When is the honeymoon over?

Today, I'm officially not a newlywed! And as promised, I would like to share some tips on marriage, that I have learned throughout my first year of marriage. Since I haven't been married long, this may not be the last time I talk about marriage, and I may change things as the the years go on, but if you would like to have a great first year of marriage, these are some things that have really helped me, and I hope help you!

Before I start my points, I would like to point out, that to strengthen your relationship with your spouse, you must strengthen your relationship with Christ! I am blessed to have a husband that has made it a priority to study the Bible and pray together daily!

Here is some 'wonderful' advice I was given (and am still getting) from people (mostly from church!) who felt like mine and my husband's constant hand holding, and loving words to each other were going to be short lived.

Just wait until the honeymoon/newlywed stage is over!!

You will hear this over and over again before and even after you get married. Why? I am starting to think that the reason people say this is because they either had too much physical touch before marriage, and therefore didn't really know the person they were marrying, or just got so much into their routine, that they gave up on the 'love and cherish' part of their vows (not saying that this is always the case...just my guess, or observation).
Thankfully, my husband has some great friends, and I have a great Pawpaw, who assured us that marriage was a great and exciting thing. That marriage didn't have to be a chore, or something to drag yourself through. Through talking to them, and reading marriage related articles, it gave me a lot of hope. 
How can you keep the 'fire' going? First by agreeing together to keep it going. After one Sunday morning when several people had told us the 'Just wait...' advice, my husband told me 'I don't ever want to stop opening the door, holding hands, or putting you first (after God, of course). Even when we have children let's put each other before them, so that we can always have a strong relationship'. This really gave me a peace of mind, and I agreed with him, to always put him second (after my relationship with God) and his needs before my own or anyone else.
That is the key...selflessness. It's not natural, or easy but it's the key to a great marriage. If you can put your spouse and their needs above your own (and even your children! I know I haven't had children yet, but it's something I've been studying on and praying about. My convictions now are that, husband comes first, children come second.), and your spouse do the same, what a great relationship you can have!

'Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her' (Ephesians 5:24,25)

Speaking of selflessness, and things that may be hard to do...this is one of them! Christ calls us as women to submit to our husbands, several times (Collosians 3:18, I Peter3:1) and in the feminist culture of today, it's a really hard pill to swallow. Ever since the Garden of Eden, women have wanted to wear the 'pants' in the family. (Gen. 3:6,16) This is not God's design for marriage, however, for he wants us to serve our husbands, and allow them to make the big decisions in our lives, just like we as church members serve Christ and allow him to make our life decisions for us. Although this may sound crazy, if the husbands heed the next verse, it can make submission, an easier thing to do! If the husbands give selfless love to their wives, just as Christ gave selfless love to us, then it makes it easy for the wife to want to submit.
You see marriage is a beautiful balance of respect and love. A husband needs to be respected, and a wife needs love. If you would like to understand this more, I recommend the book Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs.
This can really help with how to address arguments as well. My husband and I haven't really had an out-and-out fight, but the few 'discussions' that we've had, have ended well, because we tried (tried is the key word...) to bathe everything in love and respect (and never go to sleep upset!).


Another thing that really helped me, is to understand that we all love in different ways...thus we each have our own:

Love Language

The book 'The Five Love Languages' by Gary Chapman is really eye opening on how each one of us needs love in different ways. I am a person who loves quality time. Nothing says love to me, like one on one time and conversation with my husband. If you don't have time to read the book, then at least take the quiz, and it might just help you understand why perhaps your husband/wife isn't responding the way you want to your attempts to show love. Or, as a newlywed, it might help you get your marriage off on the right foot, by constantly showing your husband/wife just how much you love them...in their own love language!
http://www.5lovelanguages.com/profile/

I know this post has been long, and I am sure there are many more things I would like to write, but I will stop here, and perhaps post more later. I will leave you with God's definition of love, which is perfect advice for any married couple (or any relationship, for that matter!)

I Corinthians 13 'If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,^[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;^{[b] 6} it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

¹³ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.'

700 page views!!

This blog has over 700 page views!! (according to the blogger dashboard...not completely sure how accurate it is) Thank you so much for reading my blog, and I pray that it has been an inspiration to you, and your walk with God. If you ever have any topics or questions you would like for me to blog about, feel free to comment below!

As I said in the previous blog post, my anniversary is coming up! It's next week, and I will give some marriage tips for newlyweds then, but I wanted to post something this week so that y'all wouldn't think I had disappeared from the blog world. When I started this blog, I wanted it to be a mixture of things I'm learning in my walk with God, and also things I'm learning about housekeeping as a stay-at-home, piano teaching, youth pastor's wife! If you have housekeeping questions, I would love to perhaps to a recipe post, or perhaps a diy house projects post. Just let me know, and I will try to answer with my very little housekeeping experience :)

Again, thank you so much for reading my blog. I will hopefully have another post up before the end of next week.

Are you ready for the next step?

April is here, and I'm just a few weeks shy of my first wedding anniversary! As my husband and I make plans for a 'second honeymoon' I have been thinking about our first year of marriage a lot, and look forward to sharing with you some of the things I've learned about relationships and marriage. This week, however, I would like to sort of work my way to the actual marriage tips by starting with the question...'I've met the one I think I want to marry, but how do I know he/she is the right one?'

How I knew
You know when you are 'in love' when you see him/her as a flawless person you can't stop thinking about every few minutes, but how do you know if this is just infatuation, or really the person God has for you? Even though I can't answer this question for you, I can try to help guide you in making that decision.
My husband and I spent about 18 of the first 22 months of our relationship (this counts from first meeting via Skype, to marriage) thousands of miles away from each other. Believe it or not, I still caught myself thinking about him all the time, even though I didn't see him or even talk to him every day. I do think that it was God's plan for me to be so far apart so that I could step back and think about the serious questions in a clearer light. For me it wasn't too hard. My husband was in the ministry, which was something that I had prayed for, he was in God's word, and had shown himself to be a godly, spiritual man, we had spent literally hours talking about our views on political, and spiritual topics (when all you have is Skype to rely on, you do a lot of talking!) ect. To top it off, God gave me a peace about it, and on my wedding day, I had no doubts that this was the man God had given me.

How you can know
I have seen countless acquaintances on facebook here lately, of girls who are 'in love' but are sleeping with their boyfriends, and claiming it's God's will for them to be together. After a little while they come back with a shambled relationship, because the 'in love' stage is over and reality has settled in, and those boys are not as great as they first looked like. So when making the big decision to take the next step here are some questions you can ask yourself...

Has my boyfriend/girlfriend and I kept each other from being tempted to sin (to have sex, or other physical touching that you have previously agreed was off limits)
Has he/she encouraged me in my spiritual walk/made me want to grow more spiritually
Have we talked about money/debt, children, family, etc.? (remember, the more you discuss this now, the less you will have to later, and will help reduce future arguments) 
For girls:
Have we discussed how he will lead in our relationship (Ephesians 5:22-24) (for guys, have you made it easy for her to trust your leadership?)
Is he someone I can submit to? Remember, we are commanded to submit, even if we don't like the decisions being made (doesn't mean we can't help with the decision making, but the husband makes the final decisions). Unless the husband is making a decision that is completely against the Bible, we should submit to our husbands. So are you ready to do that?

Here are just a few that I can think of right now. If you think of other questions I've missed, feel free to comment below!  Remember that you can have all the time in the world to physically love on each other after marriage. Talking to your future spouse can make marriage a lot smoother, and helps you feel comfortable talking to that person that you will be with for the rest of your life!