My husband and I recently participated in a game organized by my church to mark this year's mothering sunday. It was a game of "know your spouse" and as fate may have it, we didn't win. The questions were based on the things we usually take for granted like, "What's the colour of your spouse's toothbrush?" and so on.
However, I learned something very important.
The women were made to sit apart from their husbands while answering the questions. to maintain speed and fairness, the questions were written.
When the organizers started calling out our answers, one of the women participant sitting beside me made a comment about I and my husband's answers. Coincidentally, her husband made the same comment to my husband on their own side of the stage.
What was the comment you may ask. They said that our answers rhyme together because we are newly married. now mind you, we got some of the answers wrong. likewise the couple that won.
When we got back home and started discussing what transpired, it dawned on me what the lady and her husband meant. As time goes on in our marriage, we tend to stop taking note of the simple and seeming insignificant things in our marriage.
Is this a case of familiarity breeds insult? i think not. I just feel that the familiarity makes us to be relaxed and stop paying attention. Any wonder why at times, we get tired of our spouses and even hearing them talk? Or we seek other ways to "make" our lives exciting? Like going out and making new "friends" in some cases, looking for fun and adventure?
I strongly believe that familiarity in marriage should cause us to ignore the little things that make marriage what it is. I believe that familiarity should make us to search for new things in our spouses. And even when we don't find any, create one. After all, the beauty of marriage is the creator himself, of whose, depending on the choices you have made, image you are.
Believe me. I know how tough it can be to maintain a marriage filled with fun and joy. At first, I didn't believe my husband when he told me that we could be married and not quarrel after I told him that quarreling is an accepted norm in marriages. Well this is two years and counting and I've stopped waiting for us to quarrel. Instead, God has given me the grace to make my own input of fun and creativity.
Of course, there are times when we bore each other. That's when we notice the something insignificant around us and start discussing it as if our lives depend on it. Come to think of it, I think it does.
The long and short of it is that, when you start feeling withdrawn from your marriage, that's the best time to notice the little things around and in your marriage. after all, that's what you did when you were courting, right?
The little things do really matter most especially in marriage. They keep the fire burning. And there is no harm in knowing your spouse via the little things. After all, it is the little things that signal us when things are going wrong with our marriage. And it is the little things that bind us together.
May God help us to pay attention to the little things and bless our marriages with overflowing joy and happiness.
Have fun and don't forget that God is beauty of marriage.
Cheers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
