Dan Byl

What is normal in the world is what is wrong with the world. What has become acceptable in our culture are the things that make it harder to stay pure of heart and mind, they are the things that make relationships so difficult, they are the ideas that are teaching kids to be the way they are.

It seems that the church is always just behind the cultural norm. What happens is that culture changes to embrace some form of a new low, the church stands up and says no, at least for a time.

Then society moves on and embraces yet another new form of low, the church forgets about what it was saying no to originally as it raises to fight this new low, but meanwhile incorporating the last low they were trying to fight.

It defiantly leads me to some serious head shaking as I watch this cycle repeat it self and the great minds of our church walk about oblivious and to afraid for there jobs to take a real stand and say enough is enough.

In many ways the church is perpetuating the decay of North American culture.

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Part two, this is one of the easiest ways to begin to learn what you need to do to care for your partner in the way he or she needs.

This takes a lot of observation skills but with just a little practice anyone can get there.

Look and see what your partner is doing to care for you, try to be aware of the things they do, the way they interact with you. Then try and do similar things back.

Does your wife make you dinner, try doing that for her, does she like going for long walks, and picnics, try planning one these, and see what happens.
Does your man talk to you before he buys anything, does he like punctuality, does he always tell you how pretty you are. Begin to do these things with him.

When we start to mimic our partners behavior we are actually beginning to love and respect our significant other in the way that speaks to them.

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If these two ever decided to duke it out, I am pretty sure respect would win, because frankly it is the manlier of the two.

This is a concept that has required some discovery on my part.

Men tend to respect their wives or significant others, while women are more prone to Love their partners. The problem with this is that men have a need to be respected not loved, and if a woman had to choose, she would choose love instead of respect.

What happens in relationships is that we care for our partners in the way that we want to be cared for. And this often ends in a relationship where neither person is receiving what they need.

Are you caring for your partner in the way they need to be cared for, or in the way you would like them to care for you?

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I don’t feel so inspired right now. But I think that being able to man up and not fake it, sometimes makes us more us better people then faking it till we’re making it.

The challenge comes in knowing when to do one or the other.

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I have spent the last month trying to figure out the answer to this question, I have spent so much of my life being ruthlessly hard on my self, and found hat when I tried to answer this question it was much more challenging then I thought it would be.

I began by sending out an email to many of my close friends.

Dear,

I am trying to compile a list of things I am good at and what brings me to life. I figure my friends might have some insight into this, so if you a have a couple minutes could you think about me as a person and write down anything that comes to mind.

Things like skills, abilities, values, even what I was doing last time you saw me excited about something.

Thanks for taking a minute to do this. It is really important to me that I get as much input as I can on this.

Cheers
Dan

The responses I got back had similar themes but also some very different ideas as well. As I spent time reflecting on what my friends had written, I could see that the things they had pointed out were true.

They created a great starting point for me to continue to grow and develop a list of good qualities, traits and skills.
Now I am in the process of developing a list of jobs that my particular skills would be used often and not just shelved for those occasional moments where I feel like I get to shine.

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Often when we think of finding our vocation we think of a job, a task that we are charged by some higher power to do, but this is not entirely accurate. Our vocation is not what job we do but what we bring to the job we do.

Our skills, our gifting, the stuff that makes us, us. When we bring these things to our work environment no matter what it is we are doing it can become our vocation.

The challenging thing is finding a place where we can use our particular skills, or attributes on a regular basis. When we begin to do this our lives will feel as though they have much more meaning then they do right now.

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