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Ready for a Marriage Check-up?
If someone asks, “How’s your marriage?” how would you answer? It’s hard to give an objective answer. This week, we offer a short quiz you can take to evaluate how things are going in your marriage. Before we can move toward the goal of a better marriage, we need to know where we are currently. Doing this Marriage Check-up exercise helped us take stock of how we were doing. Here’s what we learned… We had a couple areas where Ken’s scores were higher than Janine’s (or vice-versa) – Parenting and Spirituality. We agreed the area where we struggle the most as a couple was Conflict Resolution. This all led to some…
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Decisions, Decisions
Learn a simplified decision-making process for married couples. When facing hard choices, remember that "we" come first. This article outlines how to pause, zoom out, and make important decisions together for a stronger marriage.
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The World Turned Upside-Down
September 11, 2001. March 25, 2016. November 24, 2024. September 28, 2025. These are days when time stood still and our world suddenly turned upside-down. There have been others, for sure, but these have been some of the most difficult days we’ve had to deal with in our 34 years of marriage. Julie: September 11 needs no explanation. March 25 is the day my mom took her last breath after 3 months in the ICU after a failed surgery. On November 24, John’s dad lost his battle with Alzheimer’s. And September 28 was the day we were told to leave our church and get home to safety as an active…
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Verbal Judo – Harmonizing Your Tone of Voice
Some time ago, we wrote about the importance of being aware of the Tone of Voice we use with our spouse. The gist of the post was that our Tone of Voice is the key culprit that begins most disagreements, hurts, and fights between spouses. We want to revisit this important topic and provide some additional helpful hints we’ve learned along the way.
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Carefree Timelessness
We first heard about the concept of Carefree Timelessness years ago in a talk given by Matthew Kelly. He defines carefree timelessness as: “Time spent together with nothing to achieve other than the enjoyment of each other’s company.” In Kelly’s book titled, Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy, he writes: “Carefree timelessness is the reason young people fall in love so easily, and lack of carefree timelessness is the reason the rest of us fall out of love so easily. You had plenty of carefree timelessness when you were falling in love. You made it a priority.” Reclaiming What Matters Most We all get busy, but being too busy…
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How to Resolve Disagreements in Marriage
A few years ago we saw an article with the title: How to Resolve Disagreements in Marriage, by Nina Chen, Ph.D. Here’s what Dr. Chen, a Human Development Specialist, had to say: “There is no perfect marriage. Even happy, healthy marriages involve some conflict from time to time. Conflict is a normal part of sharing life with someone else. The key is to know how to deal with disagreement and conflict in a constructive way. These steps can help: 1. Set a specific time to work on the disagreement It is very important to discuss problems when both spouses can mentally and emotionally prepare. Writing down the problem before discussion…
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Hangry?
The challenges of caring for young grandchildren can cause stress and exhaustion, which can strain a relationship. It's important to recognize triggers that impact patience and communication. Empathy, forgiveness, and the importance of healing are important in times of stress.
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Kudos To The Tired Dad
We stumbled upon a remarkable blog post this week. It’s written by a young father whom we’ve never met. He goes by “The Tired Dad” on his blog, and we couldn’t agree more with what he says about being married but tired in this post: The Tired Dad – Marriage in the Trenches. (posted March 13, 2025) What he wrote is completely relatable for us. Here are a few Quotes from The Tired Dad’s post: Kudos to “The Tired Dad” for sharing your experience as encouragement for us all.
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Let’s Talk About Stress
Let’s talk about STRESS. All of us are constantly under some level of stress. The Cleveland Clinic defines stress as, “…a natural human reaction that happens to everyone.” https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/11874-stress They even suggest that stress can be a positive thing. Stress can help our body adjust to new situations, keeps us alert, motivated and ready to avoid danger. How we handle stress, however, can affect our relationship, especially if we handle stress differently from each other. Avoiding the Subject Karen: Like many Americans, Scott and I are experiencing stress around the election. And it does not seem likely that this stress will just go away after the polls close. Watching the…
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Big Challenges, Big Rewards
John How often do you as husband and wife take on challenging tasks together? What has been your experience when you do? Julie and I recently took on organizing a regional Worldwide Marriage Encounter convention for over three hundred people in a city a couple of hours away. We knew going in that this was going to be stressful, tiring, complicated, and a big challenge, especially as it would be bilingual (which we are not) and include a Children’s Program. It would push our limits of confidence and abilities as individuals and as a couple. We also believed that it could be an opportunity for big rewards – to grow…
