marriage building

Since we've been married, we have devoted Saturday nights to reading books on Christian marriage.  Lately, we've been reading through Fit to Be Tied by Bill and Lynne Hybels...we love it.  It's geared towards both already married couples as well as couples considering marriage, and it has an excellent discussion guide in the back.  The book raises great points, but it's also funny enough to be entertaining.

One of the challenges raised in the book is to try something new in several different areas of your life, just to keep things interesting and fresh.  Here are a few of our goals:

Dating - Go on two purposeful dates each month that we schedule in advance.  We will each plan a date for the other with their interests and needs in mind.  To get us started, we're going to work our way through a book of dating ideas.  We've picked 40 Unforgettable Dates with Your Mate.  It's got a section on dates that the wife plans for the husband and one on dates that the husband plans for the wife.  Each of their date ideas meets a specific need - the need for friendship, spiritual intimacy, etc.  We're really looking forward to going through it.

Education - We've decided to teach each other something that each of us is good at.  Nathan is going to teach Kristin all about our finances.  Kristin is going to teach Nathan how to use Creative Memories digital scrapbooking software.

Relationally - To build up our relationship with one another, we are going to re-do an exercise that we first completed while dating.  We will each write a list of ten things our spouse does to show us love and a list of ten things our spouse could do to show us love.  These are great ways to ensure that we are loving each other in ways that are meaningful to the other person.

To build up our relationships with others, we've decided to invest more purposefully in several of our friends.  We've started praying for these friends daily, and we're going to do our best to initiate spending time with them.  We've decided to also show appreciation to those mentors in our lives who have meant a lot to us by putting together a meaningful gift basket.

Spiritual - We decided it was about time that we start memorizing verses.  We each have made a goal to learn one Scripture passage a month, reflecting on it throughout the month.  Kristin's going to make magnets for each passage to help us stay reminded of them.

Nathan hasn't picked his passages yet, but here are Kristin's: 2 Corinthians 4:7-11 (witnessing), Philippians 4:6-7 (anxiety), Ephesians 5:22-24 (submission), 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 (purity), Philippians 4:8-9 (pure thoughts), Philippians 4:11-13 (contentment), Romans 12:3 (humility), James 1:22-25 (obedience), James 3:9-12 (speech), 1 Corinthians 15:58 (ministry), Ephesians 6:10-13 (staying strong).