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If You Truly Love Something

You Will Nurture It

If You Truly Love Something You will Nurture It

If you truly love something, a desire to care for it and nurture it is a natural response.  You put energy, time and money into what you love.  Marriage is no different, it needs care and attention. If you nurture your marriage it will grow with contentment and happiness. The problem is that we live in a world that weakens the marital bond and connection.  We are too busy, too stressed and too tired.  So even if you love your marriage and spouse your lifestyle slowly neglects it and weakens it. Most people give less focused attention and clock time to their marriage than to other things they would say were less important.
So, are you just stuck, or are there some things that busy people can do to nurture and strengthen their marriage.
  • Keep A Community Around You – Your friends and family are vital to the health of your relationships.  The community around you is so important that couples that elope are 12.5 times more likely to divorce than couples that have 200 or more people at their wedding.  I think the significance of this research is that we need a community to make life and marriage better.  We are designed to live in relationship with people.  The “one another” info graphic below gives a good picture on how we are to live with one another.
  • Protect Trust A All Cost – Building and creating trust in any relationship is a critical requirement. Relationships are built on the belief that people are going to do what they say and the mean what they say. Trust is the foundation that holds a marriage up. We tell each other what is important and what is expected to create love and respect.  From this place of trust we give each other our thoughts and feelings.  If you break this agreement and deceive each other problems are created. It is possible to create trust again with effort over time.  Partners have to understand the importance of honoring an agreement, and the importance of protecting, or the relationship with deteriorate over time.

Here are some posts from the past with ideas to help.  The ideas and topics will help you with what I think are the two main components of marriage: compromise and connection.

Faith makes things possible, not easy.  Impossible is an opinion not a fact.  Through Christ you have the power to change the world.  Live in community and relationship as you watch the impossible become possible.

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3 Ways to Help Grow the Emotional Bond in Marriage

Love is patient and kindThe emotional connection that a couple has is the glue of the relationship.  When things start to come unglued it is the strength of the emotional connection that keeps it together.  As a couple you have to create experiences that allow you to strengthen that connection and build trust.  This trust is developed and maintained with a rhythm of experiences you have together.

When life seems stressful our lives and relationships get out of rhythm.  Life begins to get to busy, things like kids, jobs, aging parents and more can change the rhythm of the emotional connection.  Here are three ways every couple can strengthen their emotional bond.  

Take A Minute

I want those that know me the best to (1)

Your spouse and family need you and admire you. Take a minute before you enter your house. Pray and clear the arguments and stress of the day from your mind.  Make the goal of entering into your home and family with positive affirmation and encouraging words. I know your jobs and lives are stressful, but your family needs you and your positive words. Take the time to switch gears on the ride home preparing yourself to engage.

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7 Bible Verses That Will Strengthen & Guide Your Marriage

Connected Together (1)

I enjoy research because it helps me to understand why and how something works, and how to make it better. Research about relationships and marriage is fascinating because of the tools that it gives to create connected relationships.  With that said what I love is the truth I find in scripture.

There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us. 2 Timothy 3:14-17 MSG

I started as a young boy going to scripture for answers.  The Bible helped to give me guidance and a foundation to build life and relationships on.  I was blessed as a child to have grandparents and parents that fostered that love of scripture.

Here are a few verses that have been a guide to me.  Read them over and meditate on them.  I really believe that scripture should create a reaction.  The reaction should create change in our heart and mind.

Create New Experiences

Couples get in a rut.  They do the same routine daily and weekly.  You need new experiences to keep the chemistry or passion of the relationship strong.  Studies have shown that new novel experiences can stimulate the production of the neurochemicals dopamine and norepinephrine, which show up in the brain in the early, blissful stages of a relationship.  What this means is that you need to keep the relationship new and growing. Look for new things to do together and enjoy as you explore life together.

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When You Get Stuck

When You Get Stuck

Relationships get stuck when we live in the past.  It is difficult to love fully or show kindness when you are replaying conversations and events in your head.  We are always living in the present.  We lose the focus or attention of the present by allowing or thoughts to live in the shame of the past or the anxious fear of the future.

This bind or struggle can effect how you live with and love the relationship that are most important to you.  We judge the motives or meaning of our spouse and friends by being caught up in the struggle of shame or hurt from the past and fear and anxiety of the future.  Here are a couple things you can do to help you live in the joy of the present.

Prefer Your Spouse

“In marriage do thou be wise: prefer the person before money, virtue before beauty, the mind before the body; then thou hast a wife, a friend, a companion, a second self.” ~ William Penn 

Always See The Best

ALWAYS SEE THE BEST in your spouse. Focus only on what you love and enjoy. When we focus on something its importance will grow and expand.  If you make the negative aspects of your life or spouse the center of your attention, those negative things will grow in importance.  If you focus on their strengths and beauty, the things you enjoy, you will be amazed at how those strengths will grow.  Focus on what is important.  Focus on your love and affection for them and your enjoyment will grow.

“God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which he must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves.”
― A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

“The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves. We’re still trying to give orders, and interfering with God’s work within us. ”
― A.W. Tozer

The Pursuit of God