Blog #1

Why Write a Blog?

We know what your are thinking, “they’re so busy, why would they start a blog?” And yes, we recognize that on the outside we appear very “busy”. However, we have learned that it is all about the type of “busy”we choose that impacts our marriage and family in either a positive or negative way. Below we have listed a few reasons we would like to share our story with you:

• We’ve discovered that doing new, challenging things as a couple strengthens our bond.
• We want to enhance our communication time together, what better way than openly penning a blog?!?!
• We want to candidly share our story in the hopes that it will strengthen the marriage of others, even if only one.
• And most importantly, we desire to use our marriage as it was intended, to reach others for Christ.

This blog is just another extension of our approach to the last couple of years. An approach focused on being intentional and purposeful. We believe this is exactly the reason that enables us to be so “busy” and not always feel overwhelmed.

Intentional and purposeful, these are words that get thrown around quite a bit, even borderline overused, but they get to the foundation of our marriage over the last couple of years. We are doing our best to live in an intentional way by putting our love for each other first and letting everything else flow out from that. We hope that by living with purpose our marriage becomes a means by which we are able to love, serve and inspire others.

From the outside one may look at our faith, home, careers, and children and think that we have it all together. While we are trying to be intentional in our marriage, we often find ourselves saying that “we don’t have it all together, but together we have it all!” Although we don’t view ourselves as experts in marriage, we do recognize that through our life experiences we have learned many valuable lessons in the past 14 years. Our hope is that our posts, both truthful and transparent, may offer some insight for couples on this journey called marriage, no matter where they find themselves on the path.

In our early years of marriage, it seemed that our only role was SPOUSE. We were able to place all attention and focus to one another. It sometimes felt effortless to be the husband or wife we were called to be. But then, with the blessing of one, then two, then three children it seemed as though we blinked, and we were “busy living.” It took several years to realize that busy for the sake of being busy wasn’t what we desired at all.

We decided to be intentional with our marriage, finally understanding that our relationship together could serve a much higher purpose. So, we took our first Vision Retreat; we escaped the real world and took time to slow down, pray, evaluate, and plan what we envisioned God had in store for our marriage. Through this reflection time, we quickly realized that others were dictating our daily/weekly schedules, as well as our seemingly endless list of roles we hold outside the home. On our Vision Retreat we were able to set personal, marriage and family goals and were able to return home ready to change our “busy” to “intentional.”

We are admittedly BUSY! This is precisely the reason we want to share some of the changes we have made to be more intentional with our time. We recognize there are many marriages and families just like ours and we hope our experiences can help simplify lives in a hectic world. So, we invite you to follow along with us on our Busy Livin’ Marriage journey. We will share candidly whatever life throws our way. We look forward to connecting with, and learning from, other couples as we go.