A Joyful Place Called Home

In our Marriage 101 Guides we talk about Date Night being a necessity step families.  We try to schedule ours weekly even if its a coke break at Sonic, but this week apparently weeks had lasted 28 days.  We set the date early in the week to go out Thursday night.  Thursday came with work commitments, so we  moved it to Friday night.  As is often the case, Friday morning we managed to get sideways with one another early in the day. Truth is by afternoon neither of us felt like knowing the other spouse much less going on a date, but such moments tend to prove that a break is needed. We showered and dressed up and headed to dinner together.  Headed out the door we were still in the “I may be on a date with you, but I don’t even LIKE you” mode.  A misinterpretation of movie start times meant dinner was reduced to a Chinese buffet…but we made the best of it.  One of our rules of date night is “no small talk about the children” only grown up conversations. We steered clear of politics and religion and parenting ….known divisional conversations in our lives….and relegated ourselves to polite  if shallow conversing.

We have a saying in our home, “I love you, but I don’t like you very much right now” during disagreeable moments. We began date night in that mode.  By the time we were settled into the movie “It’s Complicated” we were relaxing and beginning to enjoy the evening. The movie is poignant, if hard for me to imagine having an affair with an ex husband. I have one, and the truth is I cannot imagine anything further from my reality, but the rest of the movie was very poignant in many parts….emotions ran bare and truthful in the children’s and friends scenes.  I think they portrayed very well, how uncomfortable and trying for children parents’ divorce is….they do have to adjust, they do have to deal with their “family” no longer existing…they do have resentments of not having simple family structures….

By the end of the movie whatever Friday’s disagreements had been were entirely over.  I tend to thump Dh playfully on the arm when I’ve been irritated by him to signal him I’m past the anger/upset enough to go forward…and he playfully thanks me for letting him know. ( note that he always irritates me…I’m sure I never do anything that irritates him!   )  We are riding some waves of change as my vision, work, and his work have all changed this year. Dh’s superviser has changed twice in the last six months at work leaving him with many more administration responsibilities than he had before and much more stress. Meanwhile my whole world has continually evolved the last ten months and finding the “new normal” between vision challenges and life balance changes has just put us both in the situation of alot of change….seperately, and now in finding our “new normal” together.  We don’t even say outloud that the last six months involved a child moving to college in another state, nor a tween becoming a teen or one of our teens becoming a driver….lots of changes the last six months.

Date nights are SO important. It is as though they serve as “redirects”  of our daily over busy lives to the two folks who fell in love, they remind us that we are a WE and to celebrate the closeness and our relationship….to take time to prepare and truly spend time focusing on one another.

Today is Saturday and its icy outside and cold. I’ve already been up twice to find where I left my coffee…I’m usually not an early morning coffee drinker since it slows me down (I’m naturally high energy) but today I needed the warmth by the fire.  I love early morning times…its my time with God, my time to reflect, my time to say hello to friends on Twitter, and MY time.  Everyone else in my home sleeps in when they can, and early mornings are my prized alone time in the house padding around to my favorite chair or desk, reading, relaxing, enjoying the moments.

I hope you have a blessed day!

Sweetie