This past weekend, Jensen and I headed to Omaha, NE for a Strong Bonds (www.strongbonds.org) weekend retreat. These retreats are hosted by Army Chaplains and are amazing. They pay for your hotel (Double Tree Omaha), provide meals, pay you to be there, and if you have kids, they reimburse you for childcare so that you can be there with just your spouse for the weekend. Come on–who wouldn’t go?Â
We headed out Friday afternoon so that we could arrive before dark. Jensen had never been to Omaha and I had only been there once in high school. Thanks to Mr. GPS (he’s such a good friend), we arrived with no problem. After we checked into the hotel (note: Double Tree gives you a free, warmed chocolate chip cookie at check-in. Part of a “Sweet Dreams” campaign), we headed out for dinner. We ended up at La Hacienda. A bit sketchy from the outside, but great Mexican food–reasonable prices, good portions, fast service.
Then we decided to check out the two-story Borders store right next door. I think it’s funny that Jensen probably hardly ever stepped inside a book store before we met and now, I think he likes to go more than me! Anyway, at this bookstore, I found a wonderful new treasure. Recently, I discovered Jan Karon’s Mitford series. Love it. At the Ames Library Sale about a month ago, I scored the first four books for $0.50/each! I’m working on gathering the rest. I also love cookbooks. They are so fun to browse and imagine how you’re going to cook all these wonderful dishes in the oodles of time you find yourself with each day. At Borders, I found a Mitford Cookbook! Oh I cannot wait to share it with those of you reading this and sharing in my delight! It was definitely a good start to the weekend.
Now, I don’t want to get caught up in all the details of the retreat and not leave room to talk about the speaker because basically, he rocked. Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage is a six session dvd-based marriage seminar by Pastor Mark Grungor. He’s a crazy little Puerto Rican man (married to a redhead by the way–too bad we didn’t see pictures of their kids!) who is passionate about humor, good marriages, and well, great sex.
I’ll just share with you a few highlights of the things he shared. Jensen and I are hoping to buy his dvds and have you over to watch them with us.
1. The Tale of Two Brains. Mark’s first two sessions are on the differences between men and women’s brains. I should note that he really believes in focusing on what is right about two people in marriage, not what is wrong. We already all know we’re not perfect. Anyway. So, I had heard analogies about these differences before. Mark’s analogy is this.
Men’s brains are like warehouses full of boxes. The number one rule is that no box can touch another box. Ever. The second rule is that you can only take out one box at a time. When you’re speaking with a man, he responds by going into the warehouse, finding the box he thinks is appropriate, looking at its contents, sharing them with you, and then very carefully putting the box away–it cannot touch the other boxes!
Also, and this is very important. Men have a very special box in this warehouse. It’s their favorite box and they take it out often. It’s called THE NOTHING BOX. You know when you’re talking to him and seem to get no response? He’s just in his nothing box. When he gets home from work and just wants to “zone out” for awhile. He misses his nothing box and just needs to see it for a few minutes. And just from my personal observation, nothing makes a man run for his nothing box like hunger. Feed the boy–then have a deep discussion!
Haha, I tell you what–there were a lot of husbands who got let off the hook when the women at the retreat found out that every guy in the room had this box–not just theirs
Mark said he often has women ask why they can’t go into the nothing box with him. Guys–you know this answer… because then there would be SOMETHING in the box 🙂
Women’s brains are vastly, vastly different. We are a ball of wire. Very similar to the internet–click on one thing and you never know what you might find, but you can be sure it’s connected to something else 🙂 I’m not really sure what else to add to his discussion of women’s brains. I’m sure Jensen could tell you what the enlightening parts were.
2. How to Stay Married and Not Kill Anyone
So this section was about how men and women “count points” differently. It’s not that he’s advocating keeping track of the good/bad that your spouse does, but let’s face it–we all do it.Â
Here’s men’s way of counting points. He gets out of bed in the morning when he really didn’t want to. 500 points. He went to work and dealt with with his boss all day. 3000 points. He remembered to call you at lunch to ask how your day was. At least 7500 points. So by the time he gets home, he thinks he’s done pretty well and deserves some time to just sit so that his wife can catch up to him.
Now the women. She got out of bed this morning when she didn’t want to. 1 pt. Her husband did too. He gets 1 pt. She went to work all day. 1 pt. So did he–1 pt. She stopped by the grocery store on the way home, picked up the kids from sports’ practice, gave her friend a call on the drive home, and took the dog out when she walked in the door. 4 pts. Her husband sits down when he gets home. 0 pts. The rest of the evening may continue with her doing tasks and maybe she’ll go to bed with 20 points in her mind while her husband is still sitting at 3 (meanwhile he thinks he’s up by thousands and can’t figure out why she’s mad!).
Once again, the point of all this is not to count points or assume men are lazy. The point is to help each person understand the other, rather than just getting upset.
He also said since men give themselves so many points anyway, they think if they want to show their wife a kind gesture, it should be BIG. Example: If one rose gets me one point, twelve roses should get me twelve points! Wrong! Giving her roses gets you one point. However, giving her a single rose on twelve occasions definitely gets you twelve points 🙂
And men, listen up. You want some big points–for not even doing anything? Plan a romantic date for your wife–arrange all the details and tell her a week in advance. Then, throughout that week, every time she thinks about what you did for her–1 pt. And every time she tells her girlfriends about what you’ve done–1 pt. All for something you haven’t even done yet!
I think that this was a good example of one of his mantras throughout the weekend: Be nice to the girl. It’s probably the thing he emphasized most.
Oh man–we were all rolling on the floor–it’s so often true! I won’t share any of the other great stuff because like I said, we really hope you guys will watch his dvds.
I will recommend that if you get a chance–even if you’re single–check out his website and consider doing The Flag Page activity. It’s insanely accurate and will really help you understand how you approach the world. It’s only $10 to buy the code to complete the measures and I just cannot tell you how helpful it has been. If you’d like, I’m more than happy to discuss my Flag Page with you.Â
And if you are a military family, I really encourage you to check out a Strong Bonds weekend. We convinced two other couples to go to this one and I really think they both had a great time!
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