September 27, 2017

Take Back Your Marriage: From Your Busy Schedule

You made it through week 4 of the Take Back Your Marriage Series and today we are talking about your busy schedule and never ending to-do list! There are so many things begging for our attention that it is hard to find time for anything, let alone our marriage. It is time to take back your marriage: from your kids, from technology, from your finances, from your busy schedule and from yourself. In today’s world, it seems like everyone is constantly multi-tasking and on the go. If we are not careful, we can fill our schedule with so many tasks that we forget to enjoy life and cultivate our marriage. Here are 5 Steps To Take Back Your Marriage From Your Busy Schedule:

Inventory

Take an inventory of your family’s on-going to do’s and obligations. List out each person and under their name write their obligations/to do’s. For example, under my name it might say pay bills, work, groceries, new house tasks and under Kevin it might say work, mow yard, house work. For the kids, it might say pick up toys, go to Awanas, potty train, change diapers, order food, etc. I would suggest making this list over a few days because you might find things you forget that you do.

Prioritize

Next, prioritize what items are “musts” and what items are important to each of you. You might decide that a date night once a week is a MUST for you or maybe every other week. You might decide that prayer time every night together is important. You might decide that your kids need to have one activity a week or two. The important thing is that you decide together and incorporate time for the two of you.

Trim

This is KEY!! It is time to kick things to the curb. If your family is anything like mine, you might need to trim things off your plate. I know in this season of our life, we decided together that we don’t have time for small group/classes or volunteering. Our first priority right now is surviving. I know that sounds dramatic, but with a new baby, new careers, our move and building a house we just have to have priorities in order to stay sane. We also know that this is a rare season of life and we take that into consideration for our marriage. We are both more stressed because of our busy schedules, thus we don’t always communicate in the nicest way. We know that this is a learning process and we try to work together to accomplish our goals.

Schedule

Once you have trimmed things out of your schedule, it is time to give everything a time. I highly suggest using a timed planner. I love my Emily Ley Daily Simplified Planner. I can plan our our meals for the week, which helps me with our grocery list and I can schedule out time for each task. This really helps our family stay organized and more efficient, thus giving us more time for our marriage. And, be sure to remember to schedule alone time and date nights without kids!!

Enjoy Your Marriage

Yes, like I just said, take time to enjoy your marriage. For us right now, it seems like every night we working until 12am and going non-stop. It is the busiest season we have ever gone through and we are still learning how to navigate it with two kids and still taking time for each other. We have found that even taking 20 minutes to ourselves brings so much life into our marriage and softens our heart towards each other. We try to make time to talk each night, pray together, and sneak away for dinner when we can. We also make time for fun family moments to make sure we are still enjoying life during this busy time.

I don’t in any way claim to be an expert on this, because we are honestly a BIG work in progress, especially right now, but I do know that these steps have really helped de-stress our life right now and give us more time for our marriage. With a busy schedule and stress, it is easy to get in more arguments with your spouse because you both are under a lot of pressure. By taking time to get on the same page, prioritize and trim out things in your schedule, you will find that your arguments go down and your thankfulness for each other goes up. Take steps to start enjoying your life and your marriage again. Don’t let your busy schedule overtake your joy.