They told me marriage would be hard.
I understood what they were saying, but it didn't really register in my head. I knew many difficulties would come our way, but I only thought of them as situational difficulties. I never thought it would be our very selves that would be the cause of the difficulties. The hard situations certainly makes us stressed, but I noticed that what actually causes conflicts are the small annoyances we feel from living together.
We are sinful, both Tim and I.
We are selfish and we hurt each other.
But we are committed to loving each other and forgiving each other.
We are willing to change to make it easier to love each other.
Because that is the love that Christ showed us, and we are called to model that love in marriage.
As our family gets bigger, I've realised that it's not easy to be intentional with your marriage. Parenting, events, everyday responsibilities quickly take over your conversations and you lose the close connection that made being together so enjoyable. That is why we've decided to start Friday date nights. This time could be spent eating out, watching a DVD, playing board games, reading the bible, anything that we could enjoy doing together.
I've also started reading Paul David Tripp's What Did You Expect. It looks like a more practical book on marriage than the other books I've read during the early years of our marriage. They were great books for us to understand the importance of marriage in biblical terms, but I think it's now time to look at some practical ways we can work on our marriage. I will be blogging on what I'm reading so join me if you want to get a taste of this book or want some ideas on being more intentional with your marriage.
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