I was introduced to the blog When at Home through the post Let Your Husband Love You. I was pregnant with my third baby and cruising Facebook when I noticed many of my girlfriends sharing the same blog post. I was immediately convicted when I read it. I was a mother to 3 and 1 year old daughters with a little boy due any day. Life was insanely busy and the girls were so demanding of my time and energy that there was very little left for my husband. It was so easy to brush him off, leave the kids with him, ignore his acts of affection and breathe in a sigh of relief that I was off the hook from solo baby duty.
I mentioned the post to him and he agreed with Kristen whole heartedly. I told him I would make an effort to love him more and he was honestly excited about it. And then...our son was born. So now I was a stay at home mom to a 3 and 1 year old and a constantly nursing newborn. I was in over my head, exhausted and insane. Our relationship was no where on my radar. This continued for quite a while.
I read Kristen's posts regularly after Let Your Husband Love You. I never forgot what brought me to her site, but I stopped putting the effort into my marriage, because quite honestly, I didn't have anything left. Jonathan would come home from work and try to hug me while I was rushing to have dinner finished, break up a sister fight and quiet the baby before he nursed for the 100th time that day and I would shrug him off. The girls would go to bed, but Noah would stay downstairs with us, nursing and cuddling into the late night and then he would come to bed with us. I'm not against nursing or co-sleeping, but my husband had NO closeness with me. The baby was ALWAYS between us. I hadn't shown my husband any affection in who knows how long and it had driven a wedge between us. He didn't feel loved. I didn't feel loved. He didn't approach me anymore, so I felt insecure about that. I figured that after three kids, I just wasn't attractive to him anymore. I was old news.
All of my emotions and insecurities came out in anger. Eventually it turned into a fight and as I expressed my thoughts that Jonathan was no longer attracted to me and obviously didn't love me anymore, he called me out. He told me that I was pushing him away. I never let him hug me or kiss me. I never gave him any affection or attention and he saw that as me being tired of him. Not attracted to him. Kristen's words were echoing in my mind at that very moment. Because he needs to love you. As much as you need to receive the love he has for you, he needs to be received. He needs to be welcomed, embraced, and loved. The wedge in our relationship wasn't from him pushing me away, not being attracted to me, it was from ME. It was me making him feel like he didn't mean anything to me anymore. It was my own insecurities and busyness with the kids, making him feel unimportant and unloved. I fixed it. Became more intentional about loving him and receiving his love. Took Kristen's advice and stepped out of frantic mom mode long enough to let him love me.
We went through another period of me pushing him away recently. We just moved and are trying to get the house set up while raising 5, 3, and 1 year olds and he works 55 hours a week and is also in grad school. I stopped giving him affection or attention because I was so busy and he stopped offering it because I was pushing him away, not letting him love me again. I reread Kristin's post and reapplied it to my marriage. We've been going strong for a couple of weeks now.
It's about being intentional about showing and receiving affection. About remembering why we got married and started this crazy family to begin with.
It's about all the hats that we wear as women-wife being the most important. Do yourself a favor and listen to Kristen's advice. Apply it to your marriage. Remember it when you go through a dry spell, because trust me, it will happen.
Comment below and let me know if you've taken Kristen's advice and how it's helped you. Or maybe you need to start taking our advice to improve your relationship? Don't be shy, comment below!
**UPDATE** Thanks to Kristen from When at Home for sharing this post on her Facebook page! Please subscribe to emails from my blog, Our Journey in Love on the sidebar for new posts on family, God, relationships, home decor tips and reveals as well as DIY projects!! Thank you so much for reading!
I would be lying if I said that life has been easy lately. Moving our family of five into a new home, celebrating two birthdays, updating our new home and experiencing day to day life has been challenging for the past couple of months. Without my amazing husband and our incredibly helpful and loving parents, I would be a complete wreck. Thankfully I am beyond blessed with an amazing support system and my kids are pretty much the best kids on the planet. ;)
Here is a Currently post to update everyone on our busy lives.
Working on...a million things at once. The basement is under construction right now. We found an awesome guy who is finishing the walls, ceilings, steps and installing doors. Once he's done, Jonathan and I are installing new flooring and then we'll furnish it for our family room/super awesome kids space. I'm also painting Noah's room, as well as the girls' room and arranging furniture and organizing toys in both of the rooms. We still need to install the range fan in our kitchen as well as paint the trim and finishing decorating the walls. The office is still mostly packed up and there are several boxes full of frames and other home decor in our master. It's slow going, but I'm working on the house daily. I can't wait to start photographing each room and posting our progress on the blog.
I'm also working on my Etsy shop a ton. I'm going to be participating in the local farmers market this summer, so I'll need to make a lot of inventory and get my booth planned out. My shop is doing great, I reopened halfway through May and am blown away at the orders. I have given God my business and am doing my best to be obedient to Him and allow Him to grow my business where He sees fit. My main goal right now is to make enough money to send Annabella to preschool at our church. I have absolute faith that God will make that happen.
Reading...Jonathan bought me a new Bible (for the busy mom) for Mother's Day. It has so many quick devotionals throughout and I'm really enjoying it. I'm also doing a couple of devotionals through an app on my phone. Before the move I was reading Beautiful in God's Eyes and I hope to get back to reading it very soon.
Preparing For...Madelynn to go to school! She's all signed up for kindergarten, so now all we can do is wait for Open House in August. She's thrilled and talks about it all of the time. I am a nervous wreck and am praying that I handle it better when it's time for her to go. I'll also be sending Annabella to preschool for two days a week. It'll be good for her to be around other children without her sister and I'm so excited to see both of my girls flourish and make new friends. Noah and I aren't going to know what to do with ourselves!
Thankful For...Every single second I get to be a wife and mommy. It took a while for me to embrace this role after being an independent working woman for so long. When I had Annabella and became a stay at home mom, I was over the moon excited, but not quite sure what to do with myself or who I was. It's been three years and I am 100% confident in my abilities to love and care for my family. I am beyond grateful to God for blessing me with this life and I know without a doubt that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Raising these babies and teaching them about their Savior, managing our home, earning money and expressing my creativity through my shop and supporting and encouraging my amazing husband throughout his endeavors. Thank you God that I finally know who I am. I am Yours.
Reminiscing About...Our long weekend at the lake last weekend. We took the kids Friday after Jonathan got off of work and spent Memorial Day weekend with his family. We had Friday and Saturday morning to ourselves and then the rest of the family arrived after lunch on Saturday. The kids had so much fun and it was so nice to be able to relax and not even think about my never ending to do list. We even got to take naps in the afternoon! It was so much fun and much needed.
Here are some super precious photos from our weekend at the lake to wrap up the post!
Today is a special day. August 22, 2000 is the date Jonathan and I started dating. I was a mere 14 and he 15, but we fell for each other quickly. We met the Friday of my first week of high school through mutual friends and it turned out we had drama together. We were instantly drawn to each other and after flirting throughout the day, we ended up at a football game that night. He was wearing a pair of cargo shorts that had these ridiculous zippers all over them and every single one of them was unzipped. It drove me crazy!! I couldn't help but point it out to him (even going as far as zipping them myself) and he couldn't help but leave them unzipped just to get my attention. I can't tell you who won the football game, but I can tell you that we sat and talked until my mom dragged me away. When we hugged goodbye he asked me for my phone number, but neither of us had a pen. He had no choice but to memorize my number (I thought the chances of him calling me were SLIM). Turns out, he was smarter than I gave him credit for. Not more than thirty minutes after I arrived home, he called. We talked for a couple of hours or more; learning about each other's families, favorite foods and colors, etc. When I hung up the phone, I was enamored. I later found out that when he hung up the phone, he told his friend, Thomas that I was "the one". And even though Thomas thought he was crazy, Jonathan was right. The next 8 years were a whirlwind of new love, short term break ups, him moving to Valdosta for college, me moving to Athens, very hard times, and very happy times. But we survived. The break-ups never lasted long and the happy times always outweighed the bad.
In 2008, we decided we needed to change our lives for the better. We began going to church regularly and realized that our lives were empty, meaningless and we needed to improve our situation. That July we purchased our first home together and in September we got engaged. June 30, 2009 we were baptized together at the beach where we got married the next day. May 1, 2009, I married my soul mate on the beautiful white sands of Panama City Beach. We got married at the very end of the beach (where there were no more hotels) and we completed our photos right at sunset. It was the perfect wedding for us. We were blessed to have our Pastor travel to Florida to marry us and all of our closest friends and family celebrated with us.
And here we are now, 13 years later. I can still remember the very first time I saw him, our first kiss, when we said "I love you." And while we were just kids when we met, we got to grow up together and experience the ups and downs of life together. We were never together because we felt like we had to be, we tested our relationship and put it through the ringer. In the end, we only came out stronger. God has blessed us beyond anything I ever thought possible. We owe who we are and where we are to Him. I couldn't imagine it any other way.
