Surrounding yourself with uplifting, encouraging couples

As a married couple, I've found it's so important to surround ourselves with other uplifting, encouraging couples as often as we can.  I was just talking to some friends last night about how important I think it is to surround ourselves as individuals with uplifting, encouraging people who challenge us to be better people, who help us grow in holiness.  I don't see why it would be any different as a couple to not do the same.

I understand the need for a good balance.  It's not as if we'll desert our dear friends who are single or religious (i.e. priests); I just think that, especially as a newlyweds, Mark and I have a lot to learn about what it means to be good and loving spouses and it would do us good to see how other healthy couples have built a life together.

We are very blessed to already have several loving couples in our lives, which makes this idea easy to practice.  One of our favorite things to do is have friends over for dinner and spend some time catching up and hearing about what's going on in their lives, really focusing on them.  I dearly love small groups of friends over large groups, as I feel I can offer my full attention to them.

Our church has a ministry for couples that are in their first five years of marriage.  Part of this ministry is that all of the women and all of the men, separately, get together monthly and build each up other up as husbands and wives.  It's a great time for group accountability in learning how to live out our vocation.

As long as Mark and I remember that there will always be something to learn about being better spouses and are open to new ideas or ways of doing things, I think we'll be on the right track.

My 27th birthday, April 2008