TRUE OR FALSE
1. More often than not, there will be clues of termite infestation outside wood that’s been infected.
2. Termites only need a crack of one-thirty second of an inch in the cement slab floor to gain entrance into your home
3. Termites eat plastic as well as wood.
1. More often than not, there will be clues of termite infestation outside wood that’s been infected.
2. Termites only need a crack of one-thirty second of an inch in the cement slab floor to gain entrance into your home
3. Termites eat plastic as well as wood.
Now, how well did we do?
1. FALSE. Sometimes, you see pellets or brown sandy material but more often there’s no clue on the outside that something is terribly wrong inside.
2. FALSE. Termites need less than that—just a crack of one sixty-fourth of an inch is enough.
3. TRUE. The species popularly known as subterranean termites can destroy plastic plumbing pipes as well.
2. FALSE. Termites need less than that—just a crack of one sixty-fourth of an inch is enough.
3. TRUE. The species popularly known as subterranean termites can destroy plastic plumbing pipes as well.
And guess what? Marriages get termite infested, too.
Sometimes, there’s no clue on the outside that’s something’s gone wrong.
What triggered it? Just a tiny crack on the foundation.
One unkept promise, one small lie, one unkind word, one false accusation, one disloyalty… until one day, there’s a subtle distance and a coldness and one realizes that an erosion has taken place.
An erosion? Where? In the area of trust, mainly.
Sound familiar?
But the issue isn’t always a loss of trust. Sometimes it’s plain hurt at the lack of sensitivity, repeated again and again, until over time, the hurt becomes an irritation and then an aggravation, and then frustration.
And then the thought of just ending the marriage enters…
That’s the easy way out. But there’s another way. It’s harder, though. But it might be worth trying.
It’s forgiving. Without forgiving, you lose out in the end. At least that’s what the medical gurus say…
You end up becoming hostile and hostile people–they say–lose out in the end.
Let’s start in 2002. A study from Brown University, Harvard Medical School, Boston University and the Boston Veteran’s Health Care System Center for Behavioral Preventive Medicine.
The M.D.s studied 774 men wanting to know what the one predictor of impending heart attacks was. Their result? The most reliable predictor of a heart attack was the subject’s hostility profile.
Fast forward to 2007.
A study from the University of Utah, published in the 2007 American Psychosomatic Society.
300 married couples were studied, all said to be free of coronary artery disease. CT scans of coronary arteries were done to detect tiny calcium deposits inside the arteries. (Calcium deposits are an indicator of silent atherosclerosis or coronary artery disease.)
Results:
Spouse ratings of both anger and antagonism were significantly associated with coronary artery calcification severity. These associations occurred only among older participants. Antagonism but not anger was an independent predictor of coronary artery calcification.
Maybe that person was right after all.
Who?
The one who said, “A happy marriage is the union of two forgivers.”
I have a favorite priest. His name is Martin Luther.
Someone asked him one day, a long time ago. “Dr. Martin Luther, what would your advice be to wives and husbands today?”
His answer: “Let the wife make her husband glad to come home and let the husband conduct himself in such a way that she is sorry to see him leave.”
So there. Termites? Who ever said they had to stay…?
No comments:
Post a Comment