Parents with Disabled Kids Need Help

With your help, Sweeten Life Systems can win $25,000.00 plus other great prizes. We need your help to win. We have kicked off a new aspect of our ministry that falls squarely within our mission of "Building a lifetime of great relationships"(R)

We received a generous grant to do an in depth research study on the concerns, stresses, insights and conflicts of families with Special Needs kids. The research interviews are completed as is our grant so we need more money to carry out the Action Steps.

We have entered a great contest sponsored by Cincinnati Innovates. One of the ways they judge an entry is by "Fan Voting". Will you be our fan? You can go to their web and vote daily for us. So, please log in and vote for our entry tight now as well as tomorrow and Tuesday, and Wednesday, etc.

After you log into Cincinnati Innovates, look for Special Life Skills and read all about our project. Then, vote YES for Sweeten Life-Special Life Skills!

Stress and Pregnancy

An article in the Wall Journal tells us that most types of stress that bother expectant mothers is relatively harmless for the unborn child but certain kinds of stress can be harmful to the child. What do you think is most harmful?

Stress about money?

Stress about work issues?

Stress about housework?

The answer is, "None of these issues". The most harmful stress comes from within and it has to do with anxiety about the child. So, if you are worried about your baby, get some help. But first, read the story.

Marriage and Conflict

Conflict is normal

Misery is optional

Why, then, do we so often allow conflict to become miserable in our marriage and family life?

Dr. John Gottman has done research with hundreds of couples. He hooks them up to heart and brain wave monitors and asks them to plan some simple activity. In a few minutes Dr. Gottman can see if the couple is likely to divorce or stay married.

How does he do that? Do they threaten divorce or indicate a low interest in the marriage?

Nope! They do not know how to handle even simple differences.

In making a decision about the time to leave for a meeting they will attack each other and develop an attitude. If the couple tends to attack rather than attend, the marriage will probably not last.

How about you? Can you disagree while being agreeable? If not you may end up in court.

Or, do you find yourself Defending Yourself and Offending your Spouse?


Why make yourself and the person you love miserable?

Sex and Marriage

I have been a Counselor for many years. there is no more powerful force in marriage and all male female relationships than sex. When sex and romance are confined to marriage it is powerfully good but sex outside marriage is powerfully bad. I wrote on this issue on Brave Heart so you can read my ideas there as well.

Many of my long term couple clients discover deep divisions between them because they had sex before marriage and the wound has never healed. Even if they were not Christians or very moral at the time, sex before marriage is a powerful, long lasting fact.

Jesus taught about building our foundation on rock or sand. Only the house build on rock will sustain the storms of life and believe me marriage must face a lot of storming. Marriages of people who have sex before marriage are less stable and less long lasting than those where people waited to "do it".

Even more threatening to me as a therapist are the unleashing of unbridled passions and sexual desires today. I recently head that the rate of Sexually Transmitted Disease is the highest in this nation in the Villages Retirement City in Florida. Old men and women are hooking up and sharing disease as well as emotional bonding in record numbers.

Young people seem to share sexual organs today like we did baseball cards in our youth. The long term results will be dramatically different for them and their offspring. Just think of the price even such a star as Tiger Woods must pay for hooking up. His kids will very likely grow up in a severely dysfunctional family with shame as a family heritage.

Tiger did not count the cost of there one night stands.

A Woman of Character

When Jenny Sanford, former wife of Governor Mark Sanford, sat down to tell her children about their father's sordid affair, guess what the eldest said. This is story of great wisdom, character and maturity in a wife and of narcissism, immaturity and ego from her husband.

Mark Sanford had all the outward appearances of a Christian man. He talked the walk and led Bible studies for high end couples. He took oaths about being pure and holy but he obviously had a shallow inner life in the Holy Spirit.

Jenny Sanford writes a compelling book about her side of things and it seems to be well done. We need more leaders like her and less like her husband.

The New York Time review of Jenny Sanford's book is wonderful. I want to read the book as well.