Eight Years Later...

A few days ago, on the 27th, Rob and I celebrated our 8th anniversary of our first date, it was a blind date too!  Eight years later, we have definitely endured a lot together, more than either one of us would have asked for.  Especially the past five years, there is no denying that we have struggled, to the point of almost breaking even, the repercussions of the flood we went through are still far reaching, emotionally, and very much financially.

Rob's work schedule has been a stress on us all, but in the past few weeks, it has been getting better, last week he actually had two days off.  I hardly knew what to do with him here.  He has had to work most Sundays, but the past few weeks he has gone in early so he could leave at 11 so he could be at church with us, considering Pastor Casey has been teaching on marriage, this has meant a lot to me.

One of the things that I have seen make a noticeable difference in our relationship is our weekly "team meetings", where Rob and I sit down and talk about our family's calendar for the week, our finances, and anything else regarding the kids that we need to discuss.  It allows us to stay on the same page when it comes to managing our home and family.

Another thing that has made a noticeable difference is that we have started doing the finances together, previously I had been doing them by myself, then Rob took them over and was doing them by himself, and both ways just really didn't work, with both of us working on them together, we have really seen a big difference, not only in our attitudes toward money, but we are well on our way to being out of debt (FINALLY!!!).

Something that Pastor Casey challenged us to do was go out to dinner together and commit to each other to do whatever it takes to make our marriage work.  We chose a Wednesday night to do this, because all the kids were going to be at church for youth group and Awana, that night, we realized that it was the perfect night to have a weekly date night.  Previously we were trying to make Sunday evenings work, but it was a struggle with the kids schedules and we recently joined a small group that meets on Sunday nights.  But Wednesday nights are great, the kids have their activities and we have two hours all to ourselves to work on our marriage.  Because we are working hard to get out of debt, we won't be going out to dinner every week, so there will be some creative date nights happening, I'll post some of those ideas another time.

I'm so proud of us and the distance that we have come, I feel so blessed that Rob is so committed to working on our marriage and makes efforts to grow our relationship.  Just the other day Zach walked into the room while Rob and I were kissing and said, "You kiss too much!", I couldn't help but feel some pride at that comment, it is something that Rob and I had consciously made a decision to do.  Kiss more, hug more, talk more, especially if you are a newlywed couple, that might sound strange, but we have realized that life is crazy busy (especially with all these kids!), and if we don't consciously make efforts to show each other love, sometimes it doesn't happen. 

In eight years, what I am very sure of is two things.  1) Rob and I are very different, like night and day in almost every area.  2)What we do have in common, what is the most important, is our love for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and that is really everything we need for this marriage to work.