Hello again! Jenn, Megan, Lindsey, Jenna, Mandy and I are back this week to discuss how we have overcome hard times in each of our marriages (if you missed our posts from last week, click here).
This guy and I...
...are funny. I asked some of my closest friends to describe our marriage, and this is what they said...
Solid
Even
Supportive
Adventurous
Partnered
Christ-centered
Playful
Committed
Prayerful
Dedicated
Purposeful
Truthful
Compromising
Selfless
Selfless
Comical
In my opinion, it's the hard times that really show who you and what you stand for. Like every marriage, we've had our times of turbulence. The time that stands out the most was the summer of 2007. We were trying to get pregnant and undergoing massive amounts of fertility drugs and procedures, plus working together to build our business.
During this time, we were both waking up at 4:30 in the morning, going to the gym together, coming home and having breakfast together, going to our office together, working together all day long and then coming home from work together late at night. Andrew was also injecting me with large doses of hormones in my stomach four times a day. A lady trying to get pregnant, recovering from a miscarriage, having her stomach poked 4 times a day by her husband with large amounts of extra hormones (because apparently, I needed more!) and then seeing her husband 24/7 is more than a perfect storm...it's a flippin' tornado! To say things were a wee bit tense would be an understatement....
Yes, Andrew was extremely patient and supportive but when you're an emotional wreck receiving extra hormones, it's really easy to get ticked off. And perhaps once or twice (or 682 times), I might have gotten a little irritated irate furious over-whelmed irrational crazy upset at him. It was a tense time...
The good news is that we stuck together, we weathered the storm, we grew so much as individuals but also in our marriage. Not being able to get pregnant was a huge burden we carried but with the help of the Lord, we overcame it...and not just by eventually getting pregnant but by sticking together and being a team.
I am going to be very honest with you. That was not our biggest storm...I have a feeling that our biggest storm still lies ahead. Life is complicated and we live in a fallen world...I do not live in some la-la land where I feel like everything will be cheery and rosy for the rest of our lives. I have no idea where the next storm is coming from...maybe it will be our health? The health of our kids? Our finances? Our relationships with others? But more storms are in my future...they're in everyone's future, so it's what Andrew and I do right now, today, that prepares us for weathering what's ahead.
For us, we are both diligent in staying in God's word and reading our Bibles every day. We both focus on having the closest relationship we can with Christ. If our eyes are both on God, then our marriage will be strong.
We pray together and apart.
We pray for each other and our marriage.
We forgive easily, and we don't hold grudges.
We talk about everything (even if we know it will make the other person upset).
We spend time together every day without the kids. For us, it's watching an episode of Real Housewives and eating a brownie together every night. We laugh, we gasp, we have fun...every night.
We do all of this, so that when the next hard time hits, we're prepared. We're already praying for each other, reading our Bibles, spending time together and forgiving. It would be hard to start doing that during the middle of a hard time, so we practice now...to prepare us for the future.
Next week, we'll talk about how we keep our marriage interesting...and trust me, we keep ours very interesting!
Don't forget to link up with your marriage post today...
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