Are Your Kids More Important to You
Than Your Spouse?
Joey and Carla Link
March 20, 2019
Joey and I will be celebrating 41 years of marriage this week. In the early years of our marriage Joey was a youth pastor. We went to the high school’s sports and music events, both of us led Bible Study groups and planned youth outreach activities.
My involvement in all of this came to a screeching halt when we had our first child. I became a stay-at-home mom while Joey still attended all these activities. When he got home he wanted to spend time with his son. Our marriage was paying a price, but our attention was focused on other things.
Things came to a head when Michael was 6 months old. Early on in our marriage before our 1st anniversary, we decided we would go away for a weekend every year on our anniversary. After we had Michael, Joey started talking about where we would go for our anniversary and I told him if we went anywhere Michael would go with us. Joey had other ideas. We drove about 3 hours north to where my father lived and we left Michael with him to go out to dinner. Then we drove to a nice hotel on the beach. I had been kidnapped by my husband! He told me we were going to have a weekend together alone.
We talked a lot and made some good decisions about spending more time together. We had never heard of child-centered parenting but we had been living it in spades.
Why should your marriage relationship be the most important relationship in the family? When you became one in Christ on your wedding day, you made a commitment to love, honor and cherish your spouse for the rest of your life. Your vows didn’t say “except for the years our kids are growing up.” It said for the rest of your life. How are you going to give time to loving, honoring and cherishing your spouse when your kids are more important to you than he/she is?
Here are three ways to be intentional about your marriage.
- Love – The definition of love says it is a close friendship with affection and physical attraction. To love your spouse, spend time with him/her as friends. I (Carla) have been to and watched on TV more Los Angeles Dodger baseball games than most men do. Joey has certainly been to more ice skating shows than most men would stomach. Show interest in what each other likes to do. Hold hands. Look at each other with a twinkle in your eye.
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Honor – To honor someone is to hold them in high esteem and respect. It means you don’t treat the other in rude and disrespectful ways and you view the opinions, wishes and values of your spouse as you would your own.
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Cherish – To cherish someone is to treasure them. How do you treasure your spouse? We take good care of the things that are important to us, giving them special care. When was the last time you gave your spouse “special care”?
Spend your marriage loving, honoring and cherishing each other and you will be leaving a legacy for your children that they will treasure and your empty nest years will be golden. If you don’t set this example for your kids, where will they learn it?