We are celebrating our 26th Anniversary! After lots of bumps through the years, here’s our best tips on how to have a great marriage with this Christian marriage advice! I’m not saying we are experts by any stretch of the imagination, but 2 1/2 decades of being together teaches you a LOT about love – what to do and what not to do. Through these two posts, I hope to share some of the knowledge we’ve gained over the years to help keep you out of some of the pitfalls and traps we found ourselves in! So read along! And I’d love to hear YOUR advice in the comments!

Tip #6 – Be humble – Humility is one of the biggest parts of Christian marriage advice

Everyone struggles in different areas

You have to have a proper view of yourself in order to see your spouse accurately. It’s unlikely that your struggles are the same as your spouse’s struggles. With that being said, it’s often really difficult to look at an area of sin in your spouse without judgement. You can’t imagine WHY they are tempted in that way. This is where Christian marriage advice comes in instead of a secular perspective.

Matthew 7:3-5 says, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

Look inward

So this is where humility comes in. LOOK AT YOURSELF! Look at where God has forgiven you. See where you’ve sinned over and over again and God had forgiven you over and over again. Have a proper view of yourself – not self deprecating and not self righteous. A proper view of you lets you to see your spouse more objectively. It allows you to remove the “I’m better than you” attitude we all struggle with. So be humble and look inward before you look outward.

Tip #7 – This one is just fun – Get professional pictures taken!

I know lots of young couples and see their unbelievable engagement and wedding photos. They are beautiful! But you know what? I treasure the pictures of us with grey hair and wrinkles infinitely more. I think it’s because I know THAT man has actually seen the real, unfiltered me over the course of decades. Even with all that, he has chosen to keep loving me anyway. He knows my very worst and brings out my very best. So why should only young, beautiful people get photos?!

Tip #8 – Water your grass – it doesn’t really sound like Christian marriage advice, but it is!

I chose the crappiest pictures of us I could find to help you visualize this focus. You will go through really crappy seasons in your marriage. In a crazy twist, our really crappy season did not correspond with this super unfortunate-looking time period!

The worst time in our marriage was about 14 years ago. It was awful and scary. There was great Christian marriage advice from trusted friends, formal counseling and lots of work. It’s hard, hard conversations and massive amounts of growth in our individual relationships with the Lord. There was diving into the Word of God like never before and praying and journaling. The verse I clung to at that time was Psalm 27:13-14: I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

The grass is not greener…

I believed back then that the grass is NOT greener on the other side of the fence. Regardless of what you see on social media, every single marriage goes through cycles of struggle over the years. You are not alone. Most times, your own grass needs work. It needs weeding and edging and fertilizing and aerating and watering and back breaking labor. But IT IS WORTH IT. So roll up your sleeves and hit your knees and eventually the crappy season gives way to beauty and joy.

Tip #9 – (this one is also for wives!) Be your husband’s biggest cheerleader

When you and your hubby were first together, I bet you defended him if anyone said negative things about him. I bet you thought he was amazing. You didn’t criticize him and think your way was right all the time. I bet you gave him the benefit of the doubt.

How men view our actions

The crazy thing is that men feel most loved when they are respected. That means they feel unloved when they are disrespected. When Ryan is frustrated with me, it’s often because he felt like I disrespected him. While he probably wouldn’t articulate it that way, he would say that he felt:

*undermined when I corrected him in front of our kids
*embarrassed when I teased him about something in front of other people
*like I didn’t believe in him because I shut him down instead of dreaming with him when he brought up a new business idea
*judged when I nagged him about what he wasn’t doing instead of encouraging him in the things he WAS doing

A verse that sticks out to me is Proverbs 27:15-16. A nagging wife is like the dripping of a leaky roof in a rainstorm. Stopping her is like trying to stop the wind. It’s like trying to grab olive oil with your hand.

How to be his cheerleader

There are so many facets that show your hubby respect and make him feel like you’re cheering him on –

*avoiding sarcasm
*trusting your husband to care for the kids even if it’s not the way you do it
*being cautious not to badmouth him to your friends or on social media

There are so many ways and I’m sure I couldn’t possibly touch on them all. The amazing thing is that God knows YOUR husband’s heart. If you ask God to show you where you can be his biggest cheerleader, and ask Him to reveal where you may be disrespecting him unintentionally, He will show you. God designed our husbands to crave their wife’s respect and admiration. So again, Christian marriage advice says what you won’t hear elsewhere.

So take it to the Lord. Then, remember who you were in the beginning, because THAT is who he fell in love with ❤️

Tip #10 – The BEST Christian marriage advice – You are responsible to God for your actions.

I saved this one for last because it absolutely transformed my marriage. We were about 6 years in when I attended a conference that changed my life. By this time, I had experienced plenty of opportunities in my marriage to be frustrated and hold grudges and harbor bitterness. The table was set.

The thing that transformed my perspective

Long before Emerson Eggerichs wrote Love and Respect, he held conferences. As part of my degree completion, I attended a few marriage conferences and then earned credit by writing life learning papers on how I translated that information into my own marriage.

On the last day of the conference, Eggerichs illustrated something and it rocked my world. He said that when I die and stand before God, I will be alone. My husband will not be there for me to shift the blame onto him. So when God asks me about my actions, I don’t get to justify them by saying “he hurt me first” or “he hurt me worse”. My actions are mine and I’m responsible for them. *mind blown* I don’t know why this had NEVER occurred to me, but it was like God dropped a bomb on my perspective.

He went on to say that when your spouse hurts you or picks a fight and you choose to act in a way that honors God, and you move toward your spouse instead of away from them, picture God over their shoulder giving you a thumbs up! While you promised forever to your spouse, if you’re a believer in Christ, you ACTUALLY made that promise to the Lord!

What the culture says

We live in a culture that tells you that if your spouse hurts you, they deserve for you to treat them like crap. Karma, baby! Honestly, I fight with this thought all the time. When I’m hurt, my inclination is to hurt Ryan back. When He isn’t acting loving toward me, it’s hard to try to look for things to respect about him because all I see is the negative.

Christian marriage advice means we care about what God says

God tells us a different story and that’s why we look to receive Christian marriage advice instead of what the world tells us. God tells us that He is using difficult circumstances that feel like sandpaper to wear down the rough edges. That is what makes us look like Jesus. He uses our marriage to shape us and sanctify us.

So much of that starts when we realize that WE are responsible for our actions and attitudes toward our spouse. If your spouse sins against you, do not let it turn into sin in you!

The benefits of believing what God says

The most beautiful earthly benefit is that when we make choices that move us toward our spouse – like loving your wife deeply when you don’t feel respected, or respecting and honoring your husband when you don’t feel loved – it absolutely changes their reactions toward you! It keeps a promise you made to them and to God. AND it actually brings about the desired result!

The crazy thing is that God uses our closest relationships to sanctify us. My kids study Latin, and when I learned that “sanctus” means holy, it helped me realize that sanctification means making us holy. That holiness or sanctification is a process and it means over and over again, we choose God’s way over our way. It transforms our relationship with God and also has the same effect on our relationships here on earth!

I’m always so excited to hear how God is changing each of us and transforming us through our marriages.

What is your tried and true Christian marriage advice you’ve used to have a great marriage?

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We are celebrating our 26th Anniversary! After lots of bumps through the years, here’s our top 10 keys to a successful marriage! I’m not saying we are experts by any stretch of the imagination, but over 2 1/2 decades of being together teaches you a LOT about love – what to do and what not to do. Through these two posts, I hope to share the knowledge we’ve gained over the years to help keep you out of some of the pitfalls and traps we found ourselves in! So read along! And I’d love to hear YOUR advice in the comments!

Top 10 keys to a successful marriage

Tip #1 – Fight Fair

Anyone who knows Ryan and I in the early years knows WE COULD FIGHT. We both have very strong personalities and often that brought about fireworks . Early on, we developed “rules of engagement”.

#1 No name calling

Pretty soon after we were married, we decided we would not call names. When I was growing up, my mom NEVER let us call each other names. It’s interesting what kids will do though. I remember one day in particular, my brother and I were arguing and I called him a dirty old sock. He retaliated with calling me a whacked up piece of paper that someone spit on. I ran sobbing to tell mom! It just goes to show that even being creative with name calling is still hurtful!

Once I got older and learned more about God’s Word, I saw that the power of life and death is in the tongue -Proverbs 18:21. This is where Christian marriage advice is VERY different than what you’ll hear in the world. You can speak life into your spouse or you can speak death into them. Once something is said, you can NEVER un-say it. When my kids were little, I squeezed a tube of toothpaste out, showing them that it could never be put back inside. Words are the same way, so no matter how mad we got at each other, name calling was off the table.

#2 Never threaten divorce – or joke about it

Maybe I was especially sensitive to this one because I’m from a divorced family. However, we decided that for us divorce wasn’t something to joke about. I feel like making light of the subject allows Satan to get a foot in the door and desensitizes us to the concept. Also, we made promise not just to each other, but to God. So it isn’t something to threaten when we’re mad. Because we committed to forever, it isn’t an option, so we saw no reason for this to be in our conversations, whether in anger or in jest.

#3 Don’t stay up half the night fighting if you want a successful marriage!

“Don’t let the sun go down on your anger” does NOT mean stay up fighting until 3am when your sensibility went to bed at midnight. We wanted to follow the advice found in Ephesians 4:26-27 and make sure we didn’t go to bed angry, but sometimes that meant staying up long past when we were rational and sane. We learned over the years that it’s ok to say “I love you even though I don’t really like you right now. Let’s go to bed and pick this back up after we’re rested”. Reconvening when we weren’t so tired took the edge off and made us much more rational and loving…and it often completely diffused the anger.

Tip #2 – Going on dates regularly is key

The next in line for the top 10 keys to a successful marriage is dating your spouse! Going on dates on a regular basis is not about spending money. It’s about setting aside time when you can focus on each other with cell phones put away.

Name it!

One of the biggest things I’ve found that makes it feel special is calling it a date. With my kids, I noticed that something felt special when it was named: Ice cream on the first day of summer! Family dinner! Movie night! Beach day! We may have done those things anyway, but calling them by name and hyping it up made it feel special and intentional.

Dates are the same way. Before you have kids, you’re together often, but not going out like you used to. Suddenly, being together feels normal and boring. But something happens when you can say – “I’m looking forward to our date tonight!” It’s fun to do a silly scavenger hunt in Target or a picnic dinner in the living room and then snuggle on the couch to watch your favorite show. Because it is called a date and phones are intentionally put away, it feels special and set apart.

Dating when you have small children

Dating was easier to do in the first 8 years of our marriage because we didn’t have children. But then we had our son and moved far away from family. As a stay at home mom, we found that it’s difficult to afford to pay someone to babysit and then also pay for a night out. We figured out that dates can be a homemade fancy dinner after the kids are in bed, or a glass of wine in your bedroom in the candlelight while you chat about the day.

Another way to cut down costs is to swap childcare with another family who is in the same dilemma. Then find inexpensive things to do like going for a tour of the Cleveland signs, or heading to the free art museum, or walking in the Metroparks, or filling a thermos with hot cocoa and sitting on a snowy bench together and chatting. Don’t let lack of money derail date night!

Dating when you have older kids

In our current phase of life, it’s easier to slip away now that our kids can be home alone, but it still takes effort and intentionality because our schedules are much crazier than when the kids were little. There will ALWAYS be excuses and barriers, so it needs to be intentional!

My grandma told me once that you want to continue to know your spouse more and more. She said, “you don’t want your kids to leave home and be stuck sitting across the table from a stranger.” That is a powerful image. I want to get through our child rearing years and KNOW this man God gave me to love. I don’t want money and kids to be an excuse for why I didn’t set time aside to be together without distractions and really continue to know each others’ hearts.

So go on dates. Fancy dates or dates like this one we did years ago in our office after a night of selling insurance. You’ll never regret it.

Tip #3 – Educate yourself

This was HUGE for us, so it’s pretty high up in our top 10 keys to a successful marriage

Before Marriage

When you’re planning your wedding, spend more time preparing for your marriage than for your wedding day. Ryan proposed the month before my 19th birthday. I immediately went into education mode because I was a bit terrified. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to have a healthy, strong, God honoring marriage that could stand the test of time because that wasn’t what I saw growing up. So I studied. Ryan and I had a long distance relationship and we would read chapters of marriage books while we were apart and then talk about them on our phone calls or on our long drives together. I told Ryan that our wedding was one day and our marriage was forever. I wanted to make sure to put the bulk of our time into what lasted forever.

After Marriage

Seek out resources that can give you the truth about marriage once you’re married, too. I remember learning something like – ‘young love is like a flame, very hot and very pretty but also easily extinguished. Older love is like a burning coal. Not as pretty but almost impossible to extinguish.’ It gave me a foundation and an expectation of how love changes over the years. It gave me confidence that we were ok when the butterflies eventually gave way to security.

I went on to get my bachelors degree in Family Life Education with an emphasis in marital enrichment because I realized that when people stand before each other and God on their wedding day, 50% of them are not desiring divorce. But that is the sad reality. Education is a huge key to give couples the skills they need to navigate the rough waters ahead. You can’t learn in crisis. You can only learn beforehand and process and grow from it afterward. So learn and learn and learn because you may be on a mountaintop now, but a valley is coming. Do you have the skills to work through that when it comes?

So hang out with couples that are further than you in the journey and pick their brain. Go to marriage conferences. Read solid books like Covenant Marriage, Sacred Marriage, Love and Respect, The Five Love Languages, You and Me Forever, Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts, and so many more! Dig in together and see how beneficial it can be!

Tip #4 – For a Successful Marriage, have a space that’s just for you two

When our kids were little, we decided that our room was going to be just for us. The kiddos have the run of the rest of the house, but not our bedroom. In order to join us in our room, they knew that they needed to knock and be invited to enter. Don’t get me wrong. There’s been lots of snuggles and stories in our room over the years! But they don’t get to just come and go as they please. SO many times over the last 18 years, one of them has walked into our room without knocking. When this happens, I make them walk back out, knock, and wait for us to invite them in.

We decided that we would also not put pictures of our kids in our room. Every picture in our bedroom is just us. Ryan’s grandparents celebrated 72 years of marriage when Grandpa died. If we’re going to be married for 72 years, we realized only 25 or so of those will be child-rearing years. That means that over 45 years of our marriage could be kidless! We were an “US” before they came along. We are going to be an “US” for decades after they go out and build their own families. So, we want to make sure that relationship lasts! Having a place to call our own helps keep us connected so we can stand the test of time.

Tip #5 Maintain close relationships with other women who build you up and fill your heart with joy.

This one is for wives! I know that I’m generalizing here, so forgive me if this doesn’t apply to all women! In my experience, most women are highly relational. If you look to your husband to meet all of your emotional needs, you will suffocate him. It is not possible for him to do that. Ever. Women who can walk side by side through life are invaluable. They can laugh together and share joy and grief and sadness throughout the seasons. When they can speak hard truths to each other in love, they are even more precious! When I come home from a girls weekend, I feel so filled up that I spill over onto my family. I’m not parched and desperately looking for Ryan to quench my friendship thirst.

Look for women who you respect and admire and want to be like. The books you read and the people that you surround yourself with will dictate who you will be in five years. So be careful who you choose because you will become like them. But if you choose well, it will be a beautiful thing!

And that’s the first five in our collection of the top 10 keys to a successful marriage! Click here for the next 5!

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20 years ago today, I married my college sweetheart. In those two decades, we have had days of unimaginable joy. Days where I want to quote songs and lines from movies – You complete me! – You make me wanna be a better woman! – From this moment, I live only for your happiness! Marriage seems effortless on those days.

Then there are the days when we can’t even stand to be in the same room. I’m sad and disillusioned and while I love him, I certainly don’t like him. And because I usually love myself more than anyone else, if my needs and wants and desires aren’t being met, it makes me mad.

My mom has asked me on two occasions “what is the most important character trait in marriage?” Both times I answered, “humility”. If I have surrendered my life to Christ and have stood in awe of His ability to forgive the wickedness that only He and I know is inside my heart, then I can forgive Ryan. It’s like the parable in Matthew 18.

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant

21Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

22Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.g

23“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of goldh was brought to him. 25Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

26“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

28“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.i He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

29“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

30“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

32“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to.33Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

35“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

I have heard people say they wanted to pursue divorce because they weren’t happy. And doesn’t God want us to be happy? NO! A resounding no! There is not one verse in the Bible that says that God wants us to be happy. God wants us to be holy. God wants us to be obedient. Jesus said over and over that if we truly love him, we will obey him. The most amazing thing is that obedience brings great joy — and happiness!

In the darkest days of our marriage, we chose obedience. Ryan chose to love me when I was a selfish, unlovable brat. And I chose to respect him, even when I didn’t feel like he was worthy of my of respect. And you know what happened?! I became more lovable. And he became more respectable. And we learned that obedience brings great joy…and happiness. So maybe God DOES want us to be happy. But I think he wants us to to do it His way.

Happy 20th anniversary to my favorite boy. I still do ❤️

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