Kevin and I have recently felt a great need to be more intentional about the life we are living together. In all honesty, it feels that we fly by the seats of our pants ALL the time. There are few things that we are consistent about in our life and this saddens me. This is a big topic that comes up often in our home and we are ready to move on to bigger and better things to talk about. During one of our family night discussions we decided that the biggest reason for our inconsistency is simply business! Kevin said it perfectly, “WE. MUST. SLOW. DOWN”. If only he would have shared this wisdom with me years ago. If only I would have LISTENED to him years ago. The next big word out of his mouth was “intentionality”. We talked for a long time about what our life would look like if we were intentional about our relationship with each other, our family and our friends. We moved on to talk about being intentional about how we eat, working out, time spent in the Word daily, dates, etc. Ahhh…it was wonderful! I brought up to Kevin that I often hear couples with children say the one thing they miss is having dates with their spouses. HELLO…we don’t have children and it is rare that we make the time to have a “true” date. Right then and there we each grabbed a piece of paper and decided to write down different ideas that we would enjoy doing together as a date. It actually was a lot of fun! When we read them out loud you could tell who the selfish one was in our marriage…ME! Actually, if Kevin had it his way every date would have ended with a three letter word. =) I decided to take this exercise one step further and typed out our list of dates, cut them into strips and placed them in a “date mug”. We will be adding new date ideas as the seasons change.
Here are a few of our dates that we look forward to doing together:
Candlelight dinner at home
Bike ride and a picnic
Head to Lanesboro to float the river and go to our ice cream shop.
Go fishing for the day
Go out for wine and dessert
Play strip Tetris attack
Frisbee Golf
Watch Friends episodes with orange Julius and popcorn
Riverside Concerts (Thursdays)
Play Scrabble or game of choice
Play the “Get Lucky” coupon booklet!
Go for a walk. Come home and sit out on deck to talk about topic of choice.
Bake cookies together while listening to Michael Jackson.
Go to DQ and share a blizzard of Nicole’s choice.
Watch movie of Nicole’s choice in bed. Nicole gets a foot massage for 15 minutes
Dinner and a Movie
Go bowling
Play tennis
Go for a run
Go to a hockey game
Go for a hike
Go for a drive and find fun places to take photos together
We both know we have the desire to want to change the way we live out our everyday lives, but we must have the self-control to put our desires into action. This brings me back to a Beth Moore study we did recently with our small group called Living Beyond Yourself. It was on the Fruit of the Spirit. I do pray that Kevin and I, as a couple, will both have the self-control to be intentional about the way we live our life towards one another, our family and our friends!
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23
