Lessons Learned in 40 Years of Marriage | Episode 150

You may recall that Mark and I are doing marriage training in Uganda for pastors and their wives. In case you missed it, you can hear the whole story here in Episode 135: To Uganda with Love. To make sure you continue to receive encouragement and value for your everyday life, we’ve pre-recorded a few podcast episodes for you! To follow along with our trip, head over to Facebook and Instagram. We would love it if you would join us in prayer during our trip as well!

Mark and I are celebrating 40 years of marriage this week! It’s hard to believe we’re at this milestone. It’s certainly been hard won. We were 19 and 23 years old when we got married.

As we were talking about the last 40 years of life spent together, processing, and remembering both the good and the not-so-good times, we realized that there were a few pieces of advice we would give to our younger selves.

As we take a look back, we are uncovering the hidden gems we learned throughout the years of marriage and we decided to share them with you! We hope this helps and encourages you whether you have been married for one, five, ten, or even 40 years!

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

Some of the principles that made the difference in our marriage
How our past can have a big impact on our present
Why asking good questions can help in an argument
And much more!

Thanks for listening in!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

My Key Takeaways:

1) Find beauty in your differences. Our natural tendency was to look at our differences and all the ways we didn’t work together. But differences aren’t wrong–they are just different. We had to learn to accept the ways we were different from one another and even celebrate those as strengths. Sure, it may be annoying at times when your spouse doesn’t load the dishwasher the “right way,” but when we celebrate our differences we can value that they see the world through a different lens. Our differences are what make us unique and interesting.

2) Understand how your childhood affects your marriage. Even if you had great parents, we still bring our childhood into our marriage. This may look like how our family handled laundry growing up or if they value birthday cards. Your spouse is bringing a particular way of doing things from their family as well! Sometimes it can be bigger things like struggling with rejection or avoiding emotions that we carry into marriage from childhood. It’s important to take time individually and as a couple to discover how our childhood affects our marriage.

3) Listen for the heart. When disagreements and conflicts pop up in your marriage it is so easy to forget this! Instead, we can focus on how we were hurt or what we think our spouse should have done or said. It’s important to get curious about our spouse’s heart. Sometimes we have to dig to uncover what they are trying to say and discover what is in their heart. We’ve found that it is helpful to use the phrase “tell me more” when listening to your spouse and then repeat back to them what you heard. This helps to make sure what you heard is what your spouse is really trying to say.

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