Growing Your Marriage While Having Young Kids | Word First

well we're here to talk about when you have young kids and you're a parent or you have lots of kids or you have lots of young kids and those seasons can be challenging it can be hard we've had a lot of people say to us because we have a four-year-old and a two-year-old and then our third is on the way do in September and a lot of people have said enjoy this season it's the best time of your life and we've kind of felt like you know on the one hand it really is joyful so there's truth in that on the other hand it can be exhausting and it can be humbling you know usually when someone says that during the statement one of our kids is chucking a chicken nugget across the room or you know there's some kind of meltdown happening or something and so we've talked a lot about just how challenging it can be for the kids to become the emotional Center and they can take so much energy that the marriage can really suffer and so we've had to work really hard at having healthy rhythms and healthy habits that can keep the marriage strong during those seasons so we do things like we have a date night in once a week or we put the kids to bed early and talk about a chapter of a book and that's been helpful we do a lot of walks because the kids are quiet and the stroller and we found things like that that have been helpful what have you guys found helpful for growing your marriage in those seasons where it's so demanding and it's it's so difficult well I'm a big advocate of routine for this very reason so we had four children in four years and so early on it was quite the circus and we got as quickly as possible into a sleep routine with the kids so that they would be you know we're done at 7 o'clock it's Jeff and me on the couch talking about our day or whatever it is that we had and in fact as the kids got older and we could not put them like they're in high school and they're like yeah we're not going to bed at 7 anymore and we're like well you really could we lost our evenings because the kids were awake now until 10:00 and 11:00 at night doing homework and needing help and so it threw us off in a later season of life with like wait a minute this was the time we had carved out and now you people will not go to bed but in the early years it was a big help to us to have every night you know around seven-thirty it was just the two of us and then we developed some shared interests and and hobbies that could happen in the home or around the home so we both really got into gardening because you know you could go in your front yard and do something but you couldn't leave them and go across town unless you were gonna pay for a sitter so we got really into things like that we tried to share it was all about trying to develop like what's a show that we both like to watch or but finding ways to where when the kids were off the radar we weren't just going and doing our own things we were looking for things to do to get it cooking we cook together that one doesn't happen in my house but we do walk a lot together it's funny I can still when I get certain places and walks I can remember the various conversations we were having it could have been about the Bible it could have been about the sermon we walk a lot on Sundays and so it just gives us that time together to talk to one another and just process life and we really tried especially on our date nights I would say we did this poorly at first but we learned from a mistake I used to spend our date nights thinking oh now's the time I can talk about all the things I've been we needed to talk to him about yet schedule being the things I think we need to work on in our marriage which makes for a real fun day yeah that was very fun and so after this failed to be fun anymore you know we both came to the realization we need to take our date night so just have fun with one another again you're doing so much work together in the home when you have young children that you constantly feel like you're passing the football in some ways up well you do that change this diaper now while I'm doing this so it's nice to have a time you can just go out and just be together and try not to talk about responsibilities but just have fun together sometimes that gets forgotten with young children but there's fun to be had with one another yeah sometimes being a parent can bring up your fears and your insecurities and you can see the struggles of your spouse and so we've talked a lot about the importance of having compassion on each other and having forgiveness and grace and you know kind of having a gospel tone in our family life I think sometimes we talk about you know forgiveness and Ephesians 4:32 says be brokenhearted in your forgiveness toward each other and sometimes we think about those verses and we apply them to our neighbor more quickly than we apply them to our people in our own family and so we've talked about just how important it is to have a tone of the gospel and a tone of warmth and practicing kindness in our family and one of the things we've done to try to protect that is my wife and I have just made an agreement that we're never going to complain about each other to our friends we're never going to complain about our spouse and you know I don't have anything to complain about anyway but she probably does but even if we did we're just not going to do that because we want to protect this sense of safety and warmth and love have there been things that you guys have thought about that have been helpful dakara have a gospel environment in your family yeah I would agree we would say that it what the most foundational revelation for us as parents was that our children are our neighbors and so you know we have a tendency to be kindest to the people who are the furthest outside of our home and to sort of treat those who are closest to us with the least amount of civility and that was something that we just determined is we wanted to have a home where where we treat each other with civility because civility is really preferential love and so that meant that in addition to I love what you said about not speaking you know disrespectfully of each other with your friends but also in front of the kids like very much not wanting to show frustration if Jeff drops the ball on something or vice versa you know just that we're gonna let love cover a multitude of sins and we're going to keep going and as far as the kids are going to perceive it's that I I love him and he loves me and before each other so that and that we want them to be for each other as well and that was another thing that really defined the way that we thought about parenting was to tell the kids that they were each other's best friends even when they didn't believe it and you when we weren't sure and and then to actually see that I'm internalized that and reckon and Jeff was always so great about saying he'd be like hey who's your best friend in third grade and they'd say Susie you can't say do you know who my best friend was in third grade and then they'd say no and he'd say me neither I have no idea where that kid is now I guess what I do know I know where my sister is and I love her and she's my best friend and so he just that was a really great thing he brought to our home was just a sense of these are the people who you're going to be with for your whole life and so we should treasure them yeah that's a great point because and I even think in that it starts in our minds being prepared in our minds of how we're gonna think about one another yeah and really having a gospel centered understanding of one another which means I will fail you and you will fail me so there will be things that we could if we wrongly wanted to go talk to other people about but to have that sense of grace with one another to know from the beginning that we've all sinned and we will all be weak with one another and it's gonna happen even more in the home just because of proximity and time so we will be our sin is gonna rub against one another in the home more than any other place so it's the greatest place to get to extend grace because that's where you can't escape it you know if a friend's bother and you can just spend less time maybe with them but here is where really Christ's love has to be manifest in us in the greatest way possible is in our love for our spouse and then also in our love for our children but I think it starts with the right expectation that he's not going to be perfect I'm not going to be perfect and we can really go into marriage with the works based mentality you know like well you're gonna bring all this good stuff to the table and then of course I'm going to live up to all the good stuff I'm supposed to bring but eventually we will run out of self love for one another or what's in our own hearts and we're going to have to have Christ welling up in us to empower us to love one another so in some sense I think one of the deepest ways we do that is find our greatest love and expectations in Christ and then share that with each other but it starts in the home first they are our closest neighbors and I think they're really where they we see is the gospel manifested in me because it's much easier to love someone who lives three states away and yeah be great to them yeah thank you both