4 Ways We Find Joy and Love in Marriage

John and I recently celebrated our first anniversary. We are excited to have passed this milestone and cannot wait for many more to come.  This event has caused me to reflect on the last year and on all that it has brought.  Looking back I have realized that through our trials and shortcomings that we still love each other just as much as we did the day of our wedding. I am grateful that I made the choice to marry John, it is one that I will never regret.

We decided to take a little trip in celebration of our anniversary up to the mountains.  When we arrived at our hotel the first night of our trip, the man at the front desk enthusiastically asked us if we had just gotten married.  The conversation went a little like this:

Man: did you guys just get married?!

Me: No, but we are celebrating our first anniversary

Man: you look so happy, like you just got married. You must be doing something right How did you do it? After the first year my wife was about to kill me! How did you do it man? (Talking to John) What’s your secret?

Well, we didn't really have an answer for him, because it's not something we've ever thought about until he asked.  The moment that he saw us, we were genuinely happy.  I don't think you have to be happy every second of every day to say that you have a "happy" or "successful" marriage. Marriage, just like life, is full of trials and heartache.  We have had our fair share of life thrown at us in the last year.  Sometimes, it is OK to be unhappy or to experience other "negative" emotions.  For without the bitter we could not experience the sweet.  However, I think there is a difference between a "happy" marriage and an "unhappy" marriage.  Through our experiences we have come to believe that circumstances do not need to determine the quality of one's marriage.

After the conversation with the man at the front desk, we got thinking.  We wanted to figure out what things we did to make our marriage effective amiss the trials of life.

We came up with 5 things that have helped us make our marriage work.  Don't get me wrong, we aren't perfect.  We are just average people, trying to make our marriage above average.  These are the things that work for us, and we hope they might help you too!

1) Strengthening Our Relationship with God

This is what we have found to be most important to the happiness of our marriage.  We have realized that we need to have personal relationships with him in order to keep our marriage strong.  Our marriage is not simply a two way relationship between each other.  It is like a triangle, with God on top.  When we each grow closer to God, we grow closer to each other.

2) Staying Friends

While we were dating and engaged we were best friends!  We spent every possible moment together, and when we weren't together we were on the phone or texting each other.  We couldn't wait to be married to spend every waking moment with one another.  As we have been married, we have drifted away from this a little bit, however we notice that when we focus on our friendship, our relationship comes along with it.

3) Using All the Love Languages

Apparently there are 5 "love languages".  They are:

Words of Affirmation
Acts of Service
Receiving Gifts
Quality Time
Physical Touch

Everyone supposedly has one dominant love language, which I don't doubt is true, however we have found in our marriage that each of these languages need some focus in a marriage!  At first we each took the test and tried to cater to one another's dominant love language, but overtime realized that for us they all need pretty equal attention!  Everyone is different...but you can usually never go wrong when trying to cater to any of the love languages.

4) Traditions

Traditions are something that every family seems to have, but where do they begin?  They have to begin somewhere!  We are still working on some of our traditions, creating our own and taking some from our immediate families.  Some of the traditions that we have are: going to the Y Ball every year, going on a date once a week, each Sunday we make dinner together, John makes this delicious Mexican breakfast for us on a regular basis, we love to make spaghetti and homemade meatballs...the list goes on!  The point is, it is important to us to start traditions of our own, it brings us closer together now and for years to come.

As I said earlier, these are just the things that work for us, and I don't claim to "know it all" about marriage.  We are not perfect people, and we don't have a perfect marriage.  We experience difficult times, however we are able to find joy and love in our marriage despite the circumstances life gives us.  At the end of the day, we love each other and we love God; and that's what really matters.

Tips For Staying Sane: Confessions of a Perfectionist

I am a perfectionist.  Or rather, a recovering perfectionist. I say recovering because I still have some very perfectionistic tendencies that I have yet to overcome, but I am far less a perfectionist than I was 2 years ago, or even a year ago.  I used to try to be perfect in every which way.  I think I drove myself to insanity.  No one on the outside could tell, because it was all in my head, but it was real.  It caused me severe depression and anxiety, and made me feel like my life was so wrong.  Through some medication and a lot of counseling (with professional counselors, and with God), I have been able to overcome these obstacles.  I enjoy my life very much now, and here are some tips I have gathered for staying sane in this crazy, busy and perfectionist world.

1) Don't do more than you have to.

Ok, so this might sound lazy at first, but hear me out.  So many times I think we try to go above and beyond in everything we do, and it wears us out.  When we are worn out we can't even do the minimum of what we are required.  For example, if you try to be the BEST wife, the BEST employee, the BEST cook, the BEST homemaker, the BEST mother, the BEST runner, the MOST FIT person around, the BEST student, the KINDEST person....you will slowly go insane.  It is important to go above and beyond sometimes, and it is important to work hard, but that doesn't mean being the best all the time, it's just not worth it.

2) Minimize your To Do List

We all have To Do lists. Even if it's just in our heads, it's there.  I used to be a To Do list FANATIC.  I was always looking at, re-arranging, and writing down my To Do list.  I quite literally drove myself crazy, I was obsessive about getting my To Do list done, and, it was never done.  One day I realized that I was doing more harm than good with my To Do list, but I didn't know how to change what I was doing. Then, I did an update on my phone and it deleted my whole To Do list, it was gone, forever. Honestly it was an accident, and I was pretty devastated for about a day.  Then, I realized I was a lot happier without my To Do list (at least my long, extensive, compulsive To Do list).  I still keep a small planner handy, with a VERY short To Do list for each day.  I try to keep it to a minimum, because otherwise I just feel too overwhelmed.  There are some things that just don't need to go on my list. Don't get me wrong I still love to plan out my days and decide which day I will do laundry or go to the gym, etc., but I don't obsess over getting things done.  I'm so glad that my To Do list got erased that one day, it quite literally changed my life!

3) Focus your time on People not Things

I learned this one the hard way, and I've had to re-learn it over and over again.  People are more important than things.  Things are physical objects as well as ideas or roles we have in our lives.  If we put the people in our lives that we love first, things usually fall into place.  Now, nothing's going to be perfect, but in 10 years you will remember spending quality time with your friends and family much more fondly than you will remember wasting your days away studying, or working or cleaning.  These aren't bad things, but if we put "things" before our loved ones, are they really our loved ones?  Is it more important to make sure the kitchen is spic n span, or to spend time with a child who is experiencing difficulty and just needs some love?  In the long run, people will bring us joy and satisfaction, while things will not.  If we put people before the things in our lives, we truly will be much happier.

I really hope this helps someone out there.  I sat down to write a blog article and had nothing in mind.  I started typing and what you see here is what came out.  So, if you're reading this, I hope you take these ideas to heart, and I hope they help to improve your life as they have mine.