Spring Romance

By Rev. Ed Hird

        April showers bring May flowers.  Spring is a time when many romances begin, including my romance with my wife Janice.  I am so grateful to have been married to Janice for almost thirty-six years.  She is the love of my life and the joy of my heart.

When I was a teenager, I held the unoriginal view that marriage was just a piece of paper, a merely human sociological invention. Since coming to faith in 1972, I have been fascinated by the meaning of marriage.  Reading Matthew 19: 6 (What God has joined together…), I was shocked to discover that God invented marriage.  I remember sharing with my future wife on our first date in 1975 about my fascination with the theology of marriage.  She found me somewhat overwhelming, and told me that she wasn’t ready to commit as she had just broken up with her fiancée.

While completing my Masters, I wrote an essay on the meaning of marriage, with a strong emphasis on the ‘one flesh’ covenant.   I concluded the essay by writing our own marriage ceremony and inviting my professor Bill Adams to our wedding.  Fortunately he liked the wedding and gave me a good mark.  Thirty-six years later, Janice and I are co-leading Strengthening Marriage workshops and Strengthening Relationship groups.  God-willing, I will be graduating on May 26^th this year with a Doctor of Ministry, focusing on ‘Strengthening Marriages.’

Part of my North Shore ministry involves visiting extended care facilities where often one spouse has Alzheimer‘s disease and the other doesn’t.  I have been so impressed by the love of one North Shore wife for her Alzheimer-afflicted husband who was a former university professor.   Her covenantal love and honour for her husband is deeply rooted in his unshakable humanity, being made in God’s image.

A wedding is a celebration of a couple coming to the point where they are truly willing to become one flesh in body, mind and spirit.  Marriage is far more than just a contract or a prenuptial agreement. Marriage is a covenant of faith and trust between a man and woman, a covenant grounded for Christians in their shared commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord.  At the heart of the concept of covenant is unconditional commitment.  The hyper-individualism of our consumer culture is the acid rain of covenant love.  The busyness and stress of our culture tends to swallow our best intentions even in marriage.

James Olthius, author of I Pledge You My Troth, teaches that marriage is troth, as in ‘I pledge you my troth’.  This term, troth, as in betrothal, is an Old English term for truth, faithfulness, loyalty and honesty.  At the heart of marriage troth is our pledge ‘to have and to hold from this day forward, for better,  for worse, for richer , for poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part…”

At the heart of spring romance for me is that assurance that my wife will stand with me through thick and thin, through good times and bad.  Janice has my back and I have hers.  My prayer for marriages in the Seymour/Deep Cove area is that God may give us back our first love for each other.  May our covenant commitment be like precious gold.

Rev. Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonchurch.ca

-an article for the April 2013 Deep Cove Crier

award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide : Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide

Strengthening Marriage workshop

Strengthening Marriage: Beyond Emotional Cutoff Workshop

- a complimentary workshop spread over four sessions with married couples who have been separated, divorced or widowed, and either live or have lived on the North Shore.
-This Strengthening Marriage Workshop is part of a Doctor of Ministry Thesis Project, supervised by Dr. Paddy Ducklow of Carey Theological College. The workshop will be held on Wednesday evenings 7pm to 9:30pm (May 16th, 23rd, May 30th & June 6th). The location of the workshop is Cedarbook Village Clubhouse (555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, just north off the #1 Westview exit) . To register, contact Rev Ed and Janice Hird at 604-929-5350 or ed_hird@telus.net

Course Overview for the four sessions
Session 1: Strengthening Your Marriage through rediscovering your mutual strengths
Session 2: Strengthening Your Marriage through Celebrating Your Differences
Session 3: Strengthening Your Marriage through working on your conflicts
Session 4: Strengthening Your Marriage through balancing closeness and personal space

(NO CHARGE)

Growing through Intimacy

By Rev Ed Hird

I never imagined that we can grow through conflict, that we can discover greater intimacy through facing the conflicts in our lives.  Many of us are conflict-phobic. Through taking a course with my doctoral advisor Dr Paddy Ducklow, I learned that conflict is not something to be avoided but rather to be celebrated.   Many of us have learned from our families of origin to emotionally cut ourselves off whenever anxious situations emerge.  But avoidance and emotional cutoff just make things worse.

It takes courage to face painful situations in our life, courage to listen, and courage to confront.  Dr Ducklow modeled on this course a non-anxious presence that cared but did not get swallowed by people’s issues.  It takes a lot of inner resilience to be able to stay present and calm when the storms of life blow in. 

Jesus modeled this by how he acted on a Galilean boat during a storm. Rather than panic, he was totally relaxed and challenged his disciples to have more faith and inner peace.  Then he spoke to the wind and storms, saying ‘Peace.  Be still’.  In the midst of our storms, Jesus is still saying ‘Peace. Be still.’

I first met Paddy Ducklow in 1972 during the Jesus Movement when millions of young people came to a personal faith in Jesus Christ. Paddy at that time was leading the youth ministry at West Vancouver Baptist Church which had between 800 to 1,000 young people attending their Sunday evening service Salt Circus. I remember attending Salt Circus. The place was electric.  Paddy later founded the Burnaby Counselling Group before becoming the Senior Pastor of Burnaby Christian Fellowship.  Wherever Paddy has gone, he has had a lasting impact on the lives of many, helping them to know greater intimacy and peace through Jesus Christ.

In more recent years, Paddy became the Senior Pastor of Capilano Christian Community on the North Shore, before stepping down to become the Professor of Marriage and Family at Carey Theological College on the UBC Campus.  Over two years ago, I began to once again feel the call to do a part-time doctorate.  E-mailing Paddy, I asked his advice as to where I might go to do my doctorate.  Paddy responded, saying that he was being inducted at West Vancouver Baptist Church that very night Feb 26^th 2009 as Carey Professor of Marriage and Family.  I attended his induction, during which Paddy gave a hilarious talk on ‘Marriage for Dummies’. God spoke to me that evening, convincing me that I was to ‘step out of the boat’ and move forward on my doctorate.  The exciting thing about the Carey Doctorate is that it is a part-time program designed specifically for full-time pastors.

 In the past two and a half years, I have learned and grown in so many ways at Carey.  Paddy’s own Doctoral Thesis was on how we process conflict.  Paddy is passionate about conflict.  I will be doing my Doctoral project on Strengthening Marriages, particularly looking at couple conflict and family systems theory.  My vision is that many marriages will become more intimate, more life-giving as couples learn to embrace and celebrate the inevitable conflicts in their lives.  I dream of couples who, instead of emotionally cutting off and running, choose to hang in there and learn how to really be present to each other in ways that do not take each out. 

 

Marriages and families are worth fighting for. Marriages and families are building blocks of our very communities.  It is so easy for us to take each other out and then give up on each other.  My prayer for those reading this article is that we will find the strength to be ourselves, to embrace the gift of family and community, to forgive and reconcile at the deepest level.

 

 

The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca

-published in the Nov 2011 Deep Cove Crier

-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD.  This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide :  Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada 

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide