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25th Wedding Anniversary: Highlight of 2022

Friday, February 3rd, 2023

25th-Anniversary

One of the highlights of 2022 was the 25th anniversary of my marriage. We had professional photos taken, and Alan did something romantic with my ring. A couple of years ago, the diamond fell out of my wedding ring, and I lost it. I saw the moment it happened, so I knew the diamond was somewhere around the cushioned chair where I was sitting. I called out for Alan to come help me look. I shook out my clothes and took out the seat cushion, and we finally found it. The experience reminded me of the Scripture from Luke 15, where the woman lost a valuable coin, and she swept her entire house until she found it, and there was much joy.

The ring really needed to be resized as well, and we didn’t have the money. Now, two years later, he had a better-paying job, and while I was on a road trip, Alan decided to take the ring and get each of my children’s birth stones placed into the ring.

Meanwhile Alan’s wedding ring didn’t fit either, so I decided to get him a new one. I had raised money by selling odds and ends, and I had presented him a ring on his birthday, but he didn’t like it. So I told him we could return the ring and pick out another one together.

Out of the blue, He calls me in the middle of a week day, which is odd, and tells me to come to him so we can pick out his ring. So we go to the jewelry store to pick out his ring, and we narrow it down until he found the one he wanted. Then he told me that we should look for a ring for me. I told him he didn’t need to get me a new ring–we just needed to re-attach the diamond. He said, “Let’s look at rings.”

I started looking, and I saw a ring that looked very similar to mine behind the glass, except that it had other gemstones in it. I pointed to it and said, “That looks similar to my ring…” He blurted out, “That’s your ring!”

I was definitely surprised, and I love it! I feel like royalty, and like it’s a crown of beauty. I feel like I’m carrying around my family everywhere I go. I told Alan that each stone represented one of our children, and that the diamond represented him.

Alan stopped and said, “No, it doesn’t represent me, it represents us.”

All I could do was smile. 🙂

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Refresh Your Marriage: Go Back to Your First Love

Monday, February 8th, 2021

refresh-your-marriage

To breathe new life into a marriage that is going through hard times, go back to where you first fell in love. This will refresh your marriage by re-igniting what you had at the beginning of your relationship.

You can do this in many ways, but one tangible way is to go to the places and do the things you did at first. Remember the excitement of when you were dating, how you studied the face of this person and found him so dear. All those feelings are more easily accessed when you return to the original place where you first kissed, or where you got married, or where he first proposed to you, or where you went on your first date.

This is way easier if you live in the same city where you dated, where you got proposed to, where you kissed, etc. For me, I met my husband in California, he proposed in England, we married in Texas, and we are now living in Washington state. So how do we re-create those early memories?

Refresh Your Marriage: Go Back to Your First Love

First of all, we first met in California on a college church retreat that was on an ocean beach. We used to go to the same college Bible study, so we would walk around campus and talk. Secondly, we dated and first kissed in England, and he proposed to me at Planet Hollywood in London. Third, we got married in a small college chapel with stained glass windows in Texas.

So here in Washington state, we found a college campus. We parked nearby, walked to the school, and walked around, exploring the campus. Yes, the feeling I had more than 20 years ago came back, and we felt like college-aged kids again. We kissed in the stairwell of one of the buildings with classrooms, we saw a recreation building with students pre-occupied with their books and relationships, and we explored the small chapel that reminded us of where we got married, since it had stained glass windows. The feeling of how it was back then rushed back like a breath of fresh air, like a breeze lifting me to a better place.

It took merely half an hour, and it was free. It was one of my favorite date nights with my husband, because we had been going through a difficult time full of grief and sorrow, and going to a college campus was like a time machine, transporting us back to the beginning of our relationship. It was so beautiful, I wanted to cry for joy.

Ever since, I have been wanting to write about this fun and unique date, one that you can re-create yourself. For example, if your first kiss was on a bridge, go to that original bridge (or a similar one in the city where you now live), and go through the same situation that brought you together. Reminisce about how things were, and how you felt. Re-enter that moment through the re-entry point of that physical space, and go back to your first love like a time capsule.

Last March, my husband and I returned to the very campus in California where we first went to Bible study together, and where we spent so much time. While driving around the campus, I wanted to roll down the windows and blast 1980’s music, laugh, and be carefree. What a freeing feeling!

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Date Night: Paint a Canvas

Monday, February 3rd, 2020

Last weekend my husband and I went on a date night to paint a canvas. It was so much fun! My sister gave us a gift card for Painting with a Twist for Christmas. I had been wanting to go on this creative date for several years now, so we finally did it. I chose a mountain scene with a lake and forest.

Both Alan and I have always liked the idea of painting on canvas, ever since watching Bob Ross as children. There is something relaxing about watching someone paint. And Bob Ross always made it look so easy. This painting class was the same way. The instructor took us step-by-step through the painting: first the sky, then the lake, the forest, and the mountain last.

painting-a-canvas

The sky was interesting. We painted a white line for the horizon. Then we created a sunset, using reds, pinks, yellows, and blues. We added “fluffy little clouds.”

Next we painted the lake, along with its multi-colored ripples. Around the lake were the silhouettes of trees. Alan knew how to paint awesome trees, so he showed me how to zig-zag down the trunks of my trees.

painting-on-a-date

Finally we painted the mountain. We used white paint to go from the peak downwards on the mountain, looking like layering of snow. We created purple and pink shadows along the length of it, always moving the brush downwards.

painting-date

It was a really unique experience, as far as date nights go. I love how our paintings turned out!

I’m looking for more ideas for fun nights out as a couple (besides dinner), so in the comments, let me know: What are some unique date nights you’ve had with your spouse?

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Don’t Attribute Wrong Motives to Your Husband

Friday, February 28th, 2014

wrong-motives-to-your-husband

Don’t attribute wrong motives to your husband. In the same way that you are a new creation at salvation, your husband is also a new creation. Deep down he desires to please God. Even if he is trapped in his flesh and sins out of habit–usually through some form of selfishness–so do you. None of us who are true believers wants to do the wrong thing. Our conscience makes us feel bad, and we ask God to help us overcome sin.

I used to attribute wrong motives to my husband without even realizing it. My husband would make a statement, and I would twist his statement to make him seem like he was attacking me when he wasn’t. “Susan , you’re just hurting yourself by making up something that I didn’t say,” he told me one day. I stopped in my tracks and realized that he was right. He had made a statement that was not positive or negative, and I had extrapolated a negative motivation behind it. And there he was, refusing to defend himself because I was the one causing the problem.

“I don’t know how to stop doing it,” I said to my husband, referring to the fact that I would subconsciously attribute the worst motive to him instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt and expecting that we were on the same side. “What should I do? My brain automatically makes you out to be the bad guy, and I don’t want to do that any more. Help me figure out what to do.”

We sat down, and he prayed with me. We asked God to break this pattern of negative interaction. Do you know what? From that day forward, I stopped doing it!

Most areas of sin in my life take years for me to overcome, but this one was resolved in an instant. I’m not sure if God just fixed the negative pattern in my brain through a miracle, or if realizing that I was twisting my husband’s words and hurting my marriage caused me to be aware of what I was doing. In any case, I praise God that this destructive pattern is gone from my marriage!

I talk about this a lot more in my free audio about how powerful praying with your spouse can be: How to Get Your Husband to Pray with You

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