7 Ways To Help Your Marriage Today

A successful marriage does not happen by accident.  A marriage that works requires intention.  You have to be intentional in cultivating your relationship so it lasts and sustains the ups and downs of life.  Leanne and I don’t have a perfect marriage.  We have plenty of things to work on when it comes to improving our marriage.  But over the past 17+ years of our marriage, we have learned the benefits of being intentional, and we have discovered some tools which have helped to build up our marriage.

Today, I’d like to pass along some of the things we’ve learned so far.  And I’d like to encourage you to take action today with your marriage.  It will require intentional effort on your part, but it will be worth it.

7 Ways To Help Your Marriage Today

1. Pray together.  We aren’t perfect with this, but we do our best to pray together twice a day.  Before I leave the house for work, we pause to pray together.  At bedtime, we pray together.  This simple discipline pays huge dividends.  Praying together keeps us on the same page.  Praying together helps us support each other.  Praying together gets us through good days and tough days.  Start praying together today.
2. Make church a priority.  Church attendance doesn’t guarantee a perfect marriage, but I believe it’s a great place to start in giving your marriage a solid foundation.  A church family provides a place to grow and to serve with others.  A church can also provide encouragement or accountability when necessary.  This doesn’t happen by attending church on Christmas and Easter only.  Instead, church should be part of your regular weekly schedule.  Decide today to plug into a church together.
3. Practice a regular date night.  Leanne and I do our best to go on a date weekly.  This was definitely a challenge when our kids were younger as we juggled finances and childcare.  It’s easier for us now as our kids can be at home for a couple of hours by themselves.  A date can mean going out for dessert, playing tennis together, or taking a walk.  Making our weekly date night a priority shows our kids the importance of  marriage.  And it gives Leanne and I a fun opportunity to connect each week.  Dating should not stop when you say “I do.”  Dating is a discipline for your marriage as well.  Schedule a date with your spouse today.
4. Serve together.  Finding places to serve together has been helpful in uniting our marriage.  This happens through our H.O.P.E. group on a monthly basis.  And our trip to Guatemala was a great place to serve together.  Helping others together has been a great way to connect and encourage each other.  It’s also another great opportunity to be an example for our kids (and others).  Find a way and a place to serve together today.
5. Listen to marriage and family focused programs.  I listen to a lot of podcasts.  Two podcasts in my regular rotation are the FamilyLife Today with Dennis Rainey podcast and the Focus on the Family Daily Broadcast podcast.  It may sound hokey or old-fashioned, but these programs are a great encouragement.  Each of these daily podcasts provides suggestions to help your marriage and family.  Filling our minds with positive information about marriage is important.  You can’t find many positive messages about marriage on television, in the movies, or in society today.  Listening to marriage focused programs like these is a place to slice through the negativity.  Go on-line today and download one of these podcasts or find our when and where you can listen to these programs on the radio today.
6. Plan today to attend a FamilyLife Weekend to Remember conference.  The most popular post of all time on The Stretched Blog is Ten Reasons To Attend FamilyLife Weekend To Remember.  Leanne and I have been to a few of these conferences over the years.  I’m not going to sugar coat it.  These conferences can be a lot of work as you listen to speakers and spend time talking about your marriage.  But we’ve found these conferences to be so helpful in building up our marriage.  We’ve collected valuable tools for enhancing our marriage (books, activities, and other ideas).  FamilyLife has made it easier than ever to sign up for one of these Weekend to Remember getaways which are scheduled throughout the country.  Find a getaway near you by clicking here.  When you register, use the discount group code “Stretched01” to receive $120 off the regular price of the conference (per couple).  If you live in my area, the next getaway weekend if November 22-24 in King of Prussia.  Sign up today.
7. Find a mentor couple.  Early in our marriage, we were blessed to hang around with people like Paul and Dorothy Keisling and Jeff and Glyniss Murphy.  Couples like these took time to invest in our marriage.  They spent time with us, and they showed us what marriage looks like through their example.  I remember sitting in the Murphy’s family room during the first years of our marriage listening to Jeff and Glyniss teach about marriage.  This may require you to be a little uncomfortable asking another couple to mentor you, but it’s worth it.  To learn more about marriage mentors, I’d encourage you to check out a book by Jeff Murphy and Check Dettman – The Solution for Marriages: Mentoring a New Generation (affiliate link).

What suggestions do you have for being intentional with your marriage?  What is one thing you can do today for your marriage?

Marriage, Missions, and Marlins

It’s the weekend, and I just wanted to let you know about three cool things.

Marriage

I posted about this at the beginning of the month, but I wanted to give you a little reminder.  What ever stage or state your marriage is in, it could always use a little extra.  Family Life has teamed up with The Stretched Blog to offer a discounted rate for Stretched readers.  Simply go to the Family Life Weekend to Remember site, and register using the group code:  STRETCHED.  This will give you a significant discount on the normal rate of this conference.  Check out my original post for more details.

Missions

Today is the last day that you can pick up a free electronic copy of a new book by Seth Barnes.  Simple go to Amazon.com and search for Kingdom Journeys (Kindle Edition).  The offer is gone at the end of the day today.  For a chance to win a hard copy of the book, see my post from earlier this week.  I’ll be picking a winner early next week, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to pick up a great new book.  The book itself has a missions emphasis, but it’s about so much more than missions as you and I typically think about it.

Marlins

Don’t misunderstand me on this one, I’m a huge Phillies fan which would typically put me at odds with the Marlins.  But I have a very small place in my heart for the Marlins after reading about this story on the POTSC blog this week.  Check out this video, and I think you’ll see why:

Do you have anything that starts with the letter “M” that deserves a mention?

One Way To Help Your Marriage

This past February, Leanne and I attended Family Life Weekend to Remember in Hershey, PA.  This is a weekend event designed to help improve and enhance your marriage.  You can read more about our experience by clicking here.

In my opinion, it’s not a once and done event.  This is something to revisit again and again.  I know I need the reminders and the encouragement.  And while it can be a lot of work to attend one of these weekends, it is so worth it.

Leanne and I are already making plans to attend our next Family Life Weekend to Remember.  And we’d like to invite you to attend one of these conferences.  Family Life has teamed up with The Stretched Blog to offer a discounted rate for Stretched readers.  Simply go to the Family Life Weekend to Remember site, and register using the group code:  STRETCHED.  This will give you a significant discount on the normal rate of this conference.

We will be attending one of the weekends in Pennsylvania, but you can use the group code for any of the weekends that are offered this next year across the country.  Don’t let another year slip by without doing something to improve your marriage.  This is a weekend that you will remember.

Feel free to pass this along to other as well, so they can get in on the discount.  Also, let me know if you have any questions that I can answer for you regarding the Weekend to Remember.

What have you done recently to strengthen your marriage?

W2R Take Home 2: Make Prayer A Priority In Our Marriage

Happy Leap Day!

To my friend Stretch Mark, Happy 12th Birthday!

Yesterday, I shared one of my big take homes from my Weekend To Remember (W2R) marriage conference experience.  I shared that I want to be an agent of encouragement in my marriage and in my family.

Today, I’ll share my second big take home for the W2R conference.  I want to make prayer a bigger priority in my marriage.  Leanne and I pray to together most nights at bedtime.  Although, this sometimes is missed when one or both of us is “too” tired.  If I’m honest, I often wait for Leanne to initiate our prayer time.  I could probably come up with all kinds of excuses for this, but I’ll save you (and me) the agony.

The W2R conference was a great reminder that I need to step up and lead in this way in our marriage.  One of the speakers, Bob Maddox, shared that he and his wife pray together twice a day.  If he’s on the road, he calls her at least twice a day to make sure this prayer time happens.  Bob takes responsibility for this.  When he shared this, I was definitely challenged.  And so we are praying together twice a day.  I pray with Leanne before I leave for the office in the morning, and we pray together at bedtime.  So far, it’s been three days in a row!

How could praying together twice a day make a difference in our family?

First, making prayer a priority puts our perspective and focus in the right place.  God has to come first in our lives.  Second, praying together gives us an opportunity to connect and to lift each other up.  There’s no question that we are in a busy stage of our parenting lives as we run our kids from activity to activity.  We need this time to slow down and to be together.  Third, praying together sets the tone for our family.  I’ve heard it said, the couple that prays together stays together.  We want our family to be cemented together.  And we want our family to put God first.  When we pray, our kids will know it.  They’ll see us putting God first.  This will have an impact on their lives.  Finally, prayer changes lives.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.  James 5:16

What’s your prayer life look like?  If you’re married, do you pray together?  What reasons could you add for praying together with your spouse?

W2R Take Home 1: I Want To Be An Encourager

Yesterday, we (Leanne and I) shared about our Weekend to Remember (W2R) experience at the FamilyLife marriage conference in Hershey, PA.  Conferences like this are great, but it can be easy to come away with a mountain top high that quickly fades as real life happens.

When I woke up early yesterday morning for an earlier than normal start, it was easy to become instantly tired and to feel worn out before the week had even started.  When I had a migraine headache yesterday at work, it was easy to quickly become frustrated and to feel like I was back to real life.  (I’ve been struggling with migraines over the past few weeks.)  When I came home from Isaac’s basketball game where we suffered a tough loss in the final four of the playoffs, it was easy to get down knowing that our hoops season was now over.

But throughout the day, I kept reminding myself of the great weekend I had just experienced.  I left the conference with a few take homes.

The first major take home for me was put into action last night when Isaac suffered defeat in his basketball game.  I want to be an agent of encouragement for my wife and kids.  I was pretty down after his game due to the outcome and due to a comment from one of his teammates.  I had the chance to express my pride and love for Isaac.  Isaac plays the basketball game with a positive attitude.  He doesn’t complain.  He has fun.  He does his best.  His game continues to show improvement.  I love to watch how he transforms throughout the season into a basketball loving machine.

As we talked about the discouraging remark by his teammate, we had the chance to discuss the power of encouragement.  We all have the opportunity to lift people up through our comments.  I want our family to live this way to each other, to our classmates, to our teammates, and to others.  As a dad, I believe it starts with me as I lead our family.  I want to be an agent of encouragement!

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.  I Thessalonians 5:11

How has encouragement transformed your life?  Are you an agent of encouragement or of discouragement?  What is one thing you can do today to encourage someone?

Ten Reasons To Attend FamilyLife Weekend To Remember

This weekend, Leanne and I spent the weekend at the Hershey Lodge in Hershey, PA.  We enjoyed Cocoa Massages at the Hershey Spa.  We enjoyed chocolate butter and chocolate mocha creme brulee at the Hershey Grill.  We enjoyed a quick ride at Chocolate World.  And we enjoyed plenty of Hershey’s Kisses and candy bars.  But we weren’t there for the chocolate.

We were in Hershey, PA to attend the FamilyLife Weekend To Remember event which ran from Friday night through Sunday morning.  Before you get too nervous, Leanne and I aren’t having any major marriage problems.  But we’re always looking for opportunities to improve our marriage relationship.  This year’s event was focused on creating oneness in our marriage, and the sessions are taught from a Biblical perspective.

As we were driving home yesterday, we thought it would be fun to share reasons for attending an event like this.  Perhaps, you’ll consider attending with us next year!  So here’s our top 10 (in no particular order) reasons to attend the FamilyLife Weekend To Remember:

1.  One Big Date:  This is a great opportunity to spend time together for the entire weekend (without the kids).

2.  Cocoa Scented Everything:  From the shampoo, conditioner, and hand lotion to the baked goods and chocolate steamers, you could smell chocolate everywhere.  You could even smell chocolate in the air when you walked outside the lodge thanks to the nearby Hershey factories.

3.  Speakers:  Trent and Andrea Griffith and Bob Maddox did an excellent job transparently relating stories from their own marriages and life experiences to help illustrate the main points of the teaching.  All three of the presenters were down to earth and approachable.  We actually ran into Bob on Saturday night, and he was so easy to talk with.

4.  Great Resources:  Besides the speakers, there are tons of books and other resources available to help your marriage and your parenting.  We picked up a handful of books that we’re looking forward to exploring together.

5.  Foundational Teaching:  We’ve heard many (if not most) of these things before, but it was great to be encouraged through the speakers.

6.  Date Night:  Although this was one big date for us (see number one), it was wonderful to have an evening designated as our night out.

7.  We’re Not Alone:  There were over 1500 others in attendance at this event.  It was a blessing to see that there were so many couples who have decided to make their marriage a priority.  On Sunday, there was an opportunity for people to share how they were changed by the conference and how they were going to apply what they had learned.  We both resonated with many of the things shared.

8.  Inspiring:  We both left with renewed ideas and enthusiasm for our roles as spouses and parents.  We were encouraged to list 2 or 3 action steps to take with us as we returned to the real world.  We’ll be sharing those in the coming days through our blogs.

9.  Dynamic Breakouts:  On Sunday, we attended breakout sessions for men and for women.  When we met together after these sessions, we both commented that these times were highlights for us.  These breakouts provided specific teaching directed towards husbands and dads and wives and moms.

10.  Renewing Our Vows:  At the conclusion of the weekend, we had the privilege of renewing our marriage vows.  These vows mean so much more now that we’ve experienced life together for over 15 years.

Have you ever been to a marriage conference?  Which one?  What were the highlights or biggest take-aways for you?  How did it change your marriage?