Fair warning: I’m hopping around a little bit in today’s post, so just hang on. I promise I will make one or two half-decent points today.

As the title suggests, I’ll be talking about marriage today and a few ways I’ve found that have really helped my marriage to grow.

Before we get into that though, I’d like to share with my single friends.

I realize that I mainly talk about marriage on the blog here because, well, I’m married. It’s what I know. I also realize that many of you are not married and I want to tell you that I see you, too.

It’s easy to feel left out, especially around Valentine’s Day.

I remember being single and feeling totally excluded. It can be really tough. It can also be a beautiful, wonderful thing, and each and every one of you are welcome here, married or not.

However you’re spending Valentine’s Day - whether you ignore it completely, buy yourself chocolate and watch sappy movies or spend it with your favorite humans - I hope you have the best time.

The fact remains, I am married. As the married folks here know, it’s a lot of work. Two sinners being married to each other and doing life together is no walk in the park and it takes daily effort and humility to make it work.

I love Elliot more than anyone else on this earth, but there are days that I just do not like him at all. Those are the days that I especially need to pray hard for him (and for me) and to show up when he doesn’t deserve it, just like he shows up for me when I’m downright miserable to be around. It’s the daily effort we both put into our marriage, plus our reliance on God that makes it work.

We haven’t been married that long (3 years in May!), but here are some things we’ve done that have really helped our marriage.

Dating.

In the last six months, we have begun to date regularly again and although it seems redundant, it definitely changes things up to make special plans to hang out together. Elliot has committed to taking me on 52 dates this year, and it’s been so fun. We do subscribe to Datebox (here’s a link for $10 off), so some of our dates are at home, but it’s fun to come up with creative ideas to hang out and try new things. If you’ve never tried a Datebox, they’re essentially $30-40 a box, and it comes with a full evening of activities, games, conversation starters and ways to get to know each other better.

Couple’s Counseling.

There’s such a taboo around counseling, and I’m here on a personal crusade to change that. When I’ve mentioned doing counseling, I’ve been asked “Oh, were you having serious issues?” No, we weren’t. We simply weren’t communicating as well as we could have (who hasn’t had that issue?), and we wanted to get some help with that. This is my marriage for the rest of my life. Elliot and I are totally different people from polar opposite backgrounds (also, two sinners who both mess up on the daily). Wouldn’t it make more sense to figure out how to best communicate with each other early on, so we can enjoy our years together more? It seemed like a no-brainer and within a few months, we were communicating better than ever. It’s one of the best things we’ve ever done for us.

Traveling/Weekend Getaways.

We love to travel. Even if it’s just a day trip or an overnight, it’s so refreshing for us to get away from our real life for a little bit and get some good quality time together. Sometimes it’s a hiking trip or just a weekend at the beach. It’s a great opportunity to break away from the mundane, relax, and focus on each other.

Leave Notes For Each Other.

I haven’t done this one in a minute, but here’s my sign to start picking it back up. I found these printable notes a couple years ago and cut them out and put them in Elliot’s lunch when he went to work but now that he works from home, I’ll have to get a little more creative! My mom always wrote a sweet note on my napkin and stuck it in my lunchbox growing up and I always felt so loved and knew she was thinking of me. It’s a very easy way to brighten your partner’s day.

Pray For Each Other.

When we do devotions together, we will usually end with a prayer and during that we will pray for each other. It’s a habit that we’re working on doing more together, as well as during our own personal time with God. When I get a text from Elliot saying that he’s praying for me, my heart bursts a little bit. It is such a meaningful and intimate thing for me to know that my husband is talking to God about me, for me. Prayer is such a powerful thing that we can do for each other; it literally works wonders.

My prayer for each of you is that you feel loved at some point this Valentine’s Day - whether it be by your spouse, significant other, parent, child, sibling, friend, grandparent, grandchild, it doesn’t matter - and that you feel the love of God holding you a little bit tighter.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?” Ecclesiastes 4:9