The Year of the Marriage

Well, I bet everyone thought that they would never see me again after my first post many, many weeks ago. But surprise! Here I am. It's almost 10:00pm here at the apartment on Saturday night and I have just finished up reading the first three chapters in the new marriage book that we picked up earlier this afternoon at Barnes & Noble. I'm sure that Kristine has probably mentioned this once before, but our Sunday School Class is starting a new study of this book that we're now reading, His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley. We are supposed to have the first three chapters read by tomorrow morning's class. So now that I'm finished reading them, Kristine is laying on the couch taking her turn with the book.

I'm actually really excited to be reading this book and the first three chapters have been really good. Starting out this new year one of my goals that I have made for myself is to read some more books on marriage and to attend a conference/workshop or something like that with Kristine to help us focus on things a little a more now that we will be celebrating the end our second year of marriage and the beginning of our third in July. One thing that has been on my heart for several months is that I really don't want to live my life with just a good marriage or an average marriage like many couples seem to do these days. I really do want to have a fantastic marriage and a great marriage. A marriage times a thousand! I realized the other day that I can hope all I want but no-matter how hard this old guy from East TN tries, I'm not going to hope myself and dream myself into a marriage like that. I think I realized that even though things are really good with us right now, it's going to take a lot of hard work and intentional efforts to get to that level we want to be at and to sustain it over 60 plus years.

So with that being said, here we are tonight, reading this book and trying to start to focus on things in our lives that make a great marriage. Things like affection and sex, and the needs that are different between us. I really do think that marriage is a great thing and a great time but it's taken a lot of hard work to get to the place that we're at right now, and will take even more to get to the place we want to be. But you know what, I'm cool with that and I'm excited about the future and the place that we will be at in our marriage in years to come. It's kind of funny actually. I can hear the words that my mom always says to me just about every time we're in Cleveland. "Cliff, anything worth doing and having always requires hard work."

Well, I think I will wrap things up here. After all, my real intentions were to just let you guys know that I'm still alive and about the new book that we picked up today. I guess I had a few other thoughts on my mind after I actually started writing. Here's to a new year and the beginning of a great 2009!!!