Balancing Life and Marriage

Hello, Hope Relentless Marriage, Sarah-Gayle and Chad here, and we hope you are doing fantastic. Well done on investing in your marriage by listening to this podcast. You could be doing a lot of other things, but you are choosing to grow your relationship, and that is incredible, because remember, marriages impact families, families impact communities, and communities impact the world.

Today we want to talk about how we invest in our marriage, what it looks like to be intentional in the midst of the busyness of life. For Sarah-Gayle and me, different seasons, with kids, without kids, have different challenges, but in every season there are things asking for our time and our focus. There is a common theme: marriages that prioritize time together, compared to marriages constantly reacting to the demands of life, have a significant difference in their relationships.

We all want connection, to live life with our best friend and enjoy the day to day. Yet we do not create the margin to have that connection. There is this mentality that I can do it all, and what I have seen in the couples I counsel is that they cannot do it all, because something has to give. We are not able to do everything all at once. There are seasons for different things, but one thing that needs to be steady to impact everything else is our marriage.

I remember the early days of our relationship. We met in college, so connecting came naturally, we saw each other every day, our apartments were down the street, sometimes we had a class together. Then we graduated, got married, and served as youth pastors, so time together was a byproduct of working together. But when our first son was born and our career paths went different ways, that automatic connection was no longer a thing, and we had to reevaluate that season and become significantly more intentional about spending time together.

It is interesting, during that time we did spend a lot of time together, we were extremely busy, but our time was not always intentional, because we did not ask the deeper questions of how are you doing, really. There was a lot you were dealing with financially with the household that I was not even aware of, because I did not make myself available to be aware. If we had taken time to ask those intentional questions, I might have been on the same page, and you might not have felt so alone in that season.

That is a good point, and it highlights what we are talking about: busyness does not necessarily translate to quality time. You can be next to your spouse, working with your spouse, calendar full, but finding ways to connect, how are you doing, what are you excited about, what are you concerned or anxious about, these simple questions help a relationship check in and close the gap. Sometimes in counseling one spouse shares something and the other has never heard it, and they look at each other like, wait, really. It is that dynamic of intentionally sharing how we are doing and getting back on the same page.

It is important to ask ourselves what kind of life we want to live, especially if you are newly married. You get to choose. How much time do I want with my children, with my husband? What is the priority? Then build everything else around it. I counsel a lot of couples who are just in the race, working all the sports, and it is very hard. I encourage them to stop, reflect, and recognize, is this the life you want to live? A lot of times we realize it is not sustainable, and that is when we start to think about what needs to happen to get on a course that is more sustainable and more in line with our values.

This last weekend at church the pastor talked about counting the cost. What is the cost if things do not change, and what will it cost to create change? For us, we have teenage sons who play high-level club soccer, and it did not start that way. It started with one practice a week, then after a year two, and before you know it four practices a week, sometimes far away, then games on Saturday and Sunday, and it progressed from games down the street to games in another state. This is the creep that can happen in life. Something starts out occupying a certain part of our calendar, but it grows. That is why it is so important to periodically look back at our calendars and our values and make sure they are in agreement. More often than not we discover adjustments, some minor and some major, where we have to prioritize so that you and I are connecting and feeling friendship, while also being aware of how easily kids' activities can control the whole calendar.

For those of us with kids, sometimes we feel like martyrs as parents, anything for the kids, including our marriage, because they are helpless and cute and cannot help themselves. However we excuse our children and give them grace, we do not give the same grace to our spouse, and then we expect them to deal with more in the way of our absence and lack of attention, met with less grace. It is out of balance, because the hope is we can give attention and grace to both. But marriage is the priority, it is our covenant relationship. We train our children to grow up and leave and start their own families, but the hope is when they leave, our spouse stays and we continue to live life together. As the kids leave the house, hopefully we are not looking across at our spouse like, who is this stranger in my home. It is so common.

When you think about time management and goal setting, one thing that is talked about is distinguishing between what is urgent and what is important. Our marriage is most of the time going to fall in the important category, not the urgent. If it is truly urgent, we may have found ourselves in a difficult situation, maybe an ultimatum. We want to give our marriage the attention it deserves before we hit that point. But because something is important, urgent things will constantly try to bump important things off the calendar. So we create these meetings and appointments to deposit in our marriage, and we do not move them. Could there be some flexibility here and there? Of course. But there needs to be a standard of what we are doing and when, and if we cannot answer that, it is probably a sign that other stuff has taken over.

It is easier said than done, we live this life too, but there is no magic pill for connecting and growing with your spouse other than putting in the time, the work, and the intentionality. Our culture, our world, our jobs do not exist to sow into our marriages. They do not ask how your marriage is doing or whether you need a day off for a date with your spouse. That is not how the world works, so if we do not protect the time, no one will. Sometimes it only takes hearing a different perspective and recognizing, wow, this is important, it is not going to fix itself. If you are feeling a lack of connection now and putting your spouse on the back burner now, the chances are it will only get busier. We tell ourselves when the kids reach a certain age we will refocus, but a lot of times when then comes, there is no connection and we have grown apart.

Some practical action steps. The first is regular, weekly date nights, day or night, the purpose is undistracted time together to connect, to do something fun or new, to keep sharing experiences. The other dynamic is finding a way to connect daily. One thing Sarah-Gayle and I do is provide specific encouragement to each other daily, often a text message, a specific compliment, this dynamic of hey, I am thinking about you, I see you, I appreciate this. When we do those things daily, the deposits of keeping us together are significant over the long term.

Just as an example, I want to read a text Chad sent me, because it meant a lot. It was specific, and he took time out of a busy season to send it. He said: "Love you. I see you every day, so it can go unnoticed, but the leadership, confidence, and communication growth you have experienced over the years is incredible. You have put in a lot of effort, and it shows." That still makes me smile, and I have it on my phone to go back to when I need encouragement. This is the power we have as spouses to encourage and appreciate each other consistently. And that is an example where it takes intentionality, but start to finish that is probably a sixty-second text.

Sarah-Gayle does the same for me. I have been working out in the morning, waking up early, and after the workout when I am tired, just that positive encouragement of hey, I see you taking care of yourself, I see you working hard, I get this cheesy grin on my face. It is a meaningful deposit when we use specific words to show appreciation, respect, and encouragement, and it keeps us connected from date night to date night. It reminds us we are on the same team, not competing or comparing or trying to shift the workload, but team Galbreath. Whatever your last name is, come up with a cheer, because you guys are on the same team. Focus on and prioritize your relationship, because it matters, even in the midst of your busiest seasons. It is not a we will get to it thing, let us get to it now, because it is that significant and it impacts everything else around you.

The last thing I want to say is, if you are in a relationship that seems like there is no hope, keep on keeping on. Continue to grow, continue to invest, do what you can do to grow yourself, and have the hope that comes from consistently sowing into your relationship and being intentional. Remember, there is always, always hope.