Tag Archives: wife

Celebrating Marriage, Making Memories

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Every year, we celebrate our anniversary by taking a trip away instead of giving each other gifts. Given that we are both “quality timers” in the love language department–with gifts as a low priority–this has worked well for us. We’d rather save our resources toward focused time away with each other.

My husband edited together a video / slideshow of this year’s trip to share the beauty of California. Since we’ll be leaving the state of California soon and Highway 1 is our favorite place to visit on earth thus far, we decided to extend this particular anniversary trip to see more of it before we go.

My encouragement to those who are married is to take is take the time to celebrate milestones, like anniversaries. Take the time to build precious memories together. Never forget to have fun together or remember if you have kids that you are spouses first, parents second. One of the topics we speak about to married couples is making sure you have good memories to look back on so that if you ever hit a rough patch in your marriage, you have good memories to draw on to remind you of how it can get better. It’s kind of like with God, when we go through a dry patch where we wonder where He is, and it “seems” like He’s absent. When we have memories with God to draw back on when He was faithful to us, they can carry our faith through until we sense His presence again–if we let it.

Have you ever seen the picture within a picture idea on Pinterest, where they suggest you take a photo of yourself on each anniversary holding last year’s anniversary photo? By 50 years you’ll have yourself in the image 50x. All four of our photos so far have been from Highway 1. It’ll be an adventure to see what those pictures will be in the future as we leave here. It’s never too late to start one of these. Now, go make some great memories with your spouse.

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Funny Marriage Advice

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How about enjoying some humor today? Naturally, when you solicit marriage advice, you get quite a variety of ideas from novices and veterans alike. Today’s Wisdom Wednesday will focus on some of the funny tidbits we received from others. Hope you enjoy a good laugh:

“Don’t read, or let your husband read, Proverbs 31:10-31.” (CS)

“Fight naked.” (NS and DB and AC, yes three people gave us that one.)

“Don’t eat that one year old cake!”  (CA) (We didn’t! I think it’s still in his sister’s freezer.)

“For the bride: lingerie is your next best friend.” (A)

“Have lots of s*x” – (We got a lot of these notes on note cards)

“Don’t always be right, even though you are.” (VB)

“He’ll put up with our girlie food for a while then declare his need for MEAT.” (SH)

“Earplugs, sleep masks, and tiny reading lights are bliss savers.” (SM)

“The secret is two words: ‘Yes, Ma’am.'” (MP)

“Don’t wear fanny packs.” (LR)

Funny Marriage Advice

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Dream with Your Spouse

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“The first year is to learn each others personalities, desires, and dreams. The second year is to love each other for who they are and to help each other fulfill those desires and dreams.” (CB)

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Dream with your Spouse

Chris & I often talk about our dreams, desires, and hopes. We also often end up in long waiting seasons to see our dreams come true. This was definitely the case before we found each other (as shared in Finally the Bride). Waiting for dreams to come true has continued after marriage. Thankfully, we can “wait” with each other. But we also can help facilitate each others dreams by our support, encouragement, and making room for the other to work toward achieving that dream. Sometimes that can mean time or money invested into the dream itself.  What’s really fun is when our dreams cross each other and we can prepare together. (For example, one of our big dreams is to make a film together, so we’ve been taking a low budget, independent film making crash course together.)

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Speak Life & Blessings Over Your Spouse

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“‘By the fruit of his lips a man is filled with good things, just as surely as the work of his hands rewards him.’ Proverbs! Speak life and blessings over each other all the time, and watch as your life yields fruit because of those words!” (LS)

“Your tongue is either a pump or a nail for your spouse’s self-image. Choose for it to be a pump.” (EB)

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Speak Life and Blessings

Chris is often exhorting us to watch our words and reminding me of the power of words. This can be for good or for bad (speaking positively or negatively over your life and its circumstances). Why not use your words to speak life into your marriage, your work and ministry, and to speak life over your spouse? I’m not just talking about speaking encouragement to them, which is important, too. But purposed prayer over them (whether they are present with you or not), using Scripture, like Proverbs, to speak life and blessings.

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See Your Spouse as a Gift

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“Take care of the gift you have been given.”  (GS)

“Marriage has been a source of many blessings in my life. It fits in beautifully with one of my favorite quotes: ‘Man will fully discover himself only by making a sincere gift of himself.’ One of my fervent prayers is that I can always be a sincere gift to my wife and children. Not that I’m fully there yet, but like all of us, I consider myself a work in progress.” (DR)

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“Take care of the gift.” This was a gift I had asked for, for years, before God “finally” blessed me with a husband. He is a gift. I think sometimes, it can be easy for people to forget this was something they longed for. While we have only been married for almost 2 years, there isn’t a day that goes by I don’t thank God for Chris. He definitely is a wonderful gift. I hope I never make him feel like he isn’t or start to take him for granted. I also love the second piece of advice along the gift lines that encourages us to pray we are a gift to the other person. Chris often tells me I am a treasure, which means the world to me because of a time when I was told I was not a treasure by someone I loved. I pray Chris always sees me as a treasure and that I always give him reasons to think so.

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