Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Friendship & Intimacy





If you ask men and women what they like to do for fun,   the differences in the way we like to spend our time are quite different. The challenge is to find activities that suit both the husband and the wife and do things together. It is through developing friendship that we are able to really develop true intimacy.

Jerry and I were friends before we ever became interested in each other as marriage partners. After we had been married for quite some time though, we let our friendship slide. We were busy with life! You know what I mean. With work, family, pets, house upkeep and church, we just didn’t make time for ourselves.

As a result, we drifted apart and eventually separated for a year and a half. God miraculously restored our marriage. That story is for another day. However, when we first got back together, we really did it because we knew God was telling us to do so. We didn’t even have any feelings for each other. We had destroyed friendship and intimacy.

Our restoration began with a decision to start all over again. One of the first things we did was find a hobby we both enjoyed. That way we were able to have something to talk about besides kids and hurt feelings.

At the time we lived on the East Coast where antiques were plentiful, so we began collecting them. We went to auctions and yard sales, and then we would take our newly acquired treasure to the garage and refinish it together. We would have to sell something in our house to make room for the new piece. Today looking back, it seems symbolic of us letting go of the past failures little by little and replacing them with something better!

It required a lot of time and effort to rebuild each piece of furniture and to rebuild our marriage. However, the end result made all the hard work worth the investment! Today we are best friends once again and we do have intimacy in our marriage.

Now our passion is to see phenomenal marriages fill our church, community and world! Whether your marriage needs to be rebuilt completely like ours or just needs a little bit of TLC, it’s worth the effort.

We would love to hear your comments.