I needed to reboot a marriage. My own marriage. I was tripping David with the way I communicated. If only I could summon up more courage and humility. But I felt crushed, defeated, and very, very insecure. 

And angry. Why did everybody else seem to have great marriages but me?

Susan Cox, Re/Engage Director at Watermark Community Church in Dallas, joined me to talk about how we reboot a marriage. Both our own and those hurting marriages all around us. (Susan with her beloved family shown above.)

Truthfully, over 37 years ago I didn’t know the best ways to communicate. Eventually I was so frustrated, I didn’t care. Still, it hurts me to remember I was so ineffective in the way I communicated that I risked our marriage over it.

Susan offers us the simplest, best approach ever!

Reboot a Marriage, Couples Restoring Each Other

“Humility melts the heart of stone. Colossians 3 tells us we are to bathe ourselves in humility,” says Susan Cox, Re/Engage Director at Watermark Community Church in Dallas. Then, she adds with a laugh, “Husbands and wives, if you’re listening, when you get dressed every morning, we should bathe ourselves in humility!”

Humility. Simple, yes. Easy, well, ahem, maybe not for some of us!

Through Re/Engage, Susan joins tens of thousands of couples to share tools to restore and reboot a marriage anywhere people are ready for a change. 

“The beautiful thing about this is it’s the gospel. The core principles of this ministry is God’s word. It’s God’s people. It’s God’s Spirit,” Susan adds.

Unsung Marriage Champion

Not that she would ever admit it, but God is using Susan as something of an unsung marriage champion. All because she humbly sought help and had the courage to step into authenticity herself. 

First, she and her husband had some work to do rebooting a marriage of their own. (Find Susan’s story.) Fortunately, they found a community of couples willing to help and encourage along the way. Next, she grew to trust the scriptural principles because she realized they work. Eventually, she gained so much passion for marriage restoration that she simply couldn’t stop talking about it.

Now she directs Re/Engage, a ministry equipping couples to help each other. As news spreads of it’s success, growth has been crazy with churches calling regularly to bring Re/Engage to their communities. READ THE FULL ARTICLE

And thanks for listneing in!! We are grateful for YOU!

:)

cathy

P.S. You Can Halp: Write Reviews

You can help us by writing an Amazon reviews: for Marriage Conversations: https://Amazon.com/review/create-review?&asin=1936501562 Or to Write an Amazon Review for The Well:  https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review?&asin=B08M4G1Q6Z.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart!❤️

Cathy Krafve, Speaker, Blogger, Podcaster, and author of The Well: The Art of Drawing Out Authentic Conversations and Marriage Conversation: From Coexisting to Cherished. We welcome your stories, ideas, and questions at CathyKrafve.com. Truth with a Texas Twang.

“Vows often say the words for better or worst. There’s a starry eyed bride and groom repeating the vows and when I see them I think they have no clue!” Nancy Kay Grace returned this week to talk about grace-filled families. “They have no clue what’s coming. I didn’t and I’ve been married for 45 years!”

“All couples are incompatible. We all married the wrong people.” she adds, laughing and paraphrasing Stanley Hauerwas, a prolific modern Christian writer and thinker who was born in Dallas, Texas. (I had to throw Dallas in there. Find more great marriage quotes.)

Nancy Kay Grace, shown right, talked with me on Fireside Talk Radio to tell some funny and some personal stories.

So, how do we create grace-filled families? Where do we get the patience to keep loving when our people get really messy?

Dandelion Disaster

She compares grace in marriage to a dandelion disaster that cropped up in their yard. 

Nancy, in an attempt to help her husband, sprayed each and every dandelion with Round Up.  By the time he came home that evening, brown patches spotted their yard like a woman wearing polka-dots. 

To his credit, he didn’t say much except to note the change. 

“The next day, I was going to go out and dig up all the little brown spots,” she can laugh now about how she compounded her mistake. “So, now I have holes scattered across the whole front yard. It was a disaster.” 

She chalks up her mistake to not asking for help. Boy, haven’t we all learned the hard way to ask the right questions! Obviously, Nancy’s heart was in the right place, wanting to help her hubby, Rick, but…. 

“If I had waited and talked through with him, talked through a plan, we would have tackled the problem and the lawn disaster would have been averted,” she reports, citing the advantage of working together as a united team. “It wouldn’t have looked like crop circles!”

Finally, the only natural conclusion of her front yard failure unfolded.

“At the end of that season we had to plant new grass. Totally tear it up and plant new grass,” she says, adding with a chuckle, “And also to keep the neighbors from laughing about what was happening at the Grace household.”(Find more of Nancy’s stories in her book, Grace Impact: When Our Lives Overwhelm.)

Marriage and the Grace-filled Family

Nancy explains why grace is so important in marriage to create a grace-filled family. FIND THE FULL ARTICLE

From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU for listening and reading!! ❤️ 

:)
cathy

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Cathy Krafve, Speaker, Blogger, Podcaster, and author of The Well: The Art of Drawing Out Authentic Conversations and Marriage Conversation: From Coexisting to Cherished. We welcome your stories, ideas, and questions at CathyKrafve.com. Truth with a Texas Twang.

We all feel overwhelmed sometimes. When our lives overwhelm us, we need grace. But what is grace exactly? Happily, my friend Nancy Kay Grace showed up to talk about one of our favorite topics together. So, I asked her to tell of an ongoing challenge facing her for many years.

Nancy knew in her spirit something was wrong. 

“I shouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night with pain in my tongue,” she says.

Along the way, she developed a sore on her tongue. First, her initial doctor gave her remedies and suggested she wait and see if it healed. Next, another doctor confirmed that approach. (Find more about how the right conversation can change everything here.)

Nancy Kay Grace, shown here, meeting life’s challenges with peace and joy!

Grace to Persist

Since her situation felt ominous, she persisted in spite of their reassurances.

“It’s probably an ulcer,” the oral surgeon suggested, removing the sore, just in case.

“I had oral surgery right then and there in his office. The surgery took longer and he had to remove more of my tongue than just a small section. He almost didn’t send it off for biopsy because he didn’t think I fit the profile for cancer,” she reports.

Later that day, Nancy went home with stitches in her tongue. Suddenly, She couldn’t talk and couldn’t eat. Naturally, her head was spinning. What is happening here?

When We Feel Overwhelmed

A couple days later she got a phone call and found out it was cancer. That night she prayed through her fingers, sitting at her piano. (Find how musically-challenged mommies can inspire their music-loving children.)

“I played and I prayed through my fingers. I couldn’t sing because my tongue was all messed up,” she explains. “But I prayed through my fingers and prayed and I released it all to God. I said, ‘Whatever is ahead, Lord, I turn this over to You and I believe You are going to be with me.’” 

In that moment of prayer, she describes a perfect exchange. 

“The peace of God came over me. I knew it was a peace given for just such a time as that when someone is at a very critical point of receiving some difficult news.”

The Picture of Grace

When I first met Nancy several years ago, she extended grace to me naturally without even realizing it. I’m really sensitive to grace. Yep, because I mess up a lot.

I noticed immediately Nancy is not judge-y or condemning, but really compassionate. Sometimes people dish out a ton of rejection and condemnation out of their own self-condemnation. But not this kind-hearted lady!

For over a year now, I’ve wanted to interview Nancy on Fireside Talk Radio, but she couldn’t talk! Yet, each time I talked to her throughout the year, I was amazed at her rapid improvement and her clearer enunciation. What a beautiful miracle to watch God’s grace at work in my friend’s life! I find Nancy inspiring. FIND THE FULL ARTICLE

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Best of all, you’ll help us push positive messages out there into a universe in desperate need of good stuff. THANK YOU!!!