Lecture 9: Marriage and Family Counseling

00:00:00.000 | We had just started, in our last class period, talking about life-family cycles.

00:00:15.200 | And we want to pick up there, and we had talked about early marriage, that is prior to children,

00:00:22.520 | and then right after that is when children come in, to the picture, which is the expanding

00:00:30.640 | family.

00:00:32.560 | And we're on to life cycle number three, which is another aspect of the expanding family,

00:00:40.080 | when the children become school age.

00:00:43.400 | And again, we're saying approximately this is ages between 28 and 35, when the kids reach

00:00:50.480 | this particular time, and there is a whole set of unique dynamics that are going on at

00:00:57.880 | this time, that we are going to call developmental paths again.

00:01:04.160 | So what's happening to a family where the kids now are off to school, maybe they go

00:01:10.520 | to a Christian school, maybe they go to a public school, or maybe the school room's

00:01:14.280 | right there in their own home, but they still have a certain number of hours during the

00:01:19.000 | day where mom is usually the one overseeing the school work or they're off to school at

00:01:26.560 | some other location.

00:01:29.400 | So you've got things going on here, like adjusting to the first child entering school.

00:01:35.920 | When that happens, you don't spend as much time just randomly spending personal time

00:01:42.920 | with the child, that child's now preoccupied with their studies and work, and if mom and

00:01:48.000 | dad are homeschooling, then there's a lot of intense work and preparation and setting

00:01:52.400 | up class schedules and curriculum that's going on there that's different.

00:01:58.040 | Everything changes.

00:02:01.160 | Or if that child's off to school, then you have a tendency to wonder, how's it going

00:02:07.440 | with the input that's coming from the teacher?

00:02:11.920 | How's my child adjusting to friends at school and interacting within that environment?

00:02:18.940 | So there's adjusting to that, and then there's this adjustment to the last child entering

00:02:23.560 | school as well, when all of a sudden the home is empty again if they go off to school.

00:02:30.280 | If they're being homeschooled, of course the home's not empty, but usually it's a lot quieter

00:02:34.960 | because they usually have their little work-study areas where they go to, and they have to read

00:02:41.120 | or study or write papers or do drawings.

00:02:47.280 | So usually things are a lot quieter around the home.

00:02:50.960 | And then there's adjustment, sometimes if children are sent off to work, a lot of Christian

00:02:57.040 | families do this, usually a wife will actually re-enter the workforce.

00:03:06.360 | That is, she gets a job, more often than not it's a part-time job, to kind of supplement

00:03:12.800 | the family income, and she's away from the house during the day, but usually they have

00:03:18.280 | it planned out in such a way where either dad or mom gets home around 3 or 3.30 in the

00:03:23.480 | afternoon when the kids get home and get off the bus, and so they're there to welcome them

00:03:28.240 | when they get home, but a lot of families live with that as well.

00:03:33.680 | And this is just a daily routine that they go through.

00:03:38.120 | Now one of the big struggles that go along with this is learning how to balance multiple

00:03:43.280 | roles.

00:03:45.520 | At work, with your husband or wife, at church, with the family, with the community, there's

00:03:53.600 | all kinds of different things that are going on there, and different roles that the husband

00:03:58.240 | or wife are involved in, sometimes they're a part of Bible studies at church, or sometimes

00:04:04.320 | they're a part of ministries, a children's ministry at church, or they're a part of a

00:04:11.620 | high school or a junior high ministry at church, and so they have different roles there, maybe

00:04:18.200 | they lead a Bible study in their own home, so they have a role that they take up there.

00:04:26.600 | So there's an adjustment to all these things that are going on, and not only does mom and

00:04:31.160 | dad usually have a busy personal schedule, but the kids, because of their school responsibilities

00:04:37.240 | and homework and so on, they also are extremely busy, so the family now is divided in several

00:04:43.360 | different directions.

00:04:46.960 | Now in counseling, you've got to understand that.

00:04:48.680 | When you get a couple that comes to you that's at this particular stage of life where the

00:04:55.680 | children are school age, these are some of the issues that they're going to be facing.

00:05:01.160 | There's also adjusting to this phase of child rearing, where if the kids are going off to

00:05:06.560 | school, whether it's Christian school or public school, they're usually coming home with new

00:05:09.680 | attitudes and new vocabulary, and that's going to change things a lot, in fact it may not

00:05:18.000 | be very pleasant vocabulary, this is not something that you say around the house, and it's not

00:05:24.460 | something that you want in your Christian home, so you have to end up challenging that

00:05:30.360 | vocabulary.

00:05:34.000 | Sometimes they come home with attitudes that you've never seen them have before.

00:05:38.640 | Usually they've had very pleasant attitudes, but now that's changed.

00:05:45.520 | Or maybe you've had a very compliant child, but now that child is starting to show some

00:05:49.880 | resistance.

00:05:53.000 | They're going to challenge mom and dad and what mom and dad thinks, because they think

00:06:00.360 | they're pretty hot stuff now that they're in school, or so they think.

00:06:08.200 | So there's this adjustment to this phase of child rearing.

00:06:13.160 | Now oftentimes at this particular stage also dad is going through a readjustment in terms

00:06:17.240 | of his career goals.

00:06:22.320 | Usually he's fairly well-established in his job, of course there are certain exceptions

00:06:28.760 | to that, but usually fairly well-adjusted in his job, and he's starting to climb the

00:06:33.960 | corporate ladder, so to speak, and get certain advancements in his job, but he has mixed

00:06:40.240 | feelings about it.

00:06:42.720 | There are good things that he likes about the job, and there are things he doesn't like

00:06:45.920 | about the job, and he's frequently saying to his wife when he comes home in the evening,

00:06:50.200 | "You know what, I'm not sure I could see myself doing this the rest of my life," which puts

00:06:56.280 | a little bit of panic in her heart, "You're not going to resign your job, are you?

00:07:00.960 | That's our income, and we got to be able to feed the kids.

00:07:06.560 | I don't know whether I'm really cut out to do this forever, is this really what I really

00:07:12.300 | want to do?"

00:07:13.980 | So there's all kinds of readjustments going on there.

00:07:18.040 | Then it's at this particular stage that you begin to relate to your parents as fellow

00:07:22.040 | adults.

00:07:23.040 | There's a change there as well.

00:07:29.640 | All of your life you related to them as a child, or as a young man or young woman, and

00:07:35.600 | now you're relating to your parents as fellow adults, because you're rearing your own children

00:07:39.720 | now.

00:07:40.720 | You're making your own decisions, and most of the time you're making these decisions

00:07:45.720 | almost entirely on your own.

00:07:48.240 | Occasionally you may consult them for their wisdom, but most of the time it's on your

00:07:53.640 | own.

00:07:54.640 | So how do you relate to them that way?

00:07:59.600 | Certainly one of the ways you can relate in a positive way is by tapping some of their

00:08:04.140 | wisdom as parents.

00:08:07.920 | They've gone through this stage of life before with you, and they learned some things that

00:08:14.300 | should be done and things that should not be done during that particular phase or stage

00:08:19.080 | of life.

00:08:20.080 | So you can do that, but also you can learn from their negative examples, not just their

00:08:30.320 | positive examples.

00:08:32.000 | In fact, mom and dad will probably say, "You know, if I had to do over again, I would have

00:08:35.560 | done this."

00:08:40.440 | Sometimes that's the best thing you can learn from them, and that's okay.

00:08:44.620 | So they're now sharing with you things that they've never shared with you before because

00:08:49.580 | you were too young to even hear them or even appreciate them, but now that you're facing

00:08:53.560 | these very same problems in your life with the children and the challenges of school

00:08:59.320 | and the responsibilities of a job and career and so on, this is all new.

00:09:08.040 | And then, here's a biggie.

00:09:11.100 | At this particular stage of life, you begin to realize that you have to adjust your goals

00:09:16.420 | and dreams to reality.

00:09:22.700 | Usually when a person is younger, they think they're going to set the world on fire.

00:09:27.820 | That's what they believe.

00:09:28.820 | "Wow, I am God's answer to the world."

00:09:35.440 | And they find out that God has a much more modest plan for their life.

00:09:41.660 | Oh, God's still going to use them and still going to use them in a very impactful way,

00:09:46.900 | but it's not the big way that they thought it was going to be.

00:09:52.180 | And so they begin to readjust their goals and their dreams to reality.

00:09:57.460 | I thought we'd be here at this particular stage financially in our home, or I thought

00:10:03.380 | we'd be this far along in my career, or I thought we'd be this far along in our spiritual

00:10:09.780 | development and growth as a family and as a couple, and they're beginning to realize,

00:10:14.640 | you know, we're not even close to some of these goals.

00:10:20.280 | That's okay.

00:10:22.280 | The fact that you are growing, you are changing, and you realize you need to grow and change

00:10:26.900 | is probably the most significant thing there.

00:10:32.240 | So what we're saying is families that come into counseling can be somewhat disillusioned

00:10:37.800 | about life, and you have to take that into account when you're working with them.

00:10:45.880 | Why are they disillusioned?

00:10:50.560 | What's the major struggle that's going on in their life?

00:10:54.320 | So, which really brings us to the strains and temptations, what are they?

00:11:00.080 | Well, one of them is that, as I've mentioned, there's financial strains, automobile, family

00:11:07.800 | necessities.

00:11:08.800 | As the kids get older, they need special treatment medically, dental treatment.

00:11:19.460 | You realize you have to mortgage your house in order to get braces for the kids, you know,

00:11:26.360 | and their teeth.

00:11:28.520 | You almost have to sell your firstborn in order to repair the car.

00:11:34.960 | There's major things going on there that are financial strains.

00:11:40.560 | And then there's a lot of decisions about education here at this stage.

00:11:44.360 | Well, should we send our kids to Christian school here in the area?

00:11:48.640 | Should we homeschool our kids?

00:11:52.800 | The positive side is we have a lot of input directly into how our kids develop and their

00:11:57.320 | growth and development.

00:11:58.800 | The negative side of it is it's very time demanding.

00:12:03.440 | Do we have enough time to spend and do all of this?

00:12:08.780 | What about the public school system?

00:12:11.920 | Some Christian parents say, "Listen, I've reared my kids to think and live like a Christian.

00:12:19.240 | I want them to learn how to be salt and light out there in the world, and I'm not going

00:12:23.840 | to teach them how to be salt and light by keeping them behind closed doors or keeping

00:12:30.440 | them in purely a Christian environment.

00:12:33.800 | I want to send them out in a sense into the world and learn how to live among people of

00:12:38.760 | the world so they can be a testimony to the world."

00:12:44.800 | I remember several years ago when I was pastoring, we had a very large Christian school there

00:12:52.440 | in our area.

00:12:53.440 | It was the largest one in the country, and several of the members of the leadership of

00:12:58.200 | that school came to our church, and we had a lot of families that sent their kids to

00:13:02.360 | the Christian school system, and then we had a number of families that sent their kids

00:13:06.680 | to the public school system, and we had a whole other group of families that homeschooled

00:13:10.760 | their kids.

00:13:13.080 | Generally, now I'm speaking generally, the kids that had the most dynamic testimony in

00:13:23.400 | the youth group were the kids that went to the public school system, and one day we sat

00:13:27.880 | down with the pastoral staff and we were talking about this, and I remember our conversation

00:13:31.080 | and the flow of it.

00:13:33.680 | Why is that so?

00:13:35.200 | Why are the kids that are coming out of the public school system have such a dynamic testimony

00:13:39.120 | for Christ?

00:13:41.540 | And the conclusion that we came to was that every day they went into that public school

00:13:45.880 | system, they faced criticism and ridicule for their faith, and they had to make a decision

00:13:56.200 | that day, "Am I going to stand with Christ, or am I going to be a chameleon and act like

00:14:00.660 | everybody else in the world?"

00:14:02.400 | And it's that decision that they had to make every day that made them firm in their Christian

00:14:07.800 | stand, and to make that firm.

00:14:11.840 | I'm not saying that public school system is the only way to go.

00:14:15.200 | I'm not saying that at all, okay?

00:14:17.640 | So don't bring out your theological guns and aim them at me, okay?

00:14:25.440 | Because there was a period of time where we sent our kids to the Christian school and

00:14:29.280 | we also homeschooled our children.

00:14:34.120 | I think that is an individual decision that parents have got to make, and they've got

00:14:37.840 | to do it.

00:14:39.440 | They know their kids.

00:14:41.360 | There are certain things, certain circumstances that are going on in those children's lives

00:14:46.880 | that may be unique, and so they'll need a unique approach.

00:14:52.400 | Some kids fit real well in a Christian school, and we really recommend that.

00:14:57.800 | Other kids are just very dynamic, and they stand on their own really well and think through

00:15:04.520 | things really well, so they function real well in a public school system.

00:15:08.200 | Other children, I will say this, when we homeschooled our kids, I don't think that they're...

00:15:17.480 | I think that they developed scholastically a lot faster when they were homeschooled.

00:15:22.540 | I can say that.

00:15:23.540 | There's certainly a very positive side to that scholastic development.

00:15:29.240 | In fact, for several years, we homeschooled the kids, and we finally sent it to a public

00:15:33.040 | school system because there were so many things that that school system could do in the area

00:15:38.160 | of biology and science and stuff like that that we couldn't do in a home situation.

00:15:45.520 | Not even with our cooperative homeschool environment there, we couldn't do that same thing.

00:15:51.360 | By the time they went from homeschooling into that public school system, the kids at their

00:15:55.160 | grade level thought our kids were geniuses, and they weren't.

00:15:59.040 | They were not geniuses.

00:16:00.040 | We didn't raise four geniuses, but they thought that they were because their homeschooling

00:16:04.640 | had trained them so well in comparison to what they had received in the public school

00:16:08.240 | system.

00:16:09.240 | What I'm saying is there's plus and a minus to every system, and parents have to weigh

00:16:16.620 | those type of things out.

00:16:19.280 | This particular family is going through that kind of struggle.

00:16:23.940 | Some missionaries in different parts of the world, they can't send their kids to the public

00:16:28.440 | school system, and it's impossible to do that.

00:16:30.920 | They have to homeschool.

00:16:33.880 | Sometimes they opt for video school in terms of homeschooling or some other means, so they

00:16:40.680 | just can't do it.

00:16:43.520 | All we're highlighting here is the fact that at this particular stage of life where the

00:16:46.920 | kids are school age, the parents face this kind of a struggle, and they actually may

00:16:51.440 | come to you for counsel on what do you think is the best thing to do, what's the best way

00:16:57.920 | we can be good stewards of the short amount of time that we have with our kids.

00:17:05.800 | There's another issue that they face, a strain, husbands being away from home with outside

00:17:11.280 | activities for the kids.

00:17:15.040 | Usually kids get involved in a lot of things, ice skating, swimming lessons, karate lessons,

00:17:25.520 | soccer, football.

00:17:28.560 | There's all kinds of things that kids get involved in, and you find yourself being a

00:17:32.720 | shuttle all over the place, and the husband usually works late at night or well into the

00:17:40.480 | evening with a high demanding job.

00:17:43.240 | So that brings up some strains, and then you begin to realize the kids are getting old

00:17:47.920 | enough to really get into some real good conflicts, struggles, sibling rivalry, arguments.

00:18:01.440 | Now I know this never happened in your home, but it certainly did in our home.

00:18:07.120 | I'll never forget when our boys were first introduced to Nintendo and what that did to

00:18:13.320 | them.

00:18:15.200 | So there's arguments like that that can occur.

00:18:20.680 | There's difficulty managing children, and each child you have to treat individually

00:18:31.280 | because they each have their own little strengths and weaknesses, their own little temptations,

00:18:37.000 | and sometimes you can't cookie cutter kids in child rearing.

00:18:41.200 | You've got to be wise, not any more than you like to be cookie cuttered at your job or

00:18:50.480 | even at church, and you are just considered to be one among many people, all the same

00:18:57.600 | type of people.

00:18:58.600 | No, you don't like that.

00:18:59.600 | You want to be treated as an individual, and your kids are the same way.

00:19:02.720 | So there's difficulty in managing the kids.

00:19:07.080 | You begin to realize there's a lot of things that are going by in life that are going by

00:19:10.280 | so fast that you don't have any...you realize there's a lot of unfulfilled tasks.

00:19:15.160 | I'm not getting everything done that I need to get done.

00:19:19.520 | And sometimes people will come, husbands, wives will come and talk with you about the

00:19:24.060 | guilt that they have of all these unfinished tasks.

00:19:27.920 | I'm not getting this done, I'm not getting that done, I'm not being a responsible husband

00:19:31.760 | or parent or wife or mother.

00:19:37.360 | And again, as I hinted at before, under the developmental tasks, there's dissatisfaction

00:19:44.660 | with job and career.

00:19:46.480 | Husbands beginning to rethink things usually at this stage, "Is this what I really want

00:19:51.680 | to do for the rest of my life?"

00:19:53.840 | And there's a certain discouragement and difficulty that occurs in the job.

00:20:00.520 | Or there's promotion or new responsibilities and demands of the job, and maybe even there's

00:20:05.520 | a decision to make a career change.

00:20:09.360 | "Now, this is not the job that I want, I want to get another one.

00:20:15.960 | So what's going on with that career change?"

00:20:20.800 | And when kids start into school, whether it's homeschool, Christian school, public school,

00:20:24.960 | whatever the case, you find that you have to handle behavioral or learning problems

00:20:32.280 | of the kid.

00:20:36.560 | Behavioral or learning problems.

00:20:41.120 | This becomes a challenge because every parent expects all their kids to be geniuses.

00:20:46.800 | And they find out that they're not.

00:20:50.960 | In fact, our kids have a learning difficulty.

00:20:55.840 | And how am I going to deal with that learning difficulty?

00:20:58.560 | When I was a boy, I was totally dyslexic.

00:21:02.080 | In fact, if you took my third grade papers and you held them up to a mirror, you could

00:21:07.000 | read them perfectly.

00:21:08.640 | I wrote everything exactly backwards.

00:21:13.600 | Switch things in my mind.

00:21:17.000 | And so my mother still has some of those papers.

00:21:20.560 | And she reminds me, keeps me very humble, of those papers.

00:21:26.680 | You could read everything backwards.

00:21:28.320 | I used to jokingly say, "Of all the things in seminary that I excelled at, of all the

00:21:34.160 | things, it was Hebrew that I excelled the most."

00:21:39.480 | I did.

00:21:40.480 | I loved Hebrew and it just came to me very naturally.

00:21:44.840 | And I often wondered whether or not it was because of my dyslexia because now I'm finally

00:21:50.400 | reading the direction that I want to read, all right, from the opposite direction.

00:21:56.280 | It was just natural for me to read that direction.

00:21:59.400 | I don't know.

00:22:00.400 | I don't know whether there's any substance to that whatsoever.

00:22:02.520 | But you find out your kids have learning problems.

00:22:07.040 | And they're not catching on to things quite as well and they need special work.

00:22:14.320 | And I remember I had so many problems with this when I was in third grade that I would

00:22:21.520 | have nightmares at night as a kid.

00:22:24.520 | I'd wake up in the middle of the night screaming.

00:22:27.840 | I'd have nightmares about my schoolwork because it was driving me crazy.

00:22:33.040 | And they'd give me all these IQ tests and stuff and I would score very well on those.

00:22:38.000 | That was no problem.

00:22:40.040 | But until they discovered that I had this problem with dyslexia and because I was seeing

00:22:46.640 | things completely different than what the other kids in class were looking at.

00:22:51.280 | So you're going to find out your kids are like that and you're going to minister to

00:22:55.920 | people whose kids who have problems like that.

00:22:58.560 | And these parents are going to be very discouraged, disheartened.

00:23:03.560 | This is not what they had planned for their life.

00:23:05.720 | They've got other things that they had planned that they wanted to do.

00:23:08.160 | Well, all of this is a part of rearing children in a godly way and being a good steward with

00:23:12.760 | your child.

00:23:16.320 | So handling these behavioral or learning problems of the kids.

00:23:22.920 | You may raise two or three kids and they're generally obedient kids.

00:23:27.160 | I mean, they do well, but also you may have one kid that decides to be the little rebel.

00:23:35.600 | And this kid demands all of your time.

00:23:41.200 | This little rebel just challenges you every step of the way.

00:23:45.840 | The rest of the kids, they are well behaved.

00:23:50.360 | And frequently in parenting conferences I get this question, what do you do with a kid

00:23:53.440 | like that?

00:23:54.440 | And actually those kind of kids don't bother me a whole lot and I don't think they should

00:23:59.680 | bother parents a whole lot.

00:24:00.960 | Yes, they are more demanding.

00:24:02.280 | Yes, they're going to demand more time.

00:24:04.000 | That's usually the frustration with parents.

00:24:05.480 | They're not willing to give that time and they've got to learn that that's just what

00:24:08.440 | they got to do.

00:24:09.880 | But those parents or those children are just being really upfront.

00:24:14.760 | They're just being who they are.

00:24:16.800 | They're laying everything on the table.

00:24:17.920 | This is the way they are.

00:24:18.920 | And I'd rather deal with a kid like that than the sweet little kid that sits back and always

00:24:23.080 | obeys but on the inside is a little rebel.

00:24:26.520 | In the long run, that kid is the more dangerous kid because they're not being genuine.

00:24:36.840 | They're hiding themselves and you don't see that kid really come to the surface until

00:24:41.240 | they have a little bit of autonomy later on in adolescence.

00:24:44.760 | And all of a sudden the parents are saying, "I don't understand.

00:24:48.160 | This kid has always been an obedient kid.

00:24:50.040 | I don't know why he or she would ever do this."

00:24:53.320 | Well, because they tended to ignore that kid and focus on the kid that constantly gave

00:24:58.840 | them problems.

00:25:01.720 | When you need to address the hearts of every single kid in that family, it's not just the

00:25:08.400 | one that's real demanding.

00:25:10.920 | You think about the one that's always obedient and always wants to make mom and dad happy.

00:25:17.480 | In the long run, I think that's a more dangerous kid because you can easily lose that kid over

00:25:25.440 | the years.

00:25:26.440 | They sit in the back and they're very quiet and they don't have a whole lot to say but

00:25:30.320 | inside their heart is really going a completely different direction and that never gets challenged.

00:25:39.300 | So you're not just handling learning problems but you're also handling behavioral problems

00:25:45.920 | with kids.

00:25:47.600 | There's the challenge.

00:25:50.520 | Which brings us to life cycle number four, which is the maturing family.

00:25:55.940 | Probably parents approximate ages 35 to 45, this is families with teenagers.

00:26:04.960 | During this particular stage of life, as the parents grow older, they begin to reevaluate

00:26:10.560 | their career again.

00:26:13.760 | For the first time, all of a sudden, mom begins to experience menopause.

00:26:22.580 | I tell men, usually in counseling, "Don't dread menopause.

00:26:30.200 | For the first time in your life, your wife will be the same temperature as you."

00:26:37.640 | You know how she's always cold and you're always hot?

00:26:39.680 | Well, when she goes through menopause, you'll both be hot, okay?

00:26:46.600 | So she's always freezing.

00:26:49.840 | When she goes through menopause, now you'll both and you'll say to her, "This is the way

00:26:55.640 | I've been all of my life."

00:26:58.040 | At least you only have to experience it for a short amount of time.

00:27:04.780 | So handling menopause and all the difficulties that go along with that, there's a reassessment

00:27:11.660 | of the marriage, usually during this time.

00:27:15.400 | What's the progress?

00:27:16.580 | What's the satisfaction of the marriage when the kids become teenagers?

00:27:24.940 | You find the kids are usually off on their own.

00:27:28.180 | They have a little bit of their own freedom now where they can get out and maybe a vehicle

00:27:31.900 | and then go places and now mom and dad's left at home by themselves in the evening, lots

00:27:37.100 | of time to spend together.

00:27:40.100 | For people who have made major good investments in their marriage, they look forward to that

00:27:43.700 | time.

00:27:44.700 | For other people who have not made investments in their marriage, they don't know what to

00:27:47.700 | do at that time.

00:27:52.660 | So there's a reassessment.

00:27:56.420 | Usually it's during this time that most couples stabilize their finances and their resources.

00:28:04.860 | This is the time where they really begin to make money that they can put away for later

00:28:11.500 | on future health issues or retirement.

00:28:18.940 | This is where they begin to do that.

00:28:24.780 | Another developmental task at this particular stage is accepting individual differences

00:28:28.740 | with your mate, with your children.

00:28:33.340 | Children are now become opinionated.

00:28:35.300 | They may or may not accept everything that mom and dad believe.

00:28:39.140 | You find out whether or not your child maybe made a profession of faith in Christ years

00:28:43.460 | before, but the real fruit of that is beginning to bear out at this stage of life.

00:28:49.920 | You begin to find out, "No, wait a minute.

00:28:51.640 | Maybe my child doesn't know Christ."

00:28:53.880 | You're going through a lot of doubts, going through a lot of questions, and those questions

00:28:59.180 | may be serious enough that they really don't know the Lord, which tells us whether or not

00:29:07.540 | years before that was a real genuine commitment to Christ as Savior and Lord.

00:29:18.620 | So there's differences there.

00:29:25.280 | It's at this particular stage of life in our home that my wife really became a believer

00:29:32.520 | when our child became young teenagers.

00:29:34.840 | Now, we thought she was a believer prior to this, but she wasn't.

00:29:43.740 | I shared with you that story, didn't I, a little bit about her teaching that classroom

00:29:49.280 | of girls and how she wanted to share with them the gospel.

00:29:54.160 | Well, it's this particular stage of life that that happened.

00:29:58.860 | And then there's a shift of priorities in view of lifetime remaining.

00:30:03.640 | You realize that life's going by pretty quickly and you only have a short amount of time,

00:30:07.920 | and you begin to think through, "Okay, what am I doing that's really worthwhile and really

00:30:13.120 | is good for the kingdom of God, and what are the things that are peripheral things that

00:30:19.200 | I'm spending a lot of time with, but it really isn't advancing God's kingdom, it's not advancing

00:30:23.560 | my family, not advancing my wife or our children.

00:30:28.280 | What's going on here?"

00:30:29.280 | So there's a shift here in your priorities.

00:30:34.880 | And then there's also handling the increased independence of the children.

00:30:44.720 | That's difficult to do, too.

00:30:46.840 | Now the kids are not as directly under your influence all the time, they're off with one

00:30:55.520 | activity after another.

00:30:58.000 | Usually the church adds to those activities even more, youth group activities and Bible

00:31:04.060 | studies, and there's just an awful lot of stuff that's going on during this time.

00:31:09.680 | And so the kids aren't around as much.

00:31:14.480 | Some parents, they enjoy having the kids out of the house.

00:31:18.080 | Other parents, it's a little bit more difficult for them.

00:31:22.240 | You know, they really miss having the kids around.

00:31:24.320 | They're gone.

00:31:25.320 | The house is a lot quieter.

00:31:27.640 | Used to be your house was like a revolving door on the front door.

00:31:31.760 | Kids going in and out, all kinds of action happening.

00:31:34.420 | Now it's quiet all the time.

00:31:36.900 | And some couples have a difficulty handling the quietness.

00:31:44.820 | And then you begin to learn how to accept a new role with the children.

00:31:48.940 | It's much less of a controlling structural role.

00:31:59.020 | You realize that your role in their lives is shifting to that as of being an advisor,

00:32:12.100 | where they come and seek your wisdom, not necessarily your rules.

00:32:20.380 | Before you used to pass rules and you'd have a very structured home and you have certain

00:32:24.700 | things that these kids could do or not do.

00:32:26.460 | Now they're getting old enough where you're letting back, letting off on the rules, and

00:32:32.100 | we'll talk about this later on in the class, and you're giving them more freedom, freedom

00:32:35.900 | to make their own decisions, and with that freedom now, your role is changing from being

00:32:42.620 | less and less of an enforcer of rules to more and more of an advisor on decision making.

00:32:52.060 | Some parents handle that shift well, other parents don't.

00:32:57.340 | It's hard to do that, to handle that.

00:33:01.860 | So what are the stresses and temptations here?

00:33:04.860 | Well, one is increased expenses for necessities, major purchases, education.

00:33:15.740 | It's usually at this stage where the kids end up adding to the home an additional automobile,

00:33:28.020 | where before you only had enough where you took the whole family around, but now they

00:33:31.860 | want to drive their own vehicle.

00:33:36.700 | You're making decisions about college and you're beginning to save money for further

00:33:42.700 | education of the kid and send them to a university, and you realize that's going to cost an awful

00:33:48.500 | lot of money, an arm and a leg, to do that, and this is where oftentimes couples begin

00:33:55.260 | to talk about the wife reentering the workforce more on a permanent basis, a full-time basis,

00:34:03.860 | to get the kids through college.

00:34:05.580 | In other words, they live on his salary, but they put the kids through college on her salary.

00:34:13.100 | That's usually what happens.

00:34:18.700 | So there's these increased expenses for necessities.

00:34:23.340 | I mean, you think it was bad when the kids were really little that you had a doctor's

00:34:27.500 | appointment.

00:34:28.500 | Now, my goodness, when they go to the doctor, it really costs something.

00:34:30.820 | When they go to the dentist, it really costs something.

00:34:33.300 | They're bigger.

00:34:34.740 | They're still kids in adult bodies now, so it's going to be more expensive taking care

00:34:40.180 | of those.

00:34:41.300 | There's glasses they have to buy for them, contact lenses.

00:34:51.620 | One of my boys, just the other, last year was playing football there at the college

00:34:56.700 | and broke his nose, was elbowed.

00:34:59.820 | This year, my other boy, we thought he broke his nose, but he didn't.

00:35:03.900 | He just got an elbow in the nose, and it just bled quite a bit, and it's a good thing he

00:35:10.220 | didn't break his nose.

00:35:11.220 | But those kind of things come up.

00:35:14.980 | They break their leg.

00:35:15.980 | They break their arm.

00:35:18.740 | My son-in-law, I'll never forget, he played football in high school on the same team that

00:35:25.660 | my son played on, and during one of the games, he broke his leg.

00:35:32.980 | And his father is a wonderful friend of ours and a graduate of the seminary here, ran down

00:35:40.300 | the field to see his son and was leaning over looking at it, and it was a compound fracture,

00:35:46.100 | so the bone had come through the skin, was leaning over looking at it, and his father

00:35:51.980 | passed out and landed right on top of him.

00:36:04.980 | Jess still talks about that.

00:36:06.780 | All right.

00:36:08.220 | So there's additional expenses.

00:36:09.980 | I mean, kids are expensive, man.

00:36:14.420 | The medical bills for that.

00:36:15.580 | When our twins were born, they were born premature.

00:36:19.580 | They were about two weeks premature.

00:36:21.620 | So they were in the neonatal intensive care unit of the hospital for one week until their

00:36:27.580 | body weight was sufficient to take them home.

00:36:30.500 | Well, by the end of that week, I received a bill, now this was back in 1987.

00:36:36.420 | One week of our twins being in the hospital was $65,000.

00:36:43.900 | That was one week in 1987.

00:36:47.100 | I don't even hazard a guess on what that would be today.

00:36:52.300 | But multiply that times, I don't know, what, five or ten, and maybe you'd be pretty close

00:36:58.260 | to what the expense would be today.

00:36:59.900 | Well, that was more than I had paid for my house.

00:37:03.580 | One week in the hospital, $65,000.

00:37:06.940 | I had only paid $60,000 for my home, which tells you that we were living in a much more

00:37:14.540 | reasonable area and at a much more reasonable time.

00:37:19.660 | But just one week in the hospital.

00:37:20.820 | So kids can get very, very expensive.

00:37:23.180 | Well, this particular stage is no exception.

00:37:26.540 | So there's these increased responsibilities.

00:37:30.460 | Then there is also these differing views about freedom, responsibility, discipline of adolescence.

00:37:46.380 | And you run into this because your kids end up talking to the other kids that are teenagers,

00:37:52.820 | and they'll come home and say, "Well, their mother and daddy lets them stay out until

00:37:57.660 | 11 o'clock, why don't you let me stay out until 11 o'clock?"

00:38:03.980 | "Well, because I'm not their parent.

00:38:07.220 | I'm your parent."

00:38:08.220 | Well, that doesn't seem to suffice.

00:38:11.500 | That's not a really good argument.

00:38:13.140 | It goes down really well.

00:38:15.140 | "You're treating me like a baby," and it becomes a big argument.

00:38:20.100 | So differing views about freedom, responsibility, what are they responsible for around the house.

00:38:26.400 | We always had certain things that our kids had to take care of that was beyond any kind

00:38:32.300 | of pay or reimbursement, it was just part of family living.

00:38:37.740 | Everybody had certain chores that they were responsible to do.

00:38:41.340 | You can't imagine the discussion that occurred in our household when our kids got to be teenagers

00:38:46.020 | and found out that there were other Christian homes where kids didn't have to do that.

00:38:51.620 | Why do we have to do it?

00:38:53.100 | For years, they did the same thing.

00:38:54.500 | Now they're asking, "Why do we have to do this?"

00:38:57.540 | Because you can be thankful that we're your parents.

00:39:03.520 | Well, they don't feel thankful.

00:39:08.580 | So there's differing views about responsibility, differing views of the discipline of adolescence.

00:39:15.320 | How do you discipline an adolescent?

00:39:16.720 | You can try paddling an adolescent and they'll look at you like, "Huh, what hit me?

00:39:20.940 | Was that a fly?"

00:39:23.680 | So it's not very effective, it doesn't work.

00:39:26.640 | So you may have to resort to other means.

00:39:29.160 | You take away their cell phone, you think the world's come to an end, or their access

00:39:34.600 | to the internet, or their video games.

00:39:40.560 | You gotta find something, or their music, or their iPods, and you think that really

00:39:46.360 | speaks to them.

00:39:47.360 | Now, how long does this have to be?

00:39:50.320 | You have to get their attention some way.

00:39:53.560 | Furthermore, there's also struggles with outside activities of the kids.

00:39:59.000 | And sometimes they conflict.

00:40:00.480 | You can't be everywhere at once.

00:40:02.720 | There's a performance where one kid's going to be in a particular game, a soccer game,

00:40:09.000 | or another kid's going to be having a ballet presentation.

00:40:15.840 | So you can't be everywhere, and so you have to divide and conquer.

00:40:20.880 | There's also handling new responsibilities, promotion at work.

00:40:26.360 | As you're promoted, you get more responsibilities, and there's difficulty in managing teenagers

00:40:32.200 | as well.

00:40:33.720 | I mean, just take a teenager to the store to buy clothes, and you'll understand what

00:40:42.000 | a challenge that is.

00:40:45.780 | Kids that could care less what they wore all of a sudden now become extremely picky about

00:40:51.720 | what they want to wear.

00:40:52.720 | "I can't wear that.

00:40:53.720 | I wouldn't be caught dead in that at school," they'd say.

00:40:57.920 | "Are you kidding me?

00:41:00.080 | That's not cool, mom."

00:41:06.380 | So just managing them.

00:41:09.200 | Then there's frustration with work that is growing, or tension caused by disagreements

00:41:16.960 | about how to respond to adolescents.

00:41:19.660 | Maybe a husband and a wife have a disagreement on how to deal with them.

00:41:26.620 | She says to him, "You're being too harsh.

00:41:29.740 | Stop being so harsh.

00:41:31.340 | You've got to speak to their hearts."

00:41:33.180 | And he says to them, "Listen, if we don't get their attention, they're not going to

00:41:40.220 | treat us seriously.

00:41:42.180 | We've got to be able to get their attention.

00:41:44.300 | Get them to listen to us."

00:41:46.220 | So there's a disagreement on how do you deal with the adolescents and the stress and the

00:41:49.700 | struggle that's going on there.

00:41:52.080 | Or there's a strain that's caused by rebellion or drug abuse or sexual activity.

00:41:58.320 | This is where sometimes kids will horribly disappoint Christian parents.

00:42:06.460 | They'll get involved with people or drug abuse or alcohol or sexual activity.

00:42:18.060 | This is more and more displayed in the public entertainment and medium as normal for adolescents,

00:42:30.180 | which is causing a dramatic increase in teenage and adolescent pregnancies.

00:42:38.840 | That's going on.

00:42:39.840 | So this is how do you respond to the adolescents?

00:42:45.460 | And then last of all here, there's also the strain caused by rebellion or drug abuse.

00:42:52.260 | Well, I love this.

00:42:55.960 | He says, "I just don't fit in anymore with anybody at school.

00:43:02.280 | My parents aren't divorced.

00:43:04.080 | I haven't been abused.

00:43:05.920 | And our family isn't dysfunctional.

00:43:07.740 | I'm such a freak."

00:43:09.360 | That's the average Christian parent ends up facing that kind of thing, "I'm just such

00:43:16.200 | a freak."

00:43:17.200 | All right, this brings us to life cycle number five, life cycle number five, which we're

00:43:24.640 | going to call shrinking family or launching family, however you want to say that.

00:43:31.000 | They're ages approximately 45 to 55 in this particular family.

00:43:37.440 | What are some of the unique developmental things that are going on here?

00:43:40.320 | Well, they're refocusing more attention on their mate and less on the kids at this particular

00:43:45.600 | stage of life.

00:43:47.200 | They're relating to their children as fledgling adults now.

00:43:52.760 | And they see some childish things and childish decisions still in their kids, even though

00:43:56.920 | their kids maybe have now are in married, but they also see their kids as adults.

00:44:05.320 | And so mom and dad is usually struggling with how do I relate to them now as adults and

00:44:11.600 | let them make decisions where before, they can remember it wasn't that many years ago,

00:44:15.840 | they were making all their decisions for the kids.

00:44:19.400 | Then there's adjusting to changing family responses to them where before mom and dad

00:44:26.520 | could just make a decision and they'd all get together for dinner or get together for

00:44:31.960 | a holiday or an event or a birthday party.

00:44:34.760 | Well now these kids have their own lives and they have their own schedules and they're

00:44:38.600 | going different directions and you can't just make a decision and get everybody together

00:44:42.740 | at the same time.

00:44:43.740 | And that's hard.

00:44:45.080 | That's hard to make that transition.

00:44:49.260 | So you're going to get different responses back on things that you plan.

00:44:54.920 | There's also handling increased awareness of physical vulnerability, physical vulnerability.

00:45:01.680 | You can't do some of the things that you used to be able to do.

00:45:09.240 | You think you could.

00:45:14.800 | You think, you feel like you did when you were 20 years of age, but your body does not

00:45:20.440 | respond the same way as when you were 20 years of age.

00:45:26.360 | It doesn't respond nearly as well as when you were younger.

00:45:31.600 | I'll never forget the realization of that came to me back a few years ago when I was

00:45:38.720 | off speaking at a family camp for this church.

00:45:42.040 | And we were out and it was a beautiful setting, way out in the wilderness at this lake and

00:45:49.160 | this church had brought in all these tents and campers and they had brought in all kinds

00:45:55.680 | of food.

00:45:56.680 | We had a wonderful week.

00:45:57.680 | And they also had brought in a couple of boats to put on this lake where every year they'd

00:46:01.600 | always do water skiing.

00:46:02.600 | And one of the guys brought in this super mega powered boat.

00:46:06.320 | I mean, it was unbelievable.

00:46:07.320 | And I'm going, oh.

00:46:08.800 | And I used to love to water ski in Sollum.

00:46:10.840 | I used to love to do that.

00:46:13.040 | But it had been several years since I had done it.

00:46:16.280 | So I was all excited about getting out there on the lake.

00:46:21.700 | And so they hooked me up and I got in the back of the boat, got my skis on and got there

00:46:28.600 | in the water and was sitting there in the water and had the ski rope in front of me

00:46:33.320 | and I gave the thumbs up for him to hit that power boat.

00:46:37.000 | And man, he hit that thing and those two engines were whoosh like this and just lifted me straight

00:46:42.560 | out of the water.

00:46:43.560 | Just whoom, right out of the water.

00:46:46.240 | And I thought, oh, this is so cool, for about a half a second.

00:46:52.780 | This is going to be great.

00:46:54.500 | And then I heard, I heard with my ears this snap.

00:47:01.060 | And I'm going, hmm, I wonder what that is.

00:47:07.180 | And then I felt this excruciating pain in my leg.

00:47:12.740 | And I had ripped my hamstring, just really just ripped it.

00:47:18.880 | That thing lifted me out of the water and I was standing like this, ripped the hamstring.

00:47:22.460 | And I just went head over heels right back down into the water.

00:47:26.700 | Just straight like that.

00:47:27.700 | It must have been quite something.

00:47:28.880 | I'm glad no one was filming it.

00:47:30.300 | It would have made America's funniest videos.

00:47:33.200 | But it just went right like that.

00:47:35.120 | And I rolled in the water and I was just in excruciating pain.

00:47:39.540 | By the time they got me back to shore, I couldn't hardly walk on my leg at all.

00:47:48.200 | And the back of my leg, the whole back of my leg was all black and blue.

00:47:51.480 | It was bleeding under the surface.

00:47:53.440 | And I had really ripped that hamstring.

00:47:56.240 | Now, I used to run.

00:47:59.240 | I used to play sports.

00:48:00.720 | I used to ski.

00:48:02.000 | I never had any problems with any of that.

00:48:05.480 | And I'm sitting, I'm going, what is wrong here?

00:48:09.320 | And then my wife eventually says, "John, you're getting older."

00:48:14.600 | No, that can't be.

00:48:22.080 | And for the next, I don't know, it must have been five, six weeks, I could barely walk

00:48:27.000 | on that leg until that crazy thing healed.

00:48:30.400 | But it just destroyed me.

00:48:32.640 | Now, this is what, at this particular age, about 45 to 55, all of a sudden they're struggling

00:48:39.600 | now with their physical vulnerability.

00:48:43.800 | She can't do many of the things that she used to do and he can't do many of the things he

00:48:47.480 | used to do.

00:48:51.360 | So that's what's going to happen at this particular stage.

00:48:57.080 | Now, also there's, your married children will pull away and establish their own cycles of

00:49:01.800 | life.

00:49:02.800 | It's at this stage.

00:49:06.240 | It's always a joyful time to see that happen, but also there's a certain amount of sadness

00:49:10.760 | because you realize your family's now beginning to dissolve and break up and go in several

00:49:16.160 | different directions and it's not the same as it used to be.

00:49:19.980 | You're learning to cope with new people entering the family.

00:49:22.600 | You always look forward to a future son and daughter-in-law.

00:49:25.960 | You always look forward to that, but you never anticipated them bringing all their in-laws

00:49:30.360 | into this, too.

00:49:32.640 | That was not something that you bet on.

00:49:35.160 | Wow, you mean all their in-laws are coming in, too, the family?

00:49:39.980 | So they're struggling with that, accepting new responsibilities.

00:49:45.200 | They have now especially advisory type of responsibilities.

00:49:55.000 | So all of these developmental tasks bring on a certain amount of strains and stresses,

00:49:59.520 | too.

00:50:00.520 | For example, financial ones, this is big because most of the kids now are definitely in college

00:50:06.360 | and that brings a strain on the family resources, along with keeping up with house payments

00:50:13.600 | and car payments and other things that are going on.

00:50:17.080 | There's again the outside activities of the children that are part of these stresses and

00:50:24.760 | temptations.

00:50:26.520 | Unfulfilled tasks, again, become a big thing.

00:50:31.720 | Children leaving home for college or for marriage becomes part of this struggle, too.

00:50:41.900 | This is a time of a lot of happiness, but it's also a time of a lot of regret because

00:50:49.420 | couples begin to look back upon things that they wish they would have done.

00:50:54.720 | I wish I would have done this with my family or that with my family.

00:51:06.180 | And frequently you'll find that a lot of couples, there's job or career changes that occur.

00:51:14.860 | Because now that they've got their children reared and they're off, they're just not happy

00:51:19.640 | with what they're doing.

00:51:20.640 | Well, it brought them a paycheck, but there's more to life than a paycheck, and I don't

00:51:26.060 | want to put up with the same pressures that I've put up with before.

00:51:28.300 | I'm willing to accept a job that pays a lot less and I'm a lot happier at, and so there's

00:51:33.780 | frequent job changes.

00:51:37.140 | And then there are some close relatives or friends become seriously ill during this time.

00:51:42.940 | Some of them may even die.

00:51:46.140 | So you begin to find yourself going through a phase of life where you're starting to lose

00:51:50.700 | people that are really close to you and maybe suddenly die of a heart attack or maybe a

00:52:02.260 | car accident or somebody contracts a disease or cancer.

00:52:11.500 | And then as the children leave, there is also sometimes facing the guilt of parental failure.

00:52:19.580 | You see the way some of your kids have grown up and you're happy about it, but then you

00:52:24.340 | take a look at some of the other kids and you're not as happy about what happened and

00:52:28.820 | you wonder to yourself, "Well, is this because of the way that I brought them up?

00:52:32.940 | Is that the reason why they're dealing with life the way that they're dealing with life

00:52:36.820 | and they're struggling with things?

00:52:38.200 | Is it my fault?

00:52:39.300 | Could I have done something different or better?

00:52:44.780 | Did I disobey God in some area where my kids now are now rebellious?"

00:52:51.660 | We'll eventually talk about that, especially in reference to Proverbs 22.6.

00:52:58.300 | Then there are pressures of taking care of aging or dying parents.

00:53:04.260 | Usually as the kids move out, the parents move in.

00:53:07.700 | The elderly parents, that's usually what happens.

00:53:12.380 | Maybe a wife's father or mother passes away and so they end up taking the remaining parent

00:53:19.680 | into their home.

00:53:21.100 | Or the husband's, one of their parents, his parents passes away and they end up taking

00:53:27.120 | one of them into the home, which brings a lot of additional strain and responsibility.

00:53:32.080 | And now where previously in your life, you really relied upon them and looked up to them,

00:53:37.940 | you were their child, now it's almost as if they're the children and you're the parent

00:53:44.620 | and you find yourself taking over for a lot of just health and daily maintenance of food.

00:53:55.100 | If the parents get senile or experience Alzheimer's disease, where the brain begins to deteriorate

00:54:03.460 | and they don't even remember who you are and they don't even reappreciate you anymore,

00:54:07.700 | but you have responsibility for their daily care.

00:54:10.860 | This can bring a lot of stress on a home and a lot of stress on a marriage when that kind

00:54:15.660 | of thing happens.

00:54:17.540 | And usually because the husband's still working, whatever the parents, whether it's the husband's

00:54:22.640 | parent or whether the wife's parent, it's usually the wife that ends up being the caretaker

00:54:28.100 | of the parents.

00:54:29.740 | She's the one that usually does that.

00:54:32.540 | And when that happens, this is not what she envisioned the last part of her life to look

00:54:37.060 | like, taking care of parents for the rest of them.

00:54:40.060 | She loves them.

00:54:41.300 | She's grateful for them.

00:54:42.660 | It may be easier for her to take care of her parents, but it's much more difficult to take

00:54:47.060 | care of his parents.

00:54:49.060 | Or if you bring parents into the home, then there's an additional strain of the fact that

00:54:53.100 | maybe those parents are not believers.

00:54:56.200 | And that brings a whole new dimension in the home.

00:55:01.620 | Maybe they cuss or they drink or they have some kind of habit that you're not used to

00:55:10.020 | and they're so old, they don't want to break their habit.

00:55:15.180 | And so this becomes a difficult thing.

00:55:17.700 | And then it's the pressure of the child who doesn't marry or stays or returns home.

00:55:25.060 | And a lot of this is happening now.

00:55:28.620 | Statistics confirm the fact in European-American homes, there is a, children are waiting longer

00:55:37.900 | and longer to marry, well into their 30s before they get married.

00:55:47.620 | Some as late as the 40s in order to get married.

00:55:51.920 | So what happens when a kid goes off to college, is gone, and then comes home, doesn't marry,

00:56:00.700 | decides to live at home?

00:56:03.580 | What do you do?

00:56:04.580 | You let that kid live at home?

00:56:07.180 | So there's a lot of decision-making that mom and dad has to go through at that particular

00:56:12.180 | time.

00:56:13.180 | And you're going to be counseling people that'll be going through those kinds of decision-making

00:56:16.100 | processes.

00:56:20.340 | Then we get to the sixth life cycle, which is the empty nest family.

00:56:29.140 | Somewhere between the ages of 46 and 65, there is that empty nest.

00:56:33.420 | And there's a lot of things that are going on developmentally here, learning to live

00:56:38.060 | as a couple again, just the two of you learning to be grandparents, which on the one hand

00:56:45.180 | is a lot of joy, but on the other hand also represents some brand new challenges.

00:56:54.800 | From the grandparents' point of view, maybe you're not really fond of the way that your

00:57:01.380 | kids are raising your grandkids.

00:57:06.660 | You see some dangerous things going on in how they're handling their kids.

00:57:13.340 | You're also preparing for retirement, not because you want to retire.

00:57:17.100 | Very few people really do if they're happy in their job.

00:57:20.900 | If they're not happy in their job and they're really looking forward to getting out of it.

00:57:24.220 | But if they're happy in their job, very few people really want to retire, but they realize

00:57:27.820 | that physically they can't keep this up forever.

00:57:32.060 | They can't.

00:57:33.300 | They just can't do it anymore.

00:57:37.960 | And then they learn to relate to their children as adults there, and they help and relate

00:57:41.740 | honorably to aging parents.

00:57:44.460 | They're handling aloneness as well, being alone.

00:57:50.780 | What do you do spending time alone?

00:57:57.500 | Sometimes with just the two of you, but also at this particular stage, frequently a husband

00:58:03.060 | or a wife will pass away.

00:58:04.660 | Usually it's the husband.

00:58:08.380 | And now the wife is spending time by herself a lot.

00:58:12.540 | What do you do with that as a widow, or if you're a widower?

00:58:18.740 | Or you're handling physical deterioration.

00:58:21.580 | You find yourself going to the doctor a lot more, and the doctor wanting you to come back

00:58:28.300 | a lot more.

00:58:31.220 | And they want to put you through special tests and special treatments, and all of those things

00:58:35.940 | require more money and more money and more money.

00:58:40.700 | You're learning to communicate differently than you did before.

00:58:44.300 | When the kids were around the home, you sort of adopted baby language.

00:58:49.020 | Well, the kids are gone.

00:58:52.100 | They're out on their own.

00:58:53.620 | They're creating their own babies.

00:58:56.580 | And now it's kind of ridiculous that you talk baby language to each other just for the kid's

00:59:01.540 | sake.

00:59:03.220 | So you're learning how to communicate differently with one another.

00:59:06.900 | You're developing new goals and purposes also for living.

00:59:16.500 | Now at this particular stage also, there is a whole set of unique strains and temptations,

00:59:21.380 | and this is not an exhaustive list, but for example, the death of parents, that's a unique

00:59:27.300 | strain.

00:59:29.420 | When parents die, there's this big void that occur in life, and you realize you're not

00:59:36.060 | going to see this on this earth.

00:59:37.260 | It makes it much easier to know that if they're believers and they've committed their life

00:59:43.640 | to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, that you'll see them again in glory.

00:59:47.420 | That's a great reassurance.

00:59:49.160 | But what if you have parents that are not or you're unsure of?

00:59:52.920 | You don't know whether you'll ever see them again.

00:59:57.860 | So that's a stress.

00:59:59.420 | That's a difficulty.

01:00:00.580 | There's the death of close friends too, which puts you in contact with your own finiteness.

01:00:08.300 | Man, this is my close friend.

01:00:10.900 | We grew up together.

01:00:11.900 | We knew each other, and this person's gone.

01:00:17.160 | You don't expect that.

01:00:18.620 | The people that you've known for a long, long time are not the people that are around anymore.

01:00:25.420 | Unfulfilled tasks again or undone tasks.

01:00:31.260 | Stuff that you like to have accomplished by this stage of your life but you haven't accomplished.

01:00:39.420 | There's dissatisfaction with the job again that tends to reign at this particular stage.

01:00:43.640 | You're not happy with it.

01:00:45.620 | You want to do something different.

01:00:47.140 | You feel that your life can be more meaningful serving Christ in some other way.

01:00:53.860 | Or you're failing health, or there's health concerns that you have.

01:01:00.180 | Maybe you have a chronic disease and it bothers you.

01:01:06.140 | Or there's the death of your mate at this stage, which is probably the most traumatic

01:01:13.100 | of all events that can happen in your lifetime, to lose somebody that you've been so close

01:01:19.620 | to for so many years.

01:01:26.660 | And most people, when that happens, it's very difficult for them to live above that, even

01:01:31.580 | though their mate was a believer and they know that they'll see their mate again.

01:01:35.140 | It's very difficult for them with the remaining days they have to live above that.

01:01:38.820 | The tendency is to begin to do what Ecclesiastes 7.10 warns about.

01:01:45.140 | That is, we have a tendency to begin to live in the past in our mind.

01:01:49.540 | And we begin to rehearse all the wonderful things of the past as if there's nothing in

01:01:53.740 | the present that can ever be wonderful again because the person that I love is gone.

01:02:00.820 | And when you're counseling people like this, widows and widowers, this is something that

01:02:05.100 | you need to be aware of.

01:02:07.780 | People who spend all day long living nostalgically, living in the past.

01:02:19.540 | My kids used to talk with me about that because when the kids were young, I used to drag them

01:02:26.900 | around to battlefields, Civil War battlefields.

01:02:32.820 | That's what we would do on our vacations.

01:02:34.220 | I used to love that kind of stuff.

01:02:35.700 | I bore my family silly with that stuff.

01:02:40.540 | But I'd drag them along from one battlefield to another battlefield, explain to them what

01:02:45.320 | happened here and who were the major parties that were going on at this particular time,

01:02:50.860 | how this shaped the course of history and what happened.

01:02:56.860 | And they'd always raise their hand and say, "Dad, when are we going to get ice cream?"

01:03:01.620 | So that's the way I'd bribe them.

01:03:03.580 | I'd say, "Okay, we're going to go visit -- and then we're going to go get ice cream, okay?"

01:03:07.580 | That's the way I'd bribe them with that.

01:03:11.140 | But you've got -- when you're -- my kids used to accuse me of living in the past because

01:03:23.300 | I'd spend all those times talking about all those battles.

01:03:27.060 | Well that's what can happen sometimes with -- when you've lost a spouse.

01:03:32.740 | You can spend all of your time just living in the past and just dwelling there and so

01:03:38.780 | much that you become absolutely valueless in the present.

01:03:44.060 | Death of a spouse.

01:03:45.260 | There's financial concerns as well this age.

01:03:48.040 | Are we going to have enough to make it through the rest of our life even if I can't function

01:03:52.660 | in my job anymore and bring home a paycheck?

01:03:55.780 | Is that possible?

01:03:56.780 | Have we saved enough?

01:03:57.960 | Maybe we haven't.

01:03:59.340 | What if we retire and then suddenly one of us is diagnosed with some kind of life-threatening

01:04:04.060 | disease that's going to require years of work and therapy and hundreds of thousands of dollars

01:04:11.100 | that will just drain whatever little bit of retirement that we have to -- you know, all

01:04:15.740 | of these things are going through their mind.

01:04:20.280 | These are pressures you need to know about if you're going to counsel people at this

01:04:24.460 | stage of life.

01:04:26.740 | They have sexual difficulties at this stage, too.

01:04:30.500 | That's the reason why all these drugs have been developed to help people at this particular

01:04:37.020 | stage of life still have sexual desires.

01:04:41.900 | Ecclesiastes talks about that.

01:04:43.980 | You know that?

01:04:44.980 | Grab your Bible just for a moment.

01:04:45.980 | Let's go over to Ecclesiastes.

01:04:48.500 | Ecclesiastes chapter 12.

01:04:52.540 | It talks about -- it's a whole description of growing old.

01:04:58.140 | And here, in verse 3, it says, "In the day when the watchmen of the house tremble," all

01:05:05.060 | of this is just poetic Hebrew idioms for growing old.

01:05:10.860 | The watchmen of the house tremble, that's when your arms get weak.

01:05:14.820 | And the mighty ones stoop, your legs get weak.

01:05:17.400 | And the grinding ones stand idle because there are few.

01:05:20.980 | You lose your teeth, all right?

01:05:23.820 | You go around talking like this, all right, and you're back to baby food again.

01:05:30.460 | And those who look through the windows grow dim, your eyesight goes bad.

01:05:34.580 | Verse 4, "And the doors of the street are shut at the sound of grinding -- of the grinding

01:05:38.940 | mill is low."

01:05:39.940 | Your ears start to go bad.

01:05:41.960 | And one will rise at the sound of the bird.

01:05:43.820 | You don't sleep as deep anymore.

01:05:50.860 | In all, the daughter's song will sing softly.

01:05:54.160 | You don't hear distinctive sounds as well anymore.

01:06:01.060 | Your ability to hear is not as distinctive as it used to be.

01:06:04.600 | Verse 5, "Men are afraid of high places and the tears of the road."

01:06:07.860 | Boy, that's true.

01:06:11.180 | In our household, we've got a set of stairs, a pretty fairly steep set of stairs.

01:06:15.700 | And I remember when the kids were younger, I could hear the kids going, "Brrr," down

01:06:18.820 | the stairs.

01:06:19.820 | "Brrr," up the stairs.

01:06:20.820 | And they still do that as college kids, "Brrr," down the stairs.

01:06:23.980 | And I can remember when I was young, I used to do that too.

01:06:26.900 | Now when I get to the top of the stairs, I look down, I go, "Wow, that's a long ways

01:06:30.460 | down."

01:06:32.540 | And then the almond tree blossoms, the almond tree blossoms.

01:06:35.820 | If you go to Israel during the springtime when the almond trees are blossoming, there's

01:06:39.900 | a real pale pink blossom that appears on the trees, and these almond trees are all over

01:06:46.700 | the place, and it almost as if the hills turn white, almost looks like snow.

01:06:53.460 | Well, that's what happens.

01:06:56.020 | Your hair turns white.

01:06:58.060 | The almond tree blossoms.

01:07:00.060 | The grasshopper drags himself along, you become a cripple.

01:07:04.300 | And then he says, "And the caperberry is ineffective."

01:07:10.100 | What is that?

01:07:11.740 | The caperberry is ineffective.

01:07:12.740 | Well, if you study this, it was believed in the ancient world that the caperberry was,

01:07:18.060 | in a sense, ancient Viagra.

01:07:21.460 | It was supposed to help your sexual desire.

01:07:24.980 | But it doesn't even work anymore.

01:07:28.220 | The caperberry is ineffective.

01:07:31.300 | For man then goes to his eternal home while mourners go around in the street.

01:07:38.820 | So that's what it's like, and that's very realistic.

01:07:43.020 | So at this particular stage, there's usually a lot of sexual difficulties.

01:07:48.100 | And then there is this handling of disappointment that's caused by the children who reject your

01:07:51.820 | values or standards or your faith commitments.

01:07:56.820 | And there's several different ways that this can flesh itself out.

01:07:59.300 | Maybe they totally reject the Lord, and they walk away and declare themselves to be atheist.

01:08:06.580 | Or maybe they reject your church, and they go off and they begin attending another church,

01:08:13.140 | a church that you don't believe is really doctrinally sound, but they attend some other

01:08:20.740 | church.

01:08:21.740 | Who knows what the influence may be?

01:08:22.740 | It could be a million things, or who knows what they're thinking.

01:08:29.300 | So how do you handle that?

01:08:33.820 | The disappointment that's there.

01:08:37.300 | How do you treat your kids when you think that they are attending a bad congregation

01:08:45.860 | or not very good one, at least?

01:08:50.860 | You'll get people come in and ask you all kinds of questions like that as a pastor.

01:08:54.140 | "What am I supposed to do with these kids?

01:08:58.260 | This is not the way that I reared them."

01:09:03.700 | Which then brings us to our seventh life cycle.

01:09:09.940 | And this is in later life.

01:09:12.500 | Retirement, 65 years of age and up, although people are retiring older and older now, primarily

01:09:21.780 | because of finances, primarily because of the stock market.

01:09:24.540 | They've lost a lot of their retirement in the stock market.

01:09:28.900 | So they're staying in the workforce longer.

01:09:35.580 | There are developmental tasks here, like adjusting to big changes in lifestyle now that they're

01:09:41.420 | retired.

01:09:42.420 | They're no longer going to work on a regular basis, so there's a general slowdown in life.

01:09:46.780 | They're adjusting to the sale of the family home and moving to a new place.

01:09:50.540 | What was really good as a family home, like a home with a set of stairs and bedrooms upstairs

01:09:56.780 | now, they can't navigate those any longer.

01:09:58.940 | So you need something that's much smaller, something that can be cleaned much more easily.

01:10:03.380 | So you've got to sell the home and get into a smaller place.

01:10:08.500 | So you're adjusting to that.

01:10:11.540 | You're adjusting then to loss of a mate, the struggles there.

01:10:16.980 | You're trying to figure out a satisfactory use of spare time.

01:10:26.200 | One of the marvelous ministries that Grace to You has is usually during the week they

01:10:30.940 | have retired folks come out and work on mailings, and they offer themselves for a full day working

01:10:40.680 | on mailings to mail things out to people that have ordered things there from Grace to You,

01:10:44.460 | and these retirees come in and do that.

01:10:46.620 | And then Grace to You gives them a free lunch, and they just have a ball up there.

01:10:49.740 | If you ever go up there and watch that, it's great.

01:10:52.540 | Lots of fellowship with one another.

01:10:53.820 | They're doing something useful for the kingdom of God and having some kind of ministry.

01:10:57.300 | I think one of the greatest untapped resources in the church today are our retirees.

01:11:02.420 | I mean, you know how much work and how much wisdom you could bring to ministry by bringing

01:11:08.580 | them in and finding things for them to do that would be useful for the kingdom of God.

01:11:15.900 | But so there's a satisfactory use of leisure time and spare time.

01:11:20.220 | And then there's adjusting to illness and frailty.

01:11:24.300 | Their ability to be able to navigate things, get around, is much more limited than it was

01:11:28.940 | before.

01:11:33.440 | They also are adjusting to the fact that they are in a subculture status.

01:11:41.300 | And you know, you can see this in a lot of churches today, especially the way the young

01:11:44.060 | people treat some of the elderly.

01:11:46.380 | Young people go running through hallways and almost run them down and act like they're

01:11:49.580 | not there.

01:11:53.900 | I remember as a pastor at one particular point in our church, I had to get up on a Sunday

01:11:57.860 | morning and admonish parents to teach their kids how to act at church so they didn't run

01:12:05.060 | our senior saints down in the hallways because they'll do that.

01:12:09.420 | They'll run them down.

01:12:10.420 | They'll be walking down the hallway as a cane and some kid will go zipping past them like

01:12:14.500 | without a thought in the world and knock somebody over.

01:12:21.020 | And we had it happen on a couple occasions when that occurred.

01:12:25.980 | And the parents have got to step in there and teach their kids how to act in church.

01:12:31.380 | So this is part of that subculture status.

01:12:35.780 | Have you ever noticed that at the church where you attend, how the senior saints are treated,

01:12:42.700 | it's almost as if in most churches today they don't exist.

01:12:48.540 | It's almost like they don't exist.

01:12:50.780 | Oh, they're there and occasionally there'll be an acknowledgment of them, but it's like

01:12:55.700 | they're not there and they know it.

01:12:58.020 | They know how people treat them.

01:13:03.620 | Back in Dayton, Ohio, there is a large church there that one day the pastor got up and the

01:13:11.140 | emphasis of that particular church is on the youth.

01:13:14.280 | Got up on Sunday morning, I can't believe, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard

01:13:17.500 | it with my own ears because they have a television broadcast too, and said, "Listen, if you are

01:13:23.980 | over 35 years of age, you better look for another church because our church isn't for

01:13:28.640 | you."

01:13:31.020 | I thought to myself, "My goodness sakes."

01:13:33.140 | In other words, we're going to restrict our ministry to a certain age group.

01:13:40.220 | That's horrible.

01:13:41.220 | That's horrible.

01:13:42.220 | You see, I think that that's exactly what's being communicated to people that are widows,

01:13:48.380 | widowers, retirees in the church today.

01:13:51.580 | They're basically subculture status, and yet I think they're one of the more greatest resources

01:14:01.660 | the church has.

01:14:04.260 | Of all the people that have freedom and the wisdom and probably a lot of skills that a

01:14:08.940 | church could use, they're the ones.

01:14:13.020 | Then there's learning new ways of contributing to the world and to the church, which follows

01:14:16.700 | right out of that last one.

01:14:20.100 | Learning new ways to contribute to the world and to the church.

01:14:26.180 | That may be very difficult for people to make that transition, especially at this particular

01:14:32.740 | stage of life, and then also accepting new roles in each other's lives.

01:14:39.100 | You become each other's caretakers.

01:14:41.100 | A husband and a wife become real caretakers with one another.

01:14:52.300 | We had a dear, dear couple.

01:14:54.260 | God has since promoted them to heaven in our church years ago.

01:14:56.900 | I'll never forget them.

01:14:58.100 | Their names were Delbert and Evelyn Lakes, dear, dear couple.

01:15:02.500 | One day, Evelyn called me and said, "Pastor," she says, "I have been experiencing horrible

01:15:11.380 | depression.

01:15:13.860 | I've never had any experience like this before in my life, and I don't know why."

01:15:18.660 | She says, "I've even thought that this was some kind of demonic activity that's going

01:15:22.700 | on."

01:15:23.700 | Now, when Evelyn says that, I'm starting to really take this seriously, and I'm going,

01:15:27.820 | "Oh, we need to sit down and talk, Evelyn.

01:15:29.380 | Why don't you and Delbert come in in the evening, and we'll sit down and talk about this, and

01:15:34.740 | we'll seek God's answers for these problems?"

01:15:36.660 | So one of the things that I did was I had Evelyn write out all the medications that

01:15:44.500 | she was taking.

01:15:45.900 | We had our first counseling appointment together.

01:15:47.460 | I asked her a lot of questions about what was going on.

01:15:49.500 | We had a lot of prayer over it.

01:15:51.460 | We took her to several scriptures that pointed to hope, and in the meantime, she had given

01:15:57.780 | me this list of all the medications that she was on, and one of them was a beta blocker

01:16:01.460 | for her heart.

01:16:03.260 | And so I always have a PDR, a Physician's Desk Reference, handy where I can look up

01:16:08.260 | the side effects and all the medications.

01:16:10.540 | And so I looked up the side effects of the medication, and I found out that at the very

01:16:14.660 | top of the list, the very top of the list of this particular beta blocker for her heart

01:16:20.020 | was severe depression, bold letters.

01:16:25.660 | I'm going, "Hmm."

01:16:27.620 | So I'm on the phone five minutes later, and I'm calling Evelyn.

01:16:30.180 | I say, "Hey, Evelyn, when your doctor prescribed this particular beta blocker for your heart,

01:16:35.220 | did he tell you that one of the side effects is severe depression?"

01:16:40.420 | "No," she said.

01:16:43.060 | "Well, I think you need to call your doctor back, and I think you need to tell him that

01:16:47.740 | you're experiencing severe depression, and you think it's closely associated with this

01:16:53.140 | beta blocker."

01:16:54.380 | And sure enough, she had started experiencing her depression within the past two months,

01:17:00.180 | and it was about two and a half months ago that she had started on this beta blocker.

01:17:05.820 | She called her doctor up.

01:17:06.820 | The doctor said, "No problem.

01:17:07.820 | We can put you on something else."

01:17:08.820 | He put her on something else.

01:17:11.580 | Depression went away.

01:17:12.580 | Didn't have the depression anymore.

01:17:15.240 | So that wasn't a spiritual issue after all.

01:17:17.540 | It was actually a medical issue.

01:17:20.820 | That she would have gone on thinking that she was experiencing some kind of demonic

01:17:25.740 | attack in her life or some kind of severe spiritual deficiency in her life if we hadn't

01:17:34.340 | found out that this was actually a medication issue that was going on in her life.

01:17:43.100 | And this was all new to her because she was getting older.

01:17:47.860 | Her heart was frail.

01:17:52.260 | And so they were trying to keep her alive as long as possible and trying to give her

01:17:58.380 | the medications in order to do so.

01:18:02.780 | But that's a dear, dear, you know, you'll have this in your pastoral life.

01:18:06.740 | There are people that you really look forward to seeing in heaven, you know.

01:18:12.580 | And Delbert and Evelyn Lakes are that couple, that kind of couple.

01:18:16.820 | Those kind of people that I look forward to seeing in heaven someday.

01:18:21.540 | All right.

01:18:23.780 | So this particular stage also brings with it certain stresses and temptations here.

01:18:32.020 | Like my little picture there.

01:18:34.340 | Grandpa and grandma giving each other a big schmooch.

01:18:38.060 | So well, of course, financial.

01:18:41.300 | Because neither of them are usually working at this particular stage full time.

01:18:45.740 | They may have a part-time job.

01:18:50.420 | Sometimes I jokingly say to my wife, my goal in life is to become a Walmart greeter.

01:18:59.860 | They may have a part-time job like that.

01:19:01.540 | Like a Walmart greeter.

01:19:03.300 | Somebody greets somebody at the entrance of the store.

01:19:08.020 | She just rolls her eyes.

01:19:11.540 | Or there's a serious illness of one's -- there's just general declining health.

01:19:22.780 | So you realize that you spend a lot of your time just addressing health issues.

01:19:29.300 | Health issues.

01:19:31.100 | My father passed away several years ago.

01:19:33.980 | He was a pastor all my life, but he passed away back in 1985 of leukemia.

01:19:38.660 | And my mom continued to work and for a time after her retirement she stayed with my sister

01:19:44.860 | and her husband.

01:19:48.740 | And then she remarried.

01:19:49.740 | In fact, it's really funny, my mother remarried a guy that she knew in college.

01:19:58.060 | They had not seen each other for 50 years.

01:20:02.460 | And out of the clear blue sky, he called her after his wife had died.

01:20:08.300 | His wife had died a year or two before.

01:20:11.820 | And he remembered her, something had brought her to mind, and so he tracked her down and

01:20:15.740 | called her.

01:20:16.740 | It turned out my father was gone, too, and they struck up this relationship.

01:20:20.580 | My mother lived in Spokane, Washington, and this guy lived in Beaver Creek, Ohio.

01:20:25.660 | So clear cross country, and they struck up this relationship on the phone and eventually

01:20:30.900 | married and I got to do their wedding.

01:20:34.180 | I got to do my own mother's wedding.

01:20:36.300 | Isn't that great?

01:20:37.300 | How many people get to do that?

01:20:39.820 | I told my mom at the beginning of the wedding ceremony, I said to her, "You know, Mom, I

01:20:44.940 | got to ask you to forgive me."

01:20:48.180 | And she looked at me really funny, said, "I wasn't able to be at your first wedding, but

01:20:52.740 | I wasn't going to miss this one."

01:20:57.700 | She just rolled her eyes, too, and we went on with the marriage ceremony.

01:21:02.140 | The audience seemed to like it, though.

01:21:07.100 | So anyhow, my mother remarried, and her new husband's a wonderful Christian man, really

01:21:14.260 | loves her, and they love each other, and they're spending their senior years together.

01:21:19.380 | His name is Ray, Ray Enting, and one of the things they found out about his health insurance

01:21:27.180 | was that it covered eye problems.

01:21:31.980 | And my mother, it turned out, had some pretty serious cataracts on her eyes, and she used

01:21:40.500 | to tell the story on how the kitchen sink there at their house, she would scrub and

01:21:48.220 | scrub and scrub that, you've got to know my mom in order to really appreciate this, scrub

01:21:52.700 | it, but she could never get that kitchen sink white until she had her cataracts removed,

01:22:00.940 | and they were white.

01:22:03.140 | They were always really yellow.

01:22:09.300 | And it seems like one thing after another, as the two of them grow older, there's one

01:22:13.700 | physical problem after another that occurs that's going on there like that, and this

01:22:19.780 | is this age.

01:22:20.780 | This is, there's a general decline in health and struggles that they're going to face.

01:22:26.140 | There's unfulfilled tasks, too, especially because they don't have the physical ability

01:22:31.020 | to get everything done, and they don't have the money to pay anybody else to do it.

01:22:36.140 | So usually they have to rely upon family to come in and do some of those homebound tasks,

01:22:42.740 | and if the family can't do it, it just doesn't get done.

01:22:49.340 | And here's another thing, now when you add this up, there's a lot of time on their hands,

01:22:56.900 | and there's not a whole lot to do that's really constructive or to keep their mind occupied.

01:23:01.700 | They can do a lot of reading, a lot of Bible reading, that kind of stuff, and that's good,

01:23:07.340 | but beyond that, there's not a whole lot of things that they can occupy themselves with.

01:23:13.260 | When you combine those two things together, there's a lot of room for remorse and guilt,

01:23:20.300 | and usually when you're working with someone at this particular stage, this is something

01:23:25.940 | that you encounter, or a couple.

01:23:31.660 | Maybe it's the way in which they raise their children, maybe it's over some past deed in

01:23:42.580 | their life, something that they neglected to do, or something that they did that they

01:23:49.980 | wished they had never done.

01:23:56.460 | I have a little ER clip from Emergency Room, which is a television program, and on that

01:24:01.620 | ER clip, it's actually a medical doctor that's dying of cancer.

01:24:08.420 | He's in the hospital dying of cancer, and he tells a story.

01:24:17.400 | As he's dying of cancer, this hospital therapist comes in to try to help him because he's full

01:24:21.220 | of all kinds of guilt as he thinks back across his life, and one of the things that really

01:24:25.460 | bugs him is the fact that years before when he was a new young doctor, a young man was

01:24:32.780 | brought in accused of a horrendous crime of murder, and he had a choice as a young doctor

01:24:39.660 | on whether to do a rather complicated procedure on him in order to save the young man or not

01:24:44.860 | do the complicated procedure, and he chose because the man was accused of this horrendous

01:24:49.420 | crime to let him die, only to find out a week after the kid died that the kid was innocent.

01:24:58.500 | He did not do the crime that he had been accused of doing, and now this guy, this old man,

01:25:04.740 | this old medical doctor is dying, and this thing is still weighing on his conscience,

01:25:08.860 | and he has this hospital therapist, this woman who's attempting to try to help him, but everything

01:25:14.340 | that she tries to say doesn't help at all because she really doesn't have any real answers,

01:25:19.340 | and he's saying to her, "Listen, can I have forgiveness for sins?

01:25:26.420 | Is there any kind of atonement for sin?"

01:25:29.800 | And she can't give him a straight answer on that, and so it's a very dramatic time, but

01:25:39.060 | that's a beautiful picture of what you'll face in counseling people that are elderly,

01:25:46.140 | and there are things that have occurred or that they've done that's a part of their past

01:25:49.420 | that they really regret, and you can help them with that, and you can help them understand

01:25:54.820 | what Romans 8:1 says, "There is therefore now no condemnation of those that are in Christ

01:25:58.980 | Jesus," right?

01:26:01.060 | You can help them understand that and the forgiveness that it can have in Christ because

01:26:07.300 | of the things that have occurred in the past.

01:26:09.140 | Let me share one other thing about that.

01:26:12.100 | I remember several years ago when I visited a home of a family that had just begun attending

01:26:17.060 | our church.

01:26:22.100 | It was an older couple, and the wife had begun attending.

01:26:28.820 | Rarely would the husband come to church, but he did occasionally, and so I had a chance

01:26:34.580 | to go visit them in their home and share the gospel.

01:26:36.860 | Turned out the wife was genuinely a believer, the husband was not, and I finally got down

01:26:41.320 | to brass tacks with the guy.

01:26:42.460 | The guy had been through World War II, and finally, when we got down and he realized

01:26:52.420 | that I was just trying to help him, and he was a pretty clear-thinking guy, he began

01:26:57.940 | to say, "But you don't understand what I've done.

01:27:00.900 | You don't understand what I did during the war."

01:27:05.980 | And I said, "Well, you know what?

01:27:07.500 | I don't need to know what it is.

01:27:10.180 | It's between you and God, but I don't think that there is any kind of sin that's unforgivable,

01:27:17.580 | except for a sin would be like blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, that is, attributing to the

01:27:28.300 | Holy Spirit things that would only be attributed to Satan."

01:27:35.060 | And I gave illustrations of that from Scripture, in terms of people that were murderous, that

01:27:39.100 | couldn't be forgiven.

01:27:40.660 | The Apostle Paul himself was a murderer, and I can remember the tears in his eyes, because

01:27:50.800 | he had basically lived with these crimes.

01:27:52.940 | Some of them he shared with me, and I think in the face of the struggle of war and battle,

01:28:04.460 | there's a part of me that understands why he did what he did, but it wasn't necessary

01:28:09.180 | what he did, in terms of taking people's lives.

01:28:17.160 | So I understand his guilt that he carried all of his life, but to see God forgive that

01:28:21.940 | guy and lift his guilt, you see, he had carried that all of his life, right into his retirement

01:28:29.020 | age.

01:28:31.900 | And you're going to face people like that all the time.

01:28:34.060 | So they're going to have a lot of remorse, a lot of guilt.

01:28:37.120 | And then there's going to be concerns about the future.

01:28:40.940 | They realize they don't have a lot of time on earth, but they wonder, one of the biggest

01:28:46.780 | things, probably right at the top of the list is, "Am I going to have enough resources in

01:28:50.700 | order to make it to the end?

01:28:54.220 | Or am I going to have to rely upon my family?

01:28:57.580 | I don't want to be a stress and strain upon my family," they'll say to you.

01:29:04.180 | Well, if that's what has to be, then it has to be.

01:29:08.860 | And then if the family can't help, then the church needs to move in.

01:29:11.820 | 1 Timothy is clear about that.

01:29:16.380 | So they're concerned about the future.

01:29:18.900 | They're concerned about losing each other.

01:29:21.940 | Since they've been together for so long, my grandparents celebrated 70 years of marriage.

01:29:28.900 | 70 years.

01:29:31.260 | Of course, they were married in the hills of Tennessee when she was 13 and he was 14.

01:29:41.580 | Don't do that anymore, huh?

01:29:44.460 | Some of you would be married for 15 years by now, wouldn't you?

01:29:50.920 | So, but they celebrated 70 years of marriage and I remember their anniversary party and

01:30:02.780 | they were both still functioning, but by 75, both of them, God had eventually taken both

01:30:08.540 | of them home.

01:30:11.620 | So what's their concerns about the future?

01:30:16.420 | And then usually, as time goes on and they don't think as well, confusion sets in and

01:30:22.340 | with confusion, right on the heels of that will come discouragement.

01:30:27.400 | Some of you that have worked in retirement homes or senior homes before or maybe had

01:30:34.280 | ministries there know what I'm talking about.

01:30:37.120 | You can go one week and the person will remember you and the next week they'll forget who you

01:30:40.040 | are.

01:30:42.040 | They're confused about you and they sit around and the only thing they have to think about

01:30:49.160 | is the kids and why aren't the kids calling us?

01:30:52.560 | Why aren't the kids visiting us?

01:30:55.040 | What kind of decisions are the kids making?

01:30:56.920 | What are they doing now?

01:30:58.560 | That's all they have to think about and it's good in order to pay honor and respect to

01:31:04.840 | father and mother to call them and to contact them and to visit them as much as possible.

01:31:10.780 | That's a good thing, but they can't babysit them all the time.

01:31:14.040 | They've got their own lives to live and they have their own responsibilities.

01:31:17.940 | They can't do that and sometimes some of those expectations really become unreasonable expectations,

01:31:26.680 | but why is that?

01:31:27.780 | Because they have a lot of time on their hands and they're not sure exactly what to do with

01:31:33.940 | all that time.

01:31:36.980 | And you have the capacity as a pastor to step into that void, so to speak, and help them

01:31:43.000 | be creative and beneficial to the kingdom of God and even to your church for that time

01:31:50.960 | that they have on their hands.

01:31:52.700 | There's certain gifts and abilities that those people have.

01:31:56.700 | Some of them are musical, some of them are very practical in terms of there are families

01:32:03.220 | that are maybe poor families in your church, and the husband happens to be quite handy,

01:32:11.100 | plumbing, or carpentry, and you say, "You know, you can go and have a ministry over

01:32:18.800 | here to the Jones family and repair some things at their home," and wow, all of a sudden now

01:32:26.820 | they're really, the body of Christ is now ministering to other members of the body of

01:32:30.860 | Christ.

01:32:31.860 | And the Jones family ends up inviting Grandpa and Grandma over for dinner, and they have

01:32:36.320 | a great time, and their kids end up adopting Grandpa and Grandma, and Grandma ends up doing

01:32:41.860 | a lot of sewing projects for Mrs. Jones, and this just goes on and on and on and on.

01:32:47.360 | Those kind of things happen.

01:32:49.740 | And that's where you've got that inter-gender thing going on in the church that I think

01:32:56.740 | is very, very beneficial.

01:32:58.500 | But like I said in our last class sessions, most of the time when you go into a lot of

01:33:04.940 | churches all these Sunday school classes and stuff are divided up into age groups, and

01:33:09.580 | very little inter-gender mixture ever takes place.

01:33:13.180 | And it's almost as if we take the old folks and we kind of set them off in this class

01:33:18.140 | over here, and then all the other really active classes are over here, and we don't realize

01:33:25.900 | how much we could benefit from them just as much as they can benefit from us in terms

01:33:30.500 | of personal ministry.

01:33:34.260 | So now why do we go through all these life cycles?

01:33:37.720 | Because I want you to understand that when you're sitting in front of a couple, I want

01:33:41.180 | you to be thinking about what is the unique stage of life that they're at.

01:33:47.220 | What temptations, strains, stresses are unique to that particular cycle?

01:33:56.240 | And it will help you gather good data.

01:34:00.060 | It will help you to think through their problems.

01:34:04.460 | It will help you to understand why they've made some of the decisions that they've made,

01:34:08.300 | whether they're good decisions or bad decisions.

01:34:12.780 | It will really help you minister to them much more effectively.

01:34:22.400 | Counseling then becomes really creative and very meaningful when you are able to have

01:34:32.860 | insights into where people are at.

01:34:36.700 | In fact, people will say to you in counseling, "How did you know that?

01:34:41.660 | When you asked me about this or you asked me about that, how did you know that?"

01:34:45.460 | Well, you can say, "You know, I was just thinking about other people who were at your particular

01:34:51.340 | stage of life and all the stresses and temptations that they go through.

01:34:55.180 | I just kind of figured that this was the same thing that you'd be going through."

01:34:58.900 | Well, you know what?

01:35:00.100 | You're right.

01:35:01.420 | This is what's going on in our life right now.

01:35:05.460 | Help me, pastor.

01:35:06.460 | Do you have anything that you can say that will help me?

01:35:10.620 | Some Scripture deal with my loneliness or our financial struggles or my worry and concern

01:35:18.700 | about the future or our children.

01:35:22.900 | Some of them have walked away from the Lord.

01:35:24.780 | What can we do to reach out to them?

01:35:27.500 | Or what am I going to do with all my spare time?

01:35:31.900 | I've got loads and loads of spare time.

01:35:33.740 | What am I going to do with that?

01:35:34.980 | Is there anything that you need that would be helpful to you here around the church?

01:35:39.460 | What can I do?

01:35:41.780 | Well, you can help them out in this way.

01:35:45.100 | So all these unique family cycles reveal certain things about these people because of the stage

01:35:54.620 | that they're at and the unique, or I don't want to say unique, but the particular difficulties

01:36:02.000 | that people face at that particular stage of life are unique to everyone.

01:36:05.900 | This just reinforces what 1 Corinthians 10:13 says.

01:36:09.380 | There's no temptation taking you except for what is common to man, right?

01:36:15.820 | You're not the first person to have gone through these stages and these temptations and difficulties.

01:36:20.980 | You're not.

01:36:22.720 | So it reinforces that kind of thing and it helps you address their problems.

01:36:31.980 | Okay.

01:36:36.820 | Next week we're going to get back to analyzing and assessing why the family problems have

01:36:45.140 | developed and continued for such a long period of time.

01:36:48.580 | We'll talk about that a little bit more.

01:36:51.320 | So everybody have a good week.

01:36:53.500 | Yes, sir.

01:36:54.500 | How would you deal with a person of the kind you were just talking about and you made a

01:37:14.900 | number of good suggestions to them of how they could overcome their loneliness or to

01:37:15.900 | feel more useful in life, but they were not open to your ideas.

01:37:16.900 | They just preferred to wallow in their loneliness and self-pity.

01:37:19.900 | How would you deal with that?

01:37:24.320 | The question is, how do you deal with a person who you give them a lot of suggestions and

01:37:28.180 | they're at this elderly stage of life in order to help them with that and they prefer to

01:37:33.180 | ignore the suggestions and continue to wallow in their self-pity and, well, one of the things

01:37:39.780 | that I like to help people with is this.

01:37:43.020 | You may be alone, I tell them.

01:37:45.580 | You may be alone, but you choose to be lonely, okay?

01:37:51.460 | That's your choice.

01:37:52.520 | In other words, your husband or your wife may be gone, but you're the one who chooses

01:37:59.940 | to be lonely and you're the one who chooses to wallow in self-pity.

01:38:02.580 | Now, if you want help, I'm going to give you some practical help, and that is, this is

01:38:10.580 | akin to what Hebrews 10, verse 24 and 25 says, "Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves

01:38:15.540 | together as some are in the habit of doing."

01:38:19.260 | But we're put here on this earth in order to stimulate one another on to faith and good

01:38:24.940 | deeds and you can actively do that.

01:38:28.380 | You can be a great help to other members of the body of Christ with the gifts and abilities

01:38:32.620 | that God has given you, but don't complain about being lonely because that's your choice.

01:38:42.920 | Your circumstances may dictate that you're alone, but you choose to be lonely.

01:38:46.940 | You choose to feel lonely and you choose to act lonely.

01:38:50.500 | So that's nothing but your choice.

01:38:53.380 | It's up to you to change.

01:38:55.360 | I want them to see that.

01:38:56.860 | Does that help you, Jim?

01:39:01.980 | Because I want to challenge...

01:39:07.540 | Sometimes people will bring this stuff to you because they want you to wallow with them

01:39:10.660 | in their self-pity.

01:39:13.420 | And I'm not going to do that.

01:39:14.420 | I'm not going to do that.

01:39:15.420 | I'm going to sympathize with them and the difficulties that they're going through because

01:39:21.980 | they're alone.

01:39:22.980 | But I'm not going to wallow with them in self-pity.

01:39:24.980 | I'm going to challenge where they're at and say, "No, God has still given you life.

01:39:30.300 | That means that he has a purpose for your life and you can take that and you can misuse

01:39:35.900 | it or you can be a good steward of it and use it."

01:39:38.500 | And I've given you several suggestions on how you can be a good steward with your life

01:39:44.180 | and the breath that God's given you.

01:39:47.380 | Don't choose to be lonely, even though you're alone.

01:39:51.580 | Instead, choose to be beneficial to other people.

01:39:54.860 | Choose to love them and care for them, even though you may not know them.

01:39:59.780 | You can be a great benefit.

01:40:02.780 | And they end up having a lot of fun doing it.

01:40:07.360 | I mean, how many times can that be reproduced about sending grandpa and grandma over to

01:40:11.820 | the Joneses?

01:40:12.820 | I mean, eventually, grandpa starts helping the Joneses out practically and then grandma

01:40:17.020 | gets involved and then the Joneses have them over and then they adopt each other and they

01:40:20.300 | adopt them as grandpa and grandma and just one thing leads to another and, wow, this

01:40:24.660 | is all plus, plus, plus on all sides.

01:40:26.940 | It's a great thing.

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Lecture 9: Marriage and Family Counseling - Dr. John D. Street

Chapters