The in between...learning to appreciate the quiet day to day journey...not rushing into the next exciting thing:

(David) It’s so easy to get excited about the possibilities that the future holds and forget about the things we need to be doing now to get there. Why is this? Because it is not exciting. It’s fun to get married and begin a new life together. Its exciting to start a new job, buy a new car, move into a new apartment or your first home! But it isn’t exciting to sit through premarital coaching, to update your resume, fill out 30 job applications, save money for a down payment, or document your last five years of financial history in order to secure a loan! But with-out doing these things first, we will never get to the exciting stuff later.

(Laurel) After I graduated High School I remember the feelings of joy from finishing/closing a chapter of my life. I was a grown up. Boy did that give me a rush. I began to think about the next exciting thing I would do; college, travel the globe as a peace corp volunteer, rock off to a new city to become an artist (mind you I was not what you would call talented) ...give me the next thing I’m ready. College began in September for me and I was unable to focus on my studies because my mind was so engaged in the next adventure I was going to take that I did poorly in my first and only semester at that particular school. This should have been my first warning signal...***BEEP BEEP BEEP*** Living in my future was ruining my present. Now, before I get too far into my revelation here I would like to tell you that dreaming for our future is using our creative faith muscle that God wants us to exercise. But we can not forget that the day to day consistencies are what take us into those dreams. Dream about those trips to Europe that you will take with your spouse; just be sure you are putting money in a savings account for them instead of investing in the latest shoe sale at Nordstrom.

As young marrieds, the possibilities are endless and the dreaming never ceases. In order to achieve them you must put in long hours and hard work. Hard work for example may be laying down ‘your way of getting from A to B is the best way’ and WORK out getting there together. Because the hand in hand PARTNERSHIP along the way is what brings true joy and contentment to those dreams realized.

Ecclesiastes 7:8 The end of a matter is better than its beginning,

and patience is better than pride.

Be Sharpen-able

Proverbs 27:17
As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Keeping your marriage fresh is like keeping a kitchen knife sharp. If you don't sharpen it, it will get dull. However, if you over sharpen or sharpen to forcefully, you will wear your partner down so much that he/ she will no longer take an edge and will be resistant to sharpening. It is best to learn how to consistently and gently hone one another so that you will both always be at your best.

So, why are we so resistant to being sharpened? Because it hurts! Especially before we condition our selves to take correction and re-direction from our spouse. Our pride naturally resists it. I know this personally, because I wanted to look good to Laurel. I saw it as a sign of weakness to take correction from her because I always wanted to be the hero with the answer. I didn't understand that I could actually open myself up to her and that doing so did not make me look weak to her. When, in fact, it made me all the more attractive to her because I showed her that I trusted and respected her by allowing her to speak into my world. I had a distorted “Hollywood” view of what a relationship was supposed to look like and thought that I had to have all the answers all the time in order to impress her, when nothing could have been farther from the truth.

I was born (this is Laurel:) with a need/love of order and beauty. On my Saturdays before we had kids you would find me skimming through the home magazines at Barnes and Noble and making notes about what I was going to do when I arrived home. I loved the pretty pictures of the perfectly organized pantry’s and the beautifully decorated living rooms and thought that if my home could be transformed to look like that I would look like the perfect home-maker. So off I went! I bought every Tupperware product known to man and shelf liners and set out to have a pantry that rivalled one featured in a magazine. And I got pretty close, if I do say so myself! Except for one tiny inconvenience; David did not appreciate that I had created a system of order in the pantry that needed to be adhered to or our pantry would look as ordinary as everyone else’s pantry and I definitely did not want that.

Unfortunately, I tried organizing David as well. I cut and nipped with my words trying to ‘shape’ him into what I thought he should look like and act like in order to be acceptable in certain circles and succeed in business. I sharpened until I was left with a small piece of iron that was so nicked up that it could not cut anything straight and clean anymore.

However, God is so gentle with us always. I can remember when I heard from Him one Sunday in worship “Laurel, I’ve created David to be all of the things you desire him to be. Begin to speak the great things that he is and not what he is not.” WOW. Definitely not what I deserved but I was grateful non the less. I began to bite my tongue more than lash it. And after a few months of doing so, my Iron Man began to stand taller. I had pumped him so full of compliments (not flattery although sometimes he likes that too ;) and love (yes that sometimes translated to quite a few extra trysts) that he became confident. And his confidence was the springboard for changes in his life. He had to have a win before he was ready for change. Just like God does with us, he loves us into change.