Bluegrass Romance

You remember that game Spin the Bottle? You might have played it in junior high with hormone raging boys. It was all about “4 min in heaven”- heaven being a stinky dark closet where you would swap spit with a stranger while a whole bunch of giggling peers listened in.

So, heaven it was not…but had it’s own allure.  Actually, I’m only guessing.  The closest I came to this game growing up was watching the Wonder Years. I was a late bloomer and so the invites to the Spin-the-Bottle parties generally passed over me and onto the boobier people. But that’s not the point.

The point is I now play an even better “4 min in Heaven” game. I play it with my husband and it goes like this…

We sit knew to knee, hand in hand, and for 4 minutes straight I give him words of encouragement and affirmation.

I tell him all the things I respect about him (men love to know they are respected) and I am sincere. I tell him how much I love watching him play baseball with Lucca. I tell him all the things that make me proud to be his wife. He beats his chest and I beam.

And then we switch.

He spends 4 minutes lifting me up, honoring me as his wife. He tells me what he loves about me and why he falls in love with me deeper every day (he appreciates how I count legwarmers as pants and wonder around the house half naked on weekends). The $30 Craigslist couch we are sitting on suddenly feels like a thrown.

And I imagine this indeed is what heaven feels like- where every word is a word of love, and we bask in affirmations like a pup in the sun. The Truth that we are loveable approaches us and we actually stay to enjoy it—we do not run away.

We got the 4 min in Heaven game from a marriage class at our church. It’s a 6-week marriage class called United and it is based on the book Love & Respectby Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. (Mr. Cecil and I highly recommend it). Here is what our instructors shared with us in an email before our last class:

What we have found is that many couples never take the time to just look in each other’s eyes and say “these are some of the things I love/respect about you, or I appreciate about you.”  What would it look like if you set time aside even once a week to affirm each other that way? What if you began your date night that way?  We had a few couples say, “If we began our date night this way, it would be real hard to get mad at each other”. And you know what, they’re right. When we put ourselves in a position of serving our spouse….lifting them up…encouraging them, it speaks volumes of love/respect to them.

I’d challenge you to continue this activity even after the class ends this coming week. Make a goal to affirm each other once a week.  You’d be surprised at how the dynamics of your house can change when positive things are being spoken….and it can become part of who you are as a couple and who you are as a family.

Not bad advice. Will you include this activity in your weekend plans? I hope so and I hope share with us what it was like…

p.s. Today we are off to Mini-Mission No. 14 at the Lexington Cemetery- where tulips are blooming galore. Happy Good Friday everyone!