On some level, all men will struggle with growing and owning up. I think every man must deal with being in our own proverbial “woods” of life, where the decision is to be the man or remain in boyhood. In those “woods,” our choices are tested. Will living in secrecy with our family of origin, our peer groups and the guys we hang with be the measure of manhood, or will we reach deeper into the "woods" of uncertainty?” It’s the place where support mechanisms and associations are gone and we risk. In those "woods," real men make the responsible “call” to love others better. They accept responsibility for choices, even when things don't go the way we want them to. It’s where we resolve not to live in duplicity and be a phony.                                                  

I think when it comes to maturing a marriage over time, how a man deals with uncertainty and his fear of being “real” with others eventually determines the quality of his marriage. How do you see this measure of manhood or the lack of it affecting not just the marriage of a celebrity but any marriage?   

 by Jerry Price

 Educational institutions are trying to stem the tide of bullying from the grade school to high school  levels, whether secular or private. But what happens when the bullying is extended from parents to  parents of children or from a parent to the child of other parents? It happens you know.

Just recently, one parent in our country was arrested for videoing his son’s fights with other kids. There’s a contrast of intolerance when society gets upset about an athlete using dogs to bully other dogs. But the more subtle fights happen when hate,revenge and jealousy find their way into reasoning as a parent defends a child who is a bully, as if they aren’t.

Academic environments, caught in the middle of a parent standing behind a child who claims being a victim when actually being a perpetrator of bullying, need to look at the parent or parents of the perpetrator. These people will stand in meetings to point the finger at other parents without saying names of course and emotionally isolate them from the others. The hope is to use the public arena to control the parents of the victim accused of bullying to justify their misplaced rage. Messy, reckless and harmful it is. The goal is to get the parents and their child, who really is the victim– OUT!

What’s missing is information tied up behind legality and fear. Get the right information out. Get the facts on the table and things have a way of changing the course of the attack. Suddenly, truth clears the way and the parent of the child who is the bully is exposed as the bully. It’s a horrible thing to have a parent or parents go after the real victim such as staring them down on the campus of the school they attend, as they wait for their bully to come from class.

The hope! Having administrations not controlled by anything but truth and the facts, able to stand firm and hold accountable those who bully, even the parents who bully other parents to gain the advantage and escape the reality of a child, their child, being the bully. Cover ups never really work. Somewhere, somehow our sin finds us out. Justice is out there but sometimes delayed.

For the child, who really is the victim and for the parents of that child, what’s left apart from having to leave the environment where the parental bully terrorizes the victim, or possibly using the courts to stop the bullying? Personal dignity! Knowing how to love because of a faith which believes God will settle it in his time and way. He’s not blind to the truth. This faith allows us to endure until that moment.