Taking time to nurture marriage

It has been nearly a week since I last posted. We are in the midst of many changes in our household. My husband just shifted in his job situation, our children started back to school, and I went back for my fall semester of classes. There are times when my husband and I don’t get to spend time together as much as we would like, and I think that is pretty common for our day and age. Families are busy, and the temptation is to focus on the details rather than on the big picture.

If we obsessed about the sheer multitude of things that each one of us had to accomplish in any given day, the priority of objects would overwhelm us. Sometimes, in fact, that does happen. It is easy to lose focus on what is really important unless prayer is a part of our daily lives. God takes priority in our lives. Every day should be ordered to pleasing our Lord. When He’s pushed aside, we are easily confused in a society that aggressively competes for our affections.

God directs us back to the mission He has entrusted to us. As married couples, we are called to help one another on our journey toward heaven and to share our love in such a way that the physical manifestation of our love and God’s love combined also becomes our path to sanctity. Children are the wonderful gift of God whose love is so great it cannot be contained. Even so, the marriage itself has to have priority for the benefit of the couple and of the children. The best gift any father and mother can give to their children is the love and support of a joyful marriage.

I am absolutely in awe of the great gift of such a wonderful and loving spouse who knows this to be true. This past weekend we enjoyed a dinner out (even though I had five loads of laundry to fold, a five-page paper on the Hebrew words used in Genesis looming over me, 300 pages left in St. Augustine’s Confessions and my reading for Christian Anthropology to complete). Fantastic dinner, incomparable conversation, side-splitting laughter...we still enjoy each other’s company like we did in college, only now it’s richer and deeper, carrying with it all the experience of life and a mature faith in God.

Time out with the hubby...just what the Holy Physician of souls ordered!