Marriage advice is easy to ignore until you need it. Who hasn’t rolled their eyes at such trite aphorisms as “Say sorry even if you don’t mean it” or “Don’t go to bed angry”? These phrases tend to leak out of people’s mouths around weddings and anniversaries but are barely helpful. True, lived-in advice for a long, happy marriage isn’t so tidy because neither are relationships.
Read More
Two days after a deadly shooting at a California church, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to offer more security resources to religious communities. Under the Nonprofit Security Grant Program Improvement Act, which passed the House on Tuesday, the amount of money available each year for houses of worship, faith-based schools and other nonprofits to use for safety improvements would double and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which manages the funds, would create an office tasked with boosting participation in the program.
Read More
A Democratic State legislator in Oklahoma suggested that men should get mandatory vasectomies, in response to another bill banning abortion from the moment of conception. At a meeting of the Oklahoma state legislature Friday, Democratic Rep. Mickey Dollens suggested that members of the legislature who supported the abortion law, House Bill 4327, should consider another bill he planned to introduce, which would mandate that young men in the state receive a vasectomy once they reach puberty that could only be reversed when they are “deemed financially and emotionally responsible.”
Read More
Within hours, the 17-year-old, straight-A student and Boy Scout had died by suicide.
“Somebody reached out to him pretending to be a girl, and they started a conversation,” his mother, Pauline Stuart, told CNN, fighting back tears as she described what happened to her son days after she and Ryan had finished visiting several colleges he was considering attending after graduating high school.
Ever get stuck in a “why, why, why” cycle with your spouse? Everything he or she does is the wrong thing to do, or done in the wrong way, or done at the wrong time. I remember a specific night last week when I caught myself in this spiral. By the end of the night, I was in a perpetual state of grumpiness – the tiniest annoyance added to my bitterness and indignation at my husband’s actions or inactions.
I realized later that he wasn’t ignoring the lawn, he was waiting until the neighbors got home to borrow their mower, because ours wasn’t working. And that he had been paying an important and time sensitive bill on the phone while I was fuming over his inattention to household tasks. And he did come in and help with bath time, but just not at the split second I thought he should have.
So, it turns out that my assumption that “my husband is just so selfish and inattentive right now” was in fact, unfounded. But, there are also times when I don’t fully understand his action or inaction, and I can’t tidily wrap up the evening with an explanation.