Fun in Marriage?

Are you having fun in your marriage?

It sounds like a ridiculous question doesn’t it! After all we got married because we liked being with each other and we had fun.  But now, many of us don’t even think about fun. We are just trying to get through the day-cleaning up the next poopy diaper, finding money to pay that unexpected bill, figuring out how to be at two different ball games at once, not to mention the dirty house, piled up laundry, work projects  and…. Who has time for fun in marriage anyway?

We have a little farm in the hills of Virginia. When we bought the farm years ago we inherited a delicious red raspberry patch which produced the most delicious red raspberries twice a year in July and October. Every season the kids and I would carefully weed out the honey suckle and prepare the soil to ensure a good crop. And it did. We picked baskets of them and ate raspberry pancakes, raspberries on ice cream, raspberry muffins- raspberries in and on everything we could think of! It was great fun.

But as the kids got involved in more activities and life got busier. I just didn’t have the time to put into keeping the honeysuckle weeds out of my raspberry patch. I was sincere. I wanted a good crop but too many other commitments took up my time. Slowly and yes subtly the honeysuckle took over and began to strangle out my raspberries. Finally the day came when we had to mow down the patch. What a sad, sad, day.

As I thought about my raspberries I thought about my marriage. It was becoming easy to think, I’ll work on my marriage when life calms down. But the reality is that life doesn’t calm down. It just gets busier, more complicated. There are simply too many good options in today’s world for us and for our kids.

Our tendency is to put our marriage on hold-in fact to neglect it-thinking one day we’ll have time for us. But we’ll never have time. We have to make time or our marriage may end up like my raspberries.

Oh how we need to re-capture fun in our relationship with our husbands. We need to laugh together. We need to try something together which we’ve never done before. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.  Go for a hike in a new place, attend a lecture, take a dance class, go sailing or canoeing, light candles at dinner time, take turns reading a silly book out loud, find a field and make love in a pasture…you get the idea. Simply put, think of ways to grow your relationship with your spouse.

One of the things I pray every week for our marriage is that my husband John and I will laugh more together. I pray that for my children and their mates.  When my sons were young I prayed that God would bring them wives who would make them laugh. (He did!).  Now I pray that God would give all of us friends who would make us laugh. Life is hard. We need to lighten up. We need to restore a little silliness in our relationships.

So here’s a challenge:

Put on your calendar 2 hours in the next week for time alone with your husband. Write it in ink not pencil. Of course you don’t have time for this. But you can’t afford not to do this.  Plan something crazy and fun.  Leave a comment and let us know what you do!  You will inspire us!

After 42 years we are still working at being silly and having fun – I hope you will make silly and fun part of your marriage!