Little Reminders

Do you ever stop and think about what your life will be like 10, 20 years from now? Where is the path you are on taking you? I often think about this and wonder if I am not only doing my best right here, right now, but also building the best future. Am I seizing opportunities to make the memories I will cherish in the years to come? Am I equipping my children with the tools to be strong, self-sufficient, godly individuals?
One of the most important, am I nourishing my marriage to be the relationship that will still be there when my kids are grown and all others have moved on?
Proverbs 5:18 says, "May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth." Am I giving my husband something to rejoice about in the years to come?
Sometimes I am too busy taking care of all the technical aspects of marriage (raising the kids, cleaning the house, folding the laundry, cooking the meals, doing the bills...) that I forget to put effort into the marriage itself.
So how do you keep your marriage front and center? Now that I have a several years under my belt, what I find easiest is to use the ideas that worked in the past. We all have those special memories of the silly little lovestruck things we did when we were dating, engaged or first married. What were those things? What was it that made those things special? Repeat them and watch your husband's face light up, guaranteed!
This week I recalled early on in our marriage, before my first daughter was born, in our tiny 4 room (not bedroom) house.  I had a red dry erase marker that I used to write love messages to my Beloved on the bathroom mirror for him to find before or after work. After a few moves and a couple of kids later, that dry erase marker got lost and forgotten, but I remember how he would smile when he found those messages.  So, I started rummaging through my desk (there are now dozens of dry erase markers in my possession) and found a red dry erase marker. I went into the bathroom and wrote a simple "I love you" on his mirror. It was so sweet when he found it, like I had done something reeeallly out of the way for him. I wrote on the bathroom mirror, how hard was that? But in actuality, how hard are any of the little extra things that we can do to remind our husbands that they are the number one in our lives?
Your husband married you for a reason - because you made him smile and gave him something to rejoice about. Don't be too busy and burdened with the everyday to lose what it is he loves most about you - you!