I was reading a relationship post about a relationship with God, and realized it takes more than just maturity and patience and then thought about relationships with others when we are absent for a while.
With your parents and siblings you probably learned about absence by going to camp or away on a mission or off to school. If you use that for your model when work takes you out of town from a wife or husband and children for a month or more, you will make serious miss-steps.
There is a period of roughness, anger even, that goes with being reunited with a spouse and children when you have been gone. Young children are transparent. They just get angry when you come back (though they get over it in a day or so). You need to expect the same emotional waves to affect older children and your spouse and be ready for it, to just patiently take the time to re-engage.
Think of it as shifting into gear after starting a car that is cold. Do you skip using the clutch or letting the car warm up? If you do, things grind.
Anyway, just thought I'd post a comment on that, since most of us will have a time in our lives like that, when we are away for a month or two. I've been lucky, but my dad was in the Air Force and had TDY assignments, Viet Nam and Korea.
Not to mention, sometimes we feel emotions in regards to God that we aren't comfortable with and need to work through, just as when others are absent.
BTW, this comic made me think of my wife:
With your parents and siblings you probably learned about absence by going to camp or away on a mission or off to school. If you use that for your model when work takes you out of town from a wife or husband and children for a month or more, you will make serious miss-steps.
There is a period of roughness, anger even, that goes with being reunited with a spouse and children when you have been gone. Young children are transparent. They just get angry when you come back (though they get over it in a day or so). You need to expect the same emotional waves to affect older children and your spouse and be ready for it, to just patiently take the time to re-engage.
Think of it as shifting into gear after starting a car that is cold. Do you skip using the clutch or letting the car warm up? If you do, things grind.
Anyway, just thought I'd post a comment on that, since most of us will have a time in our lives like that, when we are away for a month or two. I've been lucky, but my dad was in the Air Force and had TDY assignments, Viet Nam and Korea.
Not to mention, sometimes we feel emotions in regards to God that we aren't comfortable with and need to work through, just as when others are absent.
BTW, this comic made me think of my wife:
