Why does God want to be at the center of my marriage?

I got back Monday evening from a wonderful four night vacation with Matt in San Antonio. After a very stressful couple of months (and many more to follow), we decided to take advantage of me having Monday off and took the Thursday and Friday before the weekend off as well. We decided that if we went to San Antonio, we could have a great time and get the most bang for our buck.The hill country infinity pool

We had a wonderful time at the resort where we stayed: I got my nails done, we played around at the mini water park (in the freezing cold), walked around, went to the zoo, slept in, enjoyed cable television, and ate at good restaurants. The last on the list brings me to tonight's point. Matt has an iPhone. It has its pros and its cons, one con being that for the most part you can use it to do things like check your facebook or email just about anywhere. All I know is that given the fact that I think kids in Australia use their cell phones even more than kids in the U.S., we are going to have to have some serious laying down of the rules when we have kids who are old enough to legitimately have cell phones (the mere thought of it is enough to give me a heart attack). Matt is pretty good about not using it too much, especially when we are sharing a meal together. If we're talking about something and it seems worthy of looking up, he might check it out on the iPhone and save it for later perusal. I couldn't resist putting this picture in...Matt just happens to be on the iPhone!
However, I saw something at almost every restaurant we ate at during our vacation that made my stomach turn. On Thursday night we sat down to a late dinner at the hotel. It was a really romantic setting. I looked over at one of the few other couples in the room, a couple in their early fifties. They both sat there, totally immersed in their phones. They barely looked up at one another and shared very few words the entire evening. On Sunday morning when we ate breakfast at IHOP, we sat next two a father and his two kids. The son stared at his iPhone all morning, and while he would contribute a little to the family's conversation he would never look up and make eye contact. The couple in back of them was on their iPhones most of their meal as well.
Am I saying that iPhones are evil in the form of a box that can call, surf the web, text, and hold 762,000 apps? Although I'd kind of like to...I can't blame the iPhone. I've noticed something among couples that have been together a long time. They (like all of us) get immeres in things. For most people it's their jobs, but it could also be hobbies or any other number of things. For some reason it all becomes old hat; a husband gets tired of hearing about how Joe Shmoe made his wife mad at work for the two hundredth time, so his wife just stops talking about work. The problem is that when work is your life, that means a line of communication breaks down and your available topics of conversation have been greatly diminished. That's where the iPhone comes in. Who needs to talk when you can eat a meal and keep yourself occupied in other ways? The problem is that you're losing your spouse! This is why I think God wants to be at the center of my marriage. He knows that the world around us gets dull and monotanous, but He never does. If we're paying attention to Him then we are always noticing what He is doing in our lives. When that happens we always have something to talk about! Work, where people make us angry and let us down, is no longer the be all and end all of our lives. Can you imagine if we all put away our iPhones at dinner and instead talked about how God brought us into a powerful conversation with a person at the gym, or shared the imagery of the beautiful sunset we saw on the way home from work? Everyday would be new and exciting (not always easy, because I know as well as you that this runs the risk of us experiencing the hard and hurtful things about being part of the Kingdom of God as well) with a new story to share! It is amazing how well God knows us. He wants to be at the center of our relationships so that we can share a more abundant life with one another, a life that sees Him everyday.
Don't be afraid, put that iPhone away during dinner and talk to your family about what God is doing in your life. I think it will be worth your while...and facebook will still be there after you're done helping one another put the dishes in the dishwasher.

Rain, rain, rain

It rained a lot this week. On Wednesday it did not stop raining ALL DAY. The rain is an amazing blessing in a lot of places, especially Texas. However, when you have a big German Shepherd and a backyard that is missing quite a bit of grass you tend to accentuate the negative instead of the positive. We've done it all: used a towel to try and dig the mud from between his toes and his legs, filled a bowl with water and dunked and scrubbed his paws, Matt actually managed to pick Bane up and get him into the bathroom for a bath on Friday (which I'm sure was disgusting). Needless to say, Bane was not allowed to go out and run around the backyard much this week. This led to extreme boredom and many sad eyes...but what are we supposed to do?
It was freezing and raining most mornings, but I gave in and took Bane for a walk Thursday morning. I quickly walked him down to the mailbox as my car sat in the road heating up. When I got into the house and looked through the mail, it was like I had opened the golden ticket for the chocolate factory. We had two pledge cards in the mail! We have not received many pledge cards, so to get one is quite good and to get two at a time seems like a miracle. God was not only raining down the wet stuff, but he was raining down some financial blessing and provision on Matt and me in preparation for Australia. As if that was not enough, he decided to rain down blessings all day long. Thursday Matt was formulating an email to send to the church we attend to discuss more with them the next step in the process of them giving us a one time donation to help with our moving fund. I won't lie, this was a big chunk of change and it was making me a little nervous to not just have the check sent to our supporting church. Anything could happen, minds could change, we could fall off the radar, you name it. However, as Matt was preparing to write the email the recipient of the not yet written email called Matt! No joke, it was pretty awesome. He said, "We're ready to cut this check, are you ready for us to send it?" All I can say is that I'm grateful for times like this when God decides to rain down a lot of blessing all in one day.
On Saturday Matt and I held a come and go open house for people to have the opportunity to come by and learn more about our financial need and what it means to be a financial partner. We had a few people come with interest, and a few people come to encourage. Overall it was a good day. We had a dear friend come by who lived in Australia for many years, it is always good to see his face and hear his stories. I'm fairly glad that the week is over because it was exhausting for many reasons, but I am very glad for the rain.