Red Lip Society

I never thought I would have a man like the one I married. God definitely knew what I needed in my life. He is unlike anyone I have ever known. He and I are nothing alike. We have two things in common: Jesus and our love for each other.

This man is everything I wanted and everything I didn’t know that I needed.  He is my partner in life, adventure and mischief.  He’s my favorite!

As the day that we have designated for romance, Valentines Day, is upon us, I wanted to share the top things I have found to be key to keeping my marriage healthy and happy.

---

LAUGH

Laughing with my husband is one of my favorite things! It’s my favorite way for us to spend time together. For example, last night we spent about an hour snap chatting each other…..from the same room. We flirted and laughed! We got up this morning talking about it.  It is okay to laugh!

Isn’t live serious enough?

A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.  Proverbs 17:22

I have found that laughter can help us get through just about anything.

DON’T SWEAT THINGS THAT REALLY DON’T MATTER

I can’t tell you how many married women I hear constantly complaining about something their husband has said or done!

For example, that whole leaving the toilet seat up situation I hear so much about….  Is that really something to fight about? (And, yes, I have fallen in the toilet on several occasions!)  Is that really something worthy of creating discord in your home?

I think I’ll just stick to this one example….in hopes you get where I am going.

It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife. Proverbs 25:24

Ladies, God has entrusted us with being the keepers of our homes.  Women truly decide the emotional temperature of the entire house, whether we mean to or not.  “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!”  Never was their a truer statement.

Does your husband work? Does he come home to you every night? If you answered “yes” to both of those questions, then statistically he is already doing better than a great many of his male counterparts.

All I’m saying here is, before you gripe out your husband about something, I want you to ask yourself, “Is this really that big of a deal? Why am I sooooo mad about this?”  I’m not saying you can’t ever be genuinely upset about something or that your husband gets a free pass.  I’m just trying to encourage you to not be someone your husband dreads coming home too.

A continual dripping on a rainy day and a quarrelsome wife are alike. Proverbs 27:15

PRAY TOGETHER

Do this often! This will hold you together when the world is trying to destroy your home and trying to destroy you.

There is nothing you can’t face together as long as you are making talking to God together a priority.

PRAY FOR HIM

Pray for his health,  his work situation, his relationship with God, his purpose in life….

Prayer is glue. Prayer is the first line of defense!

LET YOURSELF REMEMBER WHY YOU LIKED HIM

If you’ve been together for a while and life is crazy busy, it can be easy to forget why you are even together.

I’ve been married for almost seven years now (which, of course, makes me now an expert,) so sometimes I like to just sit and think about how I felt in the beginning. I like to think about our first couple of dates. I like to think about why I accepted his proposal of marriage after dating for nine days!  (Don’t bother reading it again.  Yes, we only dated for nine days.)

Don’t let the world steal those mushy, newly-dating, newly-married feelings from you. They are still there. You just have to stir them up a bit from time to time.

SERVE EACH OTHER

When was the last time you did something nice for your husband? I mean just because? Gave him a back rub…made his favorite meal….watched the ball game with him and pretended like you knew and cared about what was going on….

I bet you did lots of nice things when you were trying to land him, but now you have jobs, kids, school projects and little league. Now you’re tired. Now you spend all day pouring out and, by the time it is just the two of you alone, you don’t have anything left to give.

It’s OK. I understand. I’m tired too. But sometimes a selfless and kind act can restart something that maybe you have been missing since this thing called life got so crazy.

SERVE OTHERS TOGETHER

I have been blessed to get to go on three mission trips out of the country with my hubby. I realize not everyone is in a place in life where that is possible, however I can not tell you the joy I found in serving people we didn’t know together. We have served widows in Haiti, we’ve painted schools in Thailand and we have built churches in South Africa. We served people that couldn’t return the “favor.”

We have served our community in some of the same ways. We serve our church however we can. We give and do because God has done so much for us. I always feel closer to my husband after doing God’s work together.

I truly believe that God gave me this mischievous, blue-eyed man that I am so blessed to wake up next to every morning…..as he hogs the bed and the covers.  (Just thinking about the nightly battle for barely enough covers makes my whole heart smile.)

---

I pray this little look into what I think helps my marriage has made you smile and encouraged you.

Do you have any marriage tips to share with me?  Drop them in the comment section below.

Happy Valentines Day!