Philosophy Friday - How to Make Any Marriage Better

We believe that anyone can make their marriage better by having Heavenly Father involved in that marriage as well. When the gift of marriage was handed off to us from God, He intended that He would be involved intimately in that relationship as well. He know the weaknesses and flaws that our relationships have. More importantly He knows how to fix it.

Now when I say this to people I usually have them say back to me "But I have prayed for help with my marriage and He hasn't been helping us". From your perspective you may not see that He is answering your prayer. However, He is limited by both you and your spouses free agency. He cannot violate both you and your spouses willingness to ignore His advice if that is what either of you want to do. The great news is that He will never give up on trying to bless both of you even you reject his gifts. Since you can't make your spouse accept help from Heavenly Father, you can only try to increase your willingness to follow His plan for your marriage. We know that as you do so, you will see miracles happen.

Tuesday Tip - 01-13-2009

Today's Tuesday Tip is actually from the Generous Wife site. They send an e-mail tip every day. They also have a Generous Husband site.

Write down five things that you would like to do during your life. Ask your husband to do the same then share with each other. What can you do to help each other make those dreams come true?

A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.

Author Unknown

Our Story - Part Two

Mark - I went off to college in August of 1993. I would be living in the dorm rooms at Wright State University located in Fairborn, Ohio. By sheer luck, the university had made a mistake placing me and my roommate in a dorm room that shared a bathroom with women. So they had to move me to another one. However, the university only had a single person dorm room available for me to move me to. Normally, freshman never get these rooms but I did. The introvert in me was excited that once I got behind that door, I wouldn't need to pretend to be an outgoing person. I could be alone!

Outside my room was a completely different story. I went and did just about every social activity I could do. I met tons of new people. I made a new name for myself and shyness had nothing to do with it. Rather quickly, I had a group of friends from my dorm hall surounding me. It felt pretty good. However when it got to be too much for me, I could always slip back into my room.

I was a driven person at first. I was taking Computer Engineering classes which included Programing, Physics, Composition and Calculus. I had a full ROTC scholarship and esentially had everything paid for. I found work for spending money as a proctor for an algebra class where I taught fellow freshman students the remedials of algebra so that they could take normal set of algebra classes required of all freshman.

It was about a month into this routine that my life took a radical turn of events. I was walking from the ROTC building with a thought planted in my head that I needed to find a Church to go to. I had gone to Methodist and Prespitarian churches in the past and had made an intense study of the Bible the year before. By chance, there were two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints standing out in the parking lot when I thinking about joining a church. I walked straight up to them (because I was in my extrovert mode outside my dorm room). I saw that they had a Book of Mormon in their hand. I told them that I knew about the Book of Mormon and I that I believed it was the Word of God.

Now you got to understand what just happened there in what I just described. This was two Mormon missionaries that are use to constantly having doors slammed in their faces and being ignored by the majority of people. Not only did someone come to them first, but this someone walked up and told them that the cornerstone of their faith was true. Why did I say that? I knew it was true. Two months earlier I had finshed reading the Bible. I had an impression that God would not just give revelation that was in the Bible. I figured that there was more that he revealed on earth. I found a Book of Mormon that our family had been given and read the statements of the witnesses in the front section. It was enough to convince me that I had found more of God's revealed truth. As you can imagine, the missionaries were excited to have found me and promptly made an appointment to come see me.

Julie Beth - While I was waiting for "Mr. Right" to show up, I kept myself busy by attending Institute classes and being involved with the Young Single Adult group in my church. I really enjoyed Institute. I took the time to really enjoy the scriptures and the Gospel. It helped me to stay focused on the type of person that I really wanted to marry. It could have been easy to settle for something less then my requirements for a husband but I knew that I wouldn't be happy.

It was good to have a strong group of friends who had the same standards that I did. I knew that Heavenly Father wanted me to be happy. And that if I just kept the right things, in His due time, He would send Mr. Right to me.

One night I got a call. There was a new guy in our Young Single Adult group who was interested in attending Institute. We agreed that he would pick me up and I would show him where classes were located. It seemed like fate had dealt me a lucky hand.

We started out as "just friends". But quickly grew to like each other and started going out on dates, attending Institute together each week, and going to Church dances. I did have to overlook the fact, that he wasn't Eagle Scout (one of my requirements for my husband). However, he was talking about going on a mission. So things were looking up and my dreams were coming true after all.

Philosphy Friday - Learn How to be a Good Spouse

We believe that you must learn how to have a good marriage. It just doesn't happen. Too many people believe that finding the right person is all that is required. Conversely if they are in a bad marriage it is because they married the wrong person. This is far from the truth. We are here to say that living happily ever after is a fairy tale. To be in a good marriage means that you consistently work hard at it. Part of the reason that we started this blog is to share skills that can help you and your beloved spouse to love each other better. Please keep coming back. Feel free to comment and share skills that you have learned so that we can all get better at our marriages. If you know of good places to go to get advice, please share it with all of us.

Tuesday Tip 01-06-2008

The beginning of the year is a time that we all typically think about the future and make plans for the upcoming year. This is a good time to sit down with your spouse to plan out your future year together. You want to plan things like what will you do special for your anniversary. Plan for the holidays next year. Maybe one of you wants to go back to school. Maybe you would like to go on more dates. Make a plan on how you will accomplish this. Then get a calendar just for the two of you and start putting these plans on the calendar. It is alright if your plans don't work out for one reason or another. However, if you don't plan ahead, you can guarantee that even less of what you would like to see happen will happen.

Our Story - Part One

Mark - Growing up I always wanted to have a family and to be a father. I didn't have any plans on how many children I would have. I just assumed that I would have three children like my parents did. The person that I would marry would be a good mother and someone that I really enjoyed being around. Beyond that I didn't know much about what I was looking for.

I didn't become interested in dating in High School until my junior year. But once I made the decision to date, I jumped in with two feet. I tried everything I knew. I passed notes to girls in class. I would ask them for their phone numbers. I would talk to them for hours on the phone. I even asked a couple of them out. However no one ever seemed to be that interested in me. After awhile, I began to wonder if anyone every would be interested in me.

I tried another strategy when I was a senior. I tried dating a couple of freshman girls. Both were disasters. Each was too immature for any kind of real relationship. Neither lasted more than a couple of months. I was sure no one else older was interested in me. So I spent all the dances (including the prom) at home and alone.

So finding a high school sweetheart was now out of the picture. I began considering my prospects once I went off to college. I figured that I'd have a much better chance there. I started counting the benefits of waiting until I was in college. First no one would know me there. No one would know of my embarrassing social past. Second I could pretend to be someone that I wasn't. That was a big plus. I knew no one would be interested in the way I was. I figured that a radical change in who I was would work out better for me. So I waited out my time in High School and counted to the day that I would move far away from everyone in my home town.

Julie - At the age of four, I thought that you were suppose to grow up and marry your Mother's best friend's son. It's what I saw frequently on TV shows and movies. It also probably helped that the boy that I first had a crush on was my best friend and of course was my Mother's best friend's son.

As I got older, I realized that this wasn't a practical plan. I discovered that best friends don't like kissing someone they think of as their sister. And I always seemed to be the girl that my guy friends liked to hang out with as a friend, but nothing more. (See guys you aren't the only ones that get the line "Let's just be friends".)

I also had another complication in finding the right guy to marry. I knew that I wanted to be married to someone who loved the Gospel and the Church that I loved so much. A friend of mine (yeah you guessed it, one of the guys that I liked but I was just someone to give advice to, not to date) told me that I should never settle for anything less than an Eagle Scout and return missionary from our Church. I knew he was right. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of these in Ohio. So I didn't date a whole lot in high school. Then I didn't date a whole lot in college. In fact, at one point I went five years without a date, because there was no one I was interested in dating that was interested in dating me. I wondered if I would ever find someone to date let alone marry.