The Shafferland Shuffle

Happy Sunday, my friends! I guess you don't know much about our week since we've been doing our mini-series for the last five days! And I'm sure that has really thrown your whole world off its axis! :)

So here you go...a peek at the week!

* Last Sunday, Ryan and I spoke together at a wedding shower, which is what inspired us to write about the whole marriage series in the first place! We didn't know the bride or groom, but my friend Kari was there, and it was fun to see her! After it was over, we had a coffee date and went to visit Ryan's step-grandpa in the rehab hospital where he'd been staying.

* Guess what happened on Monday? (AGAIN!!!!) Snow! I think that marks four Mondays in a row we have awakened to spring snows. Sigh. It may have been a nasty day, but that was okay with me. I had plans to stay home and watch the Boston Marathon on TV while tracking my blog buddy Tamar. She ran the Boston Marathon! The whole thing! In the 30-something degree weather AND pouring rain. So proud of her! Other than watching her progress, I spent the day doing chores and rewarded myself with a manicure at the end of the day.

* Tuesday evening, we went to the funeral home, and on the way home, we went through the car wash. It was a different one than we usually go to, and the soap was really fun! LOL! I know you can't see it on here since the pictures are black and white, but the soap was blue and purple and looked like tie dye on our car! When I got home, I started a novel and stayed up to finish it. Whoopsie!

* Phoebe came for an overnighter on Wednesday, so she hung out with me all day while I worked on writing projects. Other than Phoebe duty and working out, my only measurable success for the day was making energy balls. :)

* Ryan showed me another sign of spring on Thursday: some new flowers in our yard! I will take it!! It actually got nice enough later in the day that we could take Phoebe out on a neighborhood walk in the sunshine. FINALLY! And we worked out. How in the world Ryan did not injure himself on this move is beyond me and mine. I told him not to break his face before his birthday!

* Our whole weekend went topsy turvy on us, starting on Friday. We threw our original Friday night plan out the window and went to the Treasure Mart instead. We found fun things but bought nothing. We tried to have a coffee date, and it was a disaster. (Too long to write about here. Maybe it'll be a good podcast story!) And then we came home so Ryan could watch the Pacers in the playoffs. They squeaked out a last second win. Whew!

* Our Saturday ended up completely upside down too. We'd planned to do a county tour and scrapped our first AND second plans for that. Ended up going to a birthday party for one of Ryan's patients (where Ryan decided to also turn 80) and then came home to do some work. I made a dessert for our company coming today, and I started spiffing up the guest room!

The Saturday Six

One.

This long winter has certainly tested my willingness to believe that spring will ever arrive. Maybe your hope is being tested in other ways...ways that make you wonder if hope even exists. This beautiful piece by Jessica is for you.

Two.

How in THE ever loving world did we miss this coffee shop when we were in Asheville??? (It was probably closed anyway. Snow storm, you know.)

Three.

One of my pieces was featured on Annesley this past week. It's a different tone than I usually write for them, but hopefully it makes you smile!

Four.

A few backyard DIY projects. (Some FAR more labor intensive than others.) I'm trying to hunt down some inspiration for our back patio/porch/yard areas. Last year we focused on the front yard. It's the back yard's turn this year. 

Five.

Looking to broaden your literary horizons this summer? This post is a couple of years old, but what a fun idea for giving you reading direction! Check it out and see how many you can check off before Labor Day!

Six.

Source

You guys!! I have been itching to tell you about this book. I've known about it for months, but it was a secret and now I can finally tell you! :) 

If you have been around the old blogaroo for a while, you might know the name Jamie Bennett. Jamie was the Mid-Morning producer before I was, and she is the main reason I was able to transition into that job as well as I did. She worked so hard to make a wonderful training manual for me and spent almost a month training me personally to take her place. The friendship we had even before I took that job has continued, and I am so thrilled to tell you Jamie just released a book! 

I first heard about this book a few years ago before it was even a book. It was a little project she had begun for herself and she hoped it might grow into a Bible study of some sort. Then, several months ago, it did just that! And then it grew into a book project! I had the honor of reading an early draft of it and offering my feedback, and now I am holding the final product in my hot little hands, and I couldn't be happier or prouder!

Jamie's book, Unveiled: 11 Secrets to Living the Abundant Single Life is a book for single ladies, but it's also so much more than that. First, though, let's talk about the single ladies. (To be fair, the book is really for ANY single person, but she writes primarily to women.) As you know, I spent 34 years as a single girl myself, and I know it can be a long and sometimes frustrating journey, if your heart desires marriage. Jamie knows this too, but she has found a way to reach genuine contentment as she waits for God to unveil her story. She has actually achieved that far more completely than I ever did. I wish I would have been able to read this book years ago!

Through a blend of thorough Scripture examples and her own experience, Jamie explains how it's truly possible to experience God's good gifts, even while you're waiting for the gift of marriage. She teaches readers how to forgive hurts of the past, live in God's abundant grace, and move ahead in His freedom. She offers insights between living with expectations and living expectantly. And she also shares so much more about how to live fully in a season of waiting.

And that is what makes this a book that can reach more than just the single crowd. People wait for all kinds of things. People wrestle with all kinds of past hurts. People have a universal longing for freedom and joy. So even though she may be focusing on the details of singleness, the principles are universally applicable. 

As I told you, I read this book several months ago, but I read the whole thing again when I received the official book, and I learned so much even the second time through. I underlined all through the book and took away nuggets I will use in my daily life, even as a married woman!

Jamie's book is bathed in Scripture, contains all sorts of evaluations, music suggestions, practical application suggestions, personal reflection questions, prayer offerings, and more. This isn't just a book. This is a whole toolbox!

I am so proud of Jamie - and not just because she wrote a book. I'm proud of her for taking the time to learn these eleven secrets straight from the Lord in the years of her own longing and waiting. I'm proud of her for working so hard to organize everything into a beautiful gift to present to others in seasons of waiting. I'm proud of her for allowing God to lead the timing of this whole project. 

I'm excited to tell you about this book, especially if you're single. Jamie's beautiful heart shines through on every page, reflecting HIS heart for His people!

Congratulations, Jamie!

I Choose You: Optimism

We've come to the end of the first week of our little I CHOOSE YOU series. Thanks for reading along with it this week! We have a few letters to go, but we hope you've found something useful even so far!

This little phrase we've chosen to explore has three o's in it, and the first one stands for optimism.

Anyone ever lived a real life version of the children's book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very-Bad Day? It happens, doesn't it? None of us escapes the madness of a day that just won't quit - or let us quit!

I remember those days (vividly!) from my single years and how I used to pray for God to send my husband to me so I wouldn't have to muddle through those hard days alone. Don't misunderstand: I had great friends! They listened to hours and hours of Bekah-processing about different things that came my way. But I still longed for the listening ear of a husband. (And I'm fortunate that my husband is a good listener. I know listening isn't everyone's forte.)

But what I didn't know back then is that even better than having a good listener to vent your day to is having someone who can actually cheer you up on a bad day. Someone who can give the gift of optimism.

I count it a blessing that most of the time, God seems to alternate the hard days of Shafferland so Ryan and I don't have them at the same time. When Ryan has a rough day (whether at work or relating to something else) I can offer my listening ear, a smile, and words that I hope will encourage and cheer him. And on my hard days, he can do the same for me.

Before I continue, let me pause to say that optimism and fixing it are two different things. Men tend to be blamed for wanting to just fix problems, but I've observed a decent number of women who do the same thing. Some people just can't handle something being wrong, and when they discover it is, they rush to fix it. Not everything is easily fixed, is it?

So this post isn't about fixing bad moods or fixing problems. It's not about annoying the ever-loving stuffing out of your spouse by fixing every little thing that goes wrong. That's not a great relationship investment. This post is about learning to share the optimism you have with your spouse when he or she needs it.

Let me give you some examples of how we do this in our household.

* Ryan has the best belly laugh of anyone I know. Some of you have told us before that you love it when he starts laughing on the podcast, because you can't help but join in. Sometimes on a bad day, I don't really feel like laughing at all, but if something happens and Ryan launches into belly-laugh mode, it's so contagious, I have to join in.

* I already told you he's good about listening, and he is. And he's also good about not fixing it. If I'm upset about something, he'll let me vent, complete with finger-wagging and hands-on-hip pose, and he doesn't tell me to calm down or be rational (or any of the other things that would NOT help in that moment). He genuinely listens and cares. He gives me a hug and a kiss and lets me unload my feelings before they cause me to implode. But then he redirects the moment. If we're home, he might suggest we watch one of our DVR'd sitcoms or a funny game show so I can get lost in someone else's humor for a moment. And for as much as I might declare I will not laugh, I usually do.

* Sometimes he'll tell me funny stories from his day. Ryan is a GREAT storyteller, and even if I missed every moment of whatever happened, his stories suck me in and cheer me up!

* If it's an especially bad day, he'll do the Mac walk. I dearly wish I had a video to show you, but even if I did, he probably wouldn't let me post it. Ryan has perfected this hilarious walk where he looks like part marionette and part turtle, and it is the funniest thing I've ever seen. No matter how bad the day, it is impossible to NOT laugh at the Mac walk.

Believe it or not, Ryan actually has bad days too, and he says...

* I always make him laugh with my witty sense of humor and my funny faces. (I think he's referring to the aforementioned finger-wag/hands-on-hips/pursed-lips look.) And as for the quick wit, all those hours with the morning team at the radio station paid off! They taught me everything I know about being funny on the fly!

* he loves the duck walk. (Yes, he has the Mac walk, and I have the duck walk.) Apparently he also enjoys my dance-like-Chandler-Bing imitations. I'm not sure what it says about either of us that we can instill optimism through weird walks, but whatever works, right?

Here's the bottom line: all these things we do, however silly they may be, go a long way in filling us with optimism, even if the main issue that discouraged us in the first place hasn't been resolved yet. I think we (the collective we) are misguided in thinking optimism means fixing the problem through rational, positive advice-giving. But we think it means finding a measure of hope and joy in the middle of the hard stuff, and sometimes that's best found through listening and laughing, refocusing and redirecting thoughts.

Now, I said at the beginning that I'm grateful we normally don't have a bad day on the same day, but it does happen now and then. We're both just deflated and discouraged on the couch together. What do we do then?

Well, that's when it helps to go back through our phones and find ridiculous pictures or videos that just crack us up. (And as you might imagine, we don't really have any shortage of those.)

And if nothing else works, we get a Frosty, go to bed, and declare the next day surely must have a chance of being better, right?

Choose to show love to each other and choose to invest in your relationship by offering the gift of optimism. Offer genuine listening, genuine laughter, and genuine love to boost a hard day. 



If you've missed the other posts in this series or want to keep reading, you can catch them here:

I Choose You: Introduction
I Choose You: Intentional
I Choose You: Chronicles
I Choose You: Help
I Choose You: Optimism
I Choose You: Openness
I Choose You: Sacred
I Choose You: Exciting
I Choose You: Yoked
I Choose You: Only
I Choose You: Understanding
I Choose You - Works For You

I Choose You: Help

We really appreciate you reading along with this little series of ours. Thanks for sending encouraging notes about it, too! Both of us are glad to see it's giving you food for thought! If you've missed the first few days, there are links to catch up at the bottom of this post.

Today, though, we look at the second letter in the word choose...and it's H. That letter, for us, represents help.

One of my biggest fears in getting married at the ripe old age of 34 was that I wouldn't know how to be a good teammate. It was a legitimate fear, I think. After all, I grew up as an only child. (For those of you who might not know me very well, I do have two sisters, but they're fifteen and eighteen years older than I am, so by the time I have many memories of life at home as a child, they were grown and living out on their own.) I lived as a single adult for over a dozen years once I left college. Basically outside of my years living in the dorm, I was used to making my own schedule and living in my own space.

Therefore, I feared I might make a terrible helpmate, because I wasn't a very good helper. I count it one of the most beautiful graces of our marriage that we have somewhat seamlessly fallen into a rhythm of living together in this house and working as a team. I'm not sure how it happened, but it did, and I'm grateful.

(If you're not married yet, this might be a good item to commit to prayer as you await a marriage of your own. It sure can't hurt to ask God to help you make that transition when the time comes! And if you are married and this part hasn't come as rhythmically for you as it has for us, it's not a lost cause! I still think it's worth praying about and asking God for direction!)

We don't remember sitting down before getting married to have specific conversations about which one of us would take which jobs within our household. Fortunately, we tend to be gifted in pretty opposite areas of daily life, so it was easy to pick our jobs. Just to give you an idea of what our practical life looks like, here are some examples.

Ryan:
* pays the bills because he enjoys it. That's just fine with me, because finances stress me out! I was really great at creating and adhering to a budget when I was single, and I paid my bills every month without fail, but I did not mourn the loss of this task for one moment after we got married. I may have actually squealed with glee in handing it over to him!

* handles most of the outside chores. Again, he likes doing them and I really don't like them at all. Yard work allows him time to decompress and be creative, and I'm happy to let him do it. He also handles all the repairs around the house because I don't really have skills that require tools of power or manual varieties.

* handles all things related to our vehicles. I can put gas in the car, but that's about it. And he told me early on he wanted to do that as a gift to me, so I didn't have to stand outside in inclement weather to fill up the tank. (Swoon!) I don't really know how to do any other car things, so he's in charge of all that. (Also, washing and cleaning out the cars are fun for him, just like yard work.)
* is our resident coffee guru. He's a morning person, so it only makes sense that he gets the coffee up and running for the day. He loves grinding the coffee beans and running the French press, so he almost always make the coffee.
* hand washes dishes. I hate washing things by hand, and he doesn't mind, so if a pot or pan isn't dishwasher safe, he usually washes it.
* cleans up all cat puke. It makes me gag and he's the one with the health care degree, so fluids are part of his gig.

Yours Truly:
* does all the laundry. Since I work from home, it's easy for me to knock out this chore while I'm working. Washing, drying, folding, putting away...the whole cycle belongs to me! (See what I did there?)

* oversees the meal planning and grocery list making, along with most of the cooking. These are creative outlets for me, and I enjoy them, so I take care of them every week.

* makes the bed every morning. I have more time in that part of the day than Ryan does, so I just make sure that little chore gets done.
* plans all vacations and creates itineraries, packing lists, and oversees the actual packing of bags and often the car, too. More creative fun for me, and I also am the one who has the time to take care of it. We choose the destination together, and then I run with it from there, making sure all details are taken care of!

* oversees house decorations, holidays, parties, gatherings, gifts, and more. You guessed it! More creative outlets for me! I take care of making sure our house is ready for Christmas or any event we host. I do all the decorating, the planning, and the executing. If a room needs redecorated, I find a Pinterest-inspired vision and run with it!
* takes care of appointments. Whether it's being available when pest control shows up or taking the car for servicing, I am the one with the flexible schedule, so I do those things.

Together We:
* grocery shop. We have both done this by ourselves before and have decided it is much more fun to do together.

* work on house projects. Ryan may be the muscle and I may be the creative design, but it's not unusual for us to work together to complete projects.
* attend events. We don't work well on a divide-and-conquer schedule, so we do almost everything together. We have pacts that we will always attend viewings together, represent our home at parties together, and even make hospital visits together.

Having said all that...often we choose to help each other out by taking up a chore that doesn't belong to us on a normal basis. When we do that, we show love to each other.

* If I know Ryan's had a long day, I'll suck it up and hand wash the pans in the sink. I may gag over water floaties, but it's worth it for him to come home to a cleaned up kitchen and not more work.

* I've been known to shovel the snow or mow the yard if I know he has a busy night ahead or could really use some extra rest. Those things aren't my first loves, but I am quite physically capable of doing them, and if I can ease his burden, I will!

* Sometimes Ryan makes the bed or unloads the dishwasher so I can have a few extra minutes to work on something else (usually of the creative variety) instead.

* Ryan is a good cook, and sometimes he'll give me the night off and make something so I can just enjoy some down time!

* And sometimes we'll do something alone that we prefer to do together. Like if one of us isn't feeling well, the other might go to the store alone.

This is a skill I first learned back when I was single, and I attended a one-day marriage conference led by Steve and Annie Chapman. They talked at length about how they make a daily goal to out-serve the other. Their main agenda (other than serving the Lord!) each day is to see how many times they can reach out and help the other one. Of all the advice they gave that day, that is the piece that stuck out to me at above the rest. I made a commitment to try to take that mindset into my someday-marriage, and I'm so grateful that Ryan has a similar outlook on our relationship. (This part especially goes more smoothly if both parties approach it from the same direction.)

We don't keep score about this stuff. We don't even have a rotation of how often we'll pitch in and do the other person's work! We just spontaneously decide to choose to show love by choosing to pitch in with a task that isn't ours. It's a relief, I think, for both of us to understand that the other is so willing to help out. Jobs might usually be yours/mine/ours, but at the heart of our marriage, we're about helping each other, because all of this life we live is really ours. 

Choose to show love by choosing to help the one you love. 



Did you miss some posts? Here you go! 

I Choose You: Introduction

I Choose You: Intentional

I Choose You: Chronicles

I Choose You: Help

I Choose You: Optimism
I Choose You: Openness
I Choose You: Sacred
I Choose You: Exciting
I Choose You: Yoked
I Choose You: Only
I Choose You: Understanding
I Choose You - Works For You

I Choose You: Chronicles

Hey, we're already through the first word of the acrostic! I = done! Check! :) Guess we'll spend a few more days getting through the second word, won't we?

If you're behind, let me catch you up! I'm doing a little mini-series here on the blog to take a look at the phrase I CHOOSE YOU and explain why Ryan and I think this phrase is even more important to a marriage than I LOVE YOU. (Full disclosure: we're big fans of that phrase too.) If you've missed the two days we have already done, the links to read them are at the end of this post.

Today we're looking at the letter C, and for us, that stands for chronicles.

We aren't talking about First and Second Chronicles in the Bible. We aren't suggesting an in depth study on those two books - unless that's what you really want to do! 

No, we mean chronicling your life together.

Don't worry. This isn't another long diatribe on the merits of scrapbooking, though you won't escape today without being reminded how much I love it, and more importantly, why I love it. This is about the many ways you can chronicle your life...and why you should!

A couple of summers ago, the pharmacist at the hospital where Ryan works had a massive stroke one afternoon. They rushed him to a bigger hospital and did everything they could, but he didn't survive. He wasn't very old, and the news of his passing shook everyone. 

When Ryan and I went to his viewing a few days later, his wife told us they'd been high school sweethearts and he had been such a wonderful husband to her. We were so brokenhearted for her, because neither of us could imagine losing the other, and we knew she hadn't had any time to prepare for this upending of her own world. 

A few days later, as I scrolled through the bazillion pictures on my phone, I found a photo of this gentleman. The hospital was having a cornhole tournament (which they do a couple of times every year) and it so happened that for that round, Ryan was this man's cornhole partner. I'd taken my lunch to the hospital during round one of the tournament, so I could watch Ryan play, and I'd taken pictures of both of them in action. I realized in the snapping of a photo, I'd captured a very random moment in one of this man's last days, and I had no idea.

Thinking about this surprising loss and seeing that cornhole picture reminded me in a fresh way that none of us has any idea how long we have on this earth, and we would do well to chronicle our lives while we have people here with us to be part of that chronicle. I was also reminded if Ryan or I should ever find ourselves in a place of loss like his co-worker's widow, I want the one left on this earth to have tangible memories to revisit. 

And not just big-moment memories. All the memories. One of the ways we choose to show love to each other is by chronicling this life we live so we can preserve the story God has been writing for us.

Here are some of the ways we do that.

* Scrapbooking. Obviously. We'll just say that one first and get it out of the way for you, okay? As you know if you read here often, I love to scrapbook. I make my albums digitally, because it goes faster and is more cost-effective for me. I make one album for every quarter of every year, chronicling the happenings of our daily lives. I also make an album for every trip we take and every major life event - like our move a couple of years ago. My scrapbooks don't just hold pictures. I also write the stories that accompany the pictures, and we both love looking back through them to reminisce about all our adventures. (We so often find things we'd forgotten!)

* Blogging. This blog I write every day is another chronicle of our life. That's actually one reason I keep the Shafferland Shuffle around on Sundays. If I do get behind in crafting my scrapbooks, I can go back through the shuffles and see what we did on what day. I have a sister-in-law that doesn't like to scrapbook, but she has a private blog where she keeps records (words and pictures) of her family's life, and then she has the blog printed through a company so she has a hard copy option, too! (I know there are similar printing options for Facebook and Instagram, if posting on those sites is really your best chronicle mode.)

* Podcasting. I went back to listen to an old episode the other day so I could find a story I needed for a scrapbook! Our weekly podcasts are stacking up to be a great memoir of our life together - and they preserve our voices, too! Having so many great Ryan-belly-laughs stored up is a good thing, I think. 

* Video recordings. This is probably our least used method, but we do have some! Back when we were first dating, I recorded us doing some car karaoke, and I showed the video to Lynne when I went to work the next day. She gave me some advice I'll never forget. She told me to keep that video, and one day down the road, when life got hard and we lost sight of why we fell in love in the first place, to pull out the video and watch it. We haven't lost sight of why we fell in love, but our dumb early-dating-years-car-karaoke is a beautiful memory to have stored up just for fun! Quick 30-second videos of silly things are fun to have on hand to keep a chronicle of your relationship and the fun you've had. We really should do more of this one, I think.

* Letters and journals. Ryan and I have a journal we started passing back and forth while we were dating, and even though we don't write in it nearly as often now, I love that little book. It holds our handwriting and our hearts' dreams. We also write letters to each other every year on our anniversary and keep all the old letters in a little treasure box. Those are precious to us, too!

* Memory box. We have a little box where we toss mementos from the year, and on New Year's Eve, we go through it and relive all the fun we had. We keep the most important things and store them in a tub. I love knowing I can go back through the bags of each year and see some of the reminders of where we went and what we did! (Maps, cards, programs, etc.)

In case you're still wondering...how does this show love?...let me tell you! You keep what matters to you, right? When we keep a chronicle of our life together, we choose to show one another that this life matters enough to preserve. These little snippets that we stop to protect do more than just make a record of history. They are a means of showing our love through reminding each other that our life together, our marriage, is important. We're not just plodding through our days as roommates. We're choosing to believe those intentional things we talked about yesterday are worth reliving as memories. 

(One year, for my birthday, Ryan took me to the park and planned a whole photo shoot, because he knew how much I would love that. For me, it was more than playing with a camera. It was understanding that this day mattered and celebrating my life mattered. We still have one of the photos from that night framed in our bathroom. I see it every single day and remember how much I felt loved through a photo shoot in the park.)

We encourage you to keep a chronicle of your life together. If you're not married yet, we urge you to keep this thought on hand for when you are! We also encourage you to document your life right now! You don't have to be married to be living a life worthy of preserving! If you are married (or in a relationship) and haven't started this practice yet, give it a try! And if you're a parent, don't just document your kids. YOU are worth documenting too! 

You are the keepers of your story. Choose to show love to one another by chronicling your story well!

Miss a post? Want to read the rest? Here you go!

I Choose You - Introduction

I Choose You - Intentional

I Choose You - Chronicles
I Choose You - Help
I Choose You - Optimism
I Choose You - Openness
I Choose You - Sacred
I Choose You - Exciting
I Choose You - Yoked
I Choose You - Only
I Choose You - Understanding
I Choose You - Works For You

I Choose You: Intentional

Welcome back for the first official day of our "I Choose You" blog mini-series! Before we hop in to that, it's podcast Tuesday, so here's a fresh round of stories for you! Enjoy!

Listen here!

And now...on to I Choose You. If you missed the introduction yesterday, you can read it to see what these next few days will be about! Today's post is all about the I, which stands for intentional.

If you're married (or have been in a relationship for a long time), do you remember the days when you were first dating and you could not spend enough time together? If you're single right now, are you looking forward to the days when you have someone to share special moments with? 

Ryan and I have not forgotten those early days of our own relationship. (We actually aren't sure how we managed to stay up so late every single night before finally saying goodbye and returning to our respective homes. We seriously survived on an average of four hours of sleep - sometimes less - in that season.)

Those were fun days. We planned all kinds of dates for each other! (The top picture is from our first date, which was a whole day's adventure planned entirely by Ryan. The middle picture is from the day we officially declared we were an exclusive couple, and I'd planned our adventures that day.) 

We texted incessantly when we couldn't talk out loud and were on the phone or together in person the rest of the time. We counted down hours and minutes until we could see each other. So sappy, but so fun!

We celebrated milestones and anniversaries. (I even threw a half-birthday-party for Ryan because we hadn't been together on his birthday, and I didn't want to wait until the next birthday to celebrate him!)

We started establishing our own inside jokes, which totally cracked us up, even if no one else had a clue what was so funny!

You know what all those examples represent? Being intentional. We lived a crazy life back in those days. I lived in one town, Ryan lived in another town, and we each worked in two other cities. When we arrived at our jobs each morning, we were 105 miles apart. I had a long commute, he had different work hours on different days, and we were both often busy working weekends. Seeing each other and investing in this new relationship of ours took intentionality. And we loved each other so much, we were glad to make whatever sacrifices we had to make in order to see each other, talk when we were far apart, and foster this budding relationship. 

As we've observed marriages together in the last five years, we've both noticed that the whole being intentional thing tends to fade quickly after marriage for a lot of couples.

Maybe they get busy, maybe they get lost in the convenience of just being together without making a lot of effort, or maybe they think it no longer matters, but it seems way too many of them put their desire to show love on the back burner and let other things become more important. 

It makes us sad!

We think it's so important to continue being intentional, even after you're married! (Maybe it's even more important then!)

We acknowledge that your intentional doesn't have to look like our intentional. Most people think we go overboard, because we tend to make a celebration out of e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. We aren't embarrassed about it, because this is how we choose to show love to each other. Sometimes we're extravagant in our intentional displays, and sometimes we're simple about it. Either way, the main point for us is being intentional in conveying love to one another.

Here are some of our favorite ways to intentionally show love:

* We hold hands whenever we can. (In the car, during prayer, walking through the mall, while watching TV...you name it!)

* We plan weekly date nights that are reserved for just the two of us. 

* Ryan always brings me my first cup of coffee in the morning.

* We take turns thinking up date ideas and sometimes even surprise one another with an idea we've found.

* We send "I love you" and "I miss you" texts throughout the day - and we also say I love you out loud about 150 times a day.

* We reserve important days to be present in each others' big moments. (Birthdays, surgeries, work events, etc.)

* We observe our monthiversary every single month (64 months and counting!) and always try to do something special, even if it's little, like getting cupcakes or lattes.

* We write notes to each other anytime we have to be apart overnight, so we have mail to open while we're separated. (Also, we try really hard not to be apart overnight.)

* Ryan says he feels loved through the way I maintain our home - planning and cooking our meals and taking care of the happenings of the house while he's at work.

* We surprise each other with treats on hard days. (Sometimes I'll take Ryan a donut or latte at work if I know he's having a hard day, and sometimes he will come home with a Frosty for me!)

* We exercise together and encourage each other when we're tired and want to quit. Like after the treats!

* We make sure we actually talk to one another every day. It's about more than just sitting in the same room staring at the same television or looking at our respective computers. We tell each other stories about our days and ask questions about what's happening in our adventures.

Hopefully those ideas will get you started in thinking about how you can intentionally show love to your spouse (or give you ideas you can store away for someday)! 

One of our favorite keys to showing love is to choose to be intentional  on the good and bad days, through the easy and hard times, and in the beautiful and ugly parts of life!

Catch the introduction and the remaining posts in the series right here!

I Choose You: Day One - Introduction
I Choose You: Day Two - Intentional
I Choose You: Day Three - Chronicles
I Choose You: Day Four - Help

I Choose You: Day Five - Optimism
I Choose You: Day Six - Openness
I Choose You: Day Seven - Sacred
I Choose You: Day Eight - Exciting
I Choose You: Day Nine - Yoked
I Choose You: Day Ten - Only
I Choose You: Day Eleven - Understanding
I Choose You: Day Twelve - Works for You

I Choose You: An Introduction

I've been in kind of a blogging slump lately. Yes, I know that when bloggers say that, it usually means they've not posted anything for weeks. I'm never one to be normal, am I? I'm in a slump, but you may have noticed I've still been yapping away! :) I feel like I haven't really said anything of significance for a while, though, and that makes me a little sad for you!

Don't worry: nothing's wrong! We have had a blissfully slow start to 2018 in the news department. That is fantastic for daily life. It's not helpful for blogging. We haven't really taken many trips or done noteworthy things, so it's been hard to come up with things to tell you about! In addition to that, I've spent most of my free time writing content for talks I've been giving and also working my way through this reflection project related to turning 40, so my mind has been focused on those projects, not on daily snippets.

Yesterday, though, I had a little epiphany!

Ryan and I had the opportunity to speak together at a wedding shower yesterday afternoon. We did a version of the same talk we shared at the Valentine's Day banquet a couple of months ago, and we enjoyed our opportunity! (We didn't know the bride or the groom, but one of the shower organizers is a friend of mine, and she invited us to talk.)

A couple of people in attendance thanked Ryan for sharing what we offered, and that's when I thought it might be fun to share pieces of this talk with you as a little mini-series for the blog! So that's exactly what I'm planning to do over the next few days!

Know what the best news is? This is for everyone, regardless of your current marital status.

Are you married? If so, I hope this little series helps you rekindle the love you share with your spouse. (If you're already doing a good job of kindling, then I hope it affirms what you're doing now!)

Are you single? Keep reading! I hope these posts will fill you with hope that marriage can be a good and wonderful adventure. I hope you'll be encouraged to begin preparing and planning now for your someday marriage!

Are you in a dating or engagement relationship? This is for you, too! Ryan and I love encouraging other couples, and I hope the words you'll read over the next few days will spur you on to be the best you can be right now - and for the future!


Here's what you can expect:

If you're new here, let me assure you that Ryan and I are just an ordinary couple. We love to have fun and make memories, but we aren't exempt from hard times or seasons of really long waiting. Our secret is that we're just crazy enough to believe we can have an extraordinary marriage in the middle of an ordinary life that probably looks a lot like yours!

We love marriage. We think it is a grand adventure and are so glad God thought it up so many years ago! As you read along, we hope you'll be inspired to love it too.

This little series is based on a phrase we think is even more important for couples than I love you. The words we'll be focusing on are I choose you.

Here's what we've discovered: you can love someone and still choose to make other people and things a higher priority. We believe the highest calling of spouses toward each other is to make sure they daily convey the message I choose you. If that message is spoken clearly, love is understood.

So we have taken the phrase I CHOOSE YOU and made an acrostic to share some of our favorite marriage advice.

We hope these next few days encourage you!! And if you'd like to read the rest of the series, take a look right here!

I Choose You: Day One - Introduction
I Choose You: Day Two - Intentional
I Choose You: Day Three - Chronicles
I Choose You: Day Four - Help
I Choose You: Day Five - Optimism
I Choose You: Day Six - Openness
I Choose You: Day Seven - Sacred
I Choose You: Day Eight - Exciting
I Choose You: Day Nine - Yoked
I Choose You: Day Ten - Only
I Choose You: Day Eleven - Understanding
I Choose You: Day Twelve - Works For You

The Shafferland Shuffle

Happy Sunday to you! (And hope your taxes are done!) Wanna take a quick peek at the last week in Shafferland?

* Last Sunday evening, as I told you earlier this week, I spoke at my parents' church. They hosted an area meeting for churches in their denomination, and they invited me to speak! It was a fun evening, and I was excited to see so many of Ryan's family members and our friends stopping by to support us! (Yummy food at the little snack time after, too!)

* Monday morning was true to recent Indiana fashion, in that we woke up to a fresh round of snow. Sigh. It was our last day to have Phoebe, and even though she didn't get a proper run around the neighborhood, she did get to visit Ryan at work, and that made her happy. (Me too!) I did laundry that day and found a whole dollar rolling around the dryer! It's really the little things that thrill my soul.

* Ryan told me Tuesday that his name was featured on the birthday board for the month! (I'm so excited for his birthday!) I was so excited to see viable buds on the tree. Gives me such great hope for spring! We hosted small group that night, and I thought that would be a good time to change the chalkboard in the living room. (It still said Happy Easter.) So I made it a countdown-to-my-birthday board!

* Wednesday I found some flowers working on sprouting in the beds near Ryan's work! YAY!! One step closer to blooming! We opened our windows for the first time this season, which made Braeya very happy, and we even went on our first walk of the season that night! Woo hoo!!!!!

* Thursday felt like spring for real, because I got festive new nail polish, we ran outside without coats, AND we had dinner on our porch for the first time this year! It was a really beautiful, sunny day all day long, and we soaked up as much outside time as we could!

* Friday I got a new shipment of Lemongrass Spa spoils, which made me happy. I love new stuff!! I spent most of the day writing (as was actually the case almost every single day this week) and when Ryan got home from work, we rehearsed our talk for a bridal shower we're speaking at this week!

* Yesterday we went to a party with a bunch of our church friends. It was a euchre tournament party, and Ryan came in second! (I don't know how to play, so I was a spectator and had a blast.) We really had a great time and got to know some of our new friends even better!

So now you're all caught up! :)