The Key to a Healthy Happy Marriage

Well the Holbrook's survived marathon May! We ended the month by spending memorial day weekend in Springfield. Sam had five days off, which was awesome. We headed to our vacation home in Enid, OK the Thursday before Memorial day weekend. Sam's classes for that day got cancelled so we got to leave in the morning. It was so great to be in a real house, with a full size kitchen, where Sam and I could both cook at the same time and I could turn around with running into the fridge or hitting the counter and it has a REAL oven! Immediately upon arriving in Enid I took to the kitchen for a new experience, making bread. I recently read the book "Eat Clean" by Tosco Reno and she said if your ever going to eat bread then eat Ezekiel bread, which is a pure and healthy bread. The story of Ezekiel bread comes from the Old Testament: Ezekiel 4:9-11-

⁹ “Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side. ¹⁰ Weigh out twenty shekels^[a] of food to eat each day and eat it at set times. ¹¹ Also measure out a sixth of a hin^[b] of water and drink it at set times.

I used a recipe that didn't use beans, so my bread was not authentic Ezekiel bread, but it was fun to make and tasted pretty good too! I have grown a lot in my cooking skills since being married for five months. I have impressed myself with some of the things I have made, not only in a small kitchen with limited resources, but making things from scratch. I have even ground my own oat flour before. It has been so much fun learning new things in the kitchen and realizing that I can cook! Never in my wildest dreams would I have pictured myself making homemade bread, especially bread that his been around forever. 

My Ezekiel bread dough after kneading it for fifteen minutes

After a night in our house and big queen bed (we sleep in a double size bed in Altus) we headed to Springfield. On Friday we both had bachelor/bachelorette parties to attend for our friends Katie and Daniel. Sam headed out fishing and the girls painted pottery. It was a lot of fun and a great time to see our friends, especially since we couldn't make it to the wedding. I love hanging out with my friends and I always realize how much I have missed them when we are all together and I never want our time to end. Also, I painted a pretty sweet G in honor of Katie and Daniel Galbraith, which I plan to see properly displayed in their house next time we visit. 

Sam and I after the bachelor/bachelorette parties

My sister and brother-in-law came into town on Saturday so we spent most of the day with them on Saturday and had a delicious bbq. We hadn't seen them since the wedding, in January, other than on facetime, so it was a blast to hang out with them. Sunday morning we had brunch with my family, after church with Sam's family, and I convinced everyone to play Phase 10 before my sister and Ben hit the road. If you have never played Phase 10 well your missing out, it is a super awesome card game, but it can last FOREVER, which is why it took a lot of convincing to get people to play. Alas, the morning ended and we had to say goodbye to Shauna and Ben. We headed over to Sam's parents house, where we were staying, and had another bbq on Sunday night, which was delicious. We even played the game Recycle (see previous blog for explanation on how to play that game) which was a lot of fun, glad we could get Sam's family to play our newly discovered and awesome game. 

Bag I made for my sister

On Monday, memorial day, we lounged around in the morning and then  headed to the National Cemetery to walk around with Sam's parents. It was beautiful to see all the graves decorated and take a moment to remember all the men and women who sacrifice daily to serve our country. We headed to lunch with my mom and Sam's parents after we left the cemetery. I went to the pool with Becky, Sarah and Hazel on Monday afternoon, while Sam napped, and then we went and said goodbye to my mom on our way out of town. It was very hard to say goodbye to Hercules, he doesn't quite understand why I come visit and then leave and it hurts to say goodbye to my precious dog. 

We spend the night in Enid on Monday night. We worked out at the Vance gym on Tuesday morning, which is not as nice as the Altus gym, then headed to OKC for the day. I met up with my best friend, Stephanie, to do some bridal dress shopping while Sam went to the cowboy museum.  The best part of the day is that Steph found a gorgeous dress and we got Qdoba for dinner!!! 

OKC dress shopping = success

It took about four days for Sam and I to recover from marathon May. Sam Thurs-Wed off which was nice, but he had a simulation bright and early Saturday morning, which was not very fun. We had a pretty low key weekend, since Sam had a SIM we were unable to attend our California wedding this past weekend. We watched a movie Friday night and celebrated friends birthdays on Saturday night. Sunday we went to Mass and Service (working a two-a-day) then just hung around our little room watching Gossip Girl in the afternoon. The perfect way to rejuvenate from a month full of traveling, we were both ready to be in one place for awhile. We don't have any more plans to travel until the end of June for a wedding in Dallas, which by then we will probably welcome a break from Awesome Altus. 

Many people say that the first year of marriage is the hardest. Some people even go as far to say that the first five years are the hardest. However, I have not found that to be true. Yes, we have had to go through a lot of adjustments and changes in the five short months we have been married, but the changes have brought us closer together and strengthened our marriage. We even have "briefings", yes Sam uses a military word to describe our financial and life discussions. Today, we had a thirty minute financial briefing. I am not sure why the military must use briefing instead of meeting, but it sounds way better than discussion in terms of a marriage.

The pool on base has awesome slides. We spend a lot of free time here

 I would say the number one reason we have had such a successful time adjusting to change is because we have put Christ in the center of our marriage. As most of my readers know Sam and I come from different Christian upbringings. Sam was raised Catholic and I was raised Baptist. Sometimes the thing people neglect to see is that Catholic and Baptist/Protestant are NOT separate religions, they are just different traditions within the Christian faith. I have heard it said multiple times from people of the Catholic faith "Catholic is the only real Christian religion, the first, the only, the best." I have also heard, from a Protestant faith "Catholics aren't real Christians, they pray to Mary not God." Well, let me just say, those are both very naive statements and it frustrates me when I hear people say things like that. I have sat through Protestant services since I was born, and I have sat through many masses over the past four (almost five) years and let me just say, though the information is relayed differently, it is the same message. Before we were married, since we were living long distance, it was easier for Sam and I to do our own thing when it came to church on Sunday, then when we were together we would try to hit up mass and service in one weekend. That works for us for now, perhaps when we have children things will change, but for now we usually go to two services in one weekend, but the reason Christ is in the center of our marriage doesn't come from the church service we are in, though those do play a role in strengthening our relationship, but from our own personal Bible study. Sam joined me in reading through the Bible and that has brought us closer together and to Christ.

You absolutely, positively, CANNOT have a relationship with God with a closed Bible. That is how he communicates to us. We have church once a week to come together corporately in worship, which is a biblical principal, but in the week between Sunday's it is important to pray and read our Bible. Any person who goes to a Christian church knows what I am talking about. Well, when Sam and I started studying together things started making more sense to us. A somewhat taboo subject (since we were raised differently) when we were dating became intimate discussions and explorations of Jesus Christ as we try to understand scripture. Sam reads a lot of books, outside of the Bible, about religion and the church, so his knowledge, especially when we read the Old Testament is unbelievable. He has really made it easy for me to understand the Old Testament and the history of what was going on during that time. I have spent more time than Sam studying the Bible over the years and I taught Sunday school for four years, so I am more familiar with the stories in the actual Bible. It is a great balance of historical and biblical knowledge. You put the two together and we have a deeper meaning, understanding, and desire to know our God more and put him in the middle of our marriage.

It is so hard for me to fathom that the God of the universe, who sent his one and only son to die on the cross so that I can have eternity in heaven, wants to have a personal relationship with me. He wants to talk to me, know me and love me. So why is it that I find it hard to give him 15 minutes out of my day, I mean what is more important than spending time reading the Bible and praying to the creator of the universe? Why do I always make excuses? Well, it is human nature, human selfishness, but we know one day every knee will bow, every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, we will have an eternity to do nothing but praise our Savior. We wont be married, we will be in new bodies, we will be in heaven doing nothing but praising the Lord. So why not start on earth? It has also been great sharing in reading the Bible daily with Sam because we hold each other accountable, sometimes we turn off the TV just to read our verses and we take turns praying together before we go to sleep. Sure, we can do more privately, separately, to grow in our personal relationship with God, but it has been beautiful to watch our marriage change as we grow together in Christ.

Sam and I also had a strong relationship before we got married, in fact nothing in our relationship, except that we got to actually be together, changed when we got married. If you have a rocky relationship before marriage you will have the same struggles and rocky relationship in marriage. Being married is not going to fix any problems, so maybe that is why people say the first year of marriage is tough, or maybe its just because a girl and guy living together is strange and thus causes problems. All I know is that I am very blessed to be married to my best friend and as long as we continue to put Christ first in our marriage I know we will continue to be content and have a healthy, strong, and happy marriage!

Thanks for reading, sorry for the length of the post, that has all been weighing on my heart for awhile and it feels great to share it with the cyber world.

Amanda