Today marks our seven year wedding anniversary.  I’ve been blogging since the fall of 2010 which means this is my third anniversary post.  They’re a little weird for me to write since my husband is very private.  Last year’s post was fun because it was the two sentence recap of each year.  For our fifth anniversary I recapped our New Orleans trip (and good grief I forgot how skinny I’d gotten – hopefully next year’s anniversary pics will look like that).

Today marks seven years.  We had some really hysterical and funny moments this year.  The kids turned three.  We survived Disney.  I got a new job and Bray got a promotion.  Still I waited to the very last second to write anything because I had no pithy summary or travel review (as that’s already been posted).  I have had friends warn me about their experiences around this time period.  Most of my close friends have been married longer than I have.  I heard all these stories about the rough patches and snags they hit.  There’s of course the psychology legend that this is when people are more susceptible to infidelity because of boredom or frustration or sameness.  Even girlfriends that never had a hint of inappropriate relationships on either side said how challenging the sixth to eighth years were.  How somehow it feels permanent.  One friend’s husband said, “It just feels like this is how it’s going to be all the time.”  And that’s hard because for so many of us the seven year mark is definitely NOT how it’s going to look all the time.  It may feel A LOT harder now than it will feel in a few  years.  You go through career changes.  Maybe home or location changes.  You often have young kids.  Your finances start to look different.  There are just a lot of factors that make this time so completely different from what the future will look like.  But when you’re in the forest, you forget because you’re stuck looking at one tree.

This time is no different for us.  It’s been a harder than usual year.  For no reason other than life is hard, in the most wonderful and best way.  We both have demanding jobs, aging parents, and preschool aged children.  Our schedules are packed and there’s less time for each other.  So we snap and we retreat.  But we also remain steadfastly committed.

Don’t let the circumstances of the NOW fool you into thinking this will be your circumstances in the LATER.  Every day is a new opportunity.  A very wise friend gave me her “three steps” to working through tough spots when she had just gotten through her own tough spots.  I won’t write them all down because she’s going to make a zillion dollars when she writes it out all, but I will share some of her wisdom.  Some of her words hinge on the fact that I get particularly anxious about marital challenges because my own parents got divorced.  Even though we are both so committed to making this work, and I know the ups always follow the downs, I still have scars on my heart from that divorce.  She shared how you pray for your husband in tough times,  you don’t assign blame, and you surrender: ”You are being given the opportunity to learn to love your husband the right way – without fear he will leave you.  You can love him, no matter what he does.  You have to confess any wrong you have done, but you can’t let guilt drive your decisions. Your husband didn’t save you.  You have to let the Lord free you of your dependency.  This is where it gets really hard, but you must surrender your husband and marriage to the Lord.  You tell the Lord to,  Do whatever you must and I know you will sustain me because You want me to find my wholeness in You alone.  I trust in YOU, Lord.  Not anywhere or anyone else…  In praying this, you assure your marriage will not end like your parents.  I know that fear is hounding you.  In surrendering to God, like Hannah, the Lord will honor you.  Your heart will be pure and your reverence for Him will grow more complete.  The sooner you surrender, the sooner the Lord can come in and get His work done.”

I am so proud of our seven years.  We have had light fun years and hard sad years and most years are a huge mix of both.  I’m going to be proud of 14 and 21 and 28 and 35 years.  I know that because I know that no matter what comes we believe in each other and in God and in our family.

Ecclesiastes 4: Two are better than one, Because they have a good reward for their labor.  For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.

I Corinthians 13: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails.

 

I know I’m doing a lot on marriage this week.  And I know I said I was going to get to a lot of other stuff.  But this is where my soul has settled for a while and I’ve seen so much stuff I just want to share.  Print this long post out for date night - I searched high and low for questions to ask a spouse to get to know him (or her) better.  Because Tuesday night Bray and I got an unexpected date night.  And all too often we sit around and talk about the bills that need to get paid or the daily news from our jobs or our kids and we don’t talk about us.  Or share funny stories.  Or get to know each other better.  So here’s a very exhaustive list for you if you, like me, found a bunch of stuff you’d still like to know about your spouse:

Fun Questions:

What is your favorite gift(s)?

What’s my idea of an ideal date?

What’s the most I’ve ever spent on shoes?

If you were the king (or queen) of the world, what is the first thing you would change?

If you could travel back in time, which historical event would you like to witness?

Which is your favorite movie of all time and favorite scene in it?  (Narrate it if I missed it.) Or favorite book?  Or favorite song (and why)?

Can you give me a mock session of how you would discuss sex education with our kids?

Your first crush – what drew you to her? Your first date – where did you go, what did you do and how long did the relationship last?

What are your three favorite: foods, meals, desserts, restaurants, hobbies, things to do, favorite color, flavors of ice cream, etc.  You fill in the blank. 

What’s your biggest pet peeve?

What’s your favorite holiday?  What part of it?  Your favorite childhood memory?  (Which are the most important to you and what do you want to be doing?)

What are the top five things you are most thankful for in your life?

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

What is the most embarrassing thing you ever did on your first job?  (Or moment?)

What’s the funniest thing you ever did as a kid?

If you won the lottery, what are the first three things you would do and three things you’ve been most longing for that you would buy?

Investigative Questions:

If you weren’t in the profession you are, what would be your other dream profession?  Or if you could make a living using a favourite hobby, which hobby would you choose?  If you knew you could not fail, what would you do?

What is your favourite memory of your grandparents?  Who’s your favourite aunt/uncle/cousin and why?

What is your idea of a romantic evening? (Had to throw one in there for us girls)

Apart from the most obvious one, which other two areas of your body are the most sensitive and responsive?

Can you remember your earliest childhood memory of happiness and that of fear?  What did you dream of becoming one day as a child?

What are the qualities that draw you to people that you can base a friendship on?

What has been your scariest dream? Which has been your most frequently recurring one?

Which has been the best decision you ever made/achievement reached?  Proudest moment? Which is the decision you regret the most?

If your house was on fire, what five things would you grab before leaving?

The one argument your parents had, that you would try and avoid with your partner, would be over…  What do you admire most about each of your parents?

What is your perception of how people see you?

Can you think of something you craved for when you were young and were denied?

What is the most generous thing anyone has ever done for you?

Who was your role model growing up? Why did you look to them as an example?

What are your retirement dreams?

What things in life bring you the most joy?

What are you most looking forward to about this year?

What do you consider to be your skills?  Weaknesses?

Faith/Deepening Relationship Questions:

Can you name three qualities that attracted you to me?  What was your first impression? How accurate do you now think it was? On which counts do you think you were totally wrong and on which were you right?

What do you most vividly remember about our first date? When did you know that I was the one you were meant to marry?  What do you like most about our marriage and why?  What are some of your best memories of our married life so far?

How have you changed through our marriage? How do you see things differently since becoming married?

If I promise not to get upset, can you tell me something that you’d like to change in me but don’t have the nerve to tell me?  (Or irritates you?)  What do you want to change that I could help?

What upsets you most in a relationship and what makes you the happiest?

What makes you the most fulfilled or happiest as a man? As a husband?  As a father?

What makes you saddest as a man?  As a husband?  Father?

What do you fear the most?  What other fears do you have?

What do you look forward to the most?

What things around the house need to be repaired (hubby) or organized/cleaned (wife)?

What caresses do you enjoy the most?  The least?  What provides you the greatest sexual pleasure? 

How is our sex life? Is there anything I can do to make our sex life better?

What desires do you have that we haven’t discussed?

At what times do you need assurance of my love the most?  What do I do that makes you feel loved?  How can that love be shown?

What can I do that will make it easier to discuss and work on areas or problems that are uncomfortable to you?

In what ways would you like me to sacrifice for you?  What things do you see by my actions that I place first in my life? What concerns and interests of yours would you like me to support?

What can I do that provides the greatest comfort and encouragement for you when you are hurt, fearful, anxious or worried?

What ways demonstrate to you that you are a very important person who is as important or more important than I am?

Name one thing I do that causes you to feel understood and/or respected. What else could I do?

Name one thing I do that causes you to feel confident in our future direction. What could I do to cause you to feel more confident in our future direction?

How are we doing with our family budgeting and finances?  What is one thing we can do to improve our budgeting and finances?

Name one personal goal for your life that I can help you achieve this year.   Name something new we might do together that would bring joy to our marriage/family?  What mutual goal would you like us to accomplish? 

How are our relationships with our extended family? Name one thing I can do to improve one of these family relationships.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate our marriage?  What would make our marriage a ten?  How would you like to see us grow in our marriage by the end of the year?  What hopes do you have for our marriage and family?

Describe your current relationship with God.  What have you been learning about God lately?

Name one way that God has blessed our marriage.

What would indicate to you that I really desire to be more Christ-like?

How has your love for God grown? What can I do to help your love for God grow?

So we’re still talking marriage.  I wrote a little yesterday about our love languages and how we may just be missing the boat on communicating love to our spouse.  What if he was saying I love you in Greek and you were saying I love you in Italian and neither one of you understood what the other was saying and had no idea that you still loved each other?  Sometimes, that is what is happening in our marriages.  Isn’t it sad that we may each be trying to say I love you and it’s just not being understood?  And how frustrating!

But another thing that is going on in our marriages, oftentimes, is an expectation that our marriage will be perfect.  Or that at least that that there won’t be fighting.  Or that fighting is a reflection of a weak marriage.  So then one big fight and you start feeling doomed. 

One last thing that’s plaguing a lot of our marriages is comparison shopping.  Have you heard this?  Or said this?  My husband plays video games and hers doesn’t, she’s so lucky.  My husband travels all the time for work and hers is home, she’s so lucky.  My husband sits on the couch and doesn’t fix stuff at the house and hers is handy, she’s so lucky.  And on and on and on.  To devastating effect. 

I’m reading a book on marriage, or I should say finishing a book on marriage I started years ago.  Don’t you love that you get pulled along for the ride whenever I’m reading a new book?  It’s called Surrendering to Marriage and the author breaks marriage up into three segments:  The Malaise, The Choice, and The Surrendering.  I’ve not finished it yet, but there’s so much good real stuff in it.  On fighting, she says, “I still don’t like it but it is what it is, and to expect two opposite personalities, of different genders, to live without clashes in one house forever is ludicrous.”  Ludicrous!  Did you catch that?  If you are never having fights, then you may actually be in more trouble than those of us fighting because there may not be any communicating going on! 

I love this foundational nugget that she shares on comparison shopping, among other things, and that she readily acknowledges is not all romance and flowers but is truth:

My fantasy of marriage as the wellspring of contentment has completely disappeared, and so should yours.  Thinking you get happiness ever after is a ticket to divorce.  I’ll tell you the four things I now know about marriage, from my own transforming relationship and from conversations with other flummoxed spouses:  A. Marriage can be hell; B. The grass is not greener on the other side; C. Savor the highs, because one thing you can count on – the dips are just around the corner; D. Nobody is perfect, so you may as well love the one you’re with…..Therefore, I surrender to this imperfect marriage, because I love it more than I hate it and I committed to this man with a promise that I need to, we all need to, do the best to fulfill.

Wow!  As you know, I’m a girl who loves her romance.  But I also love me some straight-talking.  It doesn’t get more straight-talking than this.  Look, marriage is hard.  If you went in thinking it would be all champagne and moonlight, then disabuse yourself of that notion.  There will be fights and dirty diapers and funerals and lost jobs and financial struggles and weight gain and moves and everything else.  There will also be such goodness and happiness and joy and fulfillment, but that isn’t all.  And if you hit a snag, it’s not the end.  It’s a snag.  I know we live in a culture of ME and a culture of immediacy, but marriage is not about ME or immediacy.  It’s about the unit and the long term. 

I don’t know where you are in your marriage today, but I wrote a year ago, and mean it more today, I won’t give up.  Do not give up.  The grass is not greener.  Nobody is perfect (including you, and me).   As I read in this book, and as I have experienced firsthand, “I have found that if I wait the squalls of marriage out, they always pass, and a softer wind blows through that makes me feel as if I’m the luckiest woman alive, to be with a partner who is fiercely devoted to me and our kids.”

Have you ever heard of The Five Love Languages?  It’s this book by Gary Chapman and the concept is that you receive love in an optimum way (words, time, gifts, etc.), so that is how you show love.  But if your spouse receives love in a different way, then he might not be appreciating the way you are showing love.  I know this because Bray and I took some test as a part of a premarital class and, not surprisingly, we have different love languages.  (Mine is words of affirmation – big shocker there right, words!?!?!)

Well, I think Mr. Chapman left out a few options.  In my marriage, there are two he specifically did not mention.  For Bray, there’s the love language of “hanging out with my family at the ranch,” and for me there’s “hanging out with my family in the big city.” 

This was brought to mind by two weekends this past month.  Most recently, say yesterday, we all went with Bray to the ranch.  This is not the farm in Louisiana, which I will post about later, and which has a few more creature comforts.  This is the ranch in South Texas where Bray almost died from a snake bite as a kid.  Yes, I’m a nervous nelly.   I’ve been a few times, maybe five, but even before kids when I traveled with him I preferred the farm.  So I suggested that instead of him taking the boys to the ranch this weekend, we all go together.  You could have knocked him over with a feather!  The next night he actually asked me, “did I hear you right that you want us all to go to the ranch?”  On the way down there, he mentioned that it had been almost five years since I’d last been.  This is a place my husband ADORES.  He would move there if he could.  He loves this place and it had been almost five years since I’d gone!  Now I realize that it’s been a busy few years what with being pregnant with triplets one of those years and then having little triplets that aren’t particularly well suited for rustic three of those years, but still.  Can you imagine five years without speaking one of your husband’s love languages???  And we had a great time.  It was a beautiful weekend and Bray built a bonfire for us to roast marshmallows and we fed cows and rode in his Jeep, fondly referred to as the Red Rooster.  Everyone had a great time. 

On the flip side, the weekend after I started my job he stayed home for the full weekend.  Saturday and Sunday with no ranch/farm/job pulling him elsewhere.   I couldn’t stop smiling.  We bummed around in p.j.s Saturday morning drinking coffee on the patio and chatting while the kids rode their bikes and tractors.  We ran a few errands together and cooked dinner outside and all ate together around the patio table.  We watched a Disney movie curled up together.  We had church and not much else on Sunday.  This was my idea of family perfection.  Not one activity to pull us apart or make us rush out to an event well dressed and pulled together.  I wrote about how the kids cried all Monday morning because we’d had such fun hanging out together that they weren’t ready for us to go back to work.  That’s my love language. 

The thing is, we both love the same thing and come away happy from the same thing: hanging out as a family.  But we like to do it in different geographic locations which often results in us not actually getting to hang out together.  The Five Love Languages reports:

Most of us grow up learning the language of our parents and siblings, which becomes our primary or native tongue.  Later we may learn additional languages – but usually with much more effort.  These become our secondary languages.  In the area of love, it is similar.  Your emotional love language and the language of your spouse may be as different as Chinese and English.  No matter how hard you try to express love in English, if your spouse understands only Chinese, you will never understand how to love each other….Being sincere is not enough.  We must be willing to learn our spouses’ primary love language if we are to be effective communicators of love.

Wow!  Well, that’s a hard challenge for selfish human beings.  But my thought is that recognizing the difference is half the battle.  And it’s no surprise that most marriages have different languages since we were raised with different backgrounds, values, relationships, and families.  So my challenge to all of us married women out there is to start small and make a change no matter where your marriage is today – good or bad.  Maybe it’s going to the ranch more, but maybe it’s just making coffee in the morning.  I’m going to write a little tomorrow about why we should remember it’s SO worth the effort.

I am so excited to have this interlude between our fall Friday bible study concluding and the new Fridays debut in January.  It gives me three weeks just to share what I’m reading from other people on some interesting and diverse blogs.  Today, I’m featuring blog posts about marriage in my Friday Finds.  Next week, I’ll highlight what I’ve found on dreaming big dreams.  And the last Friday before the new year, I’ll focus on the holidays. 

So marriage.  You guys know I write on this every once in a while, but if you’re a married person writing on marriage you have to be careful not to shoot yourself in the foot.  And if you’re unmarried and writing about marriage you probably don’t know what you’re talking about

Here’s some of my favorite posts I’ve read recently:

Over at Messy Marriages, I read a great post about 10 Not So Helpful Things To Do For My Spouse.  Y’all – are any of you as guilty about this as I am?  The two most convicting to me on her list of 10, though I have done them ALL, were number 2 and 5 – have you done these? 

#2 – When I think that sarcasm is a funny way to get my point (or criticism) across to my hubster.

#5 – When I think I’m getting to the heart of the matter by assuming his motives, instead of just asking him what he meant or did. 

Wow!  I loved this post because it’s true and practical.  It’s great when you take the time to recognize all the goof ball things you do that creates unnecessary marital challenges and then try to stop doing it! 

There’s an incredible blog I just found and don’t know how I’ve missed it before.  It’s Sheila Gregoire’s To Love Honor and Vacuum.  She writes about Christians having good sex.  I am sorry, but this is such a huge need in the Christian community.  No one will talk about sex.  And she does not hold back.  If there’s a topic you’ve wondered about, she’s written about it.  But she also writes about other stuff too, and she just posted a great entry about Creating a Savings Strategy with Your Husband.  I love that she reminds us to always save first and not last.  Bray is so good about that, but I get spendy and am really going to focus on driving that impulse down in 2013 as our costs go up with the kids starting private school in the fall.

There were also some blogs with great reminders and help for women struggling:

Full Heart…Full Home had a great post encouraging us to take time out for date nights with your hubby, especially when you have kids;

Lysa TerKeurst recently wrote to women who have marriages struggling in the clutch of pornography (another topic Christians avoid like the plague) and she wrote a great post over at Incourage about The Good Side of Conflict;

And then I recently used one of my own marriage posts in a link up on a Marriage website, and it reminded me today that I still have to work on talking with Bray with the WHAT not the HOW.

I hope you have a great weekend and enjoy some joyful times with the man you pledged to love til death us do part.