Yesterday was my anniversary. Jennifer and I went out for dinner and had our annual discussion “On a scale of 1 to 10, what would you rank our marriage this year?” Anyway, this morning I was too distracted to read a lot of scripture during my devotional time (NOT because of our conversation!), so I started looking through an old journal, where I found the following list. I have to say, it drew me up short. I guess I know what I’ll be working on during this year of marriage.
On a side note, I have no idea what I was thinking or what verses I was studying when I wrote this. Also, although I put this list together in my own words, the ideas are definitely not original to me. Based on the way the list appears in my journal, I don’t think these are arranged in any order than the order I thought of them. I hope you find this list as challenging as I did this morning.
Journal entry from December 2, 2009:
A list for Jeffrey on the eve of your wedding:
1) Love is a choice. Choose love everyday, no matter how hard it is or how bad things seem. The more you make the choice to love, the easier the choice will become. Make love a habit.
2) Tell her you love her. Tell her everyday. Tell her in the morning when you wakeup, tell her at night when you go to bed, and tell her at least once somewhere in between. Tell her; she needs to hear it.
3) Learn how to fight, and do it often. There is a way to fight that is not hurtful or damaging. Make rules for fighting and follow them. Don’t be afraid of fighting and don’t let things fester. If something is wrong, get it out in the open and work through it.
4) Never let the sun go down on your anger. Keep the ratio of fights to make-ups at 1 to 1. I have found that making up is the best part of fighting!
5) Show her you love her in a way that is meaningful to her. Does she like flowers? Buy some. Does her back hurt? Rub it (without expecting sex). Is she overcommitted and tired? Do the dishes. Find some way everyday to show her you love her. Sometimes the best gift you can give is a break from each other.
6) Be considerate of her needs in the bedroom (including her need to sleep). Learn what she likes, what she doesn’t. Learn when she likes some things, and when she likes others. Learn her pace and her language. Nothing is a greater puzzle than the physical needs of a woman, but they are worth discovering!
7) Keep a servant’s heart. There will be times when you are tired or mad and don’t want to do things; do them anyway, and do not expect anything in return. Remember, love is a choice.
8) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, then love your wife. Keep your priorities straight. She is not #1 in your life. It is a hard lesson, but sooner or later you must learn that if something were to happen, you could live without her, but you can never truly live without God.
9) Pray together daily. Prayer is an intimate thing and doing it with your wife will build intimacy with her. Pray for real: What’s on your heart? Do you need to repent? Have you thanked God for the person you are praying with?
10) Find excuses to be together, and laugh often.
Well, it might not be the eve of his wedding, but we are coming up on Jeffrey's 1-month anniversary. I don't remember what it was, but the other day something reminded me of this entry that I posted more than 11 years ago. Rereading this today, I have a couple of comments:
ReplyDelete1) God has truly blessed me. I'm not perfect on any of these things, but through the guiding help of the Holy Spirit, I've done ok, and Jennifer and I have a great marriage to show for it (of course, she can take a lot of, maybe most of, the credit for that).
2) While we do have a great marriage, we didn't get it overnight. I don't know what the magic number is (I'm pretty sure it is different for every couple) but there is a point where the hard work of marriage begins to get easier. Don't get me wrong, there's always work to do, but if you take care of the big things in the early years, then you don't have to work quite so hard in the later years. Be sure that you’re taking care of the big things as they come up (see point #3).
3) Seeing you and your wife has taught me an 11th point that I would add to my list today if I could. It has been true for your mom and me, and knowing your personality, I think it will be true for you too: God brought you two together for a reason, don't dismiss her strengths because they are different than yours. There will be times when the two of you need your cold logic and sound reason. There will also be times when that will get in your way, and you need to rely on her intuition and emotion. The fact that you two are different may cause some problems from time to time, but that fact is also what will make your relationship work best in the long run.