Praying for Marriages (PfM)

Please join us this week in praying for newly married couples.  Though the issues faced by newly married couples are common and often joked about, they can be troublesome and cause a marriage not to get off to the best start.  Every new marriage is a blending of two different people, and their differences required adjustments, understanding, open communication and forgiveness. The adjustments of living everyday with another human being can be a strain.  These adjustments are tough for young persons who haven’t yet established routines as independent adults; they can be even more troublesome for individuals who have been independent adults for a number of years prior to the marriage and have habits and life-styles with which they have become comfortable.   In either case, adjustments both large and small are a challenge for newly weds. Another issue for young marriages is the personal baggage the newly weds bring with them.  Often not all...

Please join us this week in praying for couples in mixed-race or mixed-cultural marriages.   In a very real sense, couples in these marriages face the same challenges and difficulties as most couples.   But in another very real sense, these common challenges and difficulties can be complicated by the couple’s mixed-race or mixed-cultural situation. Think about the conflicts that occur in marriages simply because the spouses come from different households that solved problems differently or celebrated holidays differently or handled finances differently.   Now imagine how those conflicts could be exacerbated when the spouses are from races and/or cultures that are vastly different.   Furthermore, racial and cultural differences can cause confusion in a marriage because some racial and cultural characteristics and traditions can be infused with a history and loaded with meaning unknown by one spouse and that defy an easy explanation by the other. ...

Please join us this week in praying for couples going through the hospitalization of a spouse.  This life situation can create numerous stresses on a marriage.  Just dealing with the anxiety of the medical situation itself is trying on a marriage, but there are other stressors as well. When one spouse is in the hospital, daily tasks do not decrease by half; in fact, they increase for the other spouse, and, if children are involved, they increase a lot.  Time gets compressed as one spouse tries to be at the hospital to support and comfort the other while still meeting the demands of work, home and family. It is not unusual at all for both spouses to become sleep-deprived.   Hospitalization does not equate to quality rest for the patient or for the spouse who is splitting time between a lonely bed at home and a not-so-comfortable chair in a hospital room.  The longer the hospital stay the more weariness is likely to increase.  And weariness ...