In life, I struggle with lots of things, but one thing I know for sure is that I have an amazing marriage. I take pride in my marriage, and I do anything to make it work. Jon and I will be married for 17 years on June 1st, 2019. We are often asked, “How do you have such a great marriage?” or “What works for you all, and what doesn’t?” In the next couple of blogs, I will talk about (with Jon’s input) what makes our marriage work, and how we handle different things.
Here is the list we have come up with. I will take one each month and write on them.
-Centering your marriage around God
-Quick to tell our feelings and quick to forgive
-Never tear each other down in public or in our home
-Always assume the best about each other
-Guardrails
-Shared budget
-Paying attention to the little things: He gives me gas and I drive him nuts
Please hear my heart: what works for us might not work for you. I just post this blog to help, or just to get you thinking about how to better your marriage. Just open your heart, and ask God to speak to you as you read this.
Centering Your Marriage Around God
Jon and I struggled with this when we first got married. We were two separate people with our separate relationships with God before we got married. When we got married, we heard from pastors, and other people who had been married for a while how we needed to read the Bible together, do devotionals together, and pray together. So that is what we did, and let me be real honest… I hated it! It felt fake, unnatural, and I never felt God during those times. This freaked me out because I would think what is wrong with our marriage; are we not meant for each other? What are people going to think if Jon and I don’t do this, and he is a pastor?! As time went on, Jon and I just slowly stopped doing this together, and instead did our own thing. I absolutely hated when people would ask what our prayer life together looked like. I just didn’t know how to answer that. I mean you can’t lie about your prayer life together, but I also didn’t want to say, “Um… we don’t.” So I would just talk my way around that question, but then felt like crap for not being able to actually answer that question.
So what did we do about this? After MANY of years going back and forth, and feeling guilty of not doing this together, we finally found what works for us.
We both have our own prayer life. We both do our own devotions. Here is how we put God first in our marriage. There is not a day that goes by that we don’t say, “I was reading in the Bible today and God spoke this,” or “While I was praying, this is what I felt God saying.” At dinner, we ask the kids and each other a set of questions like, “What is God saying to you? What are you praying for? What do you want prayer for?” Our daily talk is around what God is doing, or what we are praying for. Not only in our marriage, but also with our children. We challenge the kids to pray and listen to God’s voice. Do they always do it? No, but we want to show them how to put God into their daily life.
As promised, a moment with Jon:
Tillie and I like to keep it real and authentic. So we really hate doing things simply because “we’re supposed to”—we like to do things because they work. When we stopped trying to mimic the specific way others did things, and began to focus on sharing what God was saying to us, it was a game changer! Making God the center of your marriage is more about shared priorities than shared activities.
When life gets hard, we come together as a husband and wife, and pray together. The Bible says in Matthew 18:20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them. When we face trials or sickness, we come together and pray. There is nothing more beautiful than having your spouse lay hands on you and pray for you. I fall more in love with Jon when these moments happen. I feel God’s love so strong during these moments. You might be saying, “Then why don’t do this all the time?” We don’t do this every day because we feel that would be forced, or feel fake.
I love to talk with Jon about what God is doing and speaking into his life. I also love when I am praying on something that I haven’t shared with him yet, and he will come to me and say God is speaking this to me… what do you think?
God created marriage; of course, he should be the center of it. When you put God at the center of your marriage, it will be beautiful. Does that mean it will be easy all the time, or alwa
ys be amazing? No, it means he will always be there to help see you through, and THAT is what makes it beautiful and amazing!
Though one may be overpowered,two can defend themselves.A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.Ecciesiantes 4:12