Online Marriage Book Club: Team Us (week 1)
Online Marriage Book Club: Team Us (week 1)
Welcome to week one of our first (ever) online marriage book club! If this is your first time here at Fulfilling Your Vows, we are so grateful to have you. For our book club, we are going to be working through Team Us: Marriage Together. One great feature you can expect during the course of the book club is to have a Q&A section at the end of each weekly post that gives more candid insight into author Ashleigh and husband Ted’s marriage.
This Week’s Reading (Introduction)
For our first week we are working through the Introduction. We encourage you and your spouse to read through the introduction together or separately (which ever works best for you) and then schedule a time to chat about it. It is best to write anything down that jumps out at you so you can discuss it further with your spouse. We also encourage you both to pray together asking God to open your heart to receive what He wants to show you each week.
While reading the introduction there are several things that jumped out at us. Below we share a bit about what stood out most to us plan to share more on our Facebook Page throughout the week.
What Stood Out Most to Us
ADAM AND EVE WERE THE FIRST “TEAM”
Michael: Thinking about Adam and Eve being the first team really inspires me to leave a legacy of not giving up and to continue working through marriage one step at a time. I like how Adam and Eve displayed commitment towards each other by never giving up and valuing God’s creation.
Carlie: Until reading Ashleigh’s thoughts on this, I had never really thought much of Adam and Eve being a “team”. But it’s true. Not only were Adam and Eve a team, they were a team for God which tells me that they had accessed the power of agreement (Matthew 18:19 KJV). It was the very power of agreement that carried them through the fall and into eternity with Christ.
SEEKING GODLY COUNCIL
Michael: I like the fact that Ted communicated with his Pastor about marrying Ashleigh. I believe people should seek council from either their pastor or a like-minded friend when making major decisions in life (such as marriage). This was mine and Carlie’s experience, too. And we can see how important it is in the foundation of a marriage.
QUESTIONS
What are you and your spouse hoping to gain out of this online book club?
Do you and your spouse currently approach marriage as a team? If not, has this book intrigued the idea of doing so?
What is one thing that you could identify with after reading the introduction?
Q&A With Ted & Ashleigh
Can you tell us the story of how you and Ted met and the impact that initial lunch together that you mention in the book has had while writing Team Us?
Ashleigh
Ted likes to joke that we met through eBay or Craigslist, but that’s not true. Although, if we had, it’d make a far more interesting story, right? The truth is we met at church through mutual friends.
I wish I could say it was love at first sight, but it wasn’t. At the time, I’d just started grad school and a new full-time job. I was so focused on my classes and workload that I don’t remember our first introduction. What I do remember clearly, though, was the first time I spent a chunk of time with Ted.
Back then, he used to host get togethers and parties at his condo for the singles’ group. A good friend of mine invited me to come along for a game night. We ended up playing Go Fish. And Ted? Well, he cheated so that my friend and I would win each hand. Apparently, it’s not true that cheaters never win … because with time he ended up winning me over. Okay, maybe not necessarily with the cheating. But his mischievousness definitely caught my attention. I even remember thinking that night, “Hmm, he’s interesting … in a good way.”
The idea of being purposeful in marriage, as well as having open and honest communication, are things I talk a lot about in the book. Both of these qualities were a part of that first lunch and have continued to be a part of our relationship. So, in that respect, our first one-on-one lunch definitely impacted the writing of Team Us.
Ted
I first noticed Ashleigh at church, probably the first or second time that she attended. I can’t lie; she was pretty and carried herself well, and so I made opportunities to get to know her better. Before any of my buddies did. In a relatively short period of time, just a few months, I felt particularly compelled to ask her to date, with the primary purpose being to determine if it were the Lord’s will for us to be together.
I know, that sounds really clinical and oh-so-spiritual. But that sincerely was the goal, and the context was dating, or whatever term you want to use. While the theme of our early dating relationship might sound artificial or stifling or awkward, we actually found it freeing and fun, since we both knew where we were with each other, and where we weren’t.
Our initial lunch, at a local deli, was where we had the “talk,” where I clumsily suggested that I wanted to date Ashleigh, and that I saw it as a way to explore the Lord’s will regarding “us,” and that it wasn’t a commitment to there yet being an “us.” Our dating was a context to get to know each other and discern the Lord’s will about our relationship, together or not.
We ended up discerning that we should be together, not not.
That initial lunch has been a source of many laughs. My awkward cucumber salad munching, my blurting out that one of our pastors encouraged me to just marry Ashleigh, my stumbling to find the right words. I think that because I didn’t take myself too seriously then, and tend not to take myself too seriously now, there’s a lot of light-heartedness in our relationship.
Join in on the Conversation
We would LOVE to hear what you and your spouse got out of the introduction! Please leave a comment below and/or head on over to the Facebook page to join in on discussions as they are posted.
See you back here next week!
Missed something? You can find all of the previous blog posts on the landing page by simply clicking on the image below.
