Here are some points that help us to ‘create time together’.1: Have an in-house/at home date once a week, or at least a fortnight, together, with the children settled in their rooms.
(We try to have a family date out once a week – go somewhere for a coffee, where the children can play or take something for them to do there. You can still hold hands).
2: Grab the moments to connect – driving in the car, phone calls during the day, loving emails; tactile contact, the list is endless. Include the younger children, don’t try to push them slightly to the side. Snuggle up together on the couch during reading time as a family, play silly/fun games all together. We have family date night at home once a week as well (so important).
3: Always be reading/listening to something that encourages and is strengthening your marriage and/or yourself as a wife and godly woman.
4: PRAY together every day (and if you’re apart in location maintain that prayer life for each other). Pray by yourself, nuture your relationship with God and the sweetness that comes from these times flows into your relationships.
5: Talk with kindness and always TRY to be respectful to one another. (Practicing this makes the small moments together that much sweeter).
6: Be diligent/regular/spontaneous with your physical relationship.
7: Laugh together.
8: Communicate, communicate, communicate.
(Even if you have to get up earlier/stay up later to achieve this. Our children need to be in their rooms, doing something quietly before a set time most nights – not necessarily in bed asleep, but either reading or listening to a story tape).
9. If you end up in ministry as a couple, you have to be dedicated to ensure that others do not continually rob you of time together, often with their very real needs.
You, and they, must remember that God is their help and saviour not you, and while we are blessed to assist and support one another, care must be taken to ensure that we do not allow others to make us their mainstay, their source of all comfort, knowledge and an instantly accessible listening ear, in life.
Again that is another detailed and complex topic, but for now in regards to special family date nights ... on date nights let the answer phone take all your calls.
We regularly tell others, "No, we can not do that, that night is our family night".
Very occassionally a true, very real, emergency needs to take presidence.
For dates out, we find that including the children works just as well, we want them to see a role model of a ‘mum & dad’ who appreciate each others company, that they can improve on when their time comes ;-)
Don’t resent the roles in life you have been gifted with, embrace them.
The mantile of message led motherhood – a homeschooling mum, at that, can get heavy when we lose the focus of why we are doing this. When you lose your vision and purpose, bitterness/envy/strife can creep in and then those attitudes seem to give ‘birth’ in every corner of our life.
If you are constantly wanting to ‘escape’ from home/husband/children and do things ‘for myself’, you need to stop and look at the issues and attitudes that are driving you to do that.
Keeping yourself refreshed is important, and for me that is maintaining my spiritual well being first. Then my mental and physical well being. (Again, that is another ‘extra’ topic).
Oh, yes and I should add….. we have been married for more than 20 years and God has surely blessed us with a ‘good’ marriage that we continually, prayerfully, work at, using the ‘hard trials’ that life gifts each of us with to draw closer together as a couple – with God as our guide. Yes, a blessed marriage does require effort but the benefits are enormous.
May God help you to find the balance that works for you as a couple.
© Mrs. D.R. Gilchrist
