A Mini Get-Away

Every now and again Matthew and I like to get away, even if it’s just getting away from the house.  The last two or three weeks have been plain yucky for us.  We were at odds in a weird way.  He would pick at me, I would get witchy and the cycle just continued.  It seemed as if we couldn’t agree on anything, I know it wasn’t as bad as that, but that is how it felt.  When the idea hit me that we needed a get-away, even  just for the evening, I went all out.

The one thing that I like about his business trips is all the bonuses we get for hotels and flights.  My trip to Florida was paid for by sky miles, and our little evening out was courtesy of hotel points.  I had debated getting a room that we would have to drive a little ways for but I decided to instead get one that I had to drive to but that was close to Matthew’s office.  It was funny because I thought I had booked us into a hotel that was a sky scraper, apparently the hotel site that I booked through didn’t change to the picture of the actual hotel I was booking.  However, it was all good.  We just needed a quiet space to concentrate all our attention on each other.

I surprised him with his favorite wine on ice, rose petals strewn on the floor and bed, and a new fantastic dress for me!  We went for take out Chinese food and then went to wander around the World Market store where we found desert.  We talked and laughed.  Reconnected.

The girls, they were at home with a friend of Bean’s who came to spend the night.  They had hotdogs, watched a movie, played video games, and Berry went to a birthday party.  They also had ice cream and chocolate!

Matthew and I went to a fantastic little French Crêpe place.  We brought a dessert crêpe home with us and enjoyed it after we weren’t so full from the breakfast.  We had awesome handmade lattes.  Matthew had a crêpe filled with chorizo, eggs, sausage and salsa.  It was incredible.  I had a crêpe filled with scrambled egg, brie, bacon, caramelized onion, and mushrooms.  I LOVE BRIE and the combination was incredible.  The conversation was great and the little beach town we were in was charming.

The girls had cinnamon buns and homemade orange juice.

All in all, we all had a great time getting reset.  Matthew is off to a class in Atlanta this week so we will be without him until Wednesday.  This morning I am making a special breakfast of Norwegian pancakes with fruit (Thanks to Kristin for a great recipe!) and maple sausages while Matthew is off on a bike ride, the girls are still sleeping.  Have to make the best of the morning since my honey is leaving this morning, even the short trips are difficult.

I highly recommend that all couples do these little get-aways even if it’s not an overnight trip, get away together even for a few hours, drive around your exclusive neighborhoods, test drive cars, pack a picnic.  It’s worth the prep time, the baby sitter arranging, all of it!

To Leave and Cleave

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. Genesis 2:24

What does this leaving and cleaving have to do with the holidays?  I say it has everything to do with it.  I was thinking the other day about how many people are now effected by divorce, especially as adult children.  Let’s just say for argument sake that you and your spouse both come from divorced families.  Does this mean splitting the holiday into four gatherings?  Does someone get left out?  Do you rotate visiting families?

Here is the second dilemma, what about your parents and your spouses parents, do they get along?  If you are one of the fortunate couples unaffected by parent divorce, do your parents get along with your spouse’s parents and do they live close enough for you to have a huge family gathering?

I remember growing up with pretty large family gatherings.  Sometimes bringing siblings together, other times several separate families from both sides of the tree, and sometimes even families from church.

I know that most people think of holidays as a gathering of the extended family, however, I am investigating a little more deeply about what it means to “leave and cleave”.  I would also love feed back about how you all deal with celebrating and traveling when there are several families to consider.

From my point of view, being a military family, we have never been all that close, in proximity, to our extended family.  The only time that we lived relatively close was when Matthew was in college in Las Cruces, NM.  We had a 6 hour drive  to see our parents.  They came to us, we went to see them.  Holidays were always easy to figure out.  They all lived in the same town and if my siblings could make it home, all the better.  We only had to split our time in half and I readily admit, my mother demanded more of our time, add to the fact that back then, we were all too glad to escape the reality of what was happening in Matthew’s folks lives.  We love them dearly and we are so glad that things are good now, but back then, we were happy to give more time to my folks.  Later on in our marriage, we lived farther away and only made it home once a year.  Again, it was easy to divide the time between just two families.  The division of time was still not even, but we worked it all out.  We are in a different stage now.  We have older kids who are involved in a lot more things, Matthew’s job is more demanding which cuts way back on travel, and now to visit everyone that we consider parental family, we would be traveling to two different states and a lot of travel time in between the cities that they live in.  IF we added in siblings to the whole affair, we can easily double all that.  We are now trying hard to set up our own, very personal, traditions for celebrating holidays.  We didn’t establish them early on and now we are finding it so much harder.

I look at my brother’s situation and think that he’s got it pretty good, well at least where this subject is concerned.  The rest of his responsibility, I don’t envy at all.  Our parents and both sets of his wife’s parents, both of the kids, their grand baby, and a few other family members, all live in and around the same metro area.  They can all get together and celebrate in one place.  My sister-in-love’s parents and spouses get along fine and they can all gather together without drama.  My parent’s house was the gathering place last year because of all their free space.  One big happy family event.

I can’t see all the people that we would want to spend the holidays with coming together into one city.  I think the only time we will get all of them in one place is when one of the girls gets married and with that pretty far off, who’s to say who will be alive by then.  I live with the reality that our parents are a lot older than most of the friend’s parents that I know.

Now the reason I started thinking about this all in the first place.  This morning on my way to take Bean to school, I heard the DJ on our local Christian channel talking about a situation.  It was early in their marriage and he and his wife went to gather with the extended family.  It was the first time his wife had smashed potatoes and this is back in the day when everyone expected them to be smooth and creamy.  Well, her’s were not and someone in the family, mean-spirited as she was, piped up in front of everyone gathered that his wife had ruined the potatoes.  This upset his wife, she went to close herself in another room and he followed.  The entire family was gathered at the table when they came in and announced that they were leaving.  I shouted “YAY” when I heard that this was how he handled it.  What a beautiful expression of cleaving to his wife and supporting her.

I want to encourage my girls into a direction that does not pressure them to spend holidays with us.  I want them to know that we will love having them home, but I want them to establish those celebrations and traditions with their spouses and children.  It’s so important and so vital to their family core.  If their tradition means to celebrate with us before the holiday or on the holiday, okay, that’s their choice, but I want it to be just that, their choice.

Tomorrow, I will begin our preparations for the holiday meal.  I don’t want to spend the day cooking and refuse to do so.  Instead I will do the bread, the early prep of the casseroles, the pies, and the cranberry sauce tomorrow.  I will clean the house today and tomorrow and on Thursday I will bake-off what needs to be baked and clean up with needs to be cleaned and roast a beautiful turkey.  We will feast, we will play games, we will enjoy just being together.  On Friday, when everyone in the country is trying to shop for deals, we will go out and find a Christmas tree.  We will move the cars out of the garage and make a staging area for the boxes of decorations.  All of the fall decor will go away and the Christmas will come out of hiding.  We will put lights up on the house and we will enjoy the four-day weekend.  It will be the first time in quite a while that we aren’t traveling to someone’s home, and while I will miss that, it will be nice to just be us, to be thankful for all the things that leaving and cleaving bring to a family!

To Have and To Hold

I have never thought about the wedding vows and their meaning.  I think that pastors, at least almost 20 years ago in my small town, weren’t doing such a great job of premarital counseling.  I remember the pastor who married us asking if we were both believers, how we felt about premarital sex, and how we felt about divorce.  He didn’t go over what we were vowing to do, or what any of the vows meant.

Matthew and I have been together for over 20 years and we had never sat down to analyze those promises, those vows that we made to each other.  We promised this for our lives, till death.  We aren’t going to make it to death without putting in the effort to continue to love one another and everything about each other.  We have to continue to love even the changes.

The Vows:

I, (name), take you (name), to be my (wife/husband), to have and to hold , for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.

Let me break it down.  I take you.  Have you ever thought about what it means to take someone else?  It’s not just marrying a person, taking them into your life, it’s an acceptance of everything that they are, everything that they will become, everything they bring with them.  If you can’t do that, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT marry them.  If you are already married and have found that you cannot accept those things, you have to find a way to compromise and agree.  You are accepting their family traditions, rules, the way they were raised to communicate, the way you were taught to forgive, the things you were taught about sex, the way they have fun, the way that conflict is solved, the way you were taught to handle money.  You also accept their love language, their religion, and how they feel about being separated from their loved ones.  All of these things play a huge part into how you will function in your relationship.  It really takes a blending.  I can’t describe the feeling of learning new things about a person you have been married to for almost 20 years.  It was the most beneficial exercise.

Here is the how:

Make a list of your family traditions that you had as a child.  How you celebrated special events and holidays.  Dinner; did you eat at the table or around the t.v., birthdays and so on.  Then list what communication was like in your family.  Did everyone know what was going on within the family?  Was there avoidance or open talking?   List how your family communicated about problems.  Now write down the ideas you have about forgiveness.  Were you forgiven and the event forgotten or was it a constant throwing back of what happened?  Sex: was it taboo or discussed?  Did your parents talk about what to expect?  Now list how your family had fun.  Did you go camping, vacations, game nights?  List how conflict between your parents was resolved.  Did they fight, scream, and yell?  Was their physical violence, or verbal abuse?  Money; who was in charge, what were feelings about debt?  What about love?  Was love freely doled out, did you know you were loved, were their frequent “I love yous” said?  Religion, were you raised in the church or was religion absent in your home?  Finally list if their were frequent separations.  If one of your parents left home for a night was it a normal, no worries event, or was something wrong?  Did one of your parents work take them away frequently and was their conflict because of it.

When you write these things out look at the lists together.  Are there rules that you have not brought into the relationship?  Are there rules that you unintentionally or intentionally brought into the relationship?

In our busy lives we often don’t communicate with our spouse the way we should.  To effectively communicate you need full attention from both parties and preferably you need a lot of eye contact.  A technique that was taught was knee to knee and eye to eye.

What does it mean to have and to hold?  Well, it’s not to hug them and kiss them.  I guess that may be part of it, but the main meaning is that we support each other.  Hold each other up, learn to give each other the love and care that we each need to thrive, not just survive.

We had a session on better and worse also.  The better, the healthy, the richer.  Those are always easy.  Or are they?  When we are better, healthy, and have plenty of money we tend to take things for granted.  There is no motivation for the care that we take when someone is at their worst, in sick, or poor.  In a marriage you will experience all of them.  What determines how you care for someone in the worse?  I believe it’s about how you deal with each other in the better.  If you take them time to pour into each other during the better, then you can focus in on caring in the worse.  It really all comes down to focusing on the better traits when their worse traits come out.  Think about the personality traits that your spouse has.  Think about whether they are an extrovert or introvert.  Think about yourself, what are you?  Each personality has two sides.  During the better we focus on those things in their personality that we like.  During the worse, we tend to focus on the negative traits.  We need to learn to always focus on the good, especially during the worse!

If you have never figured out your language of love or your spouse’s, I suggest the books by Gary Chapman or his website.  Learning these love languages will help you to love your spouse in their language.  You should have a primary and secondary language.  Words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, gift giving, and physical touch.  Learn what they are, and learn to speak their language of love.  Dr. Chapman also talks about the languages of Apology.  Who knew?  But there are five of those also.  If you apologize in your language your spouse may not see it as an apology.  Learn to speak to them.

Another thing that we learned is from the Gottman Institute.  There are 5 Magic Hours that help marriages thrive, this 5 hours is spent over a one week period.  Partings, reunions, admiration/appreciation, affection, and weekly dates.  2 minutes spent on saying goodbye.  If you have 5 partings each week you have filled 10 minutes.  Since there are 7 days in a week, you really are going to spend more time doing these things.  20 minutes should be spent on reunions, at the end of the week you will have spent an hour and 40 minutes together, longer if your spouse is gone for extended periods over the weekend also.  There should be 20 minutes spent together when you reunite.  This is usually after full day partings, but it should be time spent without interruption.  This will totally be dependent on the season of life you are in, much easier now that my children are older.  Admiration and affection.  In my humble opinion, you can never have too much of this.  but the institute says 5 minutes each day.  Thank you, you look great…you get the idea.  Affection; kissing, hugging, holding, touch.  Skin to skin contact.  5 minutes each day.  This doesn’t include sex.  This is the stuff that will make you want to have sex or at least should, seduction.  The last part of this magical 5 hours is a weekly date, 2 hours once a week.  Spending this time together each week gives you a time of complete focus on each other.  It helps you to be more aware of each other.

Matthew and I each gave a rating for our marriage when we first arrived.  We were both in the 7/8 range out of 10.  I think this was a bit shocking to both of us.  However, we know the hit our marriage has taken since coming under the heat of a demanding job and a fast paced city.  The exercises that we went through this weekend made us realize that our main issue was communication.  It was indirectness, passive aggression, and avoidance.  These aren’t things that we want to pass down to our kids and we are determined to not allow this city or job to ruin what God has joined together.

In the end we decided to be friends again and to continue down this road.  We had the opportunity to repeat our vows with complete new understanding and appreciation for what we were saying, it was a moment frozen in time.

This weekend couldn’t have come at a better time.  God had a plan for us to be blessed, and to be a blessing to others.

Family Life has a marriage section that is always so helpful and on the heals of this weekend, this is what they shared today:  What Husbands Wish Their Wives Knew

Retreat!!

When God does something big, He does it so big that you can’t deny it’s Him!  First, I missed a phone call from Matthew.  God knew that if I had answered that phone we wouldn’t be going anywhere this weekend.  See, I require at least 3 days to plan, preferably 2 weeks.   So here is the conversation that took place yesterday.

Me:  Hi, I see I missed your call, what’s up?

Matthew:  I was calling because some openings came up for a marriage retreat on Catalina Island this weekend, Fri-Sun.

Me:  Oh, that’s too bad, wi…

Matthew:  No,  I signed us up.  We leave Friday at two be back Sunday afternoon.

Me:  WHAT!?!?!  What am I going to do about the girls?  What?

Matthew:  Don’t worry.  It will all work out.

Me: … … … (very small voice) okay

Matthew:  Alright, talk to you later.

So, I immediately break down into tears.  I was so thankful for God’s provision.  I called my friend to ask her to pray about arrangements and ask about the possibility of Berry staying with her if I couldn’t arrange anything else.  Then I had to get someone to pick up Bean from school.

EVERY SINGLE DETAIL WORKED ITSELF OUT!  First person I asked about picking up Bean-YES.  First person I asked about Berry staying-YES.

All of my anxious thoughts about how and when…all fell away.

…For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord,
“Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future…”  Jeremiah 29:11

God knew where Matthew would be that morning when the opening came up for this weekend, He knew that I would have talked us right out of it and silenced my phone, He knew and planned exactly how it would all work out and how to show me His hand in it all.  He was killing two birds with one stone.  Not only was He making plans to prosper our marriage, He was showing Himself to me again.

God knows all the little details.  He knows why I waffle, He knows why I worry, He knows.

He knew when He woke me up at 4 that morning what His plans were for the remainder of the day, and He was just getting me prepared to see His fingerprints all over it.  I’m so thankful.  Matthew and I had an awesome, time last night talking.  Was it easy, no.  It rarely is when we have waited too long to talk.  We are determined to open our ears and hearts and minds up wide and receive what He has for us this weekend.  We are going prepared to be blessed.

 

Teaching Our Children By Example

We watch a lot of programing on TLC and for the most part I am okay with their programing.  Berry has been obsessed with the John and Kate plus and 8 and now Kate plus 8.  She thinks the kids are just so cute and really likes to see all the “fun” things they do and check out how they live.  She definitely has the people watching bug.

Well, today while we took a 30 minute break, she was watching an old episode on Netflix and I was cleaning up the kitchen.  It suddenly struck me how crazy Kate comes across.  I have realized this before, but it just struck me again.  I mean, she is really downright nutty about some things.  A few minutes later I heard her start berating John about not using a coupon.  I asked Berry to pause it.  I asked her if that was the right way to treat a spouse.  Her response shocked me.  She said that she understood why Kate was so frustrated and  upset because it’s hard to manage all those kids and it must be expensive.  Kate was just upset because John was wasting money by not using the coupon.

Well, here comes a teaching moment.  I told her that it’s never right to berate your helpmate.  There are times when things need to be discussed, but it really wasn’t a big deal that he didn’t use the coupon because they could just take the coupon and receipt back to the store and get credit for it.  Yelling at him wasn’t the way to deal with it.  I explained to her that the way Kate and John displayed their life and problems, fights and drama, wasn’t the way God intended us to live.  He doesn’t want husbands and wives to be so demanding and unloving.  He also doesn’t want us to be so unforgiving and controlling, especially with our husbands.

Berry was still trying to defend Kate’s actions.  I can see where her compassion comes in, but I also want her to see why it is wrong.

I was listening to a radio show on our way to take Bean to school and they played of a clip of John saying that Kate should find a real job.  Apparently she was actually looking to do another reality TV show.  She’s a licensed nurse.  The medical field is always hiring.  I think she is looking to support her current life style.  You know what, stuff happens, we can’t always have what we want, sometimes we have to do more with less.  I can see disaster coming in those kids lives also.  The two older girls have resentment written all over their faces.  They are already in a state of rebellion, clearly angry about a lot of things in their lives.  These 8 children have seen a picture of a bad marriage, an ugly divorce, and the unreal reality of having their lives filmed.  Their parents are still fighting over every aspect of their lives, and Kate has often been filmed complaining about John in front of the kids.  Divorce is bad enough, but add all this other on top and it’s a recipe for disastrous lives.

Okay, off of my soap box now.  The point is, there are teachable moments in the this stuff.  I really want to be able to use the things around me to teach the girls right from wrong.  The one thing I am sure of, is that Matthew and I are doing our best to model a healthy marriage and the way a wife and husband should live together.  It’s about mutual respect and hanging on to our faith in God, putting Him in the center of our marriage.  I pray that our actions speak louder to them than anything they see out in the world, or on T.V.