Whenever we look at others, it always feels like their lives are on a high. It’s frustrating when we ourselves are struggling.
But when asked for advice for couples in our interview, I shared these two things:
1. Never compare.
You might be comparing your valley season to someone else’s mountain.
2. Valleys and mountain seasons are normal. Its important to push through valleys, to know they don’t last forever.
If we embrace them, they become the landscape from which we glean precious lessons from. But if we only cling onto the mountain seasons, we’ll miss out on what we could have learnt in the valleys.
Also, marriage is a race together. It requires stamina, a pushing through thru hard times, when the terrain gets tough and when it feels like you want to quit.
If Cliff and I thought the valley was forever, we would have quit in our 7th year of marriage.
We are at our tenth, grateful for all the dark nights we’ve been through before.
If you’re going through a dark season, know this- it will not last forever.
To put things in perspective- right after the shoot, we got into a tiff about what to order for dinner. 🤷🏻♀️🤔
I started to laugh,
“Man, are we the same couple who just got interviewed for a relationship docuseries?”
But that’s what relationships are about- ups and downs, and keeping it real.
No one relationship is a highlight reel forever.
Sometimes, if we’re having a rough tussle in the middle of a date or worse, ministry (!), we’ll stop the vicious cycle by simply asking-
“Can we hit reset?”
It doesn’t mean we shove the issue under the carpet.
But it does mean we can shelve it until we finish enjoying the date or completing the task at hand.
And we earmark the issue to deal with it on our weekly Sunday “marriage talks” dedicated to clearing our emotional bank accounts.
So this is me finally enjoying my newly-discovered favorite food of all time- Japanese Sukiyaki hotpot with broccoli tempura on a shivery winter night.