Bret Legg 
Advertisements are everywhere. They blare from our TVs. They stand out on signs and billboards along our streets and highways. They fill the spaces of our web pages. We’ve become saturated with advertisements.
Listen to last week’s Normal Marriage class to see what you’ve been missing. Share it with someone who might enjoy it…or need it. Then join us tonight as we continue figuring out what it means to have a normal marriage you can really enjoy.
Compatibility. It’s the idea that if you can find a person with similar personality traits, similar interests, similar backgrounds, etc. then there will be a higher probability of the relationship being successful.
But there’s a problem with this take on compatibility.
Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? In the old westerns, all you had to do was see who was wearing the white hat and who was wearing the black hat. It’s not that easy now. For example… Edward Snowden. Good guy or bad guy? The NSA. Good guys or bad guys?
There’s a sweet spot to many things in life. There’s a sweet spot on a baseball bat that sends the ball over the fence. There’s a sweet spot for musicians where all the notes seem to come together effortlessly. There’s also a sweet spot in marriage, but what is it and how do you find it?
I grew up in the country with a lot of farmland and a lot of barns. On top of most of those barns was a weather vane. The weather vane was usually in the shape of a rooster or some other farm animal and it would turn in the wind till it settled in a certain direction.
We can be like one of those weather vanes.
When I was young, I fell asleep while a dentist was working on my teeth. I had not been given anything to relax me. I just fell asleep. The dentist couldn’t believe it, and called my mom back just to see it.
Whether it’s the dentist or something else, we all face trouble in life. When trouble begins to stack up or go on for a long time, we can get discouraged and overwhelmed.
It was the biggest ice storms in ten years. Our power went out around 8:30 in the evening, so we lit candles and fired up the gas log in the living room. Since the living room was the warmest place in the house, we made a bed on the floor in front of the fireplace. (You probably know where this is going.)
Surveyors use a benchmark to determine clear boundaries. A benchmark is a point of reference from which everything else is measured. It’s a point that’s unchanging and immovable, because a benchmark that changes will skew all the other measurements.
Whether we realize it or not, all of us operate from some sort of benchmark.