Interesting Google from Father's Day thoughts - divorce

The Walk-away Wife Syndrome

By Michele Weiner-Davis

Did you know that of the over one million marriages that will end in divorce this year, two thirds to three quarters of those divorces will be filed for by women? What is this so-called, "Walk-away Wife" syndrome all about?

In the early years of marriage, women are the relationship caretakers. They carefully monitor their relationships to make sure there is enough closeness and connection. If not, women will do what they can to try to fix things. If their husbands aren't responsive, women become extremely unhappy and start complaining about everything under the sun... things that need to get done around the house, responsibilities pertaining to the children, how free time is spent and so on. Unfortunately, when women complain, men generally retreat and the marriage deteriorates even more.

After years of trying unsuccessfully to improve things, a woman eventually surrenders and convinces herself that change isn't possible. She ends up believing there's absolutely nothing she can do because everything she's tried hasn't worked. That's when she begins to carefully map out the logistics of what she considers to be the inevitable, getting a divorce.

While she's planning her escape, she no longer tries to improve her relationship or modify her partner's behavior in any way. She resigns herself to living in silent desperation until "D Day." Unfortunately, her husband views his wife's silence as an indication that "everything is fine." After all, the "nagging" has ceased. That's why, when she finally breaks the news of the impending divorce, her shell-shocked partner replies, "I had no idea you were unhappy."

Then, even when her husband undergoes real and lasting changes, it's often too late. The same impenetrable wall that for years shielded her from pain, now prevents her from truly recognizing his genuine willingness to change. The relationship is in the danger zone.

If you are a woman who fits this description, please don't give up. I have seen so many men make amazing changes once they truly understand how unhappy their wives have been. Sometimes men are slow to catch on, but when they do, their determination to turn things around can be astounding. I have seen many couples strengthen their marriages successfully even though it seemed an impossible feat. Give your husband another chance. Let him prove to you that things can be different. Keep your family together. Divorce is not a simple answer. It causes unimaginable pain and suffering. It takes an enormous amount of energy to face each day. Why not take this energy and learn some new skills and make your marriage what you've wanted it to be for so long?

If you're a man reading this and your wife has been complaining or nagging, thank her. It means she still cares about you and your marriage. She's working hard to make your love stronger. Spend time with her. Talk to her. Compliment her. Pay attention. Take her seriously. Show her that she's the most important thing in the world to you.

Perhaps your wife is no longer open to your advances because she's a soon-to-be walkaway wife. If so, read the posts on the divorcebusting.com messageboard. Don't crowd her. Don't push. Be patient. If you demonstrate you can change and she still has eyes... and a heart, you might just convince her to give your marriage another try.

This is spot-on! 

Source: http://www.divorcebusting.com/a_walkaway_wife.htm

Wound of Loneliness - Grand Canyon - Henry Nouwen

Slow Fade

Be careful little eyes what you see
It's the second glance that ties your hands as darkness pulls the strings
Be careful little feet where you go
For it's the little feet behind you that are sure to follow

It's a slow fade when you give yourself away
It's a slow fade when black and white have turned to gray 
Thoughts invade, choices are made, a price will be paid
When you give yourself away
People never crumble in a day
It's a slow fade, it's a slow fade

Be careful little ears what you hear
When flattery leads to compromise, the end is always near
Be careful little lips what you say
For empty words and promises lead broken hearts astray

It's a slow fade when you give yourself away
It's a slow fade when black and white have turned to gray 
Thoughts invade, choices are made, a price will be paid
When you give yourself away
People never crumble in a day

The journey from your mind to your hands
Is shorter than you're thinking
Be careful if you think you stand
You just might be sinking

It's a slow fade when you give yourself away
It's a slow fade when black and white have turned to gray
Thoughts invade, choices are made, a price will be paid
When you give yourself away
People never crumble in a day
Daddies never crumble in a day
Families never crumble in a day

Oh be careful little eyes what see
Oh be careful little eyes what you see
For the Father up above is looking down in love
Oh be careful little eyes what you see


-Casting Crowns "Slow Fade"

The roughest road

You have chosen the roughest road, but it leads straight to the hilltops.  - John Bunyan

I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep...

"I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep."

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/charlesmau135736.html#vrsK4yUcKtsE9EgC.99

If ever there comes a time when the women of the world come together...

If there ever comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of (hu)mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never seen. -Matthew Arnold

You Are God Alone - Phillips, Craig & Dean

"Unchangeable, unshakeable, unstoppable, that's what you are.

You are God alone."

Most crimes in the world are committed by single, unmarried men

Evidence is strong, however, that marriage reduces violent victimization against women, especially intimate partner violence by men (Lauritsen and Schaum, 2004).

"We may observe that married men are less likely to commit crime or be unemployed than unmarried men."
-"Does marriage reduce crime? A counterfactual approach to within-individual casual effects", Harvard University

"This time" - John Legend

This time I want it all
This time I want it all
Showing you all the cards
giving you all my heart
This time I'll take the chance
This time I'll be your man
I can be all you need
This time it's all of me.

Fasting

Bill Bright of Campus Crusade once said that fasting is the “atomic bomb of the spirit.”

Grad School

ASA presentation, “‘Diversity and Its Discontents’: A Report on Graduate Student Experiences in PhD-Granting Institutions” (see the Powerpointhere). 

Wise Words from Kurt Vonnegut

Bruce Lee quote

“Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We’d run the three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile[Note: when running on his own in 1968, Lee would get his time down to six-and-a half minutes per mile].

So this morning he said to me “We’re going to go five.” I said, “Bruce, I can’t go five. I’m a helluva lot older than you are, and I can’t do five.” He said, “When we get to three, we’ll shift gears and it’s only two more and you’ll do it.”

I said “Okay, hell, I’ll go for it.” So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I’m okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out. I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go any more and so I say to him, “Bruce if I run any more,” –and we’re still running-” if I run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.”

He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full five miles.
Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, “Why did you say that?”

He said, “Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”

From The Art of Expressing the Human Body by Bruce Lee and John Little

PhD notes

I'm considering getting my PhD and have been doing a lot of reading. I got into Georgia Tech and Columbia University for their EE programs (fully funded!)

PDF
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/grad-school.pdf

Videos
Why is getting a PhD so hard? eloquently answered by Threemonththesis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHdZRPDvgt8

How to get through your PhD without going insane
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MkRMp3roKQ
Notes:
An idea has to be original but it also has to be founded in current research in the field.
You need to know the field to know that your work is original, aid your own results, and give your work context and justification. You need to know the field before you can make meaningful contribution to it.

Literature is a resource to u can't learn a subject by reading a research paper b/c it's written to folks who already know the field.

To filter, focus on the best and most relevant papers first. Look at the # of citations (~500).
Then, look at relevance. There may be only 3 other research groups in the world in your field. You can easily become the 5th world leader on a topic.

If you know the outcome in advance, then it's not research.
It's often when things go wrongs that is the best results.

Constantly adapt to the things that happen. (the guy who created antibiotics)

The determining factor of success: what you do when things aren't going according to plan. That's a vital skill in research.

PhD is not inherently difficult. It is your personal reaction from within you to the situation.

You have to give yourself time to think. That's what makes you valuable as a researcher.

Writing:
1. content - data  (this is your foundation)
2. structure - how do you frame it
3. words - how you express it
4. your voice

You have to write as an academic to other academics.

You should see stress as a signal that something is not right.

Success or failure in the PHD is not a value of who you are.
If I fail, I fail. I've at least given it a good shot.

Sex & the Christian Woman

     I think one of the reasons why many young Christian women are so tormented by these desires is because today’s society is expecting men and women to wait until their education is complete, their careers are started, and their bank accounts are padded until they marry. This means that most will not marry until their mid-20s to mid-30s. I am certainly not in favor of Christians just marrying the first person who comes along so they can have their sexual desires fulfilled. I’m also not advocating that young Christians marry at 18, 19, 20 before they have had time to mature and figure out who they are and what they want to do with their lives. However, if at some point in your life, God brings in a person with whom you relate well, share common values and goals, and grow to love, what’s the point of waiting to marry until you’ve finished college, your master’s, get your first job, can afford a big wedding, etc.? Interminable waiting will just subject you to greater and greater sexual frustration and temptation. Better to marry at the court house and strike out together with faith in God, than to fall into sexual sin. 

--Comment on an interesting blog post "Sex & The Christian Woman" by Cassi Clerget

I've been really inspired by Celiz Cruz lately!

They say glory and suffering are two sides of the same coin!

I've gotten into Celia Cruz's music and am just enamored with her enormous talent. J. Lo's tribute performance at the AMA's is what got me familiar with it. Celia had such a powerful voice that could go from a high octave to a low octave quite easily. She had rhythm ("la negra tienne tumbao!") and an infectious smile! But there was a lot of pain behind the music. Although she sang about Cuba and represented her culture throughout the world, she actually was never able to return to her country before she died. She couldn't even attend her mother's funeral in 1962! Look at the translation of her adlibs to her song "Bemba Colora":

A few years ago I came out,
From my lovely little piece of land ,
And I still remember ,
Its streets and ravines ,
Their huts , I adored
Gripping palms .
Always, always they were roofed
With pieces of old yagua .

....

A bird in a cage
Fly fly and ceaselessly
And always looking for the sea
If you saw where escape
Poor thing, ay, suffering
Seeking their freedom , and ,
I like the bird I
Regain my freedom ,
Come, come , come, come
Come, come , come, come ,
Come, come , come, come

Before I understood her lyrics, I felt it. Her vibrato sprang from such a deep place that resonated with humanity over Latin beats. She sang with a lot of power but most of it was fueled by a life marked with nostalgia. She became a citizen of the world and brought her Afro-Cuban culture all over the globe. Everyone knows "Guantanamera". Everyone. Fate could not have chosen a more suitable candidate for such a destiny, no?  Kudos to the Creator for an awesome entertainer.

What an inspiration to advance our cultures and empower our communities with positive music.

Time & Eternity

A question that is on my mind is how a Christian monotheist is supposed to think about time and the future. C.S. Lewis touches on the topic in his book The Screwtape Letters.

"To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too—just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. 

The duty of planning the morrow's work is today's duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present. This is not straw splitting. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do. His ideal is a man

who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him. But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future—haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth—ready to break the Enemy's commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other—dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present."

-Letter XV, The Screwtape Letters

 In reference to the italicize part, I wish I were like that. Just do what I can do for the day, "commit the issue to heaven", and leave it at that, not wasting any effort on worrying about the future.

A biblical perspective on time:

Psalms 90:4 - For a thousand years in thy sight [are but] as yesterday when it is past, and [as] a watch in the night.

Psalms 90:12 - So teach [us] to number our days, that we may apply [our] hearts unto wisdom.

Ephesians 5: 16 Making the very most of the time [buying up each opportunity], because the days are evil. 

Try not to put your heart in tomorrow. It may get broken. Instead, put your faith and trust in the God of tomorrow who will not fail us.

You are not alone (Mavis Staples)

This song just brought me to the Lord's feet...

Her's a quote:
If God is necessary to us, then to take him out of our lives is to plunge us into the most terrible sense of loneliness and abandonment that mankind can know. We have all experienced it to some small degree when we get what we want and then discover we do not want what we got! For that sense of bored emptiness to go on forever, is unspeakable torment." -Ray Stedman

Here's an excerpt from Christian Think Tank website:
And its not really that difficult...Jesus said that children could respond to Him...Children are not 'blind faith' types at all--they are VERY careful about who they trust. It's amazing to watch children in the markets--some adults they trust, and some they don't...they make "assessments of trustworthiness" instinctively...they don't ask for proof, or ask for evidences; they watch the person...Cognitive Development types tells us that this occurs between the ages of 3 and 4--we ought to be able to do this!

So it is with Jesus...just "watch Him"...watch Him as He speaks words of healing to broken lives, as He speaks words of judgment to oppressors and religious phonies, as He rejects crowds who want to make Him a national king, as He quietly goes His death and humiliation at the Cross, as He comforts and reassures His disciples after their trauma...
....
If you REALLY want to know God--as a person, not a thing--and approach Him with an open and generous attitude, He will show His heart to you. He will probably use a variety of communication methods--the bible, true disciples of Jesus, intuition, experiences of awe, bizarre coincidence, stories from others, music and beauty--but He is God, and can reveal His heart and thoughts to you--without disclosing Himself to those who are NOT open or ready...
 (www.christianthinktank.com)

Photographer Follows His Girlfriend Around The World

http://www.boredpanda.com/photographer-follows-his-girlfriend-around-the-world-murad-osmann/

In his photo series “Follow Me To”, Russian photographer Murad Osmann is taking the viewer on an intimate journey together with his girlfriend who’s leading him around the world. The pose is almost the same in every picture: the girl never shows her face, and the guy almost never lets go of her hand. The settings change from Moscow to London to Venice to a number of different locations in Russia, revealing their passion for travel.

“For me photography is about capturing things other people might miss. It’s a way to communicate,” says Murad. Well, his loving message of trust is very clear in these photos, enjoy!

Website: muradosmann.com

Sneak peek: