We’re back!  And we had a ton of fun down in Atlanta this week.  We took the camera with the intentions of getting some fun pictures, but the truth is, we ended up just spending quality time together instead.  This seems to be a running theme with us– we take our camera somewhere fun and at the end of the week we have four pictures!  But that’s okay– it’s important to live life, too, and this week we just couldn’t juggle both.

It struck me this week– we love marriage!  Not just ours, but we love when others get married (obviously!) and we love when couples work on their marriage.  So to all of our wedding couples, or anyone reading this who is married– please always work on your marriage.  I think we personally have a fantastic marriage, and we work on it all the time, and still learned a ton this week.  Marriage isn’t something that happens on the wedding day– it’s working daily to meet the needs of your spouse.

It’s funny- we actually took this same marriage course at our church a few months after we got married.  We were 20 & 22 years old!  And the thing is, we implemented a lot of these principles and have used them over the years.  To the point that many of the things David Ferguson spoke about were no brainers to us.  It’s neat to check back on something 8 years later and realize that it really sunk in and is working!

So if you’re married, please do something to work on your marriage this week!  Figure out what your spouse really loves and do something– even if it’s small!  This wasn’t mentioned in the conference we went to this week, but the book The 5 Love Languages is a fantastic starting point!  It talks about how each person has a way that they feel loved- Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch.  For me (Susan), Acts of Service is my favorite way to be loved.  Josh could bring me a dozen roses and a surprise trip to Paris and I’d really just rather he wash the dishes and do the laundry.  On the other hand, I could do all the dishes and laundry and have the house sparkling clean and Josh would really just rather have a messy house and go to the movies.

The funny thing is, we usually love the other person in the way we want to be loved!  So if I want to do something great for Josh, my first thought is, “I could clean the whole house and make him dinner!”  And while he would smile really big when he got home, he would definitely prefer to come home to a note saying “I got a sitter, meet me at Red Lobster!”

What are you doing still reading this?  Go love on your spouse!