As I’ve taken inventory of my marriage, over the years, I’ve discovered something: marriage is hard work. Often, we find ourselves on different pages altogether. It happens to both husbands and wives alike. But, if we want to build a healthy and successful marriage, we must make a change in the way we think and interact with one another!
Husbands, lets be honest- back in college it was our goal to make our soon-to-be-wives feel like the luckiest girl in the world. In fact, it was our mission! We bought flowers, listened, took her on dates that cost more money than we actually had, and arrived at her beckoned call if she had a bad day. We did all this because we wanted to win her heart. Why is this so hard to translate into married life, years later?
Today, my wife and I celebrate 15 years of marriage. I have learned so many valuable lessons in that time. To keep the post from being 10,000 words long, I’ve condensed it to 15. 🙂
Recently I was preparing for a wedding I was in charge of officiating when one of the lines in the script jumped off the page- “Will you honor her?”
The other day I attended a prayer breakfast in downtown Indianapolis with about 600 area pastors, government officials, and ministry leaders. During the keynote speaker’s message I looked over to the neighboring table and saw a young married couple nestled close to one another, listening intently to the speakers words.
Twelve years ago, before my wife and I had children, we needed someone, who had gone before us in having children, to speak wisdom into our lives. Mostly (and unfortunately) we received comments like, “Oh, you wouldn’t understand, you don’t have any children.” That wasn’t helpful. Now, years later, we want to be.
You may be asking yourself why the topic of pornography is appearing on a parenting blog, or why it’s relevant amongst the topics I write about. Well, considering that pornography is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, and 56% of divorce cases a year involve issues with pornography and sexual addiction, I believe it’s a very relevant topic for parents and families.
Yesterday, my wife Kristin and I, celebrated 14 years of marriage. Lots of people gave us “Happy Anniversary” wishes and left comments on our Facebook pages. Between the 2 of us I think we even amassed nearly 200 likes on each of our status updates combined.
I have to admit, I’m writing this post out of “lessons learned” and not “knowledge of.” Anymore, I find that most of the content on this blog originates from this place. This is especially true when it comes to parenting.
Last week I was meeting with a young couple who are getting married this fall. As we talked about their wedding, and the type of ceremony they would like to have, we also spent some time talking about married life and some lessons I’ve learned over 14 years of marriage.
