Marriage
Random Acts of Service
Last Fall, Alison was on call one night at the hospital here in town. The proximity to our house to the hospital makes things both very convenient and painfully inconvenient. Benedict and I had the car and we planned on taking dinner to Alison shortly after her shift started. As I began to put the dinner together, I felt the urge to do something really nice. Instead of just a main course, I wanted to make her a full dinner. So I grilled up some burgers, packed up condiments, chips, dessert, and a mint. It was a small, random gesture, but one that brought her comfort on her long overnight shift.
I think that we should spend more time observing and noting all of the times that we serve our wives. The smallest and most insignificant acts all add up to something really big. Like St. Therese’s “little way,” we too are building strong marriages and loving homes when we perform these random acts. Part of it is recognizing that we’re doing these acts, and the other part is recognizing them as holy.
Random acts change the script in your wife’s head. They’re unexpected. She walks into the bedroom to see the bed turned down and her pajama’s laid out. She comes home from running errands to find the house meticulously clean and the children playing outside. We all have assumptions and expectations about our days. Learn hers and disrupt them.
If you struggle to remember to perform these little acts of service, schedule them. It may not be a surprise to you, but it still will be to her. This is a great habit to make sure that on a regular basis you’re taking that extra step to strengthen and nurture your marriage.
We’re servant leaders and by performing random acts of service we can remain grounded, grow in holiness, and demonstrated our love and fidelity. While it can be hard to imagine that such a small act could make such a big impact, simply experience for yourself and you’ll see that the proof is in the pudding. Or in this case, ice cream.
Why I’m Optimistic
Inviting God into every aspect of your life is clearly an excellent idea. Having His help and guidance is like having a cheat code in life. There are many areas, however, that I don’t even think to invite Him in. Guidance on a major purchase, request for help while working towards goals, or even just increasing the prayers of thanksgiving and showering Him with gratitude are places where I have room for improvement.
For the past 3 and a half years, things have been pretty tight in our household. With Alison in training and our family happily growing, we’ve been striving towards this goal of getting Alison trained, certified, and out in practice. While taking this journey, we’ve had the weight of a huge student loan following us around. In fact, it’s precisely the student loan that’s caused everything to be so tight. This isn’t a complaint. Those loans enabled Alison to go to school, get trained, and soon, have a big toolbox to fix the mess with, even though it will take time. This also isn’t a vote in support of student loans. I think it’s safe to say that Alison and I will be strongly dissuading our own children from taking on the burden of debt in any form.
I share all of this because I’m extremely optimistic about 2016. This is the year that we go from being on defense to going on offense. Diligent budgeting, incentive programs, my growing web design business, Alison taking on an extra shift once a week, and the potential financial benefits of Alison signing a contract for work this year means that we’re going to have a lot coming in.
This is exciting not in that we’re suddenly going to have a very full budget, but because we’re going to make real, sustained progress. The money coming in has already been spoken for. I’m excited for the psychological effect of seeing our debt decrease. After treading water for years, I’m ready to start swimming.
I hope that you and your family have something to be optimistic about this year. Whether it’s welcoming a new member of your family, reaching the last leg of a goal, or even getting everything straightened out in your family budget, this is the year to do it.
In this new year which brings with it so much hope and optimism, I hope that you find peace. More importantly, I hope that both you and I are better about inviting God into all areas of our lives so that He can guide and bless us and make 2016 the year that we start something amazing.
Long Term Thinking
Life in the Collins household has been in full motion as of late. Just after Thanksgiving we bought a van and expanded to a two car family. Then, late in December, my trusty Prius essentially died. We were able to sell it for a fair price, but we’re back to just one car. Of course, I was mildly devastated to lose my signature car.
As you may have seen on my Twitter feed, Alison has started receiving emails and phone calls from recruiters making inquires about her interests after graduation. All of these events have caused us sit down and answer the question: 10 years from graduation, where do we want to be? We’re calling our answer the “10-Year Plan."
We know what kind of medicine Alison wants to practice and we know where we want to be living, but what do we want our financial situation to be? What do we want our home to look like? What do we want our family situation to be? The answers to all of these questions, in broad strokes obviously, are even today impacting our decisions.
The vehicle that makes any plan work, especially our 10-year plan, is the finances. Money gives us the opportunity and ability to do things. Oftentimes we’re firemen when it comes to our money. We think in the short term, patching holes and putting out fires. Since graduating college, we’ve been those firemen. Now, after years of hard work and planning, we’re transitioning to a long-term view of our money. This is the key to wealth building… making financial decisions based on how they’ll impact you 5, 10, and 20 years down the road, instead of how they’ll impact you next month.
I like this long term, big picture, strategic thinking. While working for the Boy Scouts, I was routinely given high marks on my ability to see the big picture and execute on the small tasks to achieve that overall goal. While 10 years seems a long way off, and it certainly is, there’s no doubt that the buying decisions that Alison and I make today impact our ability to hit our 10 year goals.
A key to success in making financial decisions with long term thinking is to make them before they come. Money ebbs and flows, meaning it can show up quite unexpectedly and in large amounts. Delineating between needs and wants, and having a plan laid out for any and all “extra” dollars can accelerate progress. When you make decisions before money shows up, you minimize the chances that it’ll be delegated to the wrong objective.
Getting to the point of long term thinking in your life is something that takes time, takes planning, and takes unity with your spouse. When you do get there, buckle up because there’s nothing that you can’t accomplish together.
Why Marriages Fail
One of the main roles in the household for husbands is to take care of all of the little details when it comes to maintenance and upkeep. Oil changes, washing the car, lawn care, shoveling snow, and other associated tasks all fall within our purview. These are the tasks that we do for our wives. They aren’t fun and they aren’t glamorous, but we do them anyway.
We take these small annoyances off of her plate so that she can focus on other things, likely more important things. It’s pleasant to think about that fact that she doesn’t have to deal with the details of these mechanical tasks. When we complete them, she feels cared for. While it’s somewhat instinctual that we take the lead on mechanical tasks, I believe there’s something bigger at play.
When we look out across the marital landscape today, it’s plain to see that there’s an overabundance of failed marriages. While there are certainly legitimate cases in which a marriage was never valid to begin with, or where a spouse lives in constant fear for their own safety and wellbeing, I believe that the root cause of failed marriages is innate selfishness. In a way, it’s reflective of our times. We’ve slowly turned in on ourselves and, as a result, we’ve taken our gaze off of the horizon and lowered it to our own pathetically small world.
Selfishness kills marriages because it’s the antithesis of marriage. Matrimony is a Sacrament about total donation of self to the other: body, mind, and spirit. It’s a Sacrament that binds two into one, that calls for an openness to life and lends itself to properly raising children. Selfishness in marriage takes many seemingly ordinary forms: career, financial, adultery, substance abuse, and withholding. The interesting thing is that they all have the same capacity to destroy a marriage. A workaholic can destroy their marriage just as easily as an alcoholic. It’s the same root problem: selfishness.
We’re naturally selfish; it comes from our instinctual need to survive. Yet, in our marriage, arguably the safest, most stable relationship in our lives, we need to counter that selfishness. We need to be proactively seeking out ways to serve our wives, to make their lives easier, and to take small annoyances off of their plate.
There are many great things that you already do to make your wife’s life easier, but today I want to challenge all of us to go even further. Consciously seek out ways each day to remove another annoyance from her life. Over time, you’ll find your marriage is strengthened as you reduce your own selfishness and increase your love and fidelity.
Inconvenient Times of Need
If there’s one thing about marriage that’s true, it’s that your spouse often needs you when it’s most inconvenient. While not altogether a bad thing, it can be a bit frustrating when she wants to talk while you want to sleep, or when you need a favor while she’s working on a craft. While the inconvenience can be chafing, it can also be beautiful.
Sacrifice is an amazing thing, especially when done for one’s family. I get a great amount of joy when I’m able to do even small things for Benedict. That time could be used on my own pursuits, or I could remain comfortably seated, but instead I get up and do some task for him. I’ll have to remember this post when we struggle through the challenges of potty training.
Willingness to help at even the inconvenient times is part of the benefits of marriage. Spouses routinely sacrifice for and help one another. They can be relied upon as a dependable support structure, always available and always willing.
Times of need are rarely convenient. Never be so lost in an activity or task that you’re unable or unwilling to drop what you’re doing and help your wife. It’s in the times when it’s most difficult to help that you’re able to most clearly show love in action. You wife is the most important person in your world, so help accordingly.
2015: The Year of the Gazelle
I absolutely love this time of year. The anticipation of Advent, the joy of sharing Christmas morning with my own little family, and a chance for all of us to breathe a little easier and take stock of our year. It’s been a big one in the Collins household and I hope that you’ve had a fun year as well.
Many of my posts this month have us looking towards 2015 and considering how we can do it even better in the New Year. Certainly I want us both to move beyond flippant resolutions and instead implement long-term strategic goals. More importantly, I want us to meet back up here on the blog next December and celebrate the fruits of the work that we’ve done this month.
I want to focus today on something that’s very near and dear to my heart, and that’s also something that I haven’t been the best at this year. Finances make our world move, that’s something that none of us would dispute. While money shouldn’t be our god, it is the means to provide food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and comfort to both us and our family. We’re all money managers and, as such, we have the duty to do it well.
Unlike other types of goals, we all have financial related goals, whether we acknowledge them or not. We want to go on vacation, buy a new computer, get our kids that outdoor swing set or get out of debt. For Alison and I, our #1 goal right now is getting out of debt.
Like other goals, we wisely recognize that we can’t do it alone. We knew that we needed to get some outside counsel to help us figure out the best way to reach this goal. We’ve got a big hole, and an ever growing shovel, but we know that if we aren’t good money managers, that money will disappear and not help us pay down debt. We turned to Dave Ramsey who has an extensive line-up of products, classes, and services to help us.
One of Dave’s teaching tools is what he calls “Gazelle Intensity.” The gazelle is the prey of the fastest animal on land, the cheetah. Yet, despite their frequent interactions, the gazelle escapes the majority of the time. It does so by outmaneuvering the cheetah. In the illustration, it’s reveled that if we want to get out of debt, we need to be the gazelle. The cheetah represents many different enemies of financial stability: immaturity, credit marketing, impatience, reckless spending, and whatever that “next big thing” is. If we want to be successful, we have to outmaneuver those wants and focus on the goal.
I don’t know what your financial goal is, but I do know that if you want to reach it, you’ll need to be disciplined and it will take time. Why not make next year the Year of the Gazelle?
What if, for just 1 year, you poured all of your focus into reaching your financial goal? You’d have to eat at home more, spend less, and maybe even postpone that vacation. It would be hard, that’s for sure. You’d not only face the battle of wants, you’d face the battle of attrition. January would be easy, but by September, you’d be fatigued.
Right there, in that scenario, is the secret to success. Yes, in the short term, it would be hard to save money to buy a new TV as opposed to putting it on your credit card. But, if you save your money and pay cash, it will only take you 12 months. If you put it on your credit card, you could be paying for it for 3 years!
The secret is realizing that, while more painful on the front end, you’ll spend less time overall dealing with the goal. If Alison and I pay off her student loans in 5 years, that will save us 15 years of paying on them on the back end!
It takes maturity, it takes discipline, and more than anything, it takes wisdom. It takes the wisdom to understand that the pain will be less if you just rip the bandaid off instead of a slow pull.
That’s my challenge to you for today. You know what financial goal you want to hit, so sit down, talk to your wife, and decide to make 2015 the Year of the Gazelle.
A Family of Saints
During this year’s Synod on the Family, Pope Francis canonized Louis and Marie-Azelie Martin, the parents of St. Therese. What’s particularly interesting about the Martin family is the vocations that came out of it. The Martin’s had 9 children, four of whom died in childhood. Of the five who survived, all girls, each entered the religious life. This true model of holiness in a family has me thinking, what will it take for me to raise a family of saints?
From an American perspective, I think that it’s important to address the sheer number of vocations from this particular family. I have two thoughts. First, it’s clear that the love of Christ was at the center of this family. Their faith so permeated every aspect of the family life that the only spouse any of their daughters would be satisfied with was Christ Himself. Second, I think it’s equally important to note that not every family is called so deeply into the consecrated life. I think this is the message that the Church sends with the Martin family. The religious life can be a path to holiness (and consequently, sainthood), but equally so can the married life be a path to holiness.
As for me, what can I do, working with Alison, to raise a family of saints? I think that I need to first look to myself. I need to move my spiritual life to the next level. I need to work on my prayer life so that it’s not an appointment on my calendar, but instead is precious time in my day. I need to spend more time contemplating holiness and working on my own inner flaws. I then need to share my faith with Benedict. He doesn’t see me pray in the morning because he’s asleep, so I need to find ways to incorporate the rhythm of my prayer life into the day so that we can share it together.
Like any New Years Resolution or fad diet, the allure of a rich spiritual life tempts us to run very hard, very quickly, only leading to burnout. A rich spiritual life can only be attained through perseverance, diligence, and hard work. This is something that will take a lifetime of work, placing the lowest priority on my own needs and the highest priority on the needs of Alison and my family.
It’s easy for us to see a family like the Martin’s and think that that could never be us, but what we really need to see when we look in the mirror is a future saint. No path is straight, no saint is perfect. We all mess up and we all have to decide for ourselves what kind of life we will lead. Will we embrace the difficult things today in exchange for true happiness, or will we waste our days on those that will be fleeting? We can be saints, and we can raise a family of saints, if we align our desires with the desires of God.
Your Sacred Ring
In the Catholic Church, we have aids that help to remind ourselves of God’s loving presence in our lives. We call these aids sacramentals. They are things that have been blessed and that point us back to God. Without being blessed, they are something ordinary like some beads strung together on a rope or water in a bowl. After having been blessed, they become something holy, something that’s a means to achieve peace and holiness in this life, and joy in the next.
Recently I was considering the role of sacramentals in our daily lives. Embarrassingly, while observing all of the sacramentals around me, I forgot to acknowledge one that is omnipresent in my life: my wedding ring. Blessed during the Mass at which Alison and I conferred the Sacrament of Matrimony upon one another, this ring which I wear continuously is a sacramental. It’s a simple metal ring, but because it has been blessed and because it was gifted to me as a part of the Sacrament of Matrimony, it’s now a holy object that reminds me of the sacred bond that Alison and I now share.
Some people see the ring as just that, a ring. It sits on their finger and that’s about it. Some consider it to be a controlling device while others remove it when they set out to act contrary to their marital promises. For us as Catholics, it’s humility of presence stands as a physical reminder of the supernatural bond that we’ve entered into. Our wedding ring reminds us of the promises of our wedding day and of the Sacramental bond that we share with our spouses. Our wedding ring is the physical sign of the constituted Sacrament.
We attach much emotional value to our wedding ring, and rightly so. It is a reminder of what was hopefully a beautiful and memorable day. At the same time, it is so much more than that. Your wedding ring is a symbol of the Sacrament which you have entered into. When things are difficult and life is challenging, remember that your ring is not just a ring of gold, but a blessed sacramental, pointing you back to greater levels of fidelity, integrity, and holiness.
Never Rush Decisions
It’s only when I rush into something that I get burned. Alison and I have recently been car shopping, which in and of itself is a time-pressured experience. Vehicles go up for sale and are sold, sometimes in a matter of days. Like a whack-a-mole game, opportunities come and go in an instant. Especially when it’s a major, life altering decision, don’t rush.
I’m the kind of guy that likes to check off boxes. When I have a project, I want to get it done and move on to the next thing. That’s great when it comes to work or tasks around the house. It’s the worst possible mentality when it comes to major decisions. It’s not immaturity, it’s simply that I need to have more patience when entering into these types of big decisions. Rushing them leads to poor outcomes and, if they’re financial decisions, bad deals.
If you operate like I do, I have a few thoughts to help you make better decisions. First, set clear parameters. With the car, Alison and I want to pay with cash. That limits the amount we’re willing to spend and, since we’re feeling every dollar that we do spend, we’re better prepared to walk away from a bad deal. Parameters help to quickly filter out bad options. Second, only allow yourself to move forward if it’s a straightforward option. If there’s lots of bending over backwards to make the decision go through, don’t do it. We only get “creative” when we have to make the bad decision work. Like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, you can make it happen, but you’ll lose something in the process. Finally, only make a decision if you and your wife are in agreement. Alison keeps me balanced and can see my blind spots. If we’re both in agreement, we can be confident that we’re making the right decision. As an added bonus, if something goes wrong, you won’t find yourself blaming one another.
If you’re wired to work with focus and intensity and make decisions quickly, be careful when making big decisions. There’s never a good reason to rush anything major. You can always buy more time. You can’t, however, always reverse the effects of a decision that was poorly made.
Dating in the Married Life
The ordinary needs to be challenged. In the days of dating your wife, there was much newness in the air. You were getting to know each other, it was exciting, and the future was unknown. After your wedding day, things settled down. Many marriages fail with the couple citing that the flame died out, but that’s a fallacy. Dating your spouse doesn’t end on your wedding day. It doesn’t end, period.
Dating in the married life is significantly more fruitful than dating while in the single life. In the single life, both individuals are guarded. They typically don’t have shared goals, and the level of tolerance for a breakup is low. In the single life, there’s only so far into emotional intimacy that the couple can go. Dating in the married life is a continual process by which the spouses delve deeper into the relationship. Dating in the married life allows a couple to continually grow closer, to share in the fruits, and to work together towards common goals.
The question, then, comes down to a matter of effort. Spouses must sacrifice for one another by doing the lowly and menial tasks. Cleaning the bathroom or doing the laundry, as an act of service and love, can be a part of spousal dating. Certainly going out can be a part of spousal dating. Eating at the dining room table, praying together, and writing love letters are all a part of spousal dating.
Good marriages take work and an investment of time. When you maintain focus on serving your wife more than you’re being served, by sacrificing for her without expectation of return, and by seeking to know her better each day, you can both continue to share the fruits of marriage.