Before I jump right in and give you ideas to spark your marriage, let me give you a little history first. You know that saying, “every love story is beautiful, but ours is my favorite”? Well, we fell in love young and married young. We met each other working at a health food store called Wild Oats. I was a florist and my husband, Kevin, a produce guy. I was in college newly single and not ready to mingle! This is also right around the time I accepted Christ as my savior. I was focused on everything else in my life like living in my first apartment and paying for rent!
So our first date happened because we were set up by our two Manager’s AND without knowledge of it! Yep, totally happened and I was not too happy about it either. Remember that single not wanting to mingle thing I was sayin’ before? So, I knew I couldn’t leave this nice guy hanging so I got his number from his sneaky manager and gave him a call! We went out for coffee at Jamaican Blue and yes this place was as cool as it sounds! A typical late night, grungy cool underground kinda place. Kevin did everything right he was ready for a date, and I was just trying to be nice. I still remember what he wore, great cord pants, sweater wrapped around his waist all preppy style, wearing nice shoes too! He even came bearing gifts with a rose and the most adorable stuffed animal puppy. Sigh, he had me from the beginning and this was just the start. He later took me on dates like, Monet’s museum exhibit which by the way still travels from city to city and highly recommend if you get the chance to go. This is probably my favorite date of all time! He planned everything from dinner to flowers to Monet.
We fell in love fast only dated for about a year not even and were married almost 14+ years ago. I can definitely say falling in love can only take you so far though. We strongly believe that making God #1 and not putting each other in His place is key. Now, this took us both a really long time to work-out and understand, but through maturity, in our marriage, we have grown to truly make this our goal and it always works.
Ok, I hope you enjoyed some history…so I am super excited because we are going out of town this weekend which brings me to the first thing I recommend to spark your marriage.
Why we STAYCATION? Our honeymoon was a staycation. They are not too hard to plan, fairly inexpensive and now that we are parents with toddlers we have a chance for coveted “alone time”!
GO TO AN EVENT like an art show or the Monet exhibit I mentioned or if you are both into sports try to go to a ball game together and live it up shout and rally together!
And lastly, but most importantly PRAY TOGETHER. This is not easy for us to do because we can be two ships passing with our schedules, but when we do it bonds us together in a deeper more spiritual way. Another thing I love about praying with your spouse is it can work out grievances in a way that causes healing and not more strife or division in the marriage.
