Online Marriage Book Club: Team Us (week 2)
Online Marriage Book Club: Team Us (week 2)
Welcome to week two of our online marriage book club! If this is your first time here at Fulfilling Your Vows, we are so grateful to have you. For our current book club, we are 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 (Chapter 1)
This week we are working through Chapter 1. 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 Chapter 1 there are several things that jumped out at us. Below we share a bit about what stood out most to us and also share a short video clip elaborating on our answers. Discussions will occur on our Facebook Page at 8pm ET / 5pm PT throughout the week.
What Stood Out Most to Us
FOCUSING ON ONE ANOTHER’S GOOD QUALITIES
Michael: Human nature tells you to focus on the bad qualities of your spouse. Our sinful nature wants us to tear our spouse down when we don’t like something they do or say. I like how the author encourages us to focus on the good qualities of your spouse so that you promote unity in your marriage rather than cause a divide.
Carlie: I can’t lie that the story that George told about he and his wife Julie had me in tears (because I was laughing so hard). This story was a true testament to how very different each couple typically is when it comes to most everything. We saw a bit of ourselves in the story, especially towards the beginning of our marriage some 15 years ago. But mostly, we saw the love that George and Julie allowed to rule their marriage rather than the small annoyances due to “quirky” habits.
MAKING STRATEGY A PART OF MARRIAGE
Michael: I like the strategy approach to marriage so I can see the goals before my eyes and speak them aloud. Creating strategy is natural for me because I am a task-oriented person. I like how Ashleigh denotes the difference between bucket list vs. a strategy. There is nothing wrong with a bucket list, but in my experience you will never achieve it without first having a strategy in place.
Carlie: Ted and Ashleigh’s “War Room” picnic really resonated with me because Michael and I are both really big on planning, strategizing, and goal setting. We have always been big on setting goals and always notice a difference when we don’t make the time to do so. I love how Ted and Ashleigh came together and began to strategize and talk about how they wanted their relationship to be in the very beginning. It is the planning and the talking and the agreement that help make marriages succeed. I hope that everyone can take away one thing from the “War Room” picnic: planning is a crucial step to the health and success of your marriage.
QUESTIONS
What are 5 of your spouse’s best qualities?
What is one thing you learned from Ted & Ashleigh’s “War Room” picnic?
Could you relate to George and Julie’s story? If so, how?
If you were to compare your marriage to a sport, which would it be and why?
Is it in your nature to assume the best of someone? If not, how do you combat the negative thoughts that may come up when your spouse does something that you don’t like?
Want to dig deeper? For further study, please visit Ashleigh’s blog for a free downloadable study guide.
Q&A With Ted & Ashleigh
What are the long-term effects that your “war room” picnic has had upon your marriage?
Ashleigh
That “war room” picnic set the tone for our entire relationship. It helped us determine early on what qualities were important to both of us and served as the catalyst to start developing them. For example, we put a strong friendship and good communication on our list that day. While we continue to grow in these areas, both of these things have served us well over the years, specifically when we’ve hit more challenging seasons in our marriage. As we grieved a miscarriage, faced multiple job losses, and had several large moves all within two years, it wasn’t romance (as important as it is) that proved important. It was friendship and communication.
Ted
Sitting down together at a picnic table and preemptively characterizing our relationship, putting down in writing what we wanted our relationship to look like … that’s pretty outside-the-box, right? I love that we were able to not just think about our time together (yes, I know I just split an infinitive), but to also consider the context and arc of our time together. Thinking outside of our current situation, and to recall the larger story of us, is something we continue to do, even thirteen years into marriage.
See you back here next week!
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