Time

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Is there a more important gift we can give to our spouses than our time? How often during a regular week does your husband or wife have your undivided attention? What are the things that take up your time – or rather, what do you choose to spend your time on? There are so many ways we could reclaim time in our marriages - but this month let’s focus on one.

I read an article suggesting that when a couple marries, they should vow to turn of their TV - until their first anniversary! Another article on Lent posited people would have a harder time giving up TV than anything else. It would be too great a sacrifice for most - what about you? Could you give it up for a year? A month? A week? There is an official "natiaonal screen free" week, but you can try it any time. As the apostle Paul wrote in Phillipians 4:8:

...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is good, if there is any excellence and if anything is worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

How much of what is on TV or the web embodies those qualities? Are there better things you could be dwelling on - like the person you chose to spend the rest of your life with, perhaps?

For you it might not be TV. There is a multitude of other gadgets and things that consume our precious time; internet ready cell phones, video games, social networking sites. What could be gained if you and your spouse spent the time one or both of you would have been watching TV (or surfing the net, etc.) talking, asking each other questions, discussing dreams, or just walking around the neighborhood holding hands? One of the challenges in the Love Dare by Stephen and Alex Kendrick (as seen in the movie Fireproof) is to become a "student" of your spouse. It is too easy to think you know them fully and thus wind up taking them for granted. A human soul is complex though... there is ALWAYS something new to learn if you take the time to seek it. A woman once commented to me, "I've been married to my husband for almost forty years - and I'm still finding out things about him of which I had no idea!"

So, where are you at in your "education" concerning your spouse? Do you have your "high school diploma" yet? Your associates or bachelors degree? Have you started grad school?
Wherever you are in the process, recommit yourself to getting to know that person better, for bby doing so you will learn how better to love them. Commit to spending more of your time together.