The past few weeks, I’ve included tidbits from the final chapter of our book on remarriage. This chapter is for married couples and what my husband and I have learned to have a compatible marriage. We included eight ways to enhance your marriage.

    1. Pray together
    2. Communicate
    3. Keep short accounts
    4. Learn your partner’s love language

For Today:  Play together

Sometimes playing together is enjoying a hobby, but it can also be landscaping a dream backyard, or remodeling your home. Planning and doing things together gives such a sense of accomplishment. Sometimes, remodeling can create more stress, but in Jim’s previous marriage, it was just the ticket for saving their marriage.

Playing together might also be attending your favorite sporting event. Most areas have at least one professional or semi-professional team nearby, but there are always high school games to attend.

Perhaps it’s doing something you may not enjoy as much as your partner. Shirley loves hiking and Jim goes along with her though it isn’t his favorite activity. Together, you could join a community choir. Take a language class together. Take a dance class together. Go to the gym together.

We each shared from our past experiences:

From Shirley

In my first marriage, my husband and I didn’t play together much. It had the air of a business-type relationship: raising a family, paying bills, and living separate lives at the same address. After going through the communication class, we realized we didn’t play together.

For years, Bill had done his thing and I had done mine. Now we purposed to have “planned pleasant activities,” setting a date at least once a week to walk, go out for dinner, or get a cup of coffee together. We did those planned pleasant activities as well as learned a new hobby: mountaineering.

We took a mountaineering class, enjoying each step of the journey as we trained, shopped for gear, and made our graduation climb up Mt. Hood. It was something I’d never dreamed of doing and I liked it! I pushed back my fear of heights and edges to ascend the steep-edged trail. After that, we backpacked, rock climbed, and continued mountaineering. Our kids joined us for some adventures but many we did alone. This activity gradually transformed our relationship.

From Jim

Kathy and I were in an uncomfortable place in our marriage. We never did anything fun together, but focused on her career, my business, and raising our blended family. We argued and bickered. We were roommates on a treadmill, just pushing through each day.

As I shared in chapter 7, we found a place in the Columbia River Gorge that helped us focus on something together by purchasing a farm house that needed some loving care. Remodeling and developing neglected acres saved our marriage and established friendships that I still maintain in that small community. It helped our spiritual lives too; in the church where I served as an elder, we worked together in children’s ministries

 

I hope these ideas will encourage you to incorporate some of them into your marriage. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been married seven months or seven years, like us. Or even fifty-plus for some of you. All of the above photos were taken after December 7, 2013, the date of our marriage. I enjoyed looking at those special days–even though some were rather average days, we made them special!

I’d like to include a quote from the book that means a lot–regardless of your age….

Marriage on earth is a gift from God for us to enjoy here.

Enjoy every moment!