Marriage Challenge

Marriage is hard.  There I said it.  Yes I believe it also can be a gift and incredible, but sometimes it is also really hard.  If there is one thing we know to be true about marriage, it’s that it takes intentional work.  Marriage is either spiraling up or spiraling down, but it never just coasts.  We know this because we have gone through seasons where we didn’t put in the work and our marriage suffered as a result.  What did that look like?  Well, sometimes we fell into the trap of keeping score…who had the harder day, who sacrificed more, who was more tired.  I think we all know that nobody wins at that game, but it’s so easy to go there.  Or we have had those weeks of total exhaustion where we have nothing left for each other.  

So what do you do when you’re stuck in a rut and spiraling down?  You have to fight for your marriage…you have to be intentional with your spouse.  Marriage does not come easy, nobody arrives at a great marriage, you have to constantly choose each other.  When we're in a rut we have to carve out time for each other.  We each have to build some margin into our day or weeks so that we have energy to engage each other, to love each other the way the other wants and needs to be loved.  We've learned what it means to fight for each other instead of against each other and sometimes that looks like fighting for time with each other and making it a priority.   

We are far from perfect and still have hard days where it would be easy to fall back into old patterns, but we’ve learned that fighting for our marriage means we have to be honest about our struggles, our dreams, our fears.  We have to be quick to extend grace and admit when we’re wrong, and we’re committed to being each other’s biggest fan.  It takes intentional work, but we have found that the work is always worth it!  

So my challenge to you: what are you doing to be intentional in your marriage?  If you don't know where to start, here are some ideas:

• read a book, devotional, or listen to a podcast together and carve out time to discuss what you're learning
• start to pray for your spouse daily
  
• Todd and I are doing a marriage study on zoom Wednesday nights, join us! (shameless plug)
• plan weekly date nights-if you can't go out right now, do a game night or cook together...if you have little kids you can wait til after bedtime and do a later dinner, or make dessert together 

 Marriage is hard.  It takes intentional work, but we have found that the work is always worth it!