My man and I stood shoulder to shoulder at the bathroom mirror one morning getting our selves ready for the day. I might have bemoaned an ache or a pain as I tried to shake the morning stiffness from my bones. "We've got to do our best to stay as healthy as we can," he encouraged, "we want to have energy left for adventures when we become empty nesters! "
It was a sweet thought but...
"You realize I suppose, that we are 42 years old and we are the parents of a six year old...our empty nest is such a long way off.
I'll be happy if by the time we reach that point in our lives if we can at least roll our wheel chairs side by side down a mall."
The reality is that we feel healthy now at 42 so why not sample a bit of what an empty nest might feel like once in a while? Why wait until the children have all flown the coup to turn our focus toward nurturing our marriage.
This is so much easier to post on a blog than to put into real-life practice.
Since our return from sabbatical in August, my Man and I have struggled to piece an evening out together. Our greatest successes toward dating have been settling down on the couch after the kids have gone to bed and watching an episode or two of a suspenseful tv show. Even 45 minutes on the same couch helps us to make a stronger connection to one another in this season where we spend very few evenings in the same building let alone in the same room.
Another of my favorite mini-dates is when school is winding down for the day and I get a text from my Fella asking if I'd like to ride with him to grab a fountain drink. Our usual destination for these beverages is a whopping 1/2 mile from our home and from his office so our trip there and back takes all of 15 minutes but it's absolutely better than nothing at all and though brief, our little beverage jaunt is effective as a connector in our week.
Tonight [Thursday night], the stars have aligned and it looks like for the first time in a sweet forever I'm headed out to an official mark-it-in-the-records movie date with this Man I've adored for the greater part of two decades. There will be popcorn. There will be large sodas. There will be candy {Runts to be precise}. If the folks at the theater decide to turn on the movie all the better but if they don't I'm pretty sure I'll be equally content just to sit there by my guy in the dark and just be.
“Friendship is a deep oneness that develops when two people,
speaking the truth in love to one another, journey together to the same horizon.”
~Tim Keller
No comments:
Post a Comment