Marriage

I remember sitting in pre-marital counseling 20 years ago listening to the pastor go through all sorts of items before I got married the first time. I don’t remember too much, to be honest, but I do remember when he told us not to compromise in marriage. He specifically said, “There is going to come a time where you cannot agree on what to do. Perhaps it is where to spend Christmas—you both want to spend it with your families, and can’t seem to come to a decision without erupting into argument. You know that if you pick one side over the other, one of you is not going to be happy. Maybe another time you both want to vacation in two

Good or bad, how people speak to you or act around you often does have an influence on how we think about ourselves. The greater the importance of that person to you, the greater the influence. In the delicate dance of parenting, our words and actions with one another have a greater power than we think to build up or tear down. A sideways glance or condescending tone can be detrimental to our confidence as a person and especially as a parent.  Often I don’t think it’s our intention to tear one another down, but because men and women can be so inherently different in their parenting styles (and life in general!), we tend to attack those differences rather then learn from them and

Dan and I both marvel at how easy it was to transition from widowhood to being married again—almost as if we’d known each other all our lives. And oh, the joy of remarrying later in life. Because when you lose a good thing, and when goodness eventually replaces the loss, it seems so much sweeter. It’s not that I meant to take anything for granted in my first marriage. But as the years passed, I got used to the stability and the faithfulness and the companionship. And then I found myself doing road trips alone. And snowshoeing the trails in the Cascade Mountains alone. And holding Friday date night alone (I know… weird, but it was part of my brave-making campaign as