My heart

There is one tag line about marriage that will remain with me until the end of my days… did God design marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy.  A very special couple introduced a book to us in our first small group called Sacred Marriage.  It is a great book to dive into and cuss an discuss even if it’s just with your spouse.  It didn’t seem to hit home with newly weds in their first marraige in our group, but for those of us who had been married before, had children, both, or had been married for some time it brought about some great discussion.  It really made me stop and reevaluate how I can better my marraige instead of seeking out what my husband is doing wrong.  The tag line alone reminds you that marriage takes effort.  As my girlfriends and I discussed this weekend, one of the most gut wrenching things to hear these days is ‘well, I just fell out of love with him/her’ and yet those words are uttered everyday.  I’m so not a reader by nature, it takes effort for me to read, but when I do, and I read books like Sacred Marriage, For Women Only, or Created To Be His Help Meet… I find that I’m a better wife while I’m reading.  Knowing that makes me want to always be in a book or be rereading to keep these tools fresh on my mind so that I act upon them.   

My husband and I are going on two years of marriage and we get comments all the time, like “it’s so cute how you guys are always holding hands” or ” you two are still so smitten with each other” or “you two are still on your honeymoon phase” and it makes the corners of my mouth chase my ears when I get those comments.  I’ll be the first to tell you that Trent and I’s marriage is not perfect.  We have our battles, but the most important lesson I took away from Sacred Marriage is to ‘fall forward’ from these battles.  I don’t ever want to become complacent in my marriage and that takes effort.  My father-in-law told his wife after many many years of dating, I want to marry you, but if we ever stop dating, this certificate doesn’t mean anything.  My husband has taught me to guard our marriage.  I take steps every day to stay in love with him.  Some things that are important to me are…

• Never ‘venting’ to my friends or co workers about Trent’s insecurities or things he does that irritate me.  When faced with those situations, I try to give advice to those girls about how they may change the situation by their actions or words from things I’ve learned in these books 
• I never hang up or email without saying “I love you”… not “love you”… but “I love you baby”… and meaning it.
• I never go to lunch or dinner with a guy friend alone or have conversations that I wouldn’t have if my huband were right there.
• I don’t speak to or have any sort of connection to any previous boyfriends
• In everything I do, I think, how does this effect my husband
• I daydream about my husband, intimately
• I send him emails and texts telling him how proud of him I am and how attracted to him I am daily
• I don’t do anything differently with my son outside of my husbands presence as I do when he’s there (this lets Noah know that we are totally in agreement with the way that we are raising him)
• I smile at him every opportunity… I don’t ever want him to seek acception or happiness from another face.

When I feel things starting to become complacent, I take my thoughts back to my actions and feelings to the first three months of our relationship and say and do the things the same way I did then.  It does take effort because inevitably I have lived much more life with Trent than I had then and there are wounds and circumstances that make you not want to do that, but that’s when I know I need to the most… I’m going to fight everyday for my marriage and that simply takes sacrifice.  It never fails, that when I put my selfish feelings aside and lift him up I draw closer to God.