A Heart That Beats for Home
My journey as a wife and mom has been an incredible source of growth and learning, and I'm thrilled to share the insights I've gained with you through this podcast. Each episode is a heartfelt exploration of what truly makes a house feel like a home, drawing from my own experiences and the valuable lessons I've gathered along the way.
Whether you've been a parent for years, are embarking on the adventure of newlywed life, or are navigating the beautiful complexities of family dynamics, I hope you'll discover something meaningful here.
Throughout our conversations, we'll delve into topics such as parenting, marriage, achieving harmony between work and home life, fostering thriving relationships, and infusing faith into our daily experiences. My goal is to create a welcoming space where we can come together, share our stories, and offer support as we journey towards building strong and loving families.
I extend a heartfelt invitation for you to walk alongside me on this journey of growth and exploration, resonating with the rhythm of "A Heart That Beats for Home." Together, we can flourish and learn as we delve into the depths of parenthood, marriage, and the essence of family life.
A Heart That Beats for Home
55. Roommates or Soulmates? A Marriage Check-In.
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Dive into this heartfelt episode where we explore the canvas of marriage, navigating between being roommates or soulmates. Host Nikki Smith shares personal insights and lessons learned over 25 years of marriage and parenting, drawing inspiration from the book “Reconnected: Moving from Roommates to Soulmates.” With relevant anecdotes and practical tips, this episode encourages active engagement, less reliance on technology, and a return to meaningful, intentional communication.
Listeners can expect to uncover 11 characteristics that signal a drop into roommate territory and discover timely strategies for reconnecting with their partners. Reflecting on the essential role of daily life-giving conversations, Nikki introduces the "10-minute rule" — a simple way to spend quality time focusing on deeper emotional exchanges.
This episode also addresses the challenges of modern relationships, including the pitfalls of gentle neglect often caused by distractions like social media and busy schedules. It shines a light on nurturing your union to ensure it remains vibrant and alive, empowering couples to prioritize their bond above the chaos of life.
Join us for a discussion filled with actionable advice that can transform your relationship dynamics by rediscovering the essence of love and partnership!
Reconnected - Moving from Roommates to Soulmates in Marriage:
Downloadable Resource Guide:
https://www.focusonthefamily.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Reconnected-Study-Guide-gray.pdf?fbclid=IwY2xjawIusghleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHYreffCli8ckYU4Aiq8kbMCzsSvDBtdJN4UtQTqYkdnE4Mk8AIB3BL50XA_aem__G-jQMghC_fgf3nnnuqIRw
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Hey friends, I'm Nikki Smith, your host here at A Heart that Beats for Home, the podcast where we're ditching filters and diving headfirst into the raw beauty of all things home. Now, I am no expert when it comes to this whole parenting and marriage dance. I'm simply a gal who's been riding the mom roller coaster for 22 years and a wife still untangling the mystery of it all 25 years after saying I do. My goal is to bring you unapologetically messy and boldly genuine conversations about cultivating strong families. We're gonna laugh, possibly cry, and straight talk about the joy and chaos that comes within the four walls that we call home. No judgment and certainly no perfection, just real talk from my heart, a heart that beats for home. Let's dive in. Hello friends, welcome back to another week here at the podcast. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1:I am coming to you today just with a little bit of a conversation from a book I have been reading recently. I know I talk a lot about different books that I read. I love to dig in to books on all different topics marriage, parenting, business, entrepreneurship, all of the different things and I typically try to rotate pretty regularly through those different topics. Obviously, there's times in life where you tend to dig a little deeper into a specific topic, for example, when kids are going off to college and you have these young adults. I found myself reading a lot of books about parenting young adults and how to navigate that well, how to have communication with adult children. But really I try to rotate through parenting, marriage, entrepreneurship and business on a pretty regular basis in my reading, so that I'm touching on all points of my life that are really important to me to continue to grow. This year I'm doing the reading through the Bible in a year, have kind of just committed to all of my Bible reading, time being just in the Bible and not additional books, but just really working on getting through the Bible and so paying attention to all of the different areas in my life that hold a high value to me, that I want to always be getting better, that I don't want to stay stagnant in and recently came upon a book. I do a lot of audible books as well as I'm cleaning and cooking and doing stuff around the house. I'll pop one ear pod in why I'm getting stuff done and you can listen to an entire book in a day or two if you have a busy day at home, cleaning and cooking, and I just love to fill that time with learning and hearing perspective from other people.
Speaker 1:And a lot of times you go and you look for topics that are on your heart or things that you feel like you're struggling with, and I came across a book that kind of intrigued me a couple of weeks ago that was called Reconnected Moving from Roommates to Soulmates, and I thought, oh, that's kind of an interesting title. Right, we've been married 25 years and although I don't consider him a roommate, he is indeed my soulmate. There are seasons of life a lot of times with no intention other than just the fullness of days and schedule and reality of life and work that cause a lot of things to settle into habits and into your life that can make you and your spouse feel much less connected and more like roommates. And so I thought you know what I'm going to grab this one. I'm going to listen to it. I'm intrigued just on what it has to say Because for me again, having been married for 25 years, dating since we were in high school, we have done our entire life together and I can say that my husband is my very best friend.
Speaker 1:I look forward to when he walks in the door when he's done with work. We love being together as a family, but also really looking forward to the next stage of life that we're moving into. We've got two adult children now, and one who's a freshman in high school, and so, just looking ahead to man, we are three, four, five years away from being completely alone at our home just the two of us, and I want to go into that season with our marriage stronger than it's ever been. I don't wanna get to that point and go okay, we've been living like roommates and now we have to fix this and we have to figure out how we connect again and how all the things that we used to have in common with the kids and the daily activities and the sport events, and just all the different things that you do as a family that keep you very busy and connected how are we then going to be able to maintain just a really healthy relationship with the two of us? And so, for me, this has always been something that's a priority. I want to be at the end of parenting and say I cannot wait to spend this next chapter of my life with my very favorite human on the planet, and I can say that and I'm so thankful for that.
Speaker 1:But this title made me kind of think through some things, because in the book it talks immediately about 11 different characteristics of married roommates and I thought it would just be kind of interesting to walk through these on this podcast, have some conversations. There's actually a great study guide that goes with this book. I'm going to include it in the show notes. It's a free resource that's on the internet, so I'm just going to include it in there so you can take a look at it. It's actually broken down, I think, to probably be like a couple's Bible study that you could do with a group, but just some really great quotes in it, some great things to go look at, and I thought today we would look at specifically the 11 characteristics of married roommates what it might look like if you've moved a little way away from soulmate and more towards roommate, and then a couple of things about communication that it calls out in here that were really impactful to me, kind of eye-opening, and then also just a little bit about how to draw closer to each other from a heart standpoint, and so just some information that I'm just going to literally give you that I read in these books that I think has been so helpful, and I hope that it will encourage you. I hope that it might be a book that you would go pick up and maybe one of these days we could get the authors on the podcast themselves.
Speaker 1:But this is a book from Dr Greg and Erin Smalley, two different marriage counselors that have written a gazillion books on marriage and healthy marriages, and they actually wrote this book because they found themselves in a state of going gosh, what is missing? We are not connecting how we used to. We're feeling very just surface level, and so you've got these two marriage counselors that are writing books about marriage that are saying we need to kind of get some help, and the quote that they put in here was a soulmate is a spouse with whom you regularly experience the deepest level of connection and intimacy. None of us come into marriage like I cannot wait to be his business partner in life or to just be roommates. We all are looking to be deeply tied to somebody else's heart, and that is kind of the core of marriage is that deep, intimate relationship. That goes way beyond the to-do list, and so I'm going to start out just with talking about these 11 characteristics that many married couples find themselves in and maybe are good indicators that you have moved a little bit too much towards roommate functioning than soulmate. And they ask you to rate each of these from one to five, one being like it's maybe a small part of our relationship, or five, and if you're at a five, they're saying it needs immediate attention because it could be a massive kind of a massive boulder in the relationship that could cause a lot of problems. So the 11 characteristics of married roommates Number one you're exhausted, you're too tired, you are sleep deprived or you're burnt out of control.
Speaker 1:Number two you have a crazy busy schedule. Hectic schedules determine responsibilities and they leave little room for a couple to connect. Number three you have a business-like relationship. Communication is around administrating your marriage, talking about to-do lists, scheduling kids and friends Very surface level, administrative type conversation.
Speaker 1:The fourth one is gentle neglect. I thought this was a really interesting way to put that, but gentle neglect means you constantly take a backseat to phone calls, social media, jobs, kids, housework and hobbies. So if you feel like there's just this little bit of a neglecting of the relationship, everything else is taking precedence. There's just this little bit of a neglecting of the relationship, everything else is taking precedence. There's actually a great chapter in the book about how social media and phones is a huge part of this gentle neglect. We actually listened to this chapter in the car together after I had listened to it because it was so powerful and I found that I am so guilty of this as well. Just the divided attention instead of undivided attention that the society that we're in right now, that we just constantly live in this state of, there's always multiple things vying at our attention and if we don't leave that phone away from the area where we're trying to connect with our spouse, how that gentle neglect can be so, so painful. So that's number four.
Speaker 1:Number five is spiritual disconnection. You don't connect on a deep spiritual level. You rarely pray together and seldom talk about spiritual matters. Number six complacency. The romantic spark has faded and the marriage feels extremely predictable. The next one is conflict avoidant you avoid difficult conversations. Or Number eight is sexlessness. Sex has become routine, dutiful, infrequent or even non-existent. Number nine disengaged. Your marriage feels like two individuals headed in separate directions. Number 10, feeling unsafe. Your marriage is not a safe haven where you feel unconditionally loved and accepted. And number 11 is visionless, you don't share a clear dream for the life you're building together, and I don't know about you guys.
Speaker 1:But I can look at this and say, yeah, a lot of these things can creep in without intention Busyness, business-like relationship conversations I recently said to my husband let's try to have on this date we were on, what if we didn't have any conversations about our kids, their schooling, the dealings of the household, finances, what if we just solely tried to talk about things that had nothing to do with parenting or managing our household? And you have to be like, okay, you have to be so intentional about that because so many things just creep in that you spend all of your time talking about those to-do type of lists or the heartache with just family stuff that you're dealing with, or the overwhelm or the schedules and the back and forth of you're going to do that, I'm going to do this, you get him there, I'm going to get her there, and it just becomes very, very business oriented instead of that soul connection. So, looking at these 11, you can rate those however you want. Again, this whole chart is going to be in the document that I link in the show notes If you want to go back and do this, maybe with your spouse. It'd be interesting to see how they rate when you compare them to one another.
Speaker 1:But just being honest and looking at this and saying, I know for sure in my life it is easy to get into these seasons of what they call the slow fade. It's not something that happens overnight, but with busyness of schedule, fullness of life, travel, with work. You know, my husband travels a ton for work and so then there's a lot of times where I'm at home and I get into get it done mode. And it's very hard sometimes, when he comes home, for me to remove myself from the get it done mode to be able to come back to okay, we're a partnership, we're going to do this together. I need to have compassion, I need to be kind and get back into the groove of doing it as a unit, as opposed to well, I've been running this ship all week while you've been gone. I'm just gonna keep going. It's working, we've got it figured out, I've got it taken care of and we can get into these ruts where that slow fade over time turns into be a really big issue and you look back and you go, wow, we are really not connected.
Speaker 1:The other thing they talk about in the book a lot is the little foxes, and that is a reference to a Bible verse in the Song of Solomon's, chapter two, verse 15. And it urges that the actual verse says catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love. For the grapevines are blossoming and just talking about guarding that vineyard of love by catching the little foxes that would ruin it. And those little foxes are all of those things that we just talked about. It's the busyness, it's the phone, it's the overscheduling, it's the exhaustion, it's all the things that can come in and that can start to ruin the vineyard. And so, just keeping that in mind and identifying what in my relationship is a little fox and how do I get rid of those, because those can cause major, major disconnection in our relationship.
Speaker 1:And in the book they talk so much about, a common, a very, very common little fox is busyness and just not having the time to invest into a healthy marriage. That requires daily, healthy connection. We cannot have a thriving marriage where we are soulmates, where we don't connect on a regular basis, and so what was interesting about that was a couple of different things. So first of all, I wanted to talk about that bid for connection. There's a Gottman's research which I believe is one of the largest relational studies that's ever been done, and I know it's online. I've looked it up for other things, but the Gottman's research showed that couples who stayed married long term turned toward each other regularly because they talked about.
Speaker 1:There's three things that we can do in relationship. We can turn away, which means we're ignoring or we're avoiding, and this is specifically when one spouse is looking for connection. So if I go to my husband and I'm looking for connection, three options that can happen is he can turn away from me, ignoring or avoiding the comment or the action. Two, he can turn against, which is a reactive or argumentative or responding in a critical way. Or he can turn towards, which is reacting positively and showing interest in the comment or the action, and that goes both ways right Him coming to me, me going to him. And these are all considered what they call bids of connection, that every time we go towards our spouse whether it's with a comment or it's with a hurt or it's with looking just to have a connection that those little things are bids for connection and we will respond in one of those three ways turning away, turning against or turning towards and that Gottman's research showed that couples that stayed married long term regularly turned towards each other instead of away or against.
Speaker 1:They then go on to break down four different forms of communication, which I thought was really interesting and is something to really kind of think on this. We talked about oh gosh, a podcast much earlier. We talked about in marriage about keys for communication, but I had never heard about these four different topics or four different segments of conversation that we can have or communication that we can have in our life with our mate. The first one is small talk, and small talk is just very basic facts about you, about life in general. It's thought of as chit-chat or shooting the breeze. It's very nonspecific, there's no depth to it and it's just the stuff that kind of happens a lot throughout the day, just little chit chat that's going on.
Speaker 1:The second one is work talk, and this doesn't mean work talk about, like your day at work. Work talk involves managing the day-to-day life as a couple or as a family. So your daily routines, your schedules, the to-do list, the activities, financial decisions, medical choices. It never ends it the activities, financial decisions, medical choices. It never ends. It's all those things that I was just saying. Let's try to have a date night where we don't have any work talk or small talk. So when you eliminate all chit chat, you eliminate all household work talk. You have to really start figuring out how to have conversations that are much deeper.
Speaker 1:The next kind of talk is problem talk, and problem talk focuses on challenges that surface in your marriage. It is a way to confront or challenge crisis or to find solutions for an issue. So this is just dealing with problems that are happening in your relationship. Nobody really wants to have those conversations. They're harder to have. A lot of times we don't get to them because we get so caught up in the work talk and the small talk. But in that Gottman study you know where they were talking about. Those bid for connections.
Speaker 1:There also was some research that showed that most couples make up their conversation. 75 to 80% of the conversation falls in small talk, work talk or problem talk. So 75 to 80% of our conversations are happening in those first three categories. That aren't really. I mean sometimes that problem talk can end up in a connection when we've worked through things, but really they don't connect you in the same way as the fourth category.
Speaker 1:And the fourth category is life-giving talk. This is a conversation that requires initiative. The other three kind of happen. Naturally, they're just the to-dos of the day. This life-giving talk takes effort and it takes planning, and the average couple spends fewer than four minutes a day. Four minutes a day in this life-giving talking stage. And so there's something that they have implemented in their marriage, greg and Erin, that they have a 10-minute rule a day where they spend that 10 minutes just on life-giving talk. It's required. It's what was the high point of your day, what was the low point of your day, talking through dreams and goals and desires and just all the things that go beyond those other three. And so that 10-minute rule.
Speaker 1:I thought that was really, really interesting, and there was a quote that they said in there that communication is the mortar that holds a relationship together, and I know, for me and my relationship this is so true that the more we communicate, the more we're in sync. The more he knows what's going on in my life I know what's going on in his life outside of the little to do's and the chit chat the more connected I feel. And so, just trying to make a commitment to take that 10 minutes and have that life giving conversation. And again, I feel like we always bring up technology and TV and cell phones, the things that are taking away from the places in our day that we used to allot time for that life-giving conversation. At the end of the day, when you're laying in bed and you can just kind of debrief the day or how you're feeling or your hopes and your dreams, that is now all being replaced by people are scrolling or they're watching TV in their bedroom, or when we used to just sit on the couch and have a cup of coffee or have a glass of wine, and now it's you sit on the couch with those beverages and you immediately turn on a TV or a sporting event. And if you do have conversation, it's usually very shallow because we don't have the emotional bandwidth to go deeper on a daily basis. And so I loved that challenge of that 10 minutes a day, no matter what, to be in this state of life-giving conversation.
Speaker 1:Dr Orkbook I don't know if I'm saying that right studied nearly 400 couples over 30 years and discovered that happy couples tend to spend around 10 minutes a day talking about meaningful talk. This is about your spouse's inner life, their emotions, their fears, their desires and their hope, unlike small talk, work talk or problem talk. So I totally am excited to just be working on implementing that 10 minutes a day in just meaningful conversation. That goes a lot deeper than we can sometimes go and I feel like once you kind of break the cycle, once you kind of get to the place that you're like, okay, we're starting to get in a groove here. I'm understanding how much time we got stuck in the small talk and the work talk and the problem talk. Once you have kind of broken down the wall there, I feel like it's easier each day to kind of pick up where you left off. I don't think that this is something that you have to fight for every day. It does absolutely take intention. But I think once you have started to implement it it does kind of have a snowball effect where you can get to it and it's easier to get into deeper conversations.
Speaker 1:And then the other thing that I really loved was talking about your spouse needs to feel protected in your marriage, like a refuge, that your marriage is the safest place on earth. And again, I can only speak for myself. My husband would have to do his own podcast episode, which may be one of these days we're gonna get him on here with us. But if I don't feel safe, if I don't feel like home is a refuge, if I feel like when I'm having conversations and someone is either turning away from me or turning against me or I'm getting that gentle neglect which is like maybe half listening or distracted listening or on a phone call and you can tell somebody's you know and again I'm guilty of it too is responding to an email while they're talking and they're having a hard time tracking because they're multitasking All of those things. When we're bidding for connection and we feel that gentle neglect, it tells us a little bit like self-preserved, don't bring stuff up, protect yourself. You don't want to feel neglected and we want our homes to be a place where our spouse knows this is a refuge and this is the safest place on earth and that this ability in marriage to have this soulmate feeling.
Speaker 1:They refer it back to the verse that he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. That's a verse found in Joel, chapter 2, verses 12 through 13. And the whole concept of a soulmate marriage is only possible when hearts are fully open to each other. But love is risky. There's no guarantees on how your spouse will handle your heart. You and your spouse are imperfect. That means that hurting each other from time to time is inevitable and hurt people often protect themselves from further, choosing pain. And so when we look at that, you know it's a heart that is closed, as a heart in fight or flight mode, and so I can tell when my husband has felt like I haven't given him the time or the attention or I'm distracted, and he feels pushed away. He can feel the same from me. And it's impossible to connect on a deeper level when there are these closed hearts, when we are feeling like we are not totally feeling safe. This is not feeling like a refuge. We don't feel like we can be open and honest. And so when we look at that verse that was referenced from Joel, again, he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and we break that down into those things, the way that God loves us. These same qualities apply to how we should be loving our spouse and what will make our marriages feel super, super safe.
Speaker 1:So those four things first of all, slow to anger. A person who is slow to anger knows how to exercise patience, especially when somebody is struggling or is having a hard day or is maybe not at their best self. Is that slow to anger? Patience from my husband gives me permission to be human. It knows that I can come to him human and that he's going to be slow to anger. With me he's going to be a good listener. The Bible verse that I know we've talked about on here before is Proverbs 19, 11. Good sense makes one slow to anger and it is his glory to overlook an offense. When we can get in a marriage situation where we are slow to anger and it's his glory to overlook an offense, think about how that changes the framework of a marriage. And good sense implies to knowing when to pick a battle and when to let something go Is the heart of my spouse when they're bringing something to me. You know my husband.
Speaker 1:Just recently I was sharing with him something that had really hurt me. That he did and I had kind of stonewalled for a couple of days hoping that he was going to figure it out, because I was stonewalling right, which we know that never, ever works. But when he didn't figure it out. I decided, okay, I'm clearly going to have to tell him what it is that he did, that so upset me. And we sat down before he was leaving on a work trip and I just shared with him what had happened. That had really bothered me, and he just said I would have never. You could have given me a hundred guesses of what you were kind of being standoffish about and he's like that would not have been on my list, like that would not have even crossed my mind, that that would have bothered you.
Speaker 1:And he ended the conversation by saying I need you to trust my heart, nikki, that I love you so much. He said it is so unusual that I would come at you with the intent to hurt you. He's like I don't feel like that's my character. I don't feel that's who I am. I'm not trying to engage. I'm not trying to stir up your feelings, to make you angry. I'm not trying to belittle you. I'm not trying to hurt you, and I wish that you would just believe that about me, that you would just believe that my intentions are never to cause you harm, because my heart is not to ever cause you hurt or harm. And that was so important for me to hear because I do think that over time I would say the same. Like, my heart is never to go into this like, ooh, my goal today is that I am going to get him. I am going to hurt him, I'm going to rip that wound open, I'm going to make it bleed, I'm going to make him pay. That's never my heart. I absolutely want to be heard, I want things to improve when there's issues, but my heart is never to hurt my spouse. And so just hearing him say that to me of Nikki, I need you to believe that when I do something that hurts, you just come to me right away and say, hey, you probably didn't even realize, but when you did that that really hurt me and I could have saved four days of trying to let him figure it out and being a little bit passive, aggressive, and so just that good sense in that verse knowing when to pick a battle and when to let something go.
Speaker 1:The second part, after slow to anger, is to be gracious. And grace looks past your spouse's quirks, all those little things that annoy you, those little habits, those little ticks that they have, and it allows you to see what's true about him or her, and I think this goes directly into what I was just talking about. This is believing best intentions, believing that your spouse does not want to cause you harm, believing that they have your best interest at heart, believing that they would never intentionally come at you to do something that would wound you, and it just always is believing the best about our spouse. When we can see each other like this through a lens of grace, there is always going to be benefit that comes from that. The third one is compassionate, and being compassionate simply means that we care about our spouse's feelings and it communicates hey, your heart matters to me. How you feel matters to me. What's going on with you matters to me. How you feel matters to me. What's going on with you matters to me.
Speaker 1:Compassion says whatever is going on in my spouse's heart disappointment, hurt, pain, fear, frustration, all of it. It's important to me and when we have this gentle neglect, when we don't take care of the little foxes, our spouses a lot of times don't want to come to us with their hurt and their pain and their fear and their frustration because, like we talked about, they don't feel like it's a safe haven. They don't feel like home is a refuge, or their spouse is a refuge, and so we keep all that stuff inside, we're not dealing with it, and then it boils up and it becomes huge issues, and so all these things go so hand in hand to be able to have a kind of relationship that has this kind of compassion. And then the last one is abounding in love. And when we look at that, jeremiah 31 3 says I have loved you with an everlasting heart or a lifelong commitment. In God's case it's an eternal commitment. It creates security. When I know I have a lifelong commitment from my husband which I know I do I know that he is committed to this relationship until death do us part. He has made that very clear. I have made that very clear. In fact, in our house the D word is a swear word.
Speaker 1:Divorce is something we won't even talk about. There has never been a time where we have said to one another maybe we should just get divorced, maybe we shouldn't be married, maybe we'd be better without each other. That kind of conversation is absolutely forbidden in our house, absolutely not allowed, will not happen, cannot happen. That is when things are said that are hurtful, that you can't take back, and neither one of us believes that. Neither one of us believes that the better option would be that we can't take back, and neither one of us believes that. Neither one of us believes that the better option would be that we weren't together.
Speaker 1:We absolutely know that we're going to have to fight for things and we're going to have to persevere through hardship and we're going to have to work on all of these things all of the time to have a strong marriage, and that is our desire. And so when we have lifelong commitment, it creates security and in a marriage, knowing that your spouse is committed to you for life allows you to have a very open heart and to live freely, because you're not worried If I say this, if I tell them this, if I admit this struggle, if I show this weakness, that it's going to scare them or they're going to run. And so commitment always requires another super big ingredient, which is grit, because grit means that you'll do whatever it takes to stay married for a lifetime. And of course, I am not talking about things where there is abuse. So just hear me when I'm saying that I'm talking about the everyday marriage that is just having normal conflict, normal sin nature, not abusive verbally or physically at all. That is not what this is talking about. That's not the kind of grit I'm talking about. But the kind of commitment that takes this lifelong commitment is gonna take some grit. It's gonna say this is gonna be hard, there are going to be seasons that are gonna be difficult, but we are gonna commit to come through it and to persevere through it.
Speaker 1:And to come back to these things like are we living like roommates or are we living like roommates or are we living like soulmates? And assess where are we at on this. If you do that chart, if you go look at those 11 characteristics of married roommates and you score high on the roommate scale, what are you willing, what am I willing, what is my spouse willing to do to take the steps that you guys oftentimes are small, simple steps. Things like we're going to connect 10 minutes a day on meaningful, life-giving conversation. We're going to eliminate some chit chat and some small talk and some business talk and we're going to just commit to 10 minutes. Maybe it means we're going to take a walk every night and for 10 minutes we're just going to talk about more heartfelt stuff, more connection stuff, or it means we're going to put our phones away or we're going to eliminate something on our calendar so that instead we can replace that with time for each other. It means that we're going to be really cautious about that gentle neglect and when one of us is talking to the other, we're going to be really, really intentional about not giving half attention to, not leaning away, to, not turning against, but literally leaning into and being fully present for the conversation. It means that we're going to be aware of those little foxes that are coming into the vineyard it could be so many different things and we're going to be aware of those and we're going to watch out for them and we're going to get them out of our vineyard before they attack all of the good fruit. The complacency, the disengagement All of these things are things that small, tiny shifts can help us make such a drastic jump on that.
Speaker 1:Are we soulmates or are we roommates? And so I have just thoroughly loved this book. I listened to it as an audible. I took a ton of notes. I then went and tried to find some of these resources online. There's some great questions in here that you could ask your spouse together. There is also this great guide that I'm going to attach in the show notes. That would be great to do a Bible study with a couple of couples that you trust, that are in similar stages and that maybe just are really committed to making their marriage the strongest that they absolutely can. So I'm always just going to be coming to you all with things that I'm learning. None of this is original. This is stuff that I've learned.
Speaker 1:I believe that books gets us the ability to gain wisdom from people who have gone before us. Obviously the Bible, the ultimate book that allows us to have that wisdom. But being able to align ourselves with people who have gone before us that hold similar values, that prioritize marriage and family and walking with the Lord Anything that I can take from those people I am going to jump at and so just some really great things in here that I thought were worth sharing with you guys. I care about my marriage. It's the most important human relationship to me on this earth and I know that it's one that, when neglected it is, you know again what they talk so much in this book.
Speaker 1:It's a slow fade. It doesn't happen overnight. It's the one week of busyness that puts a little bit of a wedge in between us and there's some disconnect there, that then it is easy to keep on that pattern and a week can turn into a month, can turn into two months, three months, and until we are cautious enough to say, hey, I'm recognizing that this is feeling a little bit transactional. I don't want to have a transactional relationship with you. I want to have a heartfelt relationship with you. I want a soul connection with you. I don't want to just be business partners in managing a house and a home. I want to do life at a soul level, at a heart level, with my best friend, who I want to spend the rest of my life with, and getting good at recognizing these things is such a crucial part to not letting those days and weeks turn into months. So I hope this encourages you.
Speaker 1:Maybe this is something that you and your spouse can look through, can take this survey together, this little questionnaire, and just make some small commitments, especially as we're coming into spring and summer here. The kids are going to be out of school, things are going to be changing. For some schedules get busier, for others they lighten up. But just looking at every season in our life, if our marriages are a priority to us, which I pray is the heart of every single person. That's in a marriage that your spouse is your priority over your children, over your work, over the busyness of life, and that you make a commitment to just digging in and investing intentionally in that relationship so that the rewards that God has intended for it to bring in our lives. I think marriage also refines us and it makes us better humans when we're doing marriage with people who also love the Lord and are genuine in their love for their spouses. It's a relationship that is so beautiful and one that I am so grateful for. So just some little tidbits there from that book. I'll link the entire book in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Friends, be sure to share this, maybe with your spouse or whoever might benefit from it. And if you would do me a huge favor, today we are hovering right at the hundred ratings mark on our podcast. If you would, when you just pick up your phone here when this podcast is over, if you would just scroll down, you will see a place where you can go and rate a heart that beats for home. And we would be oh so grateful if you would just hit that five-star rating. If you would be willing to leave a review. That would also be absolutely amazing. All of those things are what are going to help other people find this podcast. It's how the algorithm works, and we are just so grateful for all of you that are here and are excited about those that will find our community in this second season and join us here at A Heart that Beats for Home. So you guys, doing that means the world to me and I'd be so grateful. So until next week, friends, take care.