Check out these 6 Connection Exercises for Couples To Build Intimacy – Jordan Gray https://www.jordangrayconsulting.com/6-connection-exercises-for-couples-to-build-intimacy/
Then order a signed copy of Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love https://www.jeannegormick.com/your-treasured-marriage-pre-sale
Cal Had His Issues Too! Ha! Ha!
Accept one another for who you are - the good, the bad and the even the ugly. Love him for who he is and pray for him constantly and don’t try to change him. Remember you can only change yourself.
“…in changing my self I often did experience an accompanying change in Cal. Ruth Graham once said of her husband, Pastor Billy Graham, ‘It’s my job to love and respect Billy. It’s God’s job to make him good.’ Gary Thomas suggests in Sacred Influence that we “Hold on to the good; (and) begin to define him by the good; thank him (and God) for the good – and thereby reinforce the good.’”*
*From my soon to be launched book, Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
Here’s the link to all my books: https://www.jeannegormick.com/books
Put them on his pillow, in his lunch, in his car, in his suitcase for business trips, etc. Make every day Valentine’s Day!
“Love ‘always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’ (1 Corinthians 13:7) (NIV)”*
*From my soon to be launched book, Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
Presales of Your Treasured Marriage; A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love continue through May. https://www.jeannegormick.com/your-treasured-marriage-pre-sale to order your signed copy today!
Here’s the link to all my books: https://www.jeannegormick.com/books
Laugh Together Daily
“As frustrating as Cal and I being exact opposites in so much was, he was truly my other half. As such, Cal completed me and I completed him. In many ways he needed to be my opposite to fill in the gaps of my weaknesses and strengths and vice versa. He always made me laugh. He made me a better person for knowing him.”*
*From my soon to be launched book, Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
Presales of Your Treasured Marriage; A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love continue through May. https://www.jeannegormick.com/your-treasured-marriage-pre-sale to order your signed copy today!
Here’s the link to all my books: https://www.jeannegormick.com/books
“Anabel Gillham explains in The Confident Woman: Knowing Who You Are in Christ that, ‘...God created man, woman and marriage. Marriage: A male and a female, entirely unique, agreeing to join themselves together with vows of love, commitment and trust; two facing life as one, realizing that love will not hold their marriage together, but that their marriage will hold their love together, acknowledging each other’s imperfections but accepting each other nonetheless...’*
*From my soon to be launched book, Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
Presales of Your Treasured Marriage; A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love continue through May. https://www.jeannegormick.com/your-treasured-marriage-pre-sale to order your signed copy today!
Here’s the link to current books: https://amzn.to/3d1raB6
Love After Loss
On the night of January 14, 2019 I lost my best friend and husband of 49 years and 4 months.
Over the years, I have lost my parents, my in-laws and a brother, but the loss of a loving, life-long partner is particularly hard!
Cal and I were high school sweethearts who got married, when we were young. It was easy to look forward to growing old together, but we had no idea what that would mean. As we aged, Cal’s health deteriorated and he was the first to die. My latest book, Your Treasured Marriage, tells our story and more.
Three years later, realizing that I didn’t want to be alone as I aged, I ventured out into the dating world and met a widower named Kirk. His story and my dating adventures are also in the book.
As Kirk and I got to know each other, I was amazed at how much we had in common and how we enjoyed each other’s company.
When he was hospitalized for an upcoming surgery, we looked forward to his improved health and further developing our new relationship.
But, by the afternoon of January 14, 2022 it was not to be. Kirk never left the hospital and I had lost my wonderful boyfriend of just 8 months and 16 days…
To have had two great men in my life was a blessing. Though the losses have been difficult, the loving relationships were worth it.
I have been able to tell about my love story with Cal, as I now grieve the loss of Kirk.
Each person’s grief experience is different. For me, widowhood after almost 50 years of marriage wasn’t the same type of loss as when I lost Kirk and a relationship with so much potential.
Kirk and I were looking forward to more years together. The promise of a future was filled with hope and we had plans to grow our relationship together. It was not to be…
This is why, as I heal from both losses, I have created the Loss Survivor Tribe for women in relationships that were cut off way too soon by early death. These grieving women are girlfriends, fiancées and women married to the loves of their lives for only a few short time.
I’m sorry for each of your individual losses and hope you’ll check out the Loss Survivor Tribe on the menu above or send me an email if you think we can help.
To understand how grief works, please review this Growing Around Grief diagram.
“Given the hurtful issues that feeling inadequate caused me, I am thankful that somehow we were able to raise our daughter, Julie, to be her own person. Cal and I gave her all of our wisdom and have watched where she has developed from there.”*
*From Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
Next month I will be launching my 4th book and I thought I’d share some excerpts from Your Treasured Marriage: A God-centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
Senior Prom
From Chapter 1
First Date
All around us, windows steamed while ours remained clear. From the standpoint of teens in the heat of passion, I suppose our car was one of the boring ones that cool November evening. We were having fun anyway!
The movie was Judith. The year was 1966.
Like most of the kids there, I can’t remember details of the film we’d come to see, but not because we were steaming up the windows. Because we were hot and heavy into a deep discussion of religion. I had just discovered Cal Gormick, whom I’d recently met at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) teen program, was actually Jewish. I had always been drawn to Jewish boys—something my parents frowned upon.
After a pretty intense discussion about the Jewish faith, he turned to me as the movie was ending and asked if I would do him a favor.
“Of course,” was my immediate response.
Then very seriously, very eloquently, he inquired, “Will you kiss me?”
How could I resist? This boy had such a special quality about him—a special gentleness—and, yet, so much life and energy. He certainly hadn’t acted the way most guys act at a drive-in. He hadn’t rushed at my body and pawed at me all night. He’d been my brother, my friend … such a refreshing change…”
From Chapter 24
Going in Different Directions: Cal’s Last Few Months
“…You gave me a wonderful life and family. We have three loving children and we are very proud of all five of our grandchildren who are becoming productive contributors to society. In this world of absent fathers and the residual aftermath, you were a stellar, godly example of a good father.
You stuck by me through all those years of struggle with our opposite personalities.
And, Lord God, you blessed us through it all—especially when we were being selfish, sinful humans!
Life is a special event and without you, I’m missing the music you brought into my life.”
In addition to emotional and physical intimacy, spiritual intimacy is a critical component to a successful marriage relationship. I prayed for Cal for years and, Praise God, he found Him in his own way…
“In (Cal’s) own way he said he knew Jesus. He was never comfortable attending church services. But if he ever expressed the desire, I was willing to change churches to be together with him at church. He came to many of my small group potluck parties, so many of my church friends knew and accepted him. He described himself as a ‘half breed’ when asked about his faith (half Jewish and half believer in Christ.) Unfortunately, we never really experienced spiritual intimacy. I really missed that in our marriage. It is the deepest level of oneness.
I prayed that God would show me how to share Jesus in a meaningful way that would help Cal understand Who He is and who we are in Him.”*
*From Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
“(Cal) could be so encouraging to our friends when they were going through challenging times. He always had such a warm counseling heart.”
“You encouraged me to get out and speak in front of people.”*
*From Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
“’(God) instructed man to be the leader; woman to complete, complement, and follow; children to be trained, enjoyed, and sent out from home.’”*
*From Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
Wifely Submission Is A Tough Pill to Swallow
“What I understood for sure was that wifely submission to Cal was absolutely necessary for us to achieve the satisfying, successful relationship we finally did achieve. It goes far beyond our own relationship. Our children were ever watching, ever-absorbing. We were setting examples for them in our acts of yielding to one another.”*
*From Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
Now be sure to love him everyday and cherish every moment…Life is short!
“… we used to enjoy bowling together. In the end, we couldn’t bowl together due to his declining health, but our love and relationship continued until his death. We just loved being together!”*
*From Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
Marriage takes a whole bunch of grace and forgiveness. Being committed and faithful isn’t always easy.
“Successful marriages are certainly based on frequent, effective, clear and open communication along with saying “I love you” - that they are appreciated; making time for each other as a couple and having separate time for your own interests; understanding to agree to disagree; building trust and learning to forgive. Words and advice to live by, but not always easy for us.”*
*From Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
Tough times? Reassure him that both you and God are there for him when things get tough.
“God ‘allows us to face issues that may terrify us and make us feel completely inadequate-he may even walk us through our deepest fears- so that we can grow in Him. The Bible is adamant about this. Spiritual growth takes place by persevering through difficult times.’ (James 1:2-4)”*
*From Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
“Either way as Gary Thomas’ Sacred Influence states, ‘a gentle and quiet heart, mixed with a patient spirit, in a woman who keeps praying and who finds ways to connect with her husband greatly increases the possibility that she will one day pray to the God of her dreams with the man of her dreams.’
My own wonderful someday came the day he was released from the hospital after his 2nd heart attack. We prayed together for the first time. It was an exciting step…”*
*From Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
“He had been supportive of my return to school, my volunteer work, my return to work full-time and my starting a business.”*
*From Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
“You were truly a blessing throughout my entire life (even through those tough times of being such different personalities!)”*
*From Your Treasured Marriage: A God-Centered Guidebook to Create Long-Lasting Love
You might have seen this before, but if it gives you a laugh and helps you understand older folks better, here you go…
On the kitchen on the wall, we only had one phone with no need for recording things, because someone was always home. We only had a living room where we would congregate, unless it was at mealtime in the kitchen where we ate. We had no need for family rooms or extra rooms to dine. When meeting as a family those two rooms would work out fine.
We only had one TV set and channels maybe two, but always there was one of them with something worth the view.
For snacks we had potato chips that tasted like a chip. And if you wanted flavor there was Lipton's onion dip. Store-bought snacks were rare because my mother liked to cook and nothing can compare to snacks in Betty Crocker's book.
Weekends were for family trips or staying home to play. We all did things together --even go to church to pray. When we did our weekend trips depending on the weather, no one stayed at home because we liked to be together.
Sometimes we would separate to do things on our own, but we knew where the others were without our own cell phone. Then there were the movies with your favorite movie star, and nothing can compare to watching movies in your car.
Then there were the picnics at the peak of summer season, pack a lunch and find some trees and never need a reason.
Get a baseball game together with all the friends you know, have real action playing ball --and no game video.
Remember when the doctor used to be the family friend, and didn't need insurance or a lawyer to defend? The way that he took care of you or what he had to do, because he took an oath and strived to do the best for you.
Remember going to the store and shopping casually, and when you went to pay for it you used your own money? Nothing that you had to swipe or punch in some amount, and remember when the cashier person had to really count?
The milkman used to go from door to door, And it was just a few cents more than going to the store.
There was a time when mailed letters came right to your door, without a lot of junk mail ads sent out by every store. The mailman knew each house by name and knew where it was sent; there were not loads of mail addressed to "present occupant."
There was a time when just one glance was all that it would take, and you would know the kind of car, the model and the make. They didn't look like turtles trying to squeeze out every mile; they were streamlined, white walls, fins and really had some style.
One time the music that you played whenever you would jive, was from a vinyl, big-holed record called a forty-five. The record player had a post to keep them all in line and then the records would drop down and play one at a time.
Oh sure, we had our problems then, just like we do today and always we were striving, trying for a better way.
Oh, the simple life we lived still seems like so much fun, how can you explain a game, just kick the can and run?
And why would boys put baseball cards between bicycle spokes and for a nickel, red machines had little bottled Cokes?
This life seemed so much easier and slower in some ways. I love the new technology but I sure do miss those days.
So time moves on and so do we and nothing stays the same, but I sure love to reminisce and walk down memory lane. With all today's technology we grant that it's a plus!
But it's fun to look way back and say,”Hey Look, guys, THAT WAS US!”
Send clients links to articles you run across from awards they receive or interviews about them.
Collect business cards to enter into your Contact Management System CRM and follow-up with EVERYONE you meet. You never know who will be your next customer or who they could refer you to.
Use thank-you notes, birthday and anniversary cards and other personal notes to keep in touch with all your customers. It's easier to maintain an existing client relationship than build a new one, so don't take anyone for granted.
Send clients and potential clients links to articles you come across that might be helpful to them in their businesses.
Use unique and useful specialty advertising items to keep your company name and logo in front of everyone on a daily basis.
Use "on-hold" telephone advertising to suggest additional products or services.
Provide a tip of the day, week or month for customers waiting on the phone or place these in your newsletter emails or on your web site in a blog.
Change your voicemail messages often to keep customers informed of your whereabouts and other important information.
Always carry your business cards with you even on your days off and vacations! Talk about your business wherever you go.
Keep copies of any article links about your business for future use in your newsletter emails or frame them to put on your store walls for continued credibility.
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