Online Marriage Book Club: Team Us (week 3)
Online Marriage Book Club: Team Us (week 3)
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 2)
This week we are working through Chapter 2. 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 2 there are several things that jumped out at us. Discussions will occur on our Facebook Page at 8pm ET / 5pm PT throughout the week.
What Stood Out Most to Us
THE IMPORTANCE OF DINNER TIME (creating your family’s rhythms)
Michael: I like how Ashleigh encouraged people to take their time while adjusting to the ins and outs of married life. I also like how she encourages us to embrace the life and marriage we have been given while creating a peaceful marriage and home environment together. This includes time management and making time for the “important” things. Carlie and I have learned how to be patient and flexible while I have been in the Army. I typically work 70+ hour work weeks so we fight hard to make sure that we eat as a family – and often times this means we eat late. But this is important to us both – so we make it work for our family. We have found that if we work together this is not only possible but it is well worth the effort!
Carlie: I was cracking up while reading the “The Man Who Didn’t Come to Dinner” section of this chapter. I used to be a very calculated person, type-A perfectionist raised with a somewhat ethnocentric Japanese way of doing things. But as soon as I came in relationship with Jesus, He began to put an end to it. So when Michael first met me I was always planning and executing and timing everything “just right”. But as the days and years have gone on, I have become less concerned with “time” and more concerned with relationship. So I can totally relate to both Ted and Ashleigh’s mindsets when it comes to the family rhythm. Thankfully as I’ve swung from one end of the pendulum to the other – Michael has been patient and we’ve managed to work out great family scheduling that emphasize more relationship and less nit-picking. I’d say it’s a win for Team Kercheval!
FOCUS ON PROGRESS, NOT PERFECTION
Michael: Ashleigh talks about practicing things over and over again in order to achieve common goals. She also mentions how we have to be able to work together through hard situations as we walk through life and marriage together. Over the years I have learned that a good marriage can only be attained through conquering circumstances together as they arise. Carlie and I have grow to truly appreciate God’s grace in one another as we focus on progressing in marriage rather than a “perfect” marriage (which we know doesn’t even exist). Even though we both have things to work on , God helps us to build upon our strengths and not allow bad circumstances to rule our marriage.
Carlie: We can really relate to the concept that Ashleigh mentions at the end of this chapter that “we can kill old habits with time”. And it’s true. But one of the main keys we have found to killing our old habits is that we have to focus on one another’s (and our own) progress rather than our failures. It is in this mindset that we are able to set and achieve both long and short term goals along with cheering each other along in the process. Marriage is a beautiful institution – let’s not ruin it by demanding something from our spouses that we can’t give – perfection. Praise them for the positive changes they’ve made and be there for them as they strive to make more!
QUESTIONS
After you got married, were there some habits that your spouse displayed you were unaware of? How did you handle them?
Do you agree with the idea that we should focus more on progress than perfection in marriage? Why or why not?
Is there an area that’s caused conflict in your marriage that you could solve by compromising a bit, by striking a bit more of a balance? What are some practical ways you can implement this?
Do you find that you have a realistic view of YOUR bad habits? Sometimes we can make it seem as if our spouse’s habits are worse or more annoying. How do you find yourself viewing this?
What do you think of the “communication sandwhich”? Is this something you use in your marriage? Or is it something you think you would benefit from?
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 some of the current measures you take to ensure you have your “us” time? How has this changed over the years (ie: without children vs. with children, etc)?
Ashleigh
For us, a reasonable bedtime for our four kids is huge. And, even though our oldest two are now ten and eleven, we still make sure they are in bed by 8:30 or 9 p.m. This allows us to dedicated time together every night. And, the truth is, for us this has been our “go to” approach for most of our marriage. We’ve been married thirteen years and our oldest is eleven, so we didn’t have much “without children” time in our marriage. Although, before kids, we did get away together more. But most of our married life with kids, we haven’t lived near family, so our childcare options have been limited.
Ted
Of course, there was a lot more dedicated “us” time before we had kids. Our “us” time is now mostly after the kids have been tucked into bed. More accurately, after the last one has stayed in bed. Early in our marriage, we might go to bed at different times; now it’s very uncommon that one of us stays up later than the other.
We also have occasional date nights; a better husband would arrange more date nights. Hm. I enjoy our one-on-one away-from-home-and-the-kids date nights. I’ve just been poor at initiating them. Hm.
Anyway, I think we also have “us” time when we make inside jokes with each other, in front of our daughters and others, things that only Ashleigh and I understand, comments that make fun sense to only those on the “inside” (“inside” being just Ashleigh and me). That is time. And that time pretty much only makes sense to us. So it’s “us time.”
See you back here next week!
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