Marriage is wonderful & such a blessing. In this crazy & unpredictable world, we know we have one person who will always do the best for us when we’re married. But we’re also realistic. We realize that the golden sunlight doesn’t cascade around you as you stroll smiling arm in arm beside a glowing wheat field every single day of your marriage. (Although LeAnn & Jered looked dang good doing that on their first day of marriage, right?!) Sometimes marriage is a challenge. You promise to love & to cherish when you say your vows on your wedding day. Loving & cherishing is easy when there are no money problems, when your job is going well, and when you two are seeing eye to eye on everything. Life happens, though. Not every day is a romance novel. Laundry, paying bills, keeping the house clean, managing a budget, and, you know, your basic adulting day-to-day can wear on everyone. But we have one tip you can implement today that will improve your marriage. We’re sure of it!
Our tip is this: focus on the positive! Make a conscious and intentional choice to focus on the positive. This is simply for illustrative purposes & I totally do not mean to call Josh out publicly on the blog, but I know this will help illustrate my point. Josh has a little corner of our bedroom beside his side of our bed between the bed & the dresser where he piles things- dirty clothes, mostly. At certain points in my marriage, when I felt myself focusing more on the negative, I would start to resent him a little. I would look at Josh’s little corner of the bedroom and think “Ugh. That is so gross. Why doesn’t he just put those in the clothes basket?” But those negative thoughts were not helping anyone. While those clothes weren’t in the proper place, there were so many other things I could be focusing on & thinking about in relation to Josh. For example, he plans our dinners, goes grocery shopping for our family, and cooks us dinner almost every night. He unfailingly & willingly helps me with our daughter without a single complaint and with patience and a smile on his face. He is such a hard worker & gets up most days at 5:00 a.m. so he can get work done before Tenley & I wake up. When I think about these things, I am so thankful for him. The few dirty clothes sitting in our bedroom isn’t a blip on the radar. They’re no big deal. And Josh is built up in my mind. I feel positive & uplifted about him and about our marriage. I am motivated to uplift him, compliment him, and do things around the house that’ll make him feel positively about me. And the whole thing becomes a happy cycle when Josh is uplifted & feels positive about me. He might even be motivated by my compliments, affection, love, & happiness to pick up the clothes in the corner of the bedroom. 😉 Once you switch your focus from the negative to the positive, it’ll start the happy cycle. Try it!
Follow