Marriage after kids...let's chat for Marriage Monday!
*MARRIAGE MONDAY*
Topic: marriage after kids
This was really the most requested topic from you all, and many of you were asking from different perspectives. So I want to dive in from MY perspective, and how having our first daughter changed us.
But before I share our experience, I want to share something @johnstephenpiper said in an article Nick sent me today:
Piper talks about how “the goal of life is not to avoid hardship.” Whew. If that doesn’t stop you in your tracks to re-evaluate your mindset then I don’t know what will. He explains that we don’t know if we will have disabled children, we don’t know if they will live a long life or die too soon, we just don’t KNOW. There is no handbook to prepare you for your fate. BUT, Piper says “From the standpoint of God’s word, none of those possible heartaches and none of these guaranteed stresses are reasons not to have children, because the Bible does not share the modern viewpoint that the aim of life is the avoidance of hardship...”
As @legitsadierob would say, “Woah, that’s good.”
I’m getting a little off topic for a second because this point is important: God does NOT call us to live in comfort. And let me go ahead and tell you that having kids is the total opposite of comfort. It’s pretty daunting to be in charge of little lives. But in Acts chapter 20 God reminds us that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Now that I’ve laid a little biblical foundation for what our mindsets should be, let’s get into the little details. I want to preface by saying that because Nick and I worked very hard before having kids to lay a solid foundation in our marriage, we didn’t feel like our relationship was totally rocked after having Lila. That’s not to say it wasn’t hard (I’ll get into that), but we didn’t struggle with being intimate or best friends. What did we do to get there? 1) Lots of sex (yep, I went there). 2) Quality time doing things we both love. 3) Prayer and STRICT boundaries (I can dive into this another time). 4) Taking our roles as husband and wife to heart (Nick the head of the household and me the helper).
But I will say, we struggled in very unique ways last year. After Lila was born and a full-blown pandemic hit, we spiraled. Nick faced a severe episode of anxiety/OCD and I had extreme postpartum anxiety. We were isolated and very scared of this thing no one knew about. Lila was colicky and never, EVER slept. She struggled with eating and lost weight. I mean it was just thing after thing and man did it break us individually. BUT, oh my gosh emphasis on BUT, we persevered TOGETHER. Let me tell you about the difficulties of loving one another when you’re in terrible places mentally and feel like you have nothing to give.
We did it, though. How? It had to all be Jesus giving us strength and grace. We served each other through it, even though we didn’t understand the other’s struggles at all. I don’t know what it’s like to have extreme OCD and he doesn’t know what it’s like to birth a baby. But we were gentle with one another. Understanding. Prayerful. Diligent to serve and focus on each other. It wasn’t easy, but because we had practiced doing this before kids, it wasn’t so hard to do it after. We had already flexed the muscle of service many, many times in our marriage.
I hope that this perspective changes your view a little on WHY it is so important to flex that muscle in your relationship, and why God teaches us time and time again to be servants of one another, selfless beings who put others first. When you practice it and implement it, you gain so much strength and joy through it. More than you’ll ever gain through selfish wants or being served.
Why am I completely avoiding talking about my actual child when the whole topic is about having kids? Well, because having healthy kids starts with growing a healthy marriage. Your kids don’t need you to be perfect, but they need you to be living out the gospel through your marriage. They need you to focus on each other being firm in Christ and loving each other WELL.
Thank you to John Piper for the reminder, and to my husband for just being the best in every way.