Reconnecting and Rediscovering

Many years ago when we were just beginning this journey of life as a family, Mike and I participated in a parenting class at our church.  I will never forget the words of the teacher speaking in length about the importance of staying connected as a husband and wife. Something that stuck with me was his encouraging husbands to routinely take their women out of the roles of being mommies and give them opportunities to just be wives.  While this was directed to men there was also an encouragement of us wives in being willing to allow our husbands to do this for us.  At that particular time in our marriage, doing this was somewhat easy.  We only had 2 little boys with 2 set of grandparents eager for every opportunity to spend time with their grandsons giving us many chances to escape the everyday life of mommy and daddy and reconnect as husband and wife.  Fast forward 12 years, and add 2 more kiddos to the mix and a cross country move far away from grandparents and we find ourselves in a very different place.  Those reconnecting times as husband and wife are much more difficult to mine out of the all consuming responsibilities of doing family.  Lysa Terkeurst says it so well in her book, Capture His Heart,

"When we are dating one of the things that makes us so exciting to each other is the new discoveries about each other that we spend time unearthing....All the newness is exhilarating and serves to stoke the fires of romance.  Then you get married, have a couple of kids and suddenly every conversation becomes the Cliff Notes versions.  There is no time for in-depth reviews and new discoveries.  We slip into survival mode and stop discovering all together.  I look at him everyday, sleep with him at night, talk, kiss and even make babies with him yet there is still so much I don't know and sadly what I do know has gotten lost in the shuffle of life.  It helps to think back to those days of dating and resurrect the desire to discover what makes him tick a priority."

When you are a busy mom and dad taking care of a family finding those moments to rediscover each other is down right hard.  It takes energy, effort and time that often isn't readily accessible and we go for weeks, months and years without knowing what lies deep within the hearts of our mates yet this is a vital key in keeping our marriages strong and vibrant not to mention fueling us with what we need to weather the storms that rise within our families.

I am blessed with a husband who has always encouraged me to sneak away with him and enjoy just being his wife but I am embarrassed to admit that I haven't always been a willing party.  I get so consumed in meeting the many needs of our family that I don't believe I can take the time to date and enjoy the love of my life.  This is something that I have vowed to make a priority in my life and after a little get-away he and I just experienced I am even more motivated to take advantage of every opportunity we have to reconnect and rediscover each other.

In an effort to take me out of my encompassing mommy role my man arranged for his sister to fly out and keep the kids over night while we escaped to the mountains. We spent a day soaking in this
  

and each other. It wasn't necessarily a time of discovering new things about each other but rediscovering and enjoying all those things that we already loved.  We shared quite rides up the mountain on the ski lift where we laughed, reminisced and just enjoyed being together.  Giving up the black runs, Mike skied greens and blues with me and patiently waited for his slow skiing wife at the bottom of each run.  We sipped hot cocoa together like dating teenagers and enjoyed a couple of calm meals where we actually finished a sentence.  We talked about our hopes and dreams reminding each other of how precious we are to each other.  Mike even spent an hour checking out the new IKEA store with me and was willing to DVR the Bronco game to prolong our time alone.  It was a blissful 30 hours and something that I hope to repeat as often as we can.