Marriage Tip # 3: What am I?

You spend years developing your __________.

Your __________ determines how you will react to difficult situations.

People will or will not respect you based on your __________.

Good ________ will help your marriage by building trust.

__________ is founded upon the idea of who you are when no one is looking.

___________ is ultimately between you and God.

A lot of things make up great ___________: high morals, dependability, honesty, keeping your word, respect for others and yourself, reverence for God.

Tender hearted love, sacrificial love, and tough love are part of good __________.

Finish what you started, there is no room for quiting if you are working on your __________.

People with strong ___________ continue to do the right thing when the wrong thing may be easier and no one would know either way.

Watch your thoughts, they become your words.  Watch your words, they become your actiones. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your CHARACTER.

Marriage Tip #2: Don't ever give up

Marriage is a journey.  There are going to be times of great joy and happiness but there will probably be times of sorrow and difficulty.  Either way you cannot ever give up on each other and your marriage.  Both parties have to be willing to work on the marriage because marriage will never be a one way street.  Sometimes people do terrible things and trust and respect may go out the window.  But I believe if both people are willing to work together you can overcome any obstacle.  Forgiveness is the key to moving on and going forward.

When you think about it, if you are a Christian you should try to forgive people no matter what they did.  The main reason is because Christ forgives us of our daily trespasses.  We can never be “good enough” no matter how hard we try we will always fall short.  This is why grace is so important.  Grace makes up the gap between where we want to be and where we actually are.  Sometimes this can be a difficult concept and expectations definitely factor in here too.

One thing I always try to do is communicate expectations.  Your spouse is never going to be a mind reader and they can only know your desires if you express them clearly.  Communication is the magic.  I say this all the time.  You have to be in constant communication when things don’t go according to plan; you have to talk things through so you can move forward.  Being angry doesn’t help anyone if you can’t communicate the problem, so it is less likely to happen again.

At the very least it can give the spouse the opportunity to apologize.  Then we come back to forgiveness.  I try to be generous with the forgiveness so when I mess up, he will be more likely to forgive me quickly.  I also just try to make my husband happy, doing things to help him out and being part of activities he enjoys.  He does the same thing for me.

But marriage may not be easy all the time and you really do have to work on it daily.  Be in constant communication because communication is the magic.  There also has to be mutual Love & Respect.  There is a really good book I read that transformed the way I viewed marriage called “Love and Respect” by Dr. Emerson Eggrichs.  If you have not read it, I would definitely recommend it.

Marriage Tip #1 “Be a Team”

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I am going to start a series of blog post on Marriage Tips.  Kyle and I have been married about 2 and a half years and I feel in my heart that we couldn’t be happier.  We have settled into our marriage and I thought I would share some things I think have really helped us get off to the right start.

To kick off the series I wanted to write about something I think is so important in our marriage.  We do everything with a team mentality.  We work together to accomplish our goals.  We help each other.  We are not afraid to roll up our sleeves to help the other person.

For example, we clean the house together.  We split up the things that need to be done and we do them separately to get the whole house done.  We do dishes together, laundry, we make dinner together, we shop together, and we work out together.  You probably realize that I am so lucky to have a husband who helps out around the house, and I realize this too.  I know how rare and special my husband is!!

Of course, there are times when we do things separately and just help the other person out if they are doing something else.  But that is kind of the point, we work together to get things done.  I feel like doing things this way relieves the other person of the entire burden and foster a healthy marriage where both people value the other ones time.

So marriage tip one is help each other out and be a team working together to accomplish your goals.  Helping each other out equals love, selflessly putting the other person ahead of you.

Show Love through your actions: Acts of Service