A post by The Beautiful Wife™
As I watched the Olympics for the past couple of weeks, I realized that there is a lot I can learn about my marriage from the Winter Games.
Winning Gold in Marriage
If you want to win “Gold”, you have to work hard at your sport every day. No matter the sport, athletes spend hours a week working to improve their skill… asking themselves how can they make a faster time, a higher jump or a quadruple spin to get the highest score. It is amazing to see their dedication to their sport.
Settling for Less than Bronze
A lot of people wait until something is wrong to start working at their marriage.
Unfortunately, I think most of us are so busy that we can’t imagine how to spend a couple hours a month more less a week or day working at our sport.. our marriage.
How different would our marriages look if we worked like the athletes in the Olympics?
Making Marriage A Gold Medal Performance
What if we strive for a gold every day in our marriage?
How do the athletes do it?
It’s all about setting their goals and challenging themselves to achieve it.
I want to be a star athlete when it comes to my marriage. I want to be able to celebrate all our hard work on our 10, 25, and 50 year anniversaries… that would be worth more than a gold medal to me!
How about you?
photo by US Mission Canada
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
A huge component of how these athletes make it to the Olympics is because they have a team. Mentors, experts, professionals. Sure, they show up to practice, but a professional designed the plan. A professional is overseeing the progress.
As married people, we need to have teams, mentors and communities in place. Access to resources, support from friends and families, surrounding ourselves with positive influences and admirable role models. Giving as well as receiving.
A very important aspect of a healthy, strong marriage is our relationship with God. As our pastor preached this past Sunday, “the way we love each other best is by loving God more!” If we're not loving God with our heart, mind and soul, it will be impossible for us to truly love our spouse the way we were created to. Yes, it's important to romance our spouses and to purpose daily to think of them, to prefer them and love them unselfishly, but if this isn't rooted in our deep love for God it will still lack the one thing the best marriages are comprised of – Love for God and His glory.
This is why we do what we do on The Romantic Vineyard – talk about strengthening marriages before the trouble comes. Like the 40 year old, down-hill skier who took that horrible fall. We thought for sure his injuries would be life threatening, but he came away with only a concussion. Why? Because he had trained not only for winning, but for those times when he would fail.
We love the Olympic metaphor to marriage – so timely and appropriate! Thanks for an excellent, thought-provoking post!
I would agree that most of us do just “coast” along and are not setting goals and challenging themselves to make their marriage the best it can be. As we become more sucessful and life more stressful and busy, we get to thinking that life should get easier and I will have more time for my marriage, but my experience is that the easy part was always just one more step away.
I have set myself goals, though I stumble much along the way. My wife and my marriage are worth the journey.
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