Day 360: Weekly Article: Humor in Marriage

I planned on taking the whole family to see Circus Vargas on Saturday, 9/22, for my 360^th act of love because groupon was selling cheap tickets. I waited a few hours to buy the tickets because I was busy. By the time I tried to get the tickets, they were sold out. Everyone was bummed.

Instead of taking everyone to the circus, I read this article from Focus on the Family called “Humor in Marriage” (that certainly made up for missing the circus). The central theme is that laughter does a marriage well. I’ve certainly found that to be true. We both enjoy laughing with and even at each other (though if anyone takes things too far, it’s me). And sometimes a tense situation is dispelled when one of us cracks a joke.

One thing I took away from the article was the authors’ advice to not take oneself very seriously. I get so focused on work and achievement that I often forget to have fun or to experience the little pleasures in life. But you always remind me to take time out for that. In college, I studied and did nothing else. When I met you, however, you broke me out of my shell and got me to go out every once in a while. Going out with you (and friends) became such a regular occurrence that it became a habit for me to take a break from my work to have fun. I like how you balance me out.

Another thing that struck me was the observation that different people find different things funny. What’s funny to me (Duck Soup) isn’t always funny to you. And what’s funny to you (What to Expect When You’re Expecting) isn’t always ever funny to me. But, the article said that couples can learn the humor of the other person and learn to enjoy that kind of humor.

I’ll finish with a quote by Henry Ward Beecher that was included in the article: “A marriage without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs — jolted by every pebble in the road.”

Day 356: Weekly Article: Money Matters

I read this article, for my 356th act of love, on how to get along with your spouse when dealing with/discussing money matters. Dave Ramsey has been a favorite money expert of mine for a while. I’m one of the nerds that he talks about in the article: those who enjoy making budgets and have a hard time budging from them once they’re set. You, on the other had, are a free spirit: one who hates budgets and wants to be free with her money rather than put every dollar into its own budget category. Naturally, then, there is some tension between us when we go over money issues.

Ramsey had some good stuff to say, though, about being willing to compromise (which money nerds have a hard time willing) and about making a budget that we both can agree upon and that fits our income and needs. That’s so easy to write and incredibly hard to do. Even I have grown tired lately of sticking to a budget and have ignored financial matters somewhat in an effort to relieve my stress. But, long term, I think we’re on track, even though the road is long and steep! I think in 50 years we’ll be able to say (assuming we continue on our current path) that we did well with our money, even if there were bumps and setbacks (due to our mistakes) along the way.

 

Day 350: Weekly Article: The Death of Marriage

Cameron Diaz thinks that marriage is a dying institution. At least, that’s what this article on marriage says. In the article, Al Mohler responds to psychiatrist Keith Ablow’s thoughts on marriage, thoughts which reflect Diaz’s perspective. I thought the article was good and that Dr. Mohler was on point in thinking that marriage is crucial for human happiness and the organization of society.

I really don’t have much to say about the article. But I can say that I am glad to be in a life-long commitment with you and I’m thankful for the institution of marriage.

Day 341: Weekly Article: Driscoll on Leadership

For my 341st act of love, I read this article by Mark Driscoll on how men can better lead their families. Much of the advice he gave had to do with making sure men read the Bible on their own and with their families, and that they pray with and for their families. Through 365, I’ve definitely made great gains in these areas. Over time, I’m sure this will have a huge impact on the health of our family.

Another aspect of his advice had to do with physical touch. I’m glad to say that I hug and kiss each of our kids each day when I put them to bed and often hold them while sitting on the couch either reading to or talking with them. I’m also glad to say that you and I often snuggle together on the couch after the girls are in bed.

The other day, our pastor said that his wife is his best friend. He said that sometimes, they’ll sit at the dinner table and talk for a couple of hours after they’re done eating, not because they’ve scheduled that time, but because they can’t help but talk with and enjoy each other. I think that we lack in this area. Though I think we spend a lot of time together, we don’t often talk to each other just to talk or because we’re really enjoying each other. I don’t think we should be too hard on ourselves, though, since much of our energy is spent making sure our kids our happy and healthy. Still, I think we should make time for talking.

Day 335: Weekly Article: Friendship in Marriage

For this act of love, I read this article from Focus on the Family on friendship in marriage. How important for a marriage is friendship and how important for a friendship is spending time together. Through 365 Acts of Love, we’ve developed the habit of spending our evenings together. Whether we’re watching something or reading or talking or cleaning, we’re intentional about being together and enjoying each other. I’m sure that this habit will pay great dividends in the years to come. It already has. Like C. S. Lewis said, “It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up – painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, and fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction.”

The article warned against not nourishing and nurturing your friendship with your spouse. When people let the busyness of their lives get in the way of their relationship with their spouse, their friendship with their spouse can wane and the relationship becomes more like a business partnership. For us, I remember thinking of us as roommates. It’s in a situation like that that infidelity is apt to occur.

I’m glad that I’ve seen the importance of maintaining our friendship. It’s been beneficial for our family and relationship and it’s been a lot of fun.

Day 310: Weekly Article

For this week, I reread a chapter from Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage called “Loving the Stranger.” Keller talked about things a person can do to love his/her spouse even as the initial passion of their relationship fades and his/her spouse changes over time. Though he had much more to say, he claims (and I agree) that love needs to be sustained by a deliberate choice to love.

My realization of the importance for our marriage of making the daily choice to love you lead to the formation of this blog and helped to sustain it. I don’t know that I could’ve made it this far in this project without that realization.

Day 308: Weekly Prayer: Marriage

Chapter 6 of The Power of a Praying Husband concerned praying for and fostering a good marriage. Omartian talked about the importance of love, fidelity, respect, quality time, and communication for a marriage. It was encouraging to read this chapter, because I’ve grown and placed more importance in each of these areas over the course of the last year. I prayed that God would continue to grow me in each of these areas and that he would help us build a great marriage.

Here’s something related. At the beginning of 365 Acts of Love, we had an informal counseling session with a couple in our church in order to talk through some issues in our marriage. During that session, I mentioned that our marriage was about average, thinking that the other couple would be okay with that. They weren’t. They encouraged me to strive for an excellent marriage, one that would serve as an example to many.

That really hit me. Why would I think that having an average marriage is acceptable? I think it’s because I knew that a great marriage takes work and I wanted to focus my energies on other things that I considered more gratifying, like work and exercise. Now that I’ve focused on building an excellent marriage, an excellent relationship with you, pleasing you brings me gratification (though I still really enjoy exercise and my job).

Day 296: Sex

I don’t think I ever committed in this blog to doing something on a weekly basis to educate myself about marriage. Still, I’ve been reading up on marriage every week for a while now. I think I’m committed to doing so until the blog’s done. So then, one act of week will be prayer for our marriage and one act of week will be educating myself on marriage.

A while back I wrote a post claiming that prayer and the gaining of truth about the nature of marriage are necessary for a successful marriage. Such is my reason for making these commitments.

Anyway, let’s talk about sex. For my 296th act of love, I read the chapter on sex and marriage from Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage. What an excellent chapter! Keller claimed that it’s a wife’s duty to have sex with her husband whenever he desires it. I’m kidding, I’m kidding! Actually, he claimed that even sex is an act of service and not primarily about pleasing oneself. That is, sex should be used to please one’s spouse as an act of love for one’s spouse, not (primarily) to gratify one’s own desires (I say “primarily” because being personally gratified by sex is a good thing, not bad). I really struggle with this. When it comes to sex, I am very selfish and typically think only about what I can get out of it. But Keller says that

sex is perhaps the most powerful God-created way to help you give your entire self to another human being. Sex is God’s appointed way for two people to reciprocally say to one another “I belong completely, permanently, and exclusively to you.” You must not use sex to say anything less.

I think my emphasis for 365 Acts of Love has been to change from being a person who is self-focused to being a person who is others-focused. This others-focus needs to permeate all aspects of my life, including my sex life (though that life should only be you-focused!).

 

 

Day 292: Marriage Seminar

For act 292, we attended a marriage seminar at our church centered around Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage. How is this an act of love by me? Well, I took the initiative to sign us up, put it on our calendar, and find a babysitter.

The seminar was good. We first listened to our pastors talk about the book, then broke out into small groups for discussion, the latter of which was the most helpful. We talked about our strengths and weaknesses, communication and fighting, the purpose of marriage, the importance of romance for marriage, etc. Two of the couples had been married for over 30 years, so they offered good advice on each of these areas.

When they asked us questions about romance in our relationship, it was fun to tell them that we make a good effort to foster that. We told them about some of the dinner dates we’ve had in our home and everyone thought such dates were a great idea.

But, not everything we said about our relationship was rosy. We told them about some of our struggles as a couple, which wasn’t very fun to discuss.

I’m looking forward to the next and final seminar at our church based on Keller’s book. I know we can benefit greatly from hearing other couples share their advice and even their struggles.

My Second Guest Post

Here‘s a second guest post I wrote for the marriage and family website called Power of the Home. You can find the first post here.

Through the course of my project to commit an act of love for my wife every day for a year, I’ve learned much about my marriage, my wife, and about life in general. (I still have a lot to learn.) For starters, I learned that taking my wife to Chuck E. Cheese for Mother’s Day is not a hot idea, nor is climbing a tree filled with poison oak. But here are a handful of my more substantive lessons:

1) My marriage is not about me. It’s not about my wife, either. The primary purpose of my marriage and my blog is to glorify God.

At one point during 365 Acts of Love, I stopped focusing on my relationship with God in order to focus on the blog. I knew that if I kept that up, it would’ve undermined one of my purposes for the blog, that is, to better my marriage. How do I figure that? Well, anything that is not built for God and his glory—whether a business, a life, a marriage, or a blog—is built in vain. And nothing built in vain is successful. Even a seemingly good marriage is a failure if it’s not built on bringing glory to the only one worthy of receiving glory.

So, early on in 365 Acts of Love, I committed to doing my project with the aim of glorifying God by loving my wife in a way that pleases him.

2) Loving my wife best requires putting my relationship with God before my marriage. When I put God first, when my soul is anchored in him and his faithfulness, I won’t be shaken by the ups and downs of life and I can focus on loving my wife through it. Additionally, I’ll be able to love my wife when she seems unlovable (though that doesn’t happen often).

3) I can’t make my marriage successful on my own, but need God’s grace for that. This is the case because nothing good that I have or do comes from me. It’s all from God.

This realization has driven me to prayer over and over in the past year since prayer is a means by which God grants grace. I’m learning to daily and persistently plead with God that he would give me the grace I need to live with my wife in a way that pleases him.

4) Putting my wife’s needs and desires above my own is one of the best ways for me to express and increase my love for her. Love is often portrayed as something glamorous and exciting. But typically it’s unglamorous and pedestrian. It involves everyday, nitty-gritty stuff like laundry and dirty dishes and screaming kids, not just flowers and chocolates and surprise dates. It involves giving her the comfortable side of the bed, carrying stuff into the house for her, letting her pick what to watch on TV, pumping gas for her because she hates to do it, giving her the last of the chocolate, running errands for her, cleaning the bathroom when it’s her turn, etc. Though it’s fun to do the romantic stuff, most of the loving that goes on in a marriage involves the everyday stuff. And in fact, my wife just might appreciate the latter as much as (more than?) the former.

Additionally, self-sacrificial love is tough. It’s a battle, something you fight for, not something you fall in to. Consider what Christ endured to love the world:

[Christ] . . . being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God

something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross! (Phil. 2)

That’s pretty serious love, but God calls husbands to love their wives in the same way—by giving up their interests for those of their spouses. I want to apply this in my own marriage. As the apostle Paul says in the context of the above passage, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

5) With all this giving of myself that I’m supposed to do, what’s in my marriage for me? Well, for one, if my wife takes Paul’s advice above (which she usually does), there’s a whole lot in it for me. In fact, when we both consistently live out the scriptural commands for relationships, our marriage is pretty great.

But what if my wife doesn’t put my needs and desires above her own? Well, I’ll still get a lot out of our marriage because I’ll find much joy in serving her if I sincerely and consistently devote myself to it. At first, it can be painful and annoying, but with practice, it becomes more natural and carries great satisfaction with it. More importantly, though, I’ll be doing what God requires of me even if I don’t get anything out of it.

6) Consistent loving acts, not romantic feelings, keep a marriage together for the long term. Consider these words from Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage regarding the relationship between acts and feelings of love:

Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. And of course that can be true. But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love. Love between two people must not, in the end, be identified simply with emotion or merely with dutiful action. Married love is a symbiotic, complex mixture of both. Having said this, it is important to observe that of the two—emotion and action—it is the latter that we have the most control over. It is the action of love that we can promise to maintain every day (103).

7) I’ve relearned how fun marriage can be when I make it a priority. Through this year, my wife and I have gotten a lot more lighthearted with each other and the little things that used to annoy us about each other don’t do so as easily. This relates to the joy that I talked about above.

8) Some of the smallest things can make my wife very happy. Little acts, done consistently, are very meaningful and important for our marriage, even though my wife does enjoy my grandiose, romantic gestures. For one of my acts of love, I spent three hours at a coffee shop memorizing a soliloquy from Romeo and Juliet. I then came home and performed it for my wife. I thought she would be very impressed. Instead, she said, “I’m glad you did that for me, but why did you spend three hours at a coffee shop memorizing that when you could’ve just hung out with me?”

9) If I give my relationship with my wife priority over my relationship with my kids, I’ll do the whole family a favor. By putting her first, I’m making sure that our relationship is solid. This shows our kids what a loving and committed relationship looks like and they’ll likely copy our example when they get older. In addition, I’m giving my kids a stable family life, making them feel safe and secure.

10) It’s a lot easier to serve people outside our home if our marriage is good. If we’re constantly fighting or trying to work things out, we won’t have as much energy to love and serve others. But if things are going well at home, we’ll likely be united as we minister outside our home.

11) Through 365 Acts of Love, I’ve learned a little more about the value of determination, perseverance, and commitment. This project has been very difficult and has consumed so much of my time and energy. Every day, I have to plan, implement, and write about an act of love as well as keep up with school, work, family, and church. At times, I’ve simply wanted to escape or quit or fast forward to the end of the project or anything to get out of continuing it. But, I’m seeing it through one day at a time and growing because of it. At the end of this year, I’ll be glad I persevered.