Marriage Matters

So in less than a month (6/12 – yes, I remember) I’ll have been married to my wonderful wife Traci for 12 years! Can you believe that she’s been able to put up with me for that long? I’m sure many wonder how she’s been able to stand me for that long, not including the engagement time and dating, etc.

The keys to our marriage, in my mind, are a couple of things that we find very important. Let me list them below:

Communication – Like many parents these days we run our kids from one thing to another all week long. We also both have multiple jobs and other commitments as well. Then there is all the homework to help with or check. Then add in all the house work, yard work, and you’d think we never saw each other. A lot of the time that is almost the truth. Yet through it all our marriage stays strong. We work hard on being able to communicate with one another openly and honestly as much as possible. Each week we talk about the week coming up, we talk about finances, our kids, our events, etc. We also bounce ideas off of one another and make sure that everything that needs to be covered does get covered. Sure, it’s not easy for us – but how hard would it be if we didn’t talk about these things?

Date Nights – That is right, date nights. Now we’d love to have these every week (ok, every day) but for us that isn’t going to happen. Instead we attempt to get out at least once a month without our kids. We have to have some time that allows us to focus all of our energy on one another. Does this mean that we have to go to dinner and a movie every time? No. Does it mean we go on an overnight vacation every time? No. Sure, those things are needed as well, but we just can’t do that financially. Now, we do try to eat out on our date nights, as that is part of the fun for us. It’s usually thrown in amongst the grocery shopping, and what has become our norm on a date night – a trip to Menards! Sometimes our date nights are picking up some Subway and going home to watch a movie on Netflix. Yet, it’s when we get to spend time just the two of us, and that is extremely important in a marriage. You can easily get lost in the day to day, and you both become people who kinda know each other instead of people who really know each other. I’d encourage everyone to make sure that you get some kind of regular date night in.

Prayer – This has become increasingly important to us. In the past we’d tried to do a study together, and we’d like to get back into that some day. However, right now at the very least, we spend our Sunday evenings with one another for awhile. We communicate by looking over our finances, our schedule, then praying. We pray for our family, our finances, the events of the week, and for each other. This has become very important to both of us. When was the last time you prayed for your spouse on a regular basis in front of your spouse? When was the last time they did the same for you? How could your love for one another get stronger if you had some regular basis for doing this with one another?

As I said last week, the little things matter. Maybe you take these things for granted right now. I’d like to suggest that you don’t do that any more. In order for your marriage to be strong and withstand the barrage that the world will throw at you I’d suggest you do these things, and probably a few other things. If you’d like to discuss this more feel free to contact me any time. I love to talk about these kind of things, and I really love to help others get closer to God, and in this instance, their spouse!

Next Week: Parenting Matters