The Joy I found in my marriage this week: Resiliency! Sometimes we have difficult conversations in marriage, simply because difficult situations happen. Ya know? And sometimes they’re difficult conversations over something that is so little, but our emotions get the best of us. That happened twice this week, haha. We get frustrated with each other sometimes but I’m proud to say we were able to talk it out/let our feelings subside fairly quickly.

I’ve been wanting to do some exciting things for the #monthoflove, which means GIVEAWAYS! And I wanna do something BIG! I want to give 5 lucky winners a WIFE LIFE t-shirt! Yes, that means I’m giving away 5 t-shirts total, which is over $100 in prizes! If you haven’t seen these t-shirts, they look like this: Want to show you’re a proud wifey?! Or do you want to be thoughtful and try winning it for your wife?

The joy I found in my marriage this week: thoughtful surprises! In the past few weeks, a few situations have come up that make me look back on everything it took to get where we are now. We both had to go through a lot of learning and heartbreak before meeting each other, and being ready for each other. Even though you have a few tough minutes of remembering those hard times, it all makes you appreciate your relationship for what it is today, ya know?

The joy I found in my marriage this week: the opportunity to take care of my husband as he has had the flu/cold all week! You might be thinking, “You find taking care of your ill spouse joyful? Not only do you have to do more for them than usual but you have to pick up the slack of things they normally do… I don’t see how that is enjoyable…”

*This post contains affiliate links. I don’t know a marriage that doesn’t give cards or love notes to each other for special occasions or even just for no reason at all! They can seem boring sometimes unless you get a funny one, or one that just has that unique factor… WELL. I’m going to show you how to make the EASIEST unique card you’ve ever seen! It folds and opens in a fun way, you can make at home with supplies you most likely have laying around, and you can embellish it however you want!

The joy I found in my marriage this week: Seeing a month’s worth of progress from working at our goals! It’s been a month now into the new year, and I have to admit that I didn’t have 100% success every week in my goals. HOWEVER, I can say I have still worked at them and have noticed some differences it has made in my marriage and my own life. And that is the whole point of making and pursuing goals, right?

One day I was flipping through an article on long-lasting celebrity couples, and each couple said something that has helped them be successful in their marriage. Some of the reasons were good, but this one by actor Bryan Cranston (from TV shows Malcolm in the Middle, and Breaking Bad) and his wife of 27 years stuck out to me. Whether or not couples therapy is successful for them (it seems like it is since they are still married), this statement is so powerful!

To say there are so many stereotypes and stigmas out there associated with therapists and therapy is an understatement. Therapists are often portrayed in movies and TV shows as jokes, and I’m not sure why, because seeking help for your mental and emotional state of mind is not a casual or comical thing! It’s also just as important to keep yourself emotionally healthy as it is to keep yourself physically healthy!

I am sharing my experiences because I believe that the more positively we talk about therapy, the less stigma attached to it, and the more likely people are to seek help and actually get the help they need. I have seen a therapist at two different times in my life, and each time was for emotionally difficult situations. I ask for your sensitivity as I get very vulnerable here! (Just to preface this, I’ll refer to both counseling and therapy as one sometimes, just so it’s more simple to read, but the two professions are slightly different.

I feel like a lot of things this week have been telling me “No.” It’s a lot of things that have to do with my physical health mainly, but a few other things as well. Circumstantial things that just happen in the week like having to make two special trips to the grocery store for strawberries, on two different days, and both stores just happen to be completely out of strawberries!

The joy I found in my marriage this week: gratitude. I’ve always been grateful for my husband and felt like I have been blessed with a very extraordinary one. But this week as I become more aware of serious marital struggles others are facing, it has made me realize that our own (as in my husband and I) marital struggles aren’t so significant as we think they are. You read books, watch movies and TV shows, and even hear from others of crappy situations marriages find themselves dealing with like affairs or continual dishonesty, but it doesn’t hit you how real it all is until you’ve actually been married for a few years, and when things happen to people around you.

My heart hurts every time I hear my friends, neighbors, etc. tell me that their parents still don’t approve of their spouse. It’s hard to listen to them tell me things like, “They think he isn’t good enough for me” or “They tried to break us up.” These kinds of family situations frustrate me primarily because HELLO PARENTS, IT’S AFTER-THE-FACT! THEY HAVE BEEN MARRIED FOR YEARS NOW, SO PUT ASIDE YOUR OWN FEELINGS AND SUPPORT THEM INSTEAD OF DISCOURAGE THEM!

A joy in our marriage this week (from my perspective): Getting tickets to see U2 in concert this year!!! It’s not only a joy because they are in my top ten of my concert bucket list, but I was proud of my husband for being willing to fly somewhere to go see them with me. You see, he hates flying. [Holding his hand on flights (like the picture above) is a common thing with us because of it, and I don’t mind at all!

I love playing with sparklers in the summer! They are a fun burst of energy and warmth, and have totally “sparked” a comparison for me to marriage! Some couples at various points in their marriage, lose those fun, romantic sparks. Sadly, some of these couples wait around for the sparks to come back again on their own, which rarely happens. I think they wait around because it seems like a daunting task, right?

Background/reminder This is week 1 of my campaign/project/whatever about focusing on the joys in my marriage. I talked about this whole idea and why in our Christmas card blog post but basically the reasoning for it is this: I don’t like the pressure that comes with trying to be happy. It’s as if we think we aren’t/won’t/can’t be overall happy if the majority of our day had sad or difficult moments.

First of all, Happy New Year!!! We are on a Caribbean cruise ringing in the new year, so it’s a little belated from me! That’s also the reason why we just barely did our annual dinner date night where we share and discuss our goals for the year together. We typically do it on New Year’s Eve but we felt like saving it until we got home from our trip. Especially because this fun stuff was going on!

Since this is our 3rd attempt at Christmas cards, I kinda feel like I got it right. Maybe! I didn’t feel like I could put together a newsletter super quickly even though I already had our template from last year. Something inside me suggested making it somewhat more simple this year. But I like to give more than just the picture of us with a small Christmas phrase with our names on it.

My friend Kiley is someone I have known for years and is someone I strongly look up to as a wife, a mother, but also an incredibly strong person who stands firm with a faith that everything will work out. This past year they struggled through 4 months of unemployment after having their second child and I know that was something difficult to experience for their family and their marriage. However, it also brought blessings, too.

I LOVE PLAYING GAMES!!! They are just my jam. I get so excited when we get together with friends or family who want to play games because we don’t get to play those 3+ player games at home! Over the past four years together, we have managed to find some two-player games to play at home, but we get bored of them real quick. Since every couple needs to have some games to turn to, especially in the winter time, I figured I would make one big list for us all!

I don’t think I’ll ever stop getting inspired by quotes that remind me to look for the lesson through hard times! If we apply this to marriage, I think the opportunity that #alberteinstein is talking about here are the opportunities to learn something about yourself, your spouse, or the issue. If our difficulty is disagreeing on something important, I get the chance to see another perspective I didn’t see before. I also get the chance to analyze myself and how I can improve.