“Business relationships are frequently helped by recreational companionship. Why Not marriage?”—Ed Young: Romancing the Home

We know the picture. The one of business clients meeting on the golf course. Or, the company Christmas party. Or, the business lunch. All of these recreational acts designed to build a connection between buyer and seller…or client and customer…or manager and employee.

So why can’t we do that in marriage?

I am surprised many times when couples do nothing to improve the recreational side of their marriage. It seems as if once the wedding is over and the marriage begins, there is no need to build this relationship.

Is the deal complete?

Building the recreational companionship is all the more important after the marriage.  This is one of the greatest benefits to marriage—to always have a companion who believes in you, who supports you, who loves! Recreation builds trust and communication. It continues the relationship that blossomed while dating.

To truly connect with your spouse—get out of the house. Go to dinner.  Go play put-put. Go for a walk. If you have kids, put the kids to bed and watch a movie together or play a game.

If you are having a dry spell in your marriage, maybe you need to start networking with your spouse.

“The real issue is not whether you married the right person; it’s more an issue of your being the right person for your spouse.”

–H. Norman Wright: Communication: Key to your marriage.

There are times in counseling when a struggling married Soldier will come to me discussing his marital issues. The person will bring up his or her doubts in the person that he or she married. They will bring up some familiar statements:

“Maybe it was not meant to be.”

or

“Maybe I married the wrong person.”

The question sends the relationship in a tailspin—making the assumption that there is something wrong with the other person and the best way is to end the relationship-because they are simply not the right person and, therefore, will never be right.  There is no right or wrong choice—I do believe, through observation, some people are more challenging than others—but it all comes down to where YOU choose to be in the relationship.

If you are asking these questions; ask yourself—how can I make a change to meet my spouses needs?

Turn the focus back to yourself for the solution.

You can not control your spouse—no matter how hard you try.  And many times, we try to make the spouse that right person—when in actuality, we need to adjust to them. You can only control yourself—the variable that you have control over in building the relationship is you—so take change and discover ways to become the right person that your spouse desires you to be. Amazing things will happen as you take this step—even more amazing will happen, if you both take those steps.

Through an opportunity called Book Sneeze, I was provided a copy of “Your 100 Day Prayer” by John I. Synder. One of the endorsements in the front cover correctly puts this book in perspective. Cecil Murphy says;

“If you already enjoy a daily, satisfying prayer life, don’t read this book. But if you’re looking for something to stimulate you to become more faithful and systematic [this book] offers you an opportunity to focus on talking to God daily and making it an ongoing habit.”

This was the same reaction that I had while reading and working through this book.

While I am not perfect and still have room to grow, I already enjoy a system of prayer in my life.  This book doesn’t move me me forward.  I believe, however, that this book would have moved me forward several years ago when I was struggling with finding that “groove” for my prayer life.

“Your 100 Day Prayer” gives the reader a daily devotional passage to read—from scripture and then from the author, followed by a brief guided prayer. Acted on daily—with some serious commitment, a reader could use this book as a jump start to building a solid prayer life. The challenge is in committing to go through this book everyday. Like prayer—it isn’t rocket science; the struggle is in the daily getting up and taking time to conduct personal devotions.  This book gives the reader the tools to have something available to reflect on during that time alone with God.

I do recommend this book, if you are starting out or struggling with establishing a personal devotional life.

This year’s highlight gift for me was a new Diana Mini camera.

Functioning as a “Retro” camera, this 35mm film camera takes half frame photos and square format pictures.  It is a plastic camera.  I’m still learning how it all works—which is a challenge. It should be, but with today’s all automatic cameras going back old school takes an adjustment.

The photo above was take with ISO100 Color Negative print film (35mm). It was taken at an f-stop of f-8. In this day and age of quick photos—and quick edits, we don’t get the raw images you do with film.  You also don’t get the experience that comes with shooting film.

I enjoy shooting digital. But, I still have a love for film—the entire process is an experience and not just a “click.”

For several years, I have posted reviews and commentary on comicbookday.com. I decided that I want to my comic book thoughts with you here at chaplainandrews.com, but focus more on my collection at comicbookday.com. I recently moved all of those posts to chaplainandrews.com to make them easier for you to find.

On an early post, I wrote;

When I began reading comics, I was living alone at Fort Campbell getting ready to go to Iraq for the first time.  My wife and kids were at home in South Carolina and I needed something to do to keep me busy.  So every week, I would look forward to having a comic book day on Thursday.  This was a time were I would spend some time at the comic book shop followed by a trip to Pizza Hut.  The Thursday night, many times also provided me with reading material for Friday nights when the week was done and the loneliness would set in.  Many weekends, I began to go to Nashville to visit other comic book shops and to build my collection.

My collection has grown to over 3600 and still growing.

Over the next several months and years, I plan to highlight portions of my collection at comicbookday.com. There, I will be researching various parts of my growing collection and showing the readers what I find interesting in my collection.  I am moving from a written blog to a showcase gallery of my collection, so that I may enjoy showing off what I have inside my 26-plus comic book boxes.

I invite you, the readers of chaplainandrews.com, to stop by comicbookday.com to enjoy seeing my collection of comic books!

I visited one of my uncle yesterday morning and was schooled in the advanced techniques of genealogy.

I haven’t been formally researching my genealogy for very long, but I do have a lot of stuff—and some cool toys.  I learned that to really be good, I need to go back to the basics of genealogy by using paper.

As my uncle was showing me the ends and outs of his research, his base research was hand written on Family Unit Charts like the one above and placed neatly in a notebook. This acted as a guide to all of his history as he sought to prove each fact and each relationship.

I found a very good chart on the Mid-Continent Public Library website is the genealogy resources of the Midwest  Genealogy Center. On this site there are plenty of charts and instructions.  The one I have sent out to my family members is a pdf that can be filled out and saved—so it really looks nice when it is printed out.

If you are interested in starting a family tree, I can not stress to you the importance of these family sheets.  They give information to start from, as well as pass down information to the next generation that they may desire for their own sense of heritage.

In Thursday’s New York Times, McDonald’s had a full page advertisement explaining their changes to the Happy Meal to make them more nutritional.

I was very interested in seeing  the last paragraph that explains McDonald’s commitment to the customer.

The line of interest is:

…Our job is more than serving our customers. It’s continually earning their trust.

This is the essence of Enchantment.

If we could all go beyond simply serving, to continually earning people’s trust in everything we do—that would be the ticket to success. Serving someone only effects the moment—earning the trust builds the relationship with the other person to the extent that they return for more.

This weekend, I was able to go back home to see my parents in upstate South Carolina.

Every time, I go through there, I stop in to get a copy of the latest “Jail Report”. I am amazed that it actually interests me, but when you think of local news—this is as newsworthy as you can get.

Each week, you will be able to see all of the mug shots of people arrested within the last ten days. You’ll be able to enjoy “Fun with Captions” and play “Match the Convict to the Crime” (a matching game where you match the mug shot to the offence).

It is a short little paper, but for someone passing through it is interesting to see what people are up to in the little small towns.

This morning, I was asked to give a stress management briefing. Here is the outline that I used as talking points:

Stress Management Briefing

1. Welcome and Comments

2. Key Message: Effective stress management can reduce the effects of turbulence in your life.

· Describe Turbulence

3. Stress is Normal

· Everyone experiences stress

· Stress is the body’s response to the changes in our lives and to the threats to our safety and our self-esteem

· Common symptoms of stress include:

o A fast heartbeat.

o A headache.

o A stiff neck and/or tight shoulders.

o Back pain.

o Fast breathing.

o Sweating, and sweaty palms.

o An upset stomach, nausea, or diarrhea.

4. Stress is Controllable

· Immediate Response

o Respond to Activating Events

o Keep Things in Perspective

· Take Care of Yourself

o Remind yourself that the way you are feeling is normal

o Pray

o Take care of Physical Needs.

o Focus on the mission at hand.

o Stay tied in with buddies in your unit;

o Seek Help.

· Help Others

o Charities

o Church

5. Stress is Shared

· Others have Stress

· Talk to Them

· ACE: Suicide Prevention

6. Key Message: Effective stress management can reduce the effects of turbulence in your life.

This evening, I had the unique opportunity to visit the Med-Flight hangar as a part of the CERT program here in Chesterfield County, VA.

I had a great time learning about all that the pilots and crews do to ensure that people in need get the proper medical attention fast.

There were several lessons learned from my experience.

1. The crews in the sky are highly trained and highly qualified. I had the opportunity to speak with a crew and they are very knowledgeable and it was clear to me that they were the best of the best.

2. Med-Flight shows that interagency operations work.  While the Virginia State Police operate the helicopter, the Chesterfield EMS work inside, and the Virginia Emergency Management Agency controls the radio. It is a great example of government cooperation assisting the people of the state.

3. The aircraft goes very fast.  I know that sounds lame, but at over 160 mile per hour when they are in a hurry—this is a big deal. They can get near the North Carolina border in roughly 30-40 minutes. That is very comforting to know that medical care is that close, even if it is far away.

Again, I had wonderful time seeing what the Med-Flight crews work with and how they care for patients around the area.