Summer days and nights bring out the outdoorsman in almost all of us, and a few brave souls actually answer the call by packing up their tents, sleeping bags, and marshmallows and heading for the nearest (or furthest) campground. What can we learn about marriage from these hardy souls? For 7 ways camping in the great outdoors is similar to the great adventure we call marriage, see my post here at Wedded Bliss.
photo credit: wildxplorer
I’m about to do something I loathe: I’m going to offer you a little unsolicited advice. I loathe this mostly because I loathe receiving it. If I want your opinion, I’ll ask. Otherwise, I find it rather insulting to be offered advice nilly willy, as if I haven’t the brains to think something through for myself.
For this topic, however, experience counts. No matter how smart you are, how savvy, how very much in love with your husband-to-be, you can’t hold a candle to experience. So here it is, the one thing I think every newly married couple absolutely ought to do:
Nope, it’s not here.
It’s over here, in my post at Wedded Bliss.
My mother’s right hand rested on the large panes of the airport windows. I watched silently as she choked back her tears and dabbed her eyes. I saw her tuck her fear and worry away, in a place deep inside where we couldn’t see. She straightened up, turned to face us with a small smile, and drove us home.
As a military pilot, my dad spent his share of time on deployments–living away from home, most often on an aircraft carrier practicing maneuvers. These were usually 6-months stints, but occasionally lasted as long as a year. As a child, this meant that I missed my dad, sure, but I was blessed with the naïveté of childhood: I always knew he’d come home. He’d miss some basketball games, we wouldn’t go to the golf course for awhile, and his easy-to-open wallet would be MIA for a time, but eventually he’d return and life would get back to normal.
And for us, it did. He returned safely every single time, and our family weathered the small storms of re-adjusting to life as a family of 4 under the same roof. As I think about those adjustments, I realize how well the rest of us would be served to apply some of the same ideas. Click here to read my post at Wedded Bliss about 4 ways we can learn from military couples.
photo credit: larryzou