually divorced.

Lesson Twelve

THE FOURTH GIFT

PATIENCE

Patience is the fourth gift you will share with one another. Patience means you can control yourself, when faced with a stressful situation.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do that by facing each other mentally, as well as spiritually.
2. Talk with each other about what gives you the gift of spiritual patience.
3. Talk about your relationship and how it feels to experience the patience of The Master within you.
4. Share the patience of The Master with each other. You can give the patience of The Master to your spouse only when you, yourself have first received it from God. How does patience solve conflicts of ideas? It does so by giving you perspective over your anger.
5. Make a pledge to each other to enhance this spiritual patience the next time you get angry.

Lesson Twelve

Your Fourth Meeting

You are not your spouse.

One of the great lessons of human relationship is to let each other be themselves. You are not your wife, and you are not your husband. You are not your children, and you are not your parents. Identifying who you are is the first step of facing each other. Do you want to make your spouse into your image and likeness? If so, you will no doubt be legally married, but mentally and spiritually divorced. If you have a need for control, you must let go of making your spouse into your image and likeness. You will feel the tension and pull, as your significant other resists the pressures to conform to what you think they should be. The results may show up in an alienation of affection, or a lack of being able to live together. You still love the person, but inexplicably, don’t want them to touch you. You shy away when they touch you. Perhaps just ten minutes before, your spouse told you that “You are something. I can’t stand to look at you.” Then ten minutes later, your partner wants to sit on your lap. Do you notice a bizarre pattern of love and hate? What allows you to continue in your relationship without mental or physical abuse is patience?

Lesson Twelve

THE FIFTH GIFT

KINDNESS

Kindness is the fifth gift you will share with one another. Kindness means you can control yourself when faced with a stressful situation.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do that by facing each other mentally, as well as spiritually.
2. Talk with each other about what gives you the gift of spiritual kindness. Bring God’s kindness into the picture and you will enhance your own relationship with a spouse, family, and even strangers.
3. Talk about your relationship and how it feels to experience the kindness The Master had for each of you.
4. Make a pledge to each other to be kind to each other. Kindness will refresh your tired relationship. Set a goal to do a small act of kindness each week for your spouse, your children, and those at work. Small acts of kindness make a huge impact.

Lesson Twelve

Your Fifth Meeting

Anticipation is the key to renewing relationships.

Being kind to your spouse is a gift. Being kind means that you anticipate the needs of each other. For example, when you bring home TCBY treats, and your wife says, “You didn’t have to do that. That is so thoughtful!” You can say, “I know I don’t have to do it, but that is what love is all about.” Central to understanding kindness is realizing the needs of your spouse, your family, and even those with whom you have no ties of direct relationship. Our model is The Master. He does not know us, yet he gave up his life so that we might join the Father in Heaven. That is unconditional kindness! That is unconditional love! What does God get out of the relationship with us? God is pleased when we humans discover how his creation makes sense, and how we fit into it. We fit into God’s plan, not the other way around, don’t you think? God anticipated our needs by sending his only Son, The Master. Read Philippians 2:5-12.

When you are kind, because of the kindness that God has bestowed on us, you can take everything you do and think to Heaven with you. You have linked the Kingdom of Heaven on earth with the one in Heaven.

Lesson Twelve

THE SIXTH GIFT

GOODNESS

Goodness is the sixth gift you will share with one another. Goodness is the gift from God that enables you to view your partner with fresh eyes.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do that by facing each other mentally, as well as spiritually.
2. Talk with each other about what gives you the gift of spiritual goodness. What makes a person good? Does God have anything to do with helping you become good?
3. Talk about your relationship and how it feels to experience the goodness with which The Master has filled you.
4. Make a pledge to each other to be good to each other. Make an effort to learn the center of your spouse and your children. Goodness comes from God, through the Master. Through you, you pass it to your

spouse and your family. Goodness creates a ripple effect. It permeates your thinking, helping you maintain your Center.

Your Sixth Meeting

Walk with each other towards a common goal.

Being good to your spouse is a gift. Goodness exists in the eye of the beholder. There is a saying about communications from St. Thomas Aquinas that goes, “Whatever is received, is received according to the disposition of the recipient.” Applied to goodness as a gift from God to you both, it means you must determine what goodness is. You can only do that by communicating with each other about the deepest parts of your feelings. You can only communication your deepest feelings when you face each other. Being legally married, but mentally and spiritually divorced means you DO NOT face each other. You go along in life as though you and your spouse are going in opposite directions. When you use the gift of goodness, you communicate to your spouse that you want to walk with him or her towards the goal of eternal life together, and not go in opposite directions. Your path in life is different from your spouse. You can choose to walk in the same direction, hopefully, to share your centers with each other. Goodness helps you to learn from each other. A good heart can see the footprints of God.

Lesson Twelve

THE SEVENTH GIFT

TRUSTFULNESS

Trustfulness is the seventh gift you will share with one another. Trustfulness is the gift from God that enables you to relax, knowing that your spouse is truthful.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do that by facing each other mentally, as well as spiritually.
2. Talk with each other about what gives you the gift of spiritual trustfulness. What makes a person trustful? Does God have anything to do with helping you become trustful?
3. Talk about your relationship and how it feels to experience the trustfulness with which The Master has filled you.
4. Make a pledge to each other to be faithful to each other. Make an effort to learn the center of your spouse, and your children. The ability to trust comes from God, through the Master. It is because The Master trusts both of you to help each other get to Heaven, that you can enjoy the trustfulness that comes from  sharing spiritually.

Lesson Twelve

Your Seventh Meeting

Trust means you believe that your spouse will keep their promise to you.

Trustfulness in a relationship means you believe that the words to you from someone else are true. Your marriage vows are not just a pledge for the moment, but the basis for a contract. You pledge to be faithful to each other, to help each other in sickness and in health, until death due you part.  Being legally married, but mentally and spiritually divorced is a death of sorts, the slow death of a relationship. You can live together in this state of death, but why would you want to do so? Some spouses make an accommodation that they lead separate lives, which means they have other sexual experiences outside of their marriage contract. They can rationalize that they can’t have sexual intercourse or romance inside their relationship, so they will get it from people outside of their legal marriage. Remember the story of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy? If you are trustworthy inside side your relationship, then you will be truthful with other external relationships. God trusts you to be truthful with yourselves and not experiment with other primary relationships. You can love other men and women, but not in the same way as your spouse.

Lesson Twelve

THE EIGHTH GIFT

GENTLENESS

Gentleness is the eighth gift you will share with one another. Gentleness is the gift from God that enables you to respect your spouse and family members.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do that by facing each other mentally, as well as spiritually.
2. Talk with each other about what gives you the gift of spiritual gentleness. What makes God gentle? Does God have anything to do with you becoming gentle? Read Matthew 11:29-30.
3. Talk about your relationship and what being gentle with each other means.
4. Make a pledge to be gentle in your relationship with each other. Make an effort to learn the center of your spouse and your children. Be gentle with your loved ones as God is gentle with you. Gentleness means forgiveness.

Lesson Twelve

Your Eighth Meeting

Gentleness is a sensitivity to how your partner feels.

Forgiveness is intimately bound up with relationship. We are bid to forgive others as God forgives us. Gentle- ness comes from a willingness to be sensitive to how your partner feels.

Carline had a mental dysfunction which caused her to rage uncontrollably when certain topics were brought up, such as her husband’s weight, or their finances. Carline and her husband, Josh, were polar opposites, when it came to an agreement on most subjects. Josh knew that Carline had problems controlling her temper, but he thought he could control herself. He was wrong. Josh was a gentle man, slow to anger and quick to forgive. Carline was a thoughtful person on the surface, but her dark side could pop up at any time, especially when the hot button topics were raised. For twenty years of marriage, Josh stayed married to Carline, He survived by walking away when she was screaming at him. When he returned five minutes later, it was as though Carline was a different person. He used his gentleness as a strength to help make peace.

Lesson Twelve

THE NINTH GIFT

SELF CONTROL

Self-control is the ninth gift you will share with one another. Self-control is the gift from God that enables you to love each other unconditionally.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do that by facing each other mentally, as well as spiritually.
2. Talk with each other about what gives you the gift of spiritual self-control. What makes a person able to focus on the needs of the other? Have you told each other that you continue to love each other? Read Galatians 5:16-26.
3. Talk about your relationship and what the next phase of your relationship will be. What you do want it to be?
4. Make a pledge to each other to focus on giving each other as much love as possible. What God expects of you should be what you give to each other. Read Matthew 22:34-40. What does it mean to love each other unconditionally, knowing that you are imperfect?

Lesson Twelve

Your Ninth Meeting

Self-control means you desire to give your spouse as

much physical, mental, and spiritual pleasure as possible.

Here are some ideas that will challenge your assumptions about controlling your sexual urges. Think of self- control as focusing your attention span, so that you give your spouse the most intense physical pleasure within your power to perform. This is not only the act of intercourse, but, more importantly, the infinite range of sexual and emotional experiences tied to sexual feelings. Explore together what these feeling mean. It is another way of saying that you not only face each other, but also control your urge to do less than your maximum efforts, when giving your partner sexual stimulation. The same idea goes for mental, as well as spiritual intimacy. By now, you may have seen a pattern emerging. Two people who face each other will not be legally married, but mentally and spiritually divorced. They may have difficulties, but they care for each other. Sexual intercourse is not the purpose of life. You can live without sexual intercourse, but you cannot exist without sexual intimacy. Do you see the difference? A spiritual person is not one who denies sexuality but seeks to fulfill their partner without limits.

Lesson Twelve

THE TENTH GIFT

FOOD FOR THE JOURNEY

Food for the journey is the tenth gift you will share with one another. This food is the gift from God that enables you to sustain your relationship through times of famine and spiritual depression.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do that by facing each other mentally, as well as spiritually.
2. Talk with each other about what sustains you in times of trouble in your relationship. If you are legally married, but mentally and spiritually divorced, are you incapable of taking the nourishment to give you the strength to re-establish your to face each other. Read John 6:32-40.
3. Physical food brings you together. Mental food nourishes your minds when you feed each other meaning and fulfillment. Spiritual food is eating the very energy of The Master, not just metaphorically, but in spirit and truth.

Lesson Twelve

Your Tenth Meeting

Where can you find the spiritual food come down from Heaven?

Ask each other where you can find this spiritual food that will sustain you in your common relationship and provide you with nourishment for the journey to

…Forever? The answer is right in front of you, although you may not see it. Read John 6:52-58. If you are parents, do you not feed your children and provide for them? If you are parents, do you not show your children what will nourish their bodies, just a mother polar bear teaches her cubs to hunt? Food nourishes the body and makes it strong. Without some form of food, you will surely die. Spiritual food, which is God’s own energy and power, nourishes your spirit. Without this food, your spiritual life will surely die. The Holy Spirit is the energy, or pure love, between The Father and The Master, His Son. You can share in that pure-energy, but only to the extent that you prepare yourself through faith, hope, and love. Spiritual faith is the heart that pumps God’s own life-giving blood through your veins. You can have faith as to move mountains, but if you do not have love, your spiritual muscles atrophy. Read I Corinthians 13. You must eat to grow. You must grow to get to Heaven.

230                     The Twelve Gifts of Relationship

Lesson Twelve

THE ELEVENTH GIFT

DRINK FOR THE JOURNEY

Drink is the eleventh gift you will share with one another. The spiritual drink is the gift from God that enables you to receive God’s own energy.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do that by facing each other mentally, as well as spiritually.
2. Talk with each other. What gives you the  gift of spiritual energy? What is this drink that comes from God, and where can you get it?
3. Talk about your relationship and what being one with The Master means. Do you help each other attain the purpose for which all humans exist–to know, love, and serve God, and to be happy with God in Heaven?
4. Make a pledge to help each other be spiritually alive through the drink that gives eternal life, now, and in the life to come. It is the true “pause that refreshes.”

The Twelve Gifts of Relationship

Lesson Twelve

Your Eleventh Meeting

You need a spiritual drink to sustain your relationship,

not only with God but with each other.

231

You need spiritual drink to sustain your relationship with God. You need spiritual drink to refresh tired re- lationship with your spouse and your family. Spiritual drink take the appearance of ordinary looking wine at Eucharist. As part of the bigger picture, it is the very life’s blood of the Master, made present today, every day. When you drink this blood and eat this flesh, you have life in you. We are not talking cannibalism here, as some of the nonbelievers tell you, but rather the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Just imagine! The greatest gift The Master gave to the Father was himself, to allow us to make the jump to Heaven. When we join with that same Master, we too can approach the Father with that same gift from the Son. This gift is without time or space since it exists in Heaven. Humans cannot approach the Father directly. The brilliance of that pure energy would fry our puny minds. We tag along, so to speak, with The Master. Read John 17. We are destined to be with God in Heaven.

Spiritual drink allows you to exist in the presence of pure energy, and pure love…Forever.

Lesson Twelve

THE TWELFTH GIFT

FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY

The virtues of faith, hope, and love are the twelfth gift you will share with one another. Faith, hope, and love are gifts from God that provide you with the core principles for helping each other get to Heaven.

DISCUSSION:

1. Face each other. If you want to revitalize your marriage relationship, you can only do that by facing each other mentally, as well as spiritually.
2. Talk with each other about the these gifts from God. How does faith help you? When you are down and depressed, how can faith, hope, and love help you? What can you do to help your spouse walk through the dark times? Think about whose faith, hope, and love you bring into your relationship. What effect will it have on you?
3. Talk about your relationship and how faith, hope, and love can help you remain centered.
4. Make a pledge to each other to increase faith in each other, expand hope in the future, and seal it with love, as a sign of your relationship.

Lesson Twelve

Your Twelfth Meeting

Faith, Hope and Love are core energies flowing from God’s own Center.

To help you help your spouse and loved ones get to Heaven, God gives us what we need for the trip. When God gives a gift, it is for a purpose. Gifts from God are pure energy, totally 100% of God’s nature. Humans re- ceive these gifts according to their individual capacity to know, love, and serve God in this life. The reward? Life with God together…Forever. Now THAT’S a gift worth having. But, it comes at a price.

FAITH-– Faith comes in two parts, as befits any relationship. First, God accepts you as his adopted son or daughter through a covenant agreement, usu- ally through a faith community. Secondly, you accept God as Father, the Son as Savior, and the Holy Spirit as Advocate.

HOPE — Hope is the trust for the future, that the words told to you by the Master are true. Others can say that there is no Heaven. You can only say, “I hope so!” Remember, this is not human faith, but the gift of Hope that comes from sharing God’s life. You must have Faith, to have Hope. You must have Charity to show love.

LOVE — Love is the product of faith and the recogni- tion that you hope in the Master’s promise. Read that promise in John 11:25-26.

LEARNING POINTS

1. There are twelve gifts of relationship that can help you move from being legally married, but mentally and spiritually divorced toward healing your lives with the help of God’s power.

• You can share these gifts with each other, as God has shared them with you.

• Gifts from God are energy to help sustain your spiritual dimension.

• Gifts from God are not passive, but active. God is 100% of his nature, which is divine, for lack of a better word. When these gifts from God pervade your spirit, the Spirit infuses you with the power out of this world, quite literally. It is the only power that can turn around a couple who are legally married but mentally and spiritually divorced.

• You both related to God when you share these gifts with each other. To do so, you must have hope that the words spoken by The Master are true. Read John 17.

FIVE QUESTIONS YOU NEED TO ASK YOURSELVES AND, OF COURSE, ANSWER

1. Are you the same person now as you were when those wedding pictures were taken? If there is no change, you have not grown at all. If you did grow, what how are you different now than when you made your wedding vows.
2. Do you do things of significance to your spouse together, or, do you lead separate but equal lives? What difference does that make?
3. Are you legally married, but mentally and spiritually divorced? How would you rate your spiritual awareness? Do you help your spouse to be spiritually alive?
4. Do you still remember those vows you took with each other? To have and to hold; in sickness and in health; until death do us part. Well, do you hold each other? Do you give your partner sexual intimacy as part of love? Do you feel bad, not complete, when you are not with your partner?
5. If you are legally married, but find yourself mentally and spiritually divorced, what are your options? Do you know how to fix this? Do you want to fix it? What role does Christ play in you loving your spouse as Christ loves you?

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