Weekend Kindness
Reaching Others Through Kindness

Hi! I’m Revka, and MIn the Gap asked me to join Weekend Kindness as an author. It is only polite that you should know a bit about the person who writes the articles you read.

When I meet new people, one of the first questions they normally ask is how to pronounce my name. It is said with a long e (Reev-kuh) and is Hebrew for Rebekah. More common Israeli spellings are Rivkah or Rifka. My parents liked the name but, apparently, didn’t know the “correct” spelling.

I am a born-again believer in Christ; in fact, after putting my faith in a profession rather than in the Person of Christ for 19 years, I finally came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ on July 18, 2007. (You can read my full testimony over at my personal blog, The Porch Light.)

I am married to a wonderful man (I refer to him as Mr. Incredible in my blogs), and we will be celebrating our 8th anniversary in a couple of weeks. I love being married to this incredibly patient man, and I love our three daughters, also known as Pookie Bear, Miss Muffet, and Baby Bear.

I believe that there is always room for improvement in my life and am always striving to become more like Christ, which will also make me a better person. I am excited about sharing with you my ideas for building relationships and treating our families with kindness. As you will see in my first (non-introductory) post, I plan to be transparent in my posts, honestly detailing my own struggles and triumphs as is appropriate to the topic at hand, though not every post will be about me. I hope that you will find my posts relevant, encouraging, and useful, and I look forward to getting to know you readers better.

Thanks, MIn the Gap, for giving me this opportunity.

I figure since it’s time for introductions, and I don’t believe that I’ve formally introduced myself anywhere, that I should go first.  So, here’s me in a nutshell.

I was born and raised in a truly unique household.  Until last year, I have had all four grandparents alive.  Both sets had reached over 50 years of marriage– same person the whole time.  My parents have been married 32 years.  I have two brothers and a sister, all younger.

I’ve been married 6 years to Virtuous Blonde, our wedding was on July 7, 2001.  We have three children.

I’m a Bob Jones University grad with a major in Computer Science and a minor in music (I play piano and sing).  I returned home after finishing my degree, but moved when I got married to a house near my place of employment.

Why do you want to write about building relationships?  Because the more I have read the more I see that there is a need for encouragement for couples in marriages.  There’s a lot of pressures internally and externally, and in our fast paced world we need help to keep our relationships strong.

Any other questions?  Just ask!

This week we will be introducing the new contributors to Weekend Kindness.  Yes, people from all walks of live have volunteered to help on our new focus of building relationships.  To that end, we’re going to take some time this week to meet some of the new faces around here, as I’ve asked each of them to introduce themselves before we start reading their contributions.

I look forward to reading what they have to say, discussing relationships, and learning from one another. 

There’ll still be weekly lists of different ideas, but this way we’ll also get to discuss what’s going on in relationships, read some great poetry, and simply share ways that we can encourage one another.

During the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, sentenced a soldier to be shot for his crimes. The execution was to take place at the ringing of the evening curfew bell. However, the bell did not sound. The soldier’s fianc? had climbed into the belfry and clung to the great clapper of the bell to prevent it from striking. When she was summoned by Cromwell to account for her actions, she wept as she showed him her bruised and bleeding hands. Cromwell’s heart was touched and he said, “Your lover shall live because of your sacrifice. Curfew shall not ring tonight!” 

Our Daily Bread.

What can you do in 5 minutes to make your spouse’s day?  That’s the subject of this week’s relationship builder idea.  We’re calling on all of you out there to write a poem.  No, it doesn’t have to rhyme perfectly or be in iambic pentameter.

Here are some ideas to start with:

• Write about how much you miss them.
• Write about how you are thinking about them.
• List the ways they make you feel happy or special.
• Tell them what features you like most about them.

You can make it short or long, but the point is that they will see that you loved them enough to take the time to write something about them.

If you want to do it on your blog, you can link back here so that we can all be encouraged– but it’s probably more personal to share the poem either memorized or on some kind of stationery.

Sacrificial love has transforming power. Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truly loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. It if is, so much the better; but if it isn’t, the commitment to love, the will to love, still stands and is still exercised. Conversely, it is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love. I may meet a woman who strongly attracts me, whom I feel like loving, but because it would be destructive to my marriage to have an affair, I will say vocally or in the silence of my heart, “I feel like loving you, but I am not going to.” My feelings of love may be unbounded, but my capacity to be loving is limited. I therefore must choose the person on whom to focus my capacity to love, toward whom to direct my will to love. True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision. 

Dr. M. Scott Peck