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Marriage as a Ministry

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Chad and I walked the sweet couple to the door, and we all chattered over each other as we said our goodbyes and hugged and laughed. It was the end of a marriage counseling session. The four of us had been sitting in our living room, huddled together on couches that had been used as gymnastics equipment by our seven year old daughter earlier that afternoon. We talked about important things, about Jesus things, about the joys and hardships that come with marriage and life, and about how through it all the Lord sustains and He gives grace and He offers truth that runs counter to all the world’s advice.

We shut the door and got our children in bed, and then Chad and I settled down for an evening together, both of us still thinking about the joy that comes with mentoring young couples in their very first days as husband and wife. Still, I was surprised when he turned to me and said, simply, “I never feel more called to ministry than when we’re sitting in our living room with someone on our couch like that.”  Here is a man who stands behind a pulpit and preaches God’s word every Sunday, who leads prayer meetings and ministers in hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral homes. A man who sits across from people who need financial help almost every day, who listens and counsels and carries people’s secrets around with him like Jacob Marley’s ponderous chains. This is a man whose entire life is given for Christ and for serving others. Yet, in this moment he revealed something precious to me: he feels most secure in his calling when we are serving together.

We were newlyweds ourselves when we first figured out that serving side by side is one of the greatest blessings of marriage. We dove directly into a local church where we were loved and mentored and allowed to use our gifts to glorify God. We would talk for hours about the best ways to do church, about who God is and what He might have in store for us, all of this years before He ever called us to take on a full-time ministry position. We were just a young couple with jobs and bills and worries and marriage struggles who happened to love our church and enjoy serving with our church family. We soon realized that this life of shared ministry would be a foundation that our marriage could stand on. It was fun. It was challenging. And it forced us to depend on the Lord. So, through several career changes and moves and births and miscarriages and all of the regular heartaches and hilarities of life, two constants were a reliance on Jesus and a vision for being a couple who served Him together.

Turns out that twenty years later, we still feel most at home in ministry when we’re working side by side. There is a spiritual intimacy that comes with viewing your relationship itself as a vehicle for blessing the church. Through the many phases and stages of life, our shared understanding that we are meant to serve together has kept us from getting too bogged down in that marriage and family self-obsession that is so easy to fall into. We have never served perfectly. We have never perfected marriage or ministry or juggling life in all of its craziness. But one thing I can say with assurance: our marriage has made life so much more interesting and fun and spiritually fulfilling not because we are madly in love (although we are) and not because we have it all together (because we don’t), but because we have simply had a great time serving the Lord together. And over and over and over again, He has blessed the whole imperfect ball of wax.

Someday soon we will have another young couple sitting expectantly on our worn couch, and we may or may not have much wisdom to offer them. But as I sit next to the man who has helped me love the Lord more today than I did on the day we married, I will be able to advise those newlyweds with confidence: view your marriage as a ministry. And just wait and see what God will do.

Check-up Questions for a Marriage Milestone

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When I was younger I tried to imagine what it would be like to be married for twenty years. I blinked, and then it was here. Twenty years of laughing, arguing, being annoyed, being annoying, winking across rooms, learning, growing, and changing, always changing. When milestones approach, we all tend to get a little introspective. We assess what our life has become. We take time to think about how we feel as we look around at the way things have turned out. It’s natural and good to examine our lives, but the trouble is that we tend to do this alone, and we fail to communicate with our spouse about this assessment. Our hearts get full and they get antsy and they get sad and they get worried, but we are generally terrible at expressing all of this to our spouse.

A marriage milestone is the perfect time to sit down together to think and talk through where our marriage has come from, what it is, and what we hope it will become. It’s a way to check in with each other and really try to understand how each of us sees and understands the life that we are living. Too often we go through life just guessing what our spouse is thinking. Too often we assume that no news is good news, that as long as nothing of too much significance is being brought up by our spouse, then everything must be good. But, we don’t want just an okay marriage. As Christians we long for a marriage that breathes life wherever it goes, that spreads encouragement and faith and is a clear picture of the gospel. We long for a relationship that brings both of us closer to Christ and helps us to know and understand His love more.  And we want a marriage that’s fun, that makes life better, not worse. We want to be friends, and we want to keep learning about each other.

With that in mind, here are some questions for couples to use as a starting point for some state-of-the-marriage discussions.

  1. What are two or three of your favorite memories of our life together? Are we still making memories like that?
  2. How has your understanding of God’s purpose for our marriage developed over the years?
  3. What is one thing about our marriage that is life-giving for you? What about for others?
  4. How is our marriage different from your parents’ marriage? How is it the same?
  5. What words would you use to describe this season of our marriage?
  6. How have you seen yourself grow as a Christ-follower, spouse, parent since we married?
  7. How have you seen me grow as a Christ-follower, spouse, parent since we married?
  8. Where do you see the Holy Spirit working in each of us now?
  9. In what ways do you feel we are especially strong as a couple?
  10. What is one area of our marriage that you would like to see grow and develop more?
  11. What is one small thing that I could do each day that would help you or show you love?
  12. Do you feel like you can talk to me about anything? If not, how can I make communication easier?
  13. What are you looking forward to as you consider our future?
  14. How does our life look different than what you were expecting when we married?
  15. How can I encourage you in your battle against sin and in your relationship with Christ?

I pray that these ideas will help you and your spouse evaluate, reminisce, and remember what God has done in your life. Talking to one another is key to building a lasting, fulfilling, God-honoring marriage. It isn’t always easy to communicate, but you will reap so many rewards by asking thoughtful questions and listening for your spouse’s heart in the answers. Allow your next milestone to cause you to bend your heads together, considering as one where you are and where you’re going. May God bless your efforts.

Don’t Stop Discovering Your Spouse

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Chad and I talk a lot. After twenty-four years of being friends, and twenty of those years living under the same roof,  you would think that we know just about everything about each other. You might assume that we’ve heard every story and can easily predict each other’s reactions to different situations. But, that’s not true. We are still discovering things about each other. He still surprises me regularly with an opinion or idea. I still have plenty of childhood stories in my memory that he has never heard. One of the most fun things about talking to your husband or wife is that there is always the chance that you will go a little bit deeper in understanding and knowing each other. There are all kinds of fascinating things going on in your spouse’s mind that you will never uncover unless you communicate.

Some couples have a hard time talking to each other. It’s understandable. It can be awkward and even disappointing or upsetting at times to try to talk with your spouse. Yet, sticking with small talk or, worse, silence, can be extremely damaging to your relationship. Even introverts need and crave human connection, and there is no one you should be seeking to know more than you seek to know your husband or wife.

God has given us marriage as a gift. What are we doing with it? Are we just getting through the days, working side by side but not connecting with each other in intimate ways? Are we neglecting each other in favor of other pursuits, even good things? One cure for a lack of connection is real communication. But, where do we start?

The other day Chad and I were at lunch and he mentioned that it would be fun to have some questions to ask each other. We searched around on the internet there in our booth and found a few websites that had conversation starters. We chose a few questions we found interesting, and it was really fun to see what kind of answers we could come up with. Oddly enough, a few days later I found an email in my inbox from Katie at Personal Creations, and she had created free printable questions for couples that she wanted to share with my readers! Is the internet spying on me? (Probably.)

Regardless, I really like these questions. Katie has even divided them into categories so that you can narrow down the topics that you might want to talk about at any given time. I think this is the first time I’ve ever gotten to offer free printables on my blog, and I’m pumped. Katie even includes some blank cards. I think I will use those to write some questions about spiritual things. You can print these cute cards out or just download them to your phone and pull them up during dinner one night. There are all kinds of ways you can use these questions to discover new things about your spouse and liven up the conversation when you’re driving or just hanging out together.

Just click the button above to download and/or print your questions. Huge thanks to Katie and Personal Creations for reaching out to me with this fun freebie. I would love to hear how you plan to use these questions to keep discovering your spouse. Have fun!

Your Husband’s Porn Problem is Not About You

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She pulled me aside to confess her painful secret: she had accidentally discovered that her husband was looking at porn. She was hurt and confused, and her question dropped into the church hallway air between us like a deflated helium balloon: “Why?”

I could see it in her face. In her posture. In her balled fists and her furrowed brow. She was wondering why she wasn’t enough for her husband. She was trying to wrap her troubled mind around what this discovery means about her marriage, about her husband’s love for her, about her physical appearance and her sex life. She was trying to decide how to think about what she could only describe as a betrayal. And she was desperately searching for someone who could explain it all to her.

The black-hole-like pull of pornography is complicated and yet so simple. Men and women alike are drawn to it for various reasons and keep coming back to it because sin is like that—it always seems so glittering and alluring while it kills us little by little. Like all sin, it hurts. It hurts us and it hurts those closest to us. Marriages everywhere are struggling to stay afloat in the middle of the vast ocean of pornographic material that is so readily available. Women often want to know what they are doing wrong to cause their husbands to keep going back to the source of the shame and the failure.

I looked into her precious, worried face, and I told her one thing that I have learned about pornography through the years: Your husband’s pornography problem is not about you.

In fact, it has very little do to with you. It isn’t about how you dress or how you look naked. It isn’t about how you treat your husband or whether he feels loved by you. It isn’t about which sex positions you’re willing to try. And, even if your husband says it is about any of those things, it isn’t.

Your husband’s pornography problem is about one thing. It’s about how sin is always crouching at our door, waiting to devour us. Pornography is such a quick and easy temptation, and it’s everywhere. Your husband wouldn’t be normal if he didn’t struggle with the desire to look at pornography. He didn’t suddenly develop a taste for lustful thoughts and images when he married you. Chances are, he has struggled for most of his life with this issue, and despite what many think, even a happy marriage isn’t a cure for the desire to look at what can be so easily found on the internet.

You may be the sweetest, most doting wife in the world. You may be attentive in the bedroom. You may be in great shape. You may be none of those things. But, nothing you have said or done and nothing that you are or aren’t has driven your husband to look at pornography.

I’m not saying it doesn’t affect you. It does. Very much so. His private struggle is also yours. His failure in this area hurts you deeply. You can help him in many ways as he deals with this temptation, but ultimately it is his battle to fight, and his failures are not yours to own.

Wives, be prayerful. Be gracious. Be tender. Be tough when you must. But, don’t believe for one second that your husband’s pornography problem is about you. Pornography robs a marriage of lots of things: trust, intimacy, openness. Real choices lead to real consequences. But, don’t forget that this is ultimately a spiritual issue, just like your own struggles with sin. It isn’t about your husband’s level of satisfaction with you.

In most cases, pornography is a source of terrible shame for a Christian husband. You can be a great ally for him in this area. I know it’s difficult. I know it’s heartbreaking. But, the more you recognize that your husband’s feelings about you are not the source of the problem, the easier it will be for you to help him gain victory here.

He Loves Jesus More Than He Loves Me

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Chad is usually late coming home from work. A pastor, he gets caught up in his studying or his sermon-listening or his counseling. I suspect sometimes he gets caught up in watching cat videos on the internet. Because don’t we all.

I vividly remember one day when he was running late, and I was worn out and irritated and frustrated. I called him for the fifth time in an hour, and when he finally answered the phone I came at him. What are you doing?! I huffed. I honestly wondered how he could possibly NOT be thinking of me and my situation. Surely he realized that I was being wildly inconvenienced by his tardiness. Despite the fact that my question sliced through the phone like a self-righteous sword, Chad’s answer came back quietly and with an air of immense patience: I’m just sharing the gospel with someone.

Oh. Carry on, then.

Meekly, I hung up the phone and turned to my rowdy children with a new sense of purpose in this moment. The Holy Spirit was giving me an opportunity to see that I could be a part of the gospel sharing moment that was happening in Chad’s office. And the way I could do that is by allowing Chad to sacrifice some of the time that I wanted from him so that he could give it to someone else who, just like me, desperately needs Christ.

Tonight I write this to you while the second sweet man of the evening sits in our living room across from my husband. Discipleship is happening here tonight. Husbands and fathers are growing closer to Christ, and it blesses my soul to know that here, in our home, the man that I love is giving his life to those who trust him as their shepherd.

One thing that I’ve learned through this nineteen year journey of marriage is that what you really want to look for in a husband is not someone who will cater to your every whim. It isn’t someone who is so afraid of you that he would rather disobey God than incur your wrath.  Search for the man who is always looking for ways to serve Christ and the church. Hold out for a man who is more in tune with the Holy Spirit of God than he is in tune with your moods. He is the one, my sisters, who will live a life that challenges you and helps you to see the world through spiritual eyes.  He is the one who will love you truly and deeply. Who will lay himself down for you and your children. He is the one who will care for you mind, body, and soul. The man who is in love with Jesus loves like Jesus, with grace and patience and gentleness and mercy. He will cradle you as a gift from God, and he will take seriously his responsibility to see you grow in Christ. His love for you is spiritual. It is God-given and truly blessed in every sense. Marry the one who loves Jesus more than he loves you. And then watch how the Lord will change you just because you get the privilege of watching the man you love adore his Savior.

It’s possible he won’t answer his phone when you call. It’s possible that when you finally reach him with your huffiness and your entitled attitude he will softly explain that he is serving the Lord. It’s possible that you will find yourself humbled, your spiritual eyesight adjusted back to 20/20, and once again you will thank our gracious God for a man who loves Jesus even more than he loves you.

5 Ways to Keep Romance Alive in Your Marriage (+a date night giveaway!)

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Update: valancyroses is our winner! Congratulations! Enjoy your date night!

Chad and I have been married for almost 19 years. In that time we have had some beautifully romantic moments that stand out in my mind. But, the truth is that in the long haul, marriage isn’t a continual series of memorable romantic gestures. Real romance isn’t just flowers or jewelry or poems or exotic vacations, even though those things can be nice. To be honest, I have seen some of the greatest examples of real romance at the many funerals that Chad and I have been a part of through our years of ministry. Watching a grieving husband or wife remember the life they shared with their spouse, all of the memories, all of the sacrifices made, all of the struggles they faced together–it will forever ban from your mind the notion that romance is all about date nights. Real romance is a lifetime of dedication and devotion, years of putting the needs of another person ahead of your own, decades of serving one another in humility and love.

So, it’s from that perspective that I present five ways that I believe you can help to keep true romance alive in your marriage.

1.  Make Christ supreme.
So many marriage issues could be solved if we simply knew Jesus more. If we sought Him more and made Him the ultimate priority of our lives. As Dave Harvey says in his excellent book When Sinners Say I Do, “What we believe about God determines the quality of our marriage.” If we want our marriage to become all that we hoped it would be–a lifetime of commitment and self-sacrifice and true, soul-deep love for one another, it has to begin with our own relationship with Christ. There is nothing more romantic than seeking and serving Jesus together because that is real and it’s messy and it ends with two people who see each other’s faults and flaws but choose to love strong anyway. That kind of love is born of Christ and it is Christ-like, and it is the stuff that true romance is made of. It will only happen if we know Him and we are actively working to know Him more

2. Keep a long-term perspective.
Don’t fall into the trap of obsessing over things that ultimately don’t matter. That $50 on the credit card, those dirty clothes on the floor, that irritated response, that thoughtless comment–consider whether any of that will matter at all when you are old and gray and looking back on a long life together. Consider whether that bowl left out on the counter will still be annoying you when you are standing next to his casket one day, after a lifetime of commitment and laughter and tears come flooding over you as you look at his face one last time. We spend so much time thinking about things that have no real significance that we often let them overshadow all of the blessings of our marriage. We let small annoyances turn into huge roadblocks in our relationship. If we dismiss the small stuff instead, we will create an atmosphere of love and acceptance and grace that will allow real romance to flourish.

3. Talk to each other.
I don’t think it’s possible to over-emphasize the importance of communication if you want to keep romance alive in your marriage. You can’t know someone if they don’t share their thoughts, memories, dreams, ideas, fears, joys and sorrows with you. Your spouse should be your closest friend. Couples who don’t talk don’t feel bonded. They don’t feel like a team. They are likely to be living two isolated lives, and there is nothing more sad than married people who have all the potential in the world to feel loved and happy, but who just feel sad and lonely. If you and your spouse are struggling through life keeping all of your burdens and worries and dreams of the future to yourselves, then romance is surely dead in your marriage. Only when we communicate with each other on an intimate level can true romance thrive. A bouquet of flowers means absolutely nothing if the lines of communication are down. The good news is that it’s easy to fix this problem: start talking. Start asking questions.

4.  After Christ, give each other top priority.
Your relationship with your spouse is one of the easiest to neglect. You are more likely to let your spouse down before you will let others in your life down because, well, they’re your spouse and they will understand. But, even if your spouse doesn’t blow up or seem upset with you, a continual pattern of giving him or her low priority in your life will make it impossible to keep the romance alive. It’s easy to let the children or a job replace your spouse on your list of importance. But, you must remember–one day you will retire. One day the children will grow up and leave. You have to constantly nurture your marriage by letting your spouse know that they are your number one concern, after your relationship with Christ.  There is nothing less romantic than being made to feel unimportant and forgotten.

5. Have fun together.
Don’t forget how to laugh. Don’t get so serious and wrapped up in the struggles and the problems that you don’t remember how to have fun together anymore. Keep the inside jokes going. Be okay with laughing at yourself. Life is hilarious. Don’t get hung up on the idea of date nights as the only way to have fun together. Yes, they’re fun, but so is hanging out in your living room after the kids are in bed. In one evening you can communicate, give each other priority, and have a great time just sitting in front of the TV, eating ice cream and talking about whatever comes to mind. Don’t ever underestimate the power of time spent together, whether you’re having a fancy dinner or eating corndogs while you sit on the kitchen counter. Having fun with your spouse isn’t complicated: laugh and be pleasant and remember why you fell in love in the first place.

I’m excited to do a little giveaway to help you make your spouse a priority in the coming weeks! I am giving away a $20 Fandango giftcard to one lucky reader so that you can go enjoy a movie with your spouse! All you have to do to enter is to leave a comment telling me one thing you appreciate about your husband or wife. So easy!

Chad and I decided years ago that we wouldn’t go to any more R rated movies or any PG-13 movies that we haven’t check out on a family movie review site. It’s so difficult to find movies that are rated PG, so we rarely go to the movies. But, there’s a movie coming out next weekend I wanted to make you aware of–it’s a romance that’s rated PG!

It’s called Forever My Girl. Here’s a brief synopsis of the movie:

Forever My Girl tells the story of music super-star Liam Page (Alex Roe) who left his bride, Josie (Jessica Rothe), at the altar choosing fame and fortune instead. However, Liam never got over Josie, his one true love, nor did he ever forget his Southern roots in the small community where he was born and raised. When he unexpectedly returns to his hometown for the funeral of his high school best friend, Liam is suddenly faced with the consequences of all that he left behind.  Forever My Girl is an uplifting romantic film about second chances.

The movie releases on January 19th. It’s so refreshing to see some film companies making movies for those of us who want to avoid nudity and bad language. I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t necessarily recommend it yet, but it’s definitely worth looking into if you are looking for a fun night out with your spouse.

I hope some of the tips I mentioned here today are helpful. Remember that romance isn’t about grand gestures. It’s about all of the small ways to love each other.

 

I received compensation for mentioning Forever My Girl in this blog post. All of the marriage tips are 100% from my heart. The giveaway is sponsored by Chad and me, just because we want to do something fun for my amazing readers! I’ll announce a winner on Friday, January 19th!

Sex Should be Spiritual

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God designed sex within marriage to be a sacred, pleasurable, and spiritual act. We don’t often stop and think about how amazing it really is that God invented sex and gave it such potential to build a physical and spiritual union between two people in the safety and devotion of a Christian marriage. Sex is an amazing gift, a chance to be bonded in body, mind and spirit. One flesh. Yet everywhere I turn Christian people seem to be struggling with sex.

It seems that we have taken what should be a true blessing in our marriages and have turned it into a chore. Women are constantly joking about trying to get out of having sex with their husbands. Husbands are constantly joking about how they don’t get enough sex. And, somewhere in the middle of all of the casual talk about it, are two people, naked and vulnerable in the quiet of their own bedroom, struggling to figure out how to connect spiritually while they make love.

We live in a world that is unbelievably sexual. Every commercial, television show, book, and magazine is putting sexual images and ideas into our minds every day. Porn culture has warped our idea of what sex is. It isn’t a union of two bodies and souls, but a chance to get what we want. Slowly the notion has crept into our minds that we need satisfaction by whatever means necessary, even in Christian marriage. So, we come to the sacred place where we should be experiencing a spiritual union with our spouse, and we bring along years’ worth of images and fantasies that have nothing to do with them. And, instead of being completely present in this beautiful moment, instead of wholly giving ourselves to our spouse, we retreat and call up these images, and the spiritual union is weakened at best, and completely severed at worst.

No wonder Christian marriages are having sex problems.

Pornography is a huge part of the problem. But, maybe you don’t watch porn. You have seen plenty of movies, read plenty of books, created plenty of fantasies in your mind that don’t involve your spouse. The truth is that unless we are diligent about it, we will all allow our minds to wander to scenes that we have viewed or imagined, even when we are in the middle of trying to make love to our spouse. We may not even realize what we’re doing, inviting other people into this holy moment. Letting outside ideas and images crowd in on the beautiful act of giving ourselves to one another. How can we expect to achieve a soul-to-soul union with our husband or wife when we are escaping to some love scene or pornographic image? Before long we forget how to really be present in this divine moment, this spiritual experience of loving the person right in front of us, in the ways that only we can. We have to keep ourselves anchored to each other during sex, and the only way to do that is to banish outside images from our minds. Not only that, but we have to be careful to keep from bringing brand new images into our minds, by guarding what we see and hear and read.

I know many of you are thinking that this is not a big deal, or that it is impossible to have sex without calling up images and ideas that have aroused you in the past. But, if it were an impossibility, why would Paul advise us to take every thought captive to obey Christ? (2 Corinthians 10:5) If it is no big deal, then why did he tell us to think about what is noble, right, pure, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy? (Philippians 4:8) Why would Jesus tell us that anyone who looks at a woman (or man) to lust after her (or him) has already committed adultery in their heart? (Matthew 5:28)

The truth is that when we allow images of other people into our minds when we are having sex with our spouse, we are sinning, and our sex life will never achieve the spiritual depth and emotional closeness that God designed it for. There is a better way to have sex in Christian marriage. And, it isn’t just okay sex. It is life-giving, soul-stirring, and it connects you to your spouse in ways you didn’t even realize were possible. Kick everyone else out of your head. This moment is for the two of you alone, body to body, soul to soul. Anything else will lead to a lifetime of sexual emptiness, physical connection with no spiritual bond. And, despite what this world tells you, that will never be truly satisfying.

I Just Can’t Stop

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I have spilled a lot of ink through the years trying to find all the right words to describe what it’s like to know true love. In the past six years I’ve written roughly 40 blog posts devoted to Chad and our marriage and our great love for each other. Sometimes I wonder if there’s anything left to say, but still I keep going. The words and ideas come out of the genuine wonder that I still feel after all of this time.

Today is our eighteenth wedding anniversary.  I woke up thinking about our first night together in that little bed and breakfast in Granbury, Texas. I remember that I hardly slept all night–I wasn’t used to having this other person in my bed. We both woke up throughout the night, surprised I think, to remember that we were now responsible for each other.

I was embarrassed to even flush the toilet that first night.

But, this morning, we woke up in our familiar way, eighteen years into this thing.  We have plowed through, tripped over, and prayed that God would tear down various barriers between us through the years. And, this morning, after we had only recently seen another fall, I thanked God that He keeps proving to us that it is possible to continue growing closer and closer to each other, even though we’ve been sharing every day of life for almost two decades.

This marriage is a miracle.

Our love isn’t perfect. We make plenty of mistakes and we get selfish and we get unreasonable. We say untrue things and think untrue things, and we are scared to bring up what needs to be said. We get irritated and rude. We roll our eyes.

But, of all the things that Jesus made in this world, of all the pleasures and kindnesses that He was gracious enough to provide, I don’t know if there are enough words to say thank you for this love of mine. For this marriage that has taught me so much about His goodness. For this man who has led me to the cross over and over again. If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you’re probably tired of hearing it. But, I just can’t stop being grateful.

I hope I never do.

Happy 18th wedding anniversary, Chad.

If You’re Looking for Romance, It’s Probably Right in Front of You

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A few days ago, we discussed romance on the podcast. A friend of ours posed the question, “Melissa, what is the most romantic thing Chad has done in the past year?” I sat there in silence, desperately trying to think of one huge romantic gesture that I could point to. I tried to remember if he had sent me flowers or had written me a song. I tried to recall some way that he had swept me off of my feet during the past year, and I couldn’t think of a single example. We moved on and finished the podcast, but for several hours afterward I was still troubled by the fact that I couldn’t think of any big thing Chad had done to romance me this year. Because I knew that I FEEL romanced. But, what exactly is it that makes me feel that way, even without a major romantic milestone to look back on?

And, then it hit me. What has romanced me this year isn’t flowers or nights out or even the beautiful diamond ring that Chad splurged on at Christmas (although I am never one to discourage or turn down diamonds). What has made me feel cared for this year is something that goes much deeper than gifts. Unfortunately, we women are so easily convinced that our husbands aren’t doing enough. We compare them to other men or to fictional characters, and we completely discount the ways that they make us feel on a daily basis. The truth is that while I was searching for some grand romantic gesture, I realized that one reason that I’m truly happy and feel loved and adored by my husband is that I decided years ago to try not to miss what’s right in front of me every day.

Like the way that he reaches over and grabs my hand when he’s driving. Or the way that he texts me What are you doonin? because that’s how Emerald used to say “doing.” The way that he saves the last of the whip cream for me. Or the way he picks up my favorite drink when he’s at the grocery store. The way he holds me close at night and makes me laugh even though I’m half asleep. The way he always asks if I’m getting sick when I clear my throat. The way he tells me that things aren’t as fun when I’m not there. Or the way he overlooks it when I snap at him for no reason.

Those are a few of the little things that actually end up being big things in the end.

And that doesn’t even include all of the other ways that he loves me, like working hard for our family, pointing me to Christ every day, adoring our kids, trying to keep his mind and heart pure, spurring me on to follow my dreams, helping me see my own gifts from God.

Oh, dear married friends, what if we quit letting movies and the internet convince us that we need a rose petal-filled bubble bath or a weekend in Europe or a candle-lit dinner in some fancy restaurant? We don’t need those things to be happy in marriage. We just need to be kind to each other. We need to be devoted to each other’s happiness. We need to do those little things that speak to our spouse, but even more importantly, we need to ACCEPT the little things as the most romantic offerings of all.

Someday when I’m sitting in a rocking chair looking back over our life together, it won’t be the big trips or the diamond rings that I remember most. It’ll be all the little things. The small gestures that he makes every day to communicate how much he loves me. If you’re searching for romance in your marriage, chances are you’re ignoring the most romantic things about your life. Stop and think about it, and appreciate all of the little ways that you are being romanced every day. I promise it’ll make marriage more fun and meaningful if you do. Be grateful for what you have and stop pining for a version of marriage that Hollywood dreamed up. Most of the people who wrote that stuff are divorced. Just saying.

Romance is real. And, it’s small. And, it’s glorious. Don’t miss it.

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