School of Marriage

 This May, we begin our second class of SoMa, (School of Marriage). This is an eight week interactive course for married couples who desire to have a fulfilling relationship. The classes are conducted once a week, with the couple doing their exercises in the course of the week before coming for the next session. We use a coaching approach which we have found to be very useful for married couples like the couple whose testimony is below.

 SoMa is the best thing that has ever happened to our marriage.  It was a very timely intervention by God.  We were going through a difficult time in our marriage, when everything seemed broken.  We could hardly communicate with each other, issues went unresolved, and there was anger, bitterness and mistrust.  There was no “us”, it was “me” against “you”.  With time, we had gotten into a vicious cycle of misunderstandings, anger outbursts, arguments and mistrust that we could not break out of.  We were on the verge of giving up; indeed, we had given up when Barnabas & Grace invited us for SoMa.

It is through awareness gained in SoMa that we stopped fighting each other and sought to understand each other: each others language, each others hurts, each others fears.

A great eye opener during SoMa  was understanding how our individual fears affect the way we relate to each other as well as our reactions to our spouse’s actions.  I came to realize how deeply my family background has affected me and my view of marriage.  I became aware of how I have unconsciously tried to fight anything that would make my marriage turn out like that of my parents, and how these fears made me hypersensitive to anything I perceive as a similarity to the marriage of my parents. 

SoMa also helped us appreciate each others felt needs.  It made us realize how much we had assumed that we knew each others greatest needs and how to meet them.  It was a humbling experience to realize that my idea of meeting my husband’s needs is not necessarily his, and that in many cases, we try to meet our spouse’s needs based on the way in which we would like ours to be met, which may not be effective.

To join our next class, please call Grace on 0729-237766.

A LOOK IS MORE THAN A THOUSAND WORDS

The other day I was having a conversation with my wife as I was trying to catch up with my mail on my laptop. At some point my wife went quite as I was engrossed in my toy oblivious of her having gone quite on me. When I suddenly kicked back to the conversation I noticed from the look on Gracie’s face that she wasn’t amused with me at all. As much as I tried to reassure her that I was actually listening to her, she wasn’t as convinced.

They say a look as worth a thousand words. Eye contact plays a big role in effective communication. You see, your eyes according to author and clinical psychiatrist Dr. Ross Campbell are the visible evidence of the connection between you. They link you together in a moment of shared understanding, the precious communication we all crave. He goes on to state that we even see that God designed the child’s eye to make contact with her mother during-breast feeding. As she feeds physically with her mouth, she feeds emotionally with her eyes.

Remember those days when you were dating and you could spend all that time looking into each other’s eyes, eyes filled with the “look of love”, you didn’t have to say much. Those eyes said it all. This is why it is important as you communicate to maintain eye contact thus listen with not just your ears but your eyes as well.