Day 239: Reading Up on Marriage Again

There are (at least) two things I’ve found that have the potential to really impact our marriage: prayer and education. The first seems obvious to me and will be obvious to anyone who thinks that Christianity is true. Prayer is a major means through which the God of the universe works. He wants us to bring the concerns of our marriage to him in prayer and wants to make changes in our marriage on the basis of those prayers. As such, I want to us to take as much advantage of that means as we can.

The other one seems obvious too: knowing certain things about marriage is a prerequisite to having a good marriage. In light of that, I’ve read up on marriage since 365 Acts of Love began. I read Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage, I’ve listened to sermons on marriage, we’ve been (slowly!) working through the Love and Respect Conference CDs, I’ve kept up with a few marriage blogs, and a few days ago, I read some John Piper articles on marriage. And for my 239th act of love, I read three marriage articles from Focus on the Family, one on commitment, one on protecting one’s marriage from infidelity, and one on fostering spiritual intimacy with one’s spouse.

I understand that possessing propositional knowledge about what makes for a good marriage is not sufficient for having a good marriage, but it certainly seems necessary.

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Day 238: The Search for a New Song

When I posted about our song a few days ago, I decided that I want us to have a new (that is, an additional) song, one that reflects the renewed commitment we have for each other because of 365 Acts of Love. “Out of My League” is cool and it can always be our song, but I think it would be wonderful to have a song that reminds us of this great and challenging year in our lives as well as the changes that it brought to our marriage.

Picking a song is tough, though. For this post, I’ll have to be satisfied with simply throwing out a candidate: “I Will Be Here,” by Steven Curtis Chapman. I know it’s old, but I like it. I already bought it on Amazon. Like “Out of My League,” I won’t tell you that I purchased this song, but will surprise you with it by incorporating it into one of my acts of love.

And the search goes on . . .

 

PS Readers: I’ll totally take suggestions.

Day 237: Tried and True

For this act of love, I stuck with something tried and true: a back massage. If ever I want to make you happy, this is all I have to do. The trouble is, getting myself to do it is the tricky part.