Marriage After Kids

Before I get into my muse what do you think of the new look??  

My mind is more confused now as to why people sometimes have children to "fix" or enhance their relationship.

If you know J and I personally or have been around Aunt LaLa for a while you know how much we love one another and how hard we work at having a healthy marriage.

Marriage is one of the greatest and scariest commitments you can make.

Josh and I celebrated our eight year anniversary today. Eight years! And in year three we decided we were ready to start trying to get pregnant. We had no idea what a journey we would be taking in trying to grow our family.

In year seven it happened! We had a baby! What a miracle, our baby boy.

I thought I was prepared for everything... as much as I could be. But what I was not prepared for was how having our miracle took a toll on my marriage. Wow. 

I was felt so disconnected to J. It literally broke my heart. 

First we went through a traumatic birth, unexpected move, living with family, then trying to find our bearings as new parents. Stress much? Whew. 

We were on different sleeping schedules, I was struggling with depression and being overwhelmed, we had not alone time AT ALL... Dates? yeah, no, I'm not leaving my baby... that was just too difficult. Talking did not happen because we were afraid of stressing the other or hurting eachother. 

Did I mention in all this Josh started a new job?  (Smile)

No one told me about this part. I knew there would be change, but I just did not think it would be a negative one in my marriage. 

But here is the good stuff. Josh and I love each other so much and we have strived to have a healthy marriage keeping God at the center. So when we faced all the difficulties we prayed and asked God for help. 

There were conversations of "Okay, we are really feeling disconnected... what do we do?" We prayed. Asked God to show us and help be what the other person needed. 

It got better after we moved into our place. It was easier to find our groove or routine as a family of 3. We started to reconnect and it felt so great. 

We know now that we have to work more diligently to stay connected and MAKE time for one another. 

Just as in our relationship with God, we go through seasons of life. Sometimes your at the mountain tops and then your deep in the valley's. It is there growth happens. When we are in these valley's we need to remind ourselves of God's goodness... in marriage remind ourselves of why we chose this person to spend life with. 

This past year God has shown me the deepest parts of myself and I have really been stretched. In these difficult times I grew stronger in my faith AND my marriage!

This post is not to scare you away from having kids, but just to be aware. The enemy has clearly made point to destroy our family structures starting with marriage, we must be vigilant and be aware of his devices. 

As always if you need prayer or have questions I'm here. auntlala25 at gmail. 

Happy 8 year Anniversary my beloved!