It's Wednesday, the day when we talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you follow up either by commenting or by writing your own post and then linking up!
Yesterday, I wrote a post on how to encourage our kids towards courtship rather than mindless dating.
Today I want to talk to us as married couples: do we still "court"? Do you still try to woo each other?
One thing that my husband and I still do is play. We joke with each other, we laugh with each other. He even chases me sometimes! Play is good for the soul. My girls have grown up hearing us laughing and teasing and pretending to pout so the other person has to make it up to us, and all kinds of silly things. It's fun! It's terrible being serious all the time.
We also try to have date nights occasionally. We don't do it once a week, because that's just not practical with our schedule. But we do take walks together almost every night, and we take ballroom dancing lessons during the winter on Thursday nights (which then becomes our date night, even if it's not year round).
I've always believed that the more fun you can have with your spouse, the less stress you will feel at other points in your life. Your spouse is a great stress-reliever, if you keep the relationship strong, because you know you're not going through life alone.
Finding that time alone, though, can be a challenge for two reasons. First, the kids are underfoot, and there's so much that needs to be done with the kids, and second, money is usually an issue. How can you date when you don't have money for dinner and a movie, let alone a baby-sitter?
Solution? Don't go to dinner and a movie and hire a baby-sitter. Do something else. Here are some ideas for low-cost dating from the blog Many Little Blessings:
Candle lit dinner after the kids are in bed (or while they watch a movie) — our favorite place to do this is our screened in porch
Board games (we love Scrabble, but play other games as well) or Puzzles
One of us sitting at the counter while the other one is cooking or baking (yeah — this doesn’t sound like a date, maybe, but we really enjoy it and it is some great time to talk)
Play video games against each other after the kids are in bed (although this can bring the kids out of their beds to see what in the heck is going on)
IM each other while you’re both in the house with, um, perhaps more risque messages
Teach each other about a favorite craft, hobby, or interest
Give each other massages
Reading aloud to each other (although we usually do this as a family activity nowadays)
I love the candle-lit dinner after kids go to bed. One night, make them their chicken fingers or something easy, and make you something that you both really enjoy, that the kids always go "EEwwwww" at. Cook just for you. And then enjoy it together!
Picnics work well.
I also love anything active. One of my favourite memories of when we were dating was getting into a water fight. I'm not a sports person, but the times that we laugh the most are when we're doing something physical: I'm trying to steal something from him, or I'm trying to catch him. He's just so much stronger and faster, the whole thing becomes such a farce I end up winning because he's laughing so hard.
So play soccer, or frisbee, or catch, or anything!
I love bike rides, too. And if you need a baby-sitter, try trading with a friend. Or catching some moments when they're in bed. Another thing to do is to limit DVD use with your kids. Don't let them watch movies very often. But then every now and then, pull them out so that Mommy & Daddy can have some time together. That way the DVDs are special, and they're more likely to stay engrossed, but they also learn that sometimes you need privacy!
What do you do for a cheap date? What do you do that makes you and your husband laugh together? Let's get some ideas going in the comments, and then I'll publish a new post with a long list of date ideas, using everything you gals have said!
Now, what advice do you have for us today? Do you have great ideas on how to "Date While Married"? Or do you have something else to tell us? Write your own Wifey Wednesday post that links back to here, and then leave the link of THAT POST in the Mcklinky below. Thanks!
I had quite the Easter weekend. First, a group of 15 kids from the Mulli Children's Family in Kenya are in town for two weeks while they prepare for their choir tour in the fall. I'm helping them put together their program, so almost everything else has been on hold.
In the middle of all that, I threw a surprise 40th birthday party for my husband on Saturday night. Seventy people showed up and we had a great game, including throwing a pie in his face (I've always wanted to do that), and a big SQUARE DANCE! That is not as geeky as it sounds, and even the most die-hard "you'll never get me up there dancing" people had a great time.
Then, of course, there were all the Easter services. Exhausting.
So now we begin a new week, and I thought I would post some Easter thoughts I had.
I was focusing on the verse in Luke 24:5, that says,
In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground. But the men said to them, "why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He has risen!".
All weekend I couldn't get that thought out of my head: "why do you look for the living among the dead?".
Don't we do that? Don't we look for something to satisfy our longing among things that never can? Don't we look for fulfillment among things that will never fulfill?
Don't we spend so much time watching television in order to "have fun" or "relax", and then feel this vague uneasiness afterwards, because we've wasted a night and it wasn't edifying? And we didn't spend time talking with our families instead?
Or take sex for a minute. Don't we look for the next sexual high in similar ways to how our culture does--focusing on the body or the next, best sex trick--instead of realizing the potential that making love has for building a deep spiritual bond between a husband and a wife?
We spend our lives looking for something that gives life among things that don't. And I'm not talking about people who don't believe in God. I'm talking about people who do. We go to church, we love God, but how often do we squander our time and energy and even dreams on things that aren't the point of our lives?
He is risen. He is alive. And He can give us power to live a big, amazing life. But that will only happen when we start to realize that He is the point of our lives, not entertainment, or leisure, or fun. It will only happen when we realize that true joy is so much more than fleeting entertainment. Only when we lay down our dreams of material success and focus on being purposeful will we feel that we are moving forward in this life.
Do not look for the living among the dead. Don't base your life in things that don't satisfy. Those are my Easter thoughts, and they have inspired me to spend more time with my kids again, and focus on relationships, rather than jobs and entertainment. What about you?
So I took the test that's been going around the mom blogs! 101 words! Not so bad.
When I was 18 I tried to get a job as a secretary through a temp agency for the summer during university. Most of the temp agencies loved me because I clocked in at about 115 words per minute (I guess age is slowing me down). But one wouldn't hire me because my error rate was too high. They demanded a speed of 60 words per minute with no more than 2% errors. Well, my speed was 115, and my errors took me down to 102 words per minute. But the error rate killed me.
I looked at them like they had horns. "You know," I said, "There is such a thing as a backspace key on these newfangled computer thingies that I'll be using. And your test didn't let me use the backspace key."
No go.
Another temp agency got me a job for $15 an hour that lasted all summer. I called Kelly's, the one who didn't hire me, and told them with a little bit of triumph in my voice.
There, that's my only typing story. Anyone else got one?
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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