After months of planning and crowdsourcing ideas on ways to strengthen our marriage we were so excited to begin the first phase of the Strong Marriage Experiment with the first action being that of dreaming about (and documenting) our highest hopes for our life together.  Unfortunately, we had the sad misfortune of getting into a huge argument yesterday which left us too raw for that.

Somehow dreaming about how great your marriage can be with someone you are currently really hurt by was something neither of us were up for.  Serving each other seemed more appropriate so we juggled the days around and began.

 

Strong Marriage Challenge Day 1 – Acts of Service

Do something to serve your spouse that is out of your wheelhouse or something they have been asking you to get to for a while.  Perhaps that one thing you’ve been procrastinating ;-).

David woke up earlier than normal to take care of my morning routine of fixing a hot breakfast for the kids and serving me breakfast in bed.  This was a good start in nudging my heart back a bit because David does a lot of things to serve our family, but cooking is never one of them.

Look at those eggs!  He’s been holding out on me.

He is a fish out of water in the kitchen and just knowing how much effort he put into making me a really nice breakfast meant a lot.  I was able to sleep in and nurse my heart wounds while he did my morning chores and took care of the kids.

After he went to work and the boys were off to school, I tackled something David had been asking me to take care of for several months — organizing my part of the closet and sorting things out underneath my bathroom sink.

I also organized my part of the closet and got rid of a bunch of clothes that I never wore.  David was somewhat of a minimalist before being a minimalist was cool.  One of the best ways to love him well is to get rid of stuff.  He’s practically giddy when I hand him stuff he can take to be donated.  Even though I’d been dragging my feet, I got rid of a ton of junk I was never going to use and it felt great.

We ended the day with him serving me by giving me a 45 minute back rub.

Score!

Not exactly how we envisioned the project beginning but this is real life and we plan on being honest about it along the way.

TAKE ACTION:  Surprise your spouse today by serving them in some way or doing something for them that would be completely unexpected.