I’ve been married a super long time. Thirty-seven years to be exact. I know, I know… we don’t look as if we could have been married this long. (LOL!) Truth-be-told we did get married very young. Larry was still a teenager! I know, it seems crazy. But here we still are. Still together, still in ministry, still doin’ this thing! And we’ve got three grown kids, four grandkids and one on the way!

Life, leadership and ministry are an even greater pressure cooker on a marriage relationship. There are times when it’s super intense. We have made it all these years on prayer, God’s grace, and a lot of work!

On the day I’m posting this, it’s Valentine’s Day, when everyone’s minds tend to go even more so toward relationships. So I’m sharing five habits that keep us together, even when it seems like everything in the world is conspiring to make us a statistic.

We look for activities to do together.

We often marvel that we ever ended up together because we are such opposite personalities with interests that are nothing alike.  There aren’t many recreational activities that we both enjoy doing, so we have to intentionally discover the things that will work for both of us, and prioritize them. Otherwise, one of us is loving an activity and the other is just tolerating it all the time. We both enjoy travel, cooking, trying new foods, and walking. Lately we’ve been trying to get in 10,000 steps a day together. Anytime we find something we both enjoy we try to capitalize on that.

We do devotions on the You Version Bible app together.

We take turns finding devotionals that we can do together on the app, and the biggest thing we glean from this is the “Talk it Over” section at the end where we share our thoughts about how the devo or scriptures for the day personally impact us.

We communicate a lot throughout the day.

With our busy schedules, we mostly communicate during the day by text. We do this to keep a pulse on how the other is doing. If I have a meeting I want his prayer cover and support on, I let him know that and vice-versa. If there’s something in the day that didn’t go well, we comfort and support each other through it. If there is something great that happened, we get excited about it, and we many times plan right then and there how we’re going to celebrate it when we are together again after work.

We write to each other when we are at a difficult spot.

We are both leaders and sometimes tend to talk over each other when we are angry about something. It can be difficult to have a conversation where we both get to fully express our feelings and come to a place of understanding. At those times, we usually end up writing out our thoughts in Messenger or an email and sharing in that way until we can come to peace on an issue.

We prioritize times of rest together.

We know that for our personal and marriage health, a day off is important as well as taking all of our vacation time. This helps us to get recharged and ready for what’s next.

If you are married, what habits help you to not only maintain but grow the relationship?