Unanswered Prayers, A Silent God, and the Death of a Child

Amazon link

Book Blurb

After the unexpected, accidental death of his three-year-old son, Jason Jones went on a long, painful journey to make sense of how God could have let this happen to his son and best friend, Jacob, and to their family. And he struggled intensely with his faith after everything he thought about God disintegrated on June 12, 2011.

In "Limping But Blessed," Jones explores struggling with faith and belief, dealing with his depression and grief, and searching for hope in a hopeless situation. The book includes tales of his darkest days, correspondence he had with Christian theologians, and what he's done to preserve his son's legacy.

At some point in each of our lives, something goes terribly wrong, and our faith is shaken to the core. This book is the story of one man's journey through the darkest time of life searching for answers and a grueling attempt to find a sliver of hope to keep holding on.

Publr - Fortress Press

Publ Date - April 1, 2017

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Limping But Blessed

http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/limping-but-blessed

by Thomas J. Oord

March 21st, 2017

“My son is dead, but I still think about him in the present tense. When we talk about people who have died we often talk about them in the past tense. I struggle to reconcile this when I talk about Jacob.” - Jason Jones

That’s the way Jason Jones begins his new book, Limping But Blessed: Wrestling with God after the Death of a Child. That introductory paragraph and the rest of this essay is a guest post from Jason. Here’s the rest of what he says in the book’s introduction…

Limping But Blessed

by Jason Jones

It may be semantics, but in my mind Jacob is not gone forever. He is still my son. I didn’t used to have a son. I have a son. So, when I talk about him, I try to say things like: “He is a sweet fun-loving kid.” I know that sounds crazy to other people. Maybe they think that I’m living in denial. But because I believe Jacob continues to be who he is, there is no reason to speak of him using the past tense. I don’t want to say Jacob was a good boy. I want to say Jacob is a good boy. He didn’t stop being who he is at the time of the accident.

This is especially true because I believe in a life that comes after this earthly life. And I believe I will be with Jacob again. I don’t know or understand what that will look like, but I do have faith that all things will be made new again. For the sake of not confusing you, however, when I talk about Jacob in this book I will use the past-tense verb “was” instead of “is.”

This book is about Jacob’s life, and his death. It’s about what happened on the day of his accident and about what unfolded in the following days, months, and years. And it’s about my tenuous, tortured, doubt-filled relationship with God.

You see, God didn’t answer my prayers when Jacob died. None of them. They all went unanswered. And to this day, I still experience an overwhelming silence from God.

That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in God anymore. But I don’t believe in him the way I used to.

I don’t know if God is.

But I know this: Jacob is.

So maybe God is, too.

My Superhero

The day we found out we were having a boy, I was full of excitement and joy. I loved playing with dolls and having princess parties with the girls, but I was excited about the new experiences raising a boy would bring—teaching him how to throw a football, fighting with action figures on the living room floor, and watching sports together on Sunday afternoons.

Jacob was delivered via C-section, so when he was born I was only able to get a short glimpse of a fat pasty baby with bright red hair as they rushed him over to a table out of sight. He was a plump little thing with rolls all over and a head full of fine red hair. When he finally blinked his little blue eyes open wide enough, we connected. That was it. This was my son, and I was in love.

Jacob brought a new level of energy to our house. The girls were quiet and well behaved when they played, but Jacob was loud and rambunctious. He was a whirlwind around the house, making noise wherever he went. When he learned how to walk, he stole the girl’s high heel dress-up shoes and put them on. From the other side of the house we could hear him, clanking down the hall with those cheap plastic shoes that didn’t fit his feet. A typical little brother, he put on their girly costume dress-up clothes and ran through the house laughing because he knew how much it bothered his sisters.

Recently, Brea and I were talking about how much of Jacob’s personality had already begun shining through even though he was only three years old. He never reacted to anyone as a stranger and was a happy, contented toddler. He was independent, adventurous, and curious. What stood out to me most was how tenderhearted he was. He loved to cuddle, unlike our daughters, so he got plenty of cuddles from his mommy and daddy. He wasn’t shy about giving kisses and big hugs either. He was very affectionate, and everyone that he knew loved that about him.

Jacob was fascinated with superheroes. Every day, he dressed up in a different superhero outfit, or a mix-and-match of a few. Some days he’d wear his cowboy boots, blue jean shorts, and a Batman shirt and mask. When Brea ran errands with him, she often had the protection of Batman or Buzz Lightyear as she walked up and down the grocery store aisle. Brea loves to tell the story of the time when a neighbor’s cow got loose and wandered into our front yard. When Brea and Jacob walked outside, the cow started walking toward them, and Jacob put up his arm like Iron Man and started making shooting noises to keep the cow at a safe distance from him and his mother.

Our relationship at first was father and son. But we quickly became playmates, and I often called him my “little buddy.” As Jacob got older, building a fort and playing with superhero action figures inside of it was one of our favorite things to do together. He gathered up his action figures and climbed in dressed as a superhero, and we went wherever his toddler imagination would take us.

Our forts were a mess of sheets secured by as many pillows as we could gather and fortified by dining room chairs and the living room couch. I usually played the bad guy and Jacob was the good guy (of course). One of his favorite action figures was Blue Beetle. I’d never heard of him when I was growing up, but he became Jacob’s favorite to carry around and play with. Sometimes, out of nowhere, Jacob looked at me and pointed and called me Blue Beetle. Since Blue Beetle was his favorite and he carried him everywhere with him, I took it as a compliment.

I vividly remember a poignant moment with Jacob on one of the many days we spent together in our fort. While we were playing, I asked Jacob if he knew who Jesus was. I don’t really know what prompted me to ask my three-year-old this question, but I did. He looked up at me, and he said, “Yes. He’s the man at Papa’s church.” (Papa is the name the grandchildren call my dad.) I put my head down so he couldn’t see me laughing at his answer. He was right, though. Jesus was the man at Papa’s church. A few weeks earlier, we had gone to an Easter play at my parents’ church where we saw a man dressed up like Jesus. We talked a little bit more about the Easter play, and Jacob remembered seeing Jesus go up into the clouds. I’m sure this reminded him of all the superheroes he saw flying around on television. I knew at some point I would revisit who Jesus was, but I wasn’t going to confuse him with that explanation at this point. So I moved on.

One of the most special times Jacob and I had together was two weeks before he died. Our family went to a bed-and-breakfast retreat for the weekend with a group of other families. We knew there was a river close by, so we brought fishing poles, including a Spiderman fishing pole for Jacob. He’d never been fishing and was excited to get to use his very own fishing pole, especially one with a superhero on it.

From the time we arrived, he begged me to take him fishing. Honestly, I’m not very interested in fishing, so I kept putting it off. Plus, I didn’t expect that we’d catch anything. On our last day, Jacob asked me again about fishing, and I knew I had to take him.

All three of the kids and I walked down to the river and found an open spot in between some trees. We put all of our poles and gear down, I pulled out one of the worms, and I showed them how to put one on a hook. None of them liked that very much and asked me to do it for each of their poles. The kids proceeded to get hooks stuck in trees and broke lines on roots in the water. They didn’t know any better and just figured this was part of the deal. After several casts and no bites, Kendall and Kelsey grew tired of it and walked off. I wanted to join them, but Jacob wanted to stay and keep fishing.

While I was baiting a hook on his Spiderman fishing pole he squatted down low to the ground like I did and put his hands on his knees. He patiently watched me put the hook through the worm. He scrunched up his little pudgy nose like he thought it was gross. In the sweetest voice he asked me, “Daddy, are we fishing?” He wanted to make sure we were really accomplishing our goal. I told him, “Yes, Jacob we are fishing.”

After casting and casting, to my surprise we actually caught a fish! I was as shocked as Jacob was. “Ha! Jacob, we caught a fish,” I told him. I let him reel it in, and he was beaming with excitement. He started laughing at the fish flopping around on the ground.

We both felt pretty proud of ourselves. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I took Jacob fishing—it’s a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life. It may sound like a very simple story, but it’s one of those father-son moments dads dream about. It’s even more sacred to me because he died only two weeks later. Thankfully, Brea was able to sneak up behind us that day and take a picture of the two of us to capture the moment. That picture is one of my prized possessions and it’s in my office next to me every day.

This book is dedicated to Jacob, my superhero.

American Mythology - The Way We Never Were: Family Life in America

Amazon link, October 1993

The Way We Never Were:

American Families and the Nostalgia Trap

"I'm increasingly thinking of the need for quality child care and limits on the work week as the new health and safety regulations we need in this society." - Stephanie Coontz

"Providing children with good care, and families with decent health insurance,

are in the public interest." - Stephanie Coontz

About The Way We Never Were

October 1993

This myth-shattering examination of two centuries of American family life banishes the misconceptions about the past that cloud current debate about "family values." "Leave It to Beaver" was not a documentary, Stephanie Coontz points out; neither the 1950s nor any other moment from our past presents workable models of how to conduct our personal lives today.

Without minimizing the serious new problems in American families, Coontz warns that a consoling nostalgia for a largely mythical past of "traditional values" is a trap that can only cripple our capacity to solve today's problems.

From "a man's home was his castle" to "traditional families never asked for a handout," this provocative book explodes cherished illusions about the past. Organized around a series of myths and half-truths that burden modern families, the book sheds new light on such contemporary concerns as parenting, privacy, love, the division of labor along gender lines, the black family, feminism, and sexual practice.

Fascinating facts abound:

• In the nineteenth century, the age of sexual consent in some states was nine or ten, and alcoholism and drug abuse were more rampant than today
• Teenage childbearing peaked in the fabulous family-oriented 1950s
• Marriages in pioneer days lasted a shorter time than they do now

Placing current family dilemmas in the context of far-reaching economic, political, and demographic changes, The Way We Never Were shows that people have not suddenly and inexplicably "gone bad" and points to ways that we can help families do better.

"Seeing our own family pains as part of a larger social predicament means that we can stop the cycle of guilt or blame and face the real issues constructively," Coontz writes. "The historical evidence reveals that families have always been in flux and often in crisis, and that families have been most successful wherever they have built meaningful networks beyond their own boundaries."

--The Publisher.

Family Studies historian, author, and speaker Stephanie Coontz

Wikipedia Bio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Coontz

Stephanie Coontz (born August 31, 1944) is an author, historian,[1][2] and faculty member at Evergreen State College. She teaches history and family studies and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001-2004. Coontz has authored and co-edited several books about the history of the family and marriage.

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Official Stephanie Coontz Blog Site - Archieve Articles

http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/



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Reviews of The Way We Never Were

http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/books/thewayweneverwere/

Review of: The Way We Never Were

Kirkus Reviews, 8/15/92

Placing the American family in its historical, cultural, economic, and philosophic context Coontz (co-ed., Women's Work, Men's Property, 1986) identifies the myths and their sources, functions, and fallacies that Americans generate around family life, as well as the terrible burden these illusions create.

Violence, abuse, poverty, ignorance, alcoholism, dependence on government support -- in brief, all the social ills attributed to the breakdown of the family -- have in fact been a part of American social life since Colonial times, Coontz says. She further argues that our ideal of family life is primarily an invention of the 50's, projected in TV sitcoms such as Leave It to Beaver, and is an ideal as pernicious as are the social problems it supposedly prevents.

Families always have been diverse and fragile, shaped by a community of interdependencies and reciprocities easily lost. Even the division of labor between the nurturing, altruistic female and the aggressive, competitive male -- to whom she is supposedly connected by a bond of love -- is an illusion and a source of great unhappiness. Indeed, many of the problems in family life, Coontz says, are caused by the unfounded belief that the family should be a symbol of strength, a model of self-sufficiency, a center of values in which people find refuge and raise children who will be good citizens.

Today, the survival of the family depends on realistically assessing its diversity and what it can and can't do, on its overcoming the fantasies of what it is supposed to be and how it is supposed to function; and on recovering its civic commitments.

Clear, incisive, and distinguished by Coontz¹s personal conviction and by its vast range of cogent examples, including capsule histories of women in the labor force and of black families. Fascinating, persuasive, politically relevant.

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Ozzie and Hariet Lied

The New York Times Book Review, November 4, 1992, By Donald Katz

Two models of the American family have been on view in this political season. The family Clinton has presented itself as an up-to-date survivor model, replete with storytelling about family trouble - the beaming young couple who have worked past their problems, the working mother of the candidate, the once drug-addicted and imprisoned brother. The family Bush has appeared as a more traditional survivor family with a similar persistence of love and loyalty in the face of loss and pain, and yet, being "traditional," accoutered with all sorts of Little-League and car-pool nostalgia.

The purpose of the nostalgia, of course, has been to create a morally superior memento of a better family part. And it is what remains of this idealized, once-upon-a-time American family that the historian Stephanie Coontz shreds into tiny pieces in the first half of her often brilliant and invariably provocative new book, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.

Pick a favorite presumption about American families during better times -- the "notion that traditional families fostered intense intimacy between husbands and wives while creating mothers who were totally available to their children," for instance -- and Ms. Coontz proceeds to unravel the mythical conceit. She says it is a 1950's vintage amalgam of the mid-19th century, middle-class obsession with the "mother-child axis" and the contradictory view of married life prevalent during the 1920's, which eroticized the adult relationship and called on mothers to curb their "over-investment" in their children.

No wonder that the pressure to abide by the hydraheaded, myth, as Ms. Coontz documents, drove so many women to therapy and substance abuse in the 1950's. Pick an era when you think a more decent American family was in ascendancy, and, Ms. Coontz, who teaches at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., offers dozens of facts in support of her contention that pain has always been a part of family life. The fabled colonial household was fragmented by early death, and children frequently heard explicit talk of sex. The idealized Victorian home hid a rate of marital dissolution, albeit without divorce, that would easily rival current divorce rates.

Contrary to popular opinion, Ms. Coontz writes, "Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary." In the Beaver's 1950's; before food stamps and public housing programs, one in four Americans was poor. There were Federal programs - G.I. benefits, housing loans, highway construction and job-creating research and development. But she argues that such programs rendered the 1950's suburban family "far more dependent on government handouts than any so-called 'underclass' in recent U. S. history." Incidents of family violence and abuse remained buried under the idealized images of the times, "Wife battering was not even considered a 'real' crime by most people," and "by 1960 ... experts described, incest as a 'one-in-a-million occurrence.'" Following a fascinating recapitulation of the development of modern gender roles, Ms. Coontz addresses contemporary myths about the American family. Here she begins to break less interesting historical news and clutters her effort to clear away the mist of myth. Her analysis is almost exclusively centered, on the economic and political genesis of domestic problems and the economic and political solution to them. Her discussions of heavily freighted cultural issues such as childbearing and maternal employment, latchkey children and the impact of day care on infants are terse; each subject is dealt with in a bit over a page, the boomers' penchant for "nesting" is written off as manufactured, romanticization.

But a change in focus has occurred, and Americans are leaving behind the habits of an era in which money-getting and what some commentators have called expressive individualism -- a phrase applied, depending on your point of view, to privileged self-involvement or Promethean liberation -- were idealized in a way that marked and even injured innumerable Americans. The current "turn toward home" that Ms. Coontz says is historically unproductive is precisely the cultural change that has allowed the warts-and-all family storytelling of the Clintons to appear just as all-American, value-laden and "pro-family" as the "nostalgia traps" laid out by the Bushes.

The last half of The Way We Never Were nevertheless complements the historical research contained in the first. Ms. Coontz tries to turn the focus of a tedious public debate away from an idealized image of individual roles and domestic life by using economic and social data to describe an America in which people are struggling every day to make ends meet, and raise their children.

Once we have shed all the unhelpful myths, our understanding of the American family must come to include the schools in which family members learn, the houses and communities in which families live, the medical system upon which families depend, and the economy that ultimately dictates the relative ability of each family to thrive. Perhaps at that point, somewhere in the future, we will finally create the Golden Age of the, American family.

Donald Katz is the author of "Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America."

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Whole Truth Behind Dream '50s

Newsday, by Vickie Erv

Oh, we families had a jolly time in the '50s, living and breathing family values, whatever those are. Such happy, moral days: babies booming, divorce and illegitimacy half of what they are today, home ownership skyrocketing, daddy venturing out to win bread, and mommy staying home to express her femininity through intricate housework maneuvers. This was not just Leave It To Beaver. This was the real thing. Of course, in order to play this American Family Dream Game, you really did have to be white and middle class.

On the other side of the tracks, according to family historian Stephanie Coontz, 25 percent of Americans were poor in the mid-'50s, a time before food stamps and housing programs. Forty percent of black women with small children worked outside their homes. African-Americans, whose labor sustained the economic expansion of the time, were restricted from living in white neighborhoods.

To tell the whole truth, postwar middle-class happiness was achieved through an enormous public investment. If there was indeed a brief moment of prosperity for the many working-class people who entered the middle class, it wasn't because individuals suddenly became more ambitious and self-reliant.

Fifties-style upward mobility arrived courtesy of the federal government, which subsidized college education through GI benefits, boosted house buying and home building through federal housing loans and built highways out to the suburbs through publicly financed projects.

And while we're telling the truth, middle-class life could be psychologically harrowing. According to a study of San Francisco Bay area women hospitalized as "schizophrenic" in the 1950s, some wives, unhappy with enforced domesticity, were labeled schizophrenic, institutionalized and sometimes given shock treatments "to accept their domestic roles and their husbands' dictates." For some women who sought abortion, shock treatments were also recommended, because the failure to want a baby was considered to signify dangerous emotional disturbance. And as for the myth of '50s-style deferred sexual gratification, in 1957, more than 97 out of every 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19 gave birth. (By the by, sexual morality wasn't so pristine at other times in American history either. In the 20 years prior to the revolution, one-third of all children born were conceived out of wedlock.)

If the '50s weren't picture perfect, surely we could hitch our nostalgic yearning for family values to some other eras in American history! Perhaps the gentle Victorian family. Not so gentle for Victorian families who weren't middle class. In The Way We Never Were, Coontz presents fascinating facts and figures that explode the cherished myths about self-sufficient, happy, moral families. This book will convince you that the good old days for families can -- and should -- never be ours once again. You may come to doubt political candidates who promise to return us to a golden age.

Coontz successfully proves that we are not going to solve any current social crises by trying to recreate models of family bliss that were realized only in the haze of nostalgia.

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Facts of Life for a Whole Nation

The News Tribune, Wednesday May 28, 1997. By Kathleen Merryman

Those who say "Here's what's wrong with families" in front of Stephanie Coontz had better be able to pull out the numbers.

Stephanie Coontz can't thank Dan Quayle enough. She had just published The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap when [Vice-President] Quayle blasted television character Murphy Brown for choosing to become a single mother. There was Quayle, conjuring up a nostalgic vision of "traditional" American values sustained by "traditional" families that looked very much like 1950s sitcom icons. And there was Coontz, the Evergreen State College professor of history and family studies, using history to demonstrate that Quayle's vision was a seductive myth.

Radio and television producers from I-5 to the Washington Beltway booked her.

Pat Buchanan debated her.

The National Enquirer misquoted her.

And thousands of ordinary people - precisely the kinds of ordinary people that college professors rarely get to meet - called her on talk shows and wrote to her.

Over and over they told her they were sure they were failing as families. Money was tight. Jobs were insecure. They were stressed and isolated. They blamed themselves, and they got lots of help. The airwaves and opinion columns are stuffed with pundits, politicians and preachers blaming the nation's problems on the collapse of family values. If only Americans would return to the traditions of the past - when men brought home the bacon and women cooked it and the kids washed their hands and said please before they ate it - everything would be fine again.

Politicos from the left offered no comfort to folks who aren't as affluent or educated as policy makers and futurecasters, she said. Society is changing, deal with it or get left behind, they said - and did nothing to help.

The people Coontz heard from had been buying the blame argument - it was so simple when everything else in their life was so complex - and blaming themselves.

Coontz stopped them right there.

Families aren't failing and pulling America down with them, she told them. The situation is far more complex, and the solution does not lie in imaginary visions of the past or predictions of -an affluent techno-future.

She believes it lies in accepting change and enlisting government and business and individuals to deal with it creatively. When Coontz didn't hear creative, practical solutions from the left or the right, she stepped in with a sequel to The Way We Never Were.

The Way We Really Are: Corning to Terms with America's Changing Families, ($23, Basic Books, HarperCollins) musters the tools of social science to explain what's going on in real homes and communities. For starters, what's going on right now is not the Apocalypse of American Society. It is intense economic and social change, and - with the possible exception of winning Lotto - change is always tough. For most people things are changing in very complicated ways.

They experience their anxiety as a loss," Coontz said on a sunny afternoon in the cozy bungalow she shares with her son and husband in Olympia. Outside, lilacs planted 40 years ago scented the air. Inside, the phone rang with more talk show producers and the graduation ceremony coordinator at the high school where her son is a sophomore. She married two years ago, but for much of her son's life, Coontz; has been a single mom with a full-time job.

Coontz's home life was the American situation in miniature - Everything looked the same on the surface, but there has been a huge shift in how people are supporting and living within it. All the time, when she debates proponents, of the family values argument, she explains that it's not enough to point to the past and lead the troops backward toward a cozy memory.

For starters, the realities of the past and the way it is being remembered are very different things, she said. Coontz reminds readers of The Way We Really Are that in the 1950s government supported families to a much greater extent than it does today, with low-interest home loans, college educations for veterans and massive public works projects. Business re-invested its profits and unions negotiated living wages. A dependable worker could expect employment security. The minimum wage of $1.48 in 1968 was enough to keep a full-time worker's family of three above the poverty line, she wrote in the fact-stuffed book bolstered by 46 pages of footnotes.

Life for some people - especially white people - was full of hope. But segregation was still the law in large chunks of the nation, and violence against minorities is part of almost every major city's history. "At the end of the 1950s, despite 10 years of economic growth, 27.3 percent of the nation's children were poor, including those in white 'underclass' communities such as Appalachia," Coontz wrote. "Almost 50 percent of married-couple African American families were impoverished - a figure far higher than today."

Even if families could choose to return to the shape they held in the 1950s, it's unlikely that business and government would follow, Coontz said. Government has shifted its economic benefits away from workers and toward businesses and the wealthy, she argued, and she can produce figures to back it up. "Corporate subsidies and tax breaks cost the Treasury $1,388 per person per year - more than three times what we spend on all child nutrition, food stamp and welfare programs," she wrote.

As the people who called and wrote kept telling her, jobs are a gamble. Layoffs are a constant threat. They see benefits eroding. They can't take care of their families with one salary. More than a third of all two-parent families with children would be poor unless both parents worked, Coontz said.

It's absurd and pointless to blame mothers for working, she said. Many are working to keep their children out of poverty. Sometimes, that one salary is all that protects a family from economic and emotional disaster. She cited studies that show that when a breadwinner loses a job, the stress manifests itself in the family. There are arguments, poor parenting decisions, and a disproportionately high number of divorces. While some family-values proponents want to make divorce more difficult - and to penalize single mothers socially and economically - Coontz argued that punishments or a mandated return to past roles won't save or encourage marriages - especially in the face of overwhelming economic pressures. She suggested that government and business should try a little tenderness.

"Employers aren't catching up. Schools aren't catching up. Government isn't making any of the policy changes that are needed, though there's certainly public support for them. People want quality child care, parental leave and insurance," she said. "There is absolutely no evidence that working parents - or decent child care - are bad for kids," she said, anticipating the argument she's often heard: that if mothers stayed home, their children wouldn't need child care.

"I'm increasingly thinking of the need for quality child care and limits on the work week as the new health and safety regulations we need in this society," she said. She's debated conservatives who say that's not government's role, and it would be intrusive for government to require business to meet those needs for its workers. She disagrees.

Providing children with good care, and families with decent health insurance, are in the public interest - as are the federal health and safety regulations the meat-packing industry fought as intrusive earlier in the century, she maintained. Already, she said, businesses that don't recognize that employees have lives are paying. Employers who are demanding more are getting less as employees who can't settle family issues at home are increasingly getting it done on work time. "The more employers make family life harder, the more they get the worst of both worlds. Employees who are not renewed in the family make up that renewal on work time," Coontz said.

She suggested measuring the work day in some businesses by what's Produced and not by time spent. That would cut down on time wasted on the phone, on e-mail or in pointless meetings. Flextime could help some employees who want to be home for their children - especially their teens.

"Kids get in trouble between 3 and 6 p.m.," she said, pulling out studies that document the times of day when kids have sex, get hit by cars and commit crimes. Moms or dads who could go to work early and get off in time to monitor their kids could have a stabilizing influence on whole neighborhoods.

Schools could rework schedules to match kids' needs. Research has shown that teens especially have a tough time waking up early. High schools that begin at 9:30 a.m. and let out at 4:30 p.m. would fit kids' body clocks - as well as the schedules of parents who could be home around 5 p.m. "Let's kick the notion around," Coontz said. If parents had more free-time, Coontz predicted, the community would benefit. Parents would find it easier to volunteer -especially in activities that benefit children.

"The track records for certain programs are exemplary," she said. Young people who volunteer can benefit from the experience, too, provided they're doing meaningful work. Her own son volunteered several years at Camp Easter Seal, she said. This summer, that experience helped him earn a meaningful summer job at the camp. And that, she said, will help set him on a straight course into the future.

Stephanie Coontz -
Families Studies of America





Couples Study of Sleeping Apart





On Divorced and Single Families





On Marital Roles

Family Studies historian, author, and speaker Stephanie Coontz

Just For the Fun of It - Keith Urban and Miranda Lambert, "We Were Us"

Miranda Lamberts and Keith Urban performing 2014 Fuse Song, "We Were Us"

Keith Urban - We Were Us ft. Miranda Lambert

We Were Us Lyrics

http://www.metrolyrics.com/we-were-us-lyrics-keith-urban.html

Wikipedia - About the Song - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Were_Us

from Fuse

"We Were Us" is track #6 on the album Fuse. It was written by Galyon, Nicholle Anne / Robbins, Jimmy / Nite, Jon.

Songwriters - Galyon, Nicholle, Anne ? Robbins, Jimmy / Nite, Jon

Published by - Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group

Rearview crosses

Railroad ties
Oh, Hail Marys
Friday nights
Heartbeat baby
Low-beam lights
God, I miss when you were mine

[Chorus]

Back when that song was a song
I could sing along without thinkin bout you every time it came on
Every beat, every line, every word, every time
When a road was a road
I could roll on through without wishin that empty seat was you
Money was gas, dreams were dust
Love was fast and we were us

Shotgun sunset
A cool mint kiss
Backseat promise
Breaking it
Floorboard feeling
County lines
God, I miss when you were mine

[Chorus]

In a sleepy town, just jumping in
Far too young to know that summers end
We were us, we can't go back
It's what it is, but God I miss

[Chorus]

Every beat, every line, every word, every single time
I just close my eyes and you're ridin shotgun
You and me, baby, on the run
I can feel your heartbeat, baby

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Miranda Lamberts and Keith Urban performing 2014 Fuse Song, "We Were Us"

Keith Urban and Miranda Lambert: Behind the Scenes of Their New Song

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20756523,00.html

Only a few years ago, reigning CMA female vocalist of the year Miranda Lambert was opening for Keith Urban. 

Both stars now headline their own tours, but the two pair back up on Urban's latest single, "We Were Us," debuting Friday at 7:30 p.m. on his Facebook page, followed by a chat with the musician. 

"Getting to work with Keith in the studio was awesome," Lambert, 30, says. "He's been someone that's inspired me along the way."

That admiration and respect goes both ways, PEOPLE Country's latest cover star says.

"She's the real deal," Urban, 46, says. "I just love her artistry."

Recording a duet together was a given, but only "if the right song ever came along." Luckily, it did.

"When I heard 'We Were Us,' it was instant. I had two thoughts. The first [was] ''This is that song' and the second – 'Man, I sure hope she says yes!' " Urban jokes.

Thankfully, Lambert did.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Behind the Song: Keith Urban’s ‘We Were Us’ | Courtesy of Capitol Nashville

Behind the Song: Keith Urban’s ‘We Were Us’

http://radio.com/2014/03/18/keith-urban-miranda-lambert-we-were-us-behind-the-song/

By Annie Reuter and Kurt Wolff

March 18, 2014

Urban's duet with Miranda Lambert is nominated for an ACM Award this year.

“We didn’t mean for it to become a duet,” Jimmy Robbins told Radio.com about “We Were Us,” thesong of his that Keith Urban recorded last year withMiranda Lambert. “That didn’t happen until we got to the second verse, and thought, ‘maybe a guy could say this, too.’ That’s when we all got pretty excited about it.”

Robbins wrote “We Were Us” with two of his regular writing partners, Jon Nite and Nicolle Galyon, and last November the song became Urban’s 16th No. 1 hit. Now it’s also been nominated for Vocal Event of the Year at the 49th annual Academy of Country Music Awards, which take place April 6 in Las Vegas. (Update: “We Were Us” won the ACM Award for VocalEvent of the Year.)

“It almost didn’t happen,” Robbins said of the song in a phone interview Monday (March 17) with Radio.com. As he recalled, he’d been in a session at his home studio with Nite, and the song idea they had wasn’t going in the right direction, so they put it aside. Then “that afternoon, our friend Nicole was coming over. We pulled that idea out, and she loved it.”

The chorus was their starting point. “Back when that song was a song I could sing along without thinkin’ ’bout you every time it came on,” Urban and Lambert sing.

“The front half of the chorus we were just singing, and the words phonetically sounded like something,” he explained. “A lot of times when you write a song, you have a hook or a title, and you write from there. This was one of those times where we didn’t have anything. We didn’t know what the hook was until we got there.”

Robbins credits Galyon with coming up with what he calls the “disconnected images” that mark the verses of the song.

“I remember Nicole got really into it,” Robbins said. “She’s from a small town in Kansas, and so I think we were really channeling her home town in this song.”

“Rearview crosses

Railroad ties

Oh, Hail Marys

Friday nights

Heartbeat baby

Low-beam lights

God, I miss when you were mine.”

— “We Were Us”

“It’s easy to listen to and kinda hard to write, to tell a story without really telling a story,” Robbins said. One thing he loves, though, about the result is that it’s not a literal narrative. “It leaves it up to the individual to piece [the story] together and make it their own.”

One of the striking characteristics of “We Were Us” that it’s an upbeat duet. “There are a lot of duets out there,” Robbins said, “but there aren’t a lot that are uptempo with a feel like that. They tend to be super ballads.”

Maybe that characteristic, then, is what helped propel the song to the top of the charts. It was the first male/female duet, in fact, to do so since Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood‘s “Remind Me” in 2011.

“I think that Keith had been toying with the idea of a duet, and my publisher knew that,” Robbins said. As soon as they finished the song, “it was on hold with Keith I think that night. He loved it and put it on hold right then.”

Urban, said Robbins, “had been toying with the idea of a duet, and my publisher knew that.”

And Lambert was on Urban’s mind already as a duet partner. “He toyed with the idea of a few different people, but she was always his first choice,” Robbins explained.

Urban agreed. “I just love Miranda’s voice,” he told Radio.com in a conversation last September, when he was preparing to release his album Fuse. “I love her artistry. We did some shows together many years ago. She got up and did a song with me each night, and I loved our voices together.”

Urban explained that in the back of his mind, he has always hoped that he would find a song that they could duet on together.

“‘We Were Us’ came along, and it’s not the kind of song Miranda would normally do, but her voice is the first one I heard in my head,” he said. “I called her up and sent her the song and she loved it and came to the studio. Blake came along as well and hung out for the day. Miranda and I went in and sang the song and I’m just so happy at the way it turned out.”

“We Were Us” tells the story of two former flames looking back on their lost love.

As for Lambert, she had only praises for her duet partner, as she explained last fall in a behind-the-scenes video.

“He’s been someone that’s inspired me along the way,” she said. “He’s really intense and takes what he does seriously.”

Lambert may have been Urban’s first choice — and she may have loved the song when he played it for her — but getting the two of them onto Urban’s record wasn’t easy.

“It was really down to the wire,” Robbins said. “She’s on a different record label, so there’s a whole other world of red tape — [there are] so many people that have to approve of it for him to be able to use it.” Robbins said he, Nite and Galyon wrote the song last March, and so by the time Urban and Lambert agreed to cut the song, “it was right before [Fuse] was done, and we didn’t know if it was going to be on it or not.”

Ultimately, “We Were Us” made it onto Fuse. And that was a relief for Robbins and his fellow songwriters in more ways than one.

“Songs get cut, and don’t make records, and get cut again,” he explained. “But once we heard Keith and Miranda sing ['We Were Us'], it would have been hard to hear anybody else sing it, because it sounds like it was made for them.”

The 49th ACM Awards will be broadcast live from Las Vegas on Sunday, April 6, 2014 at 8pm ET on CBS.

"Broken Girl," by Matthew West with Lyrics



"This song is for all the broken girls out there so that they will understand
that God loves them and wants them to be happy again."

Let your tears touch to the ground

Lay your shattered pieces down

And be amazed by how Grace can take a broken girl

 And put her back together again.


Broken Girl by Matthew West with Lyrics

MATTHEW WEST LYRICS

 Send "Broken Girl" Ringtone to your Cell 

"Broken Girl"

Look what he's done to you

It isn't fair
Your light was bright and new
But he didn't care
He took the heart of a little girl
And made it grow up too fast

Now words like "innocence"
Don't mean a thing
You hear the music play
But you can't sing
Those pictures in your mind
Keep you locked up inside your past

This is a song for the broken girl
The one pushed aside by the cold, cold world
You are
Hear me when I say
You're not the worthless they made you feel
There is a Love they can never steal away
And you don't have to stay the broken girl

Those damaged goods you see
In your reflection
Love sees them differently
Love sees perfection
A beautiful display
Of healing on the way tonight
Tonight

This is a song for the broken girl
The one pushed aside by the cold, cold world
You are
Hear me when I say
You're not the worthless they made you feel
There is a Love they can never steal away
And you don't have to stay the broken girl

Let your tears touch to the ground
Lay your shattered pieces down
And be amazed by how Grace can take a broken girl
And put her back together again


This is a song for the broken girl
The one pushed aside by the cold, cold world
You are
Hear me when I say
You're not the worthless they made you feel
There is a Love they can never steal away
And you don't have to stay the broken girl
You don't have to stay the broken girl

Love Between Friends

 

 

Love Between Friends

 

Love between friends is

So hard to live with because

You can't be yourself no matter

How hard you try so you cry yourself

To sleep by the pain of loving a friend.

Love between friends is the unwise thing

To do because in the end you'll break yours

And his heart into a million pieces and the

Friendship will be over within minutes.

Shannon Eason

Submitted: Monday, July 04, 2011

Edited: Monday, July 25, 2011

  

 

 

 

 

Are You With the Right Partner?

During a seminar, a woman asked," How do I know if I am with the right person?"

 

... The author then noticed that there was a large man sitting next to her so he said, "It depends. Is that your partner?" In all seriousness, she answered "How do you know?" Let me answer this question because the chances are good that it's weighing on your mind replied the author.

 

Here's the answer.

 

Every relationship has a cycle… In the beginning; you fall in love with your partner. You anticipate their calls, want their touch, and like their idiosyncrasies. Falling in love wasn't hard. In fact, it was a completely natural and spontaneous experience. You didn't have to DO anything. That's why it's called "falling" in love.

 

People in love sometimes say, "I was swept of my feet."Picture the expression. It implies that you were just standing there; doing nothing, and then something happened TO YOU.

 

Falling in love is a passive and spontaneous experience. But after a few months or years of being together, the euphoria of love fades. It's a natural cycle of EVERY relationship.

 

Slowly but surely, phone calls become a bother (if they come at all), touch is not always welcome (when it happens), and your spouse's idiosyncrasies, instead of being cute, drive you nuts. The symptoms of this stage vary with every relationship; you will notice a dramatic difference between the initial stage when you were in love and a much duller or even angry subsequent stage.

 

At this point, you and/or your partner might start asking, "Am I with the right person?" And as you reflect on the euphoria of the love you once had, you may begin to desire that experience with someone else. This is when relationships breakdown.

 

The key to succeeding in a relationship is not finding the right person; it's learning to love the person you found.

 

People blame their partners for their unhappiness and look outside for fulfillment. Extramarital fulfillment comes in all shapes and sizes.

 

Infidelity is the most common. But sometimes people turn to work, a hobby, friendship, excessive TV, or abusive substances. But the answer to this dilemma does NOT lie outside your relationship. It lies within it.

 

I'm not saying that you couldn't fall in love with someone else. You could. And TEMPORARILY you'd feel better. But you'd be in the same situation a few years later.

 

Because (listen carefully to this):

 

The key to succeeding in a Relationship is not finding the right person; it's learning to love the Person you found.

 

SUSTAINING love is not a passive or spontaneous experience. You have to work on it day in and day out. It takes time, effort, and energy. And most importantly, it demands WISDOM. You have to know WHAT TO DO to make it work. Make no mistake about it.

 

Love is NOT a mystery. There are specific things you can do (with or without your partner), Just as there are physical laws Of the universe (such as gravity), there are also laws for relationships. If you know how to apply these laws, the results are predictable.

 

Love is therefore a "decision". Not just a feeling.

 

Remember this always: God determines who walks into your life. It is up to you to decide who you let walk away, who you let stay, and who you refuse to let GO! ♥

 

- Anon

 

 

 

 

Encouraging Bible Verses About Marriage
 

#1

Genesis 2:18 (New International Version)

 

¹⁸ The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

 

#2

Ephesians 4:2-3 (New International Version)

 

²Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. ³Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

 

#3

2 Corinthians 6:14-15 (New International Version)

 

¹⁴Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? ¹⁵What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?

 

#4

Proverbs 17:14 (New International Version)

 

¹⁴ Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam;
so drop the matter before a dispute breaks out.

 

#5

John 13.34 (New International Version)

 

³⁴ A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

 

#6

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (New International Version)

 

⁹ Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:

¹⁰ If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!

¹¹ Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?

¹² Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

 

#7

Philippians 2:2 (New International Version)

 

²then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

 

#8

Proverbs 5:18-19 (New International Version)

 

¹⁸ May your fountain be blessed,
and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.

¹⁹ A loving doe, a graceful deer'"
may her breasts satisfy you always,
may you ever be captivated by her love.

 

#9

Proverbs 19:14 (New International Version)

 

¹⁴ Houses and wealth are inherited from parents,
but a prudent wife is from the LORD.

 

#10

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (New International Version)

 

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. When you seek guidance in your marriage from God his holy word will make your marriage far better than you attempting to guide your own marriage!
 

 

Love

What is love? Love is where

Two people fell in love with

Somebody that they can not

Live without feeling like they

Are dead or on another planet.

Love is the reason why people

Have broken hearts and tears in

Their eyes. Love is trouble to cause

People pain of both happy and hurt.


Shannon Eason
Submitted: Monday, July 04, 2011
Edited: Tuesday, July 05, 2011




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