Well, here we are - the last week of this 31 Days to a Great Marriage journey!
How did Day 27 -
- Look at Pictures Together, go? I bet you're still thinking about, or have the positive feelings about, looking at pictures together with your spouse. That's just one of the benefits :)
Today the focus is to...
DAY 28: TO A GREAT MARRIAGE - Recall Your Vows
Chances are good that you recited the traditional vows at your wedding, but there's also a good chance that you and your husband came up with your own vows. And for the remaining days of our 31 Days to a Great Marriage, it's time to focus on your vows you made.
Today, recall your wedding day and the vows you recited. Do you remember them? Can you say them from memory? Give it a try and then look at them (ie below) and if you wrote your own vows then find them and read them together. And let the conversation flow naturally.
Basic Traditional wedding vows:
I ___________________ take you, _______________to be my wedded wife/husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse; for richer for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish, forsaking all others, for as long as we both shall live.
This is a good day to get out the pictures and videos of your wedding day and relive it together, too :)
That's it!
See you tomorrow,
It's Day 4!
How did you do with Day 3? to start having more fun together with your husband:
#1 little fun things every day;
#2 a couple of planned fun things this month.
If you haven't done it yet I want to encourage you to not skip this one. You deserve to carve out some fun time together after long days and long weeks filled with responsibilities. So, get out that calendar and plan 2 or 3 fun activities just for you and your husband to do together this month, that you both really like to do. And turn up the creative fun juices a little every day.
Okay, so now we start to use the power of reminiscing....
DAY 4: TO A GREAT MARRIAGE - Reminisce Together
On Day 1 you were to make a list of 31 things about your husband that made you fall in love with him in the first place, and begin to tell him one of them from your list every day. Hopefully that is starting to bear some fruit, and today's encouragement to reminisce will build on that. To reminisce means to simply recall, remember, look back, recollect.
So, beginning today, and few times a week throughout this month carve out a little time together after dinner and the kids are in bed, or when you're driving in the car together, et al., and bring up a fond memory you have about the day you met, your first date, your wedding day, your honeymoon, and then ask him what one of his fondest memories is -- and voila! you're reminiscing together.
Duane and I have been doing this for awhile, and not just about our wedding, etc., such as fun vacations; memorable Christmas trips (this is one we enjoy talking about because when the boys were little we would often make the trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with his parents. The drive in the car, though filled with lots of "how long until we're there?" were fun, and bring up fond memories for all of us.
You can also use the months or seasons, ie October; football season, to remember and reminisce about the good times of your lives together.
Adding the power of reminiscing together with your husband (as well as with the children at other times) helps relieve the effects of life's day-to-day responsibilities, stresses and tensions.
And if you need a little more convincing as to the value of doing this, look at what this study found about the stress-reducing effects of just looking at old photos!
For those who want to 'catalog' your shared memories, you can even record your memories; then in a few years, listen to them together, just another way to reminisce. We did this with the boys, and have had loads of laughs, and tears, as we've played tapes of our conversations as a family. Hearing their voices at age two and five and ten, now that they are grown, well, there's nothing else like it.
Doing today's suggestion, and the others on this 31 Days to a Great Marriage, will add fun and joy and draw your hearts closer.
