Spin the Novice

One of the many rules in college debate is that you always looked at and spoke to the judges, never at the person you are debating.  Which meant if you could get your opponent to look at you, then they would lose points.  So while you tried to keep a laser focus on the judges you also tried to distract your opponent into looking at you.  

Once during a debate, I was able to attract the gaze of my opponent - and so I took a small step backward, causing my opponent to turn their gaze even further.  I continued this process until I had gotten my opponent to turn almost completely around with their back to the judges.  The technique is called Spin the Novice. 

It is a technique I think Satan uses on us often.  He distracts our attention away from those things that matter the most and spins us around until we don’t know what way is up.  The numbers prove he is really good at getting us to turn to false things instead of each other.  

According to the website Social Media Today, we spend 116 mins a day on social media.  They prepared the following infographic to show how what that looks like over a lifetime along with other common activities.  

The website Becoming A Minimalist offers these eye-opening statistics:

• There are 300,000 items in the average American home.
• Over the course of our lifetime, we will spend a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items.
• The average 10-year-old owns 238 toys
• Some reports indicate we consume twice as many material goods today as we did 50 years ago

We are a group of people who have lost our focus on what really matters.  We think we are happy and doing well after all our closets are full, our calendars are full, our garages are full, which means we should be full. Right?

When we face challenges that are so big and difficult they seem impossible to recover from, we find that all those distractions are of no use to heal us or our marriages.  We also find that we have not built a foundation that will stand the storm.  We are left unprotected, unprepared, uncertain of what to do.  According to Goddard, “Satan’s best hope is to keep us from looking up” (59). He spins us around and around so distracted that we never have a chance to look up.  But Goddard goes on to explain if, “we invite our partners to gaze with us on truths of eternity,” (62) then we can move forward together.  

We can’t expect our relationship to have the laser focus on eternity it needs to survive if we get distracted by every opponent.  We can’t be the novice that gets spun.  Our focus has to be continually brought back in line with God.  

We need to, as Gottman teaches,  fIll our “emotional bank accounts” (88) so we are ready for those life events that create withdrawals.   And in true Gottman fashion, we are not left wondering how to keep those accounts full. With a term he describes as, “bids”, “for each others' attention, affection, humor or support”, we fill our emotional bank account.  These are not large acts, they are the little things we ask for help with, the quick questions, or the listening ear we need after a long day.  His research shows that successfully married couples turn toward their partners, “bids” 86 percent of the time, while those who end up divorce average 33 percent.  

This is great information, MARRIAGE CHANGING information,  if we want to have a marriage that is spin free, then stop looking for a place to hide when your spouse needs you in small, mundane ways. 

Twelve years ago we lost a child.  I didn’t know your arms could feel actual pain from being emptied or the depth of guilt and betrayal I could feel knowing that it was my body that failed the task.  This was a time where turning away from each other would be easy, almost acceptable.  But we had full bank accounts. While the withdrawals during this time were huge, we had what we needed.  

Gottman, John. 2015. The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work. Harmony Books 2nd edition

Goddard, H Wallace. 2009. Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage. Joymap Publishing Ceder Hills, Ut

www.becomingminimalist.com/clutter-stats/. Last accessed 2/21/2018

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/  Last Accessed 2/21/2018