A few weeks ago we celebrated our wedding anniversary. YAY! It’s hard to believe we’ve been married this long (almost 5 decades). What’s great is that our love for each other seems to ramp up with each passing year. The Love Story of our marriage didn’t start out that way, but God helped us to get it that way. And He’s still helping us. How we pray more of you get to this stage of marriage! It’s amazing—a true reason to celebrate. But this year we celebrated our love a bit differently. We put together an anniversary staycation.
We did this for several reasons. Our finances recently took a hit and things were financially tighter. Plus, because of certain circumstances, we couldn’t get away for very long. So instead of going away to enjoy new sights together, we celebrated from our home. And instead of celebrating for one day, we put together the plans to prolong the romance of it all and enjoy an anniversary staycation for 3 days.
Anniversary Staycation
We took our initial disappointment of not being able to get away and instead, we turned it into something pretty great. We highly recommend this to anyone with an anniversary coming up. For us, it was a matter of applying the “turning lemons into lemonade” concept. It also, more importantly, goes with the Biblical concept of “being content in any circumstances we find ourselves in.” However, now that we’ve done this, we’ll do this again in upcoming years. Sometimes it’s good to celebrate just the day of the anniversary. Other times it’s good to get away, if this is possible. And then there is the idea of putting together an anniversary staycation.
All of this goes along with something that Dolley Carson once wrote:
“Have a romantic weekend away. Trade babysitting with another couple and dedicate your weekend to romance, playfulness, and joy! No work or projects or telephone calls allowed. You’re being held captive by love for each other and unavailable. Remember, you’re away… at home! Maybe a whole weekend isn’t possible, but you can still have romance … plan a date!”
Now it just wouldn’t have worked for us to go away for the weekend. But we live in a great city to enjoy. So why not put together plans to enjoy it all the more during this special time in our lives? Also, our sons are grown so we don’t need to “trade babysitting.” One son is married and lives with his lovely wife and family in another country across the ocean. Our other son lives with his lovely wife on the other side of this country. So no babysitting is required here! But perhaps the babysitting idea is one that you need to employ. Think about it.
A Needed Relaxing Time Together
However, we did dedicate our time together to romance, playfulness, and lots of joy! We had a blast, just concentrating on each other. We didn’t work (except to post incoming comments on the web site –after all, this is a 24 hour, 7-day a week ministry). God made it possible for us to do that. It’s something we truly needed, and God obviously knew that. We didn’t realize how much we needed to do that until we did. Thank you God!
We recommend you give this anniversary staycation a try; you may like it! What we did was plan ahead to go to a few restaurants for one meal a date. The other times we enjoyed cooking together. We had a few gift cards that others had given to us, so it helped us to have some “cheap dates.” They were cheap, but they were thoroughly enjoyable. Our purpose was to concentrate on each other, not anyone else who was in the restaurants, which we did.
We then had some questions waiting for us to talk about after we ordered our meals. One question came from the wonderful book, Cherish written by Gary Thomas. (It’s a great book that we highly recommend you read. Plus, they have the DVD series, titled, the Cherish Video Study, which we purchased to eventually share with other couples. We recommend you obtain that, as well. It’s an investment in your marriage that can’t be beat!)
Cherishing Each Other
The question we asked each other was:
“What are three specific things you cherish about your spouse? Tell them what they are.”
This was a very moving time for both of us to share together. Also, we continually had on hand a book that some dear friends of ours wrote. Tom and Debi Walter, from Theromanticvineyard.com, wrote the book, Cherishing Us: 365 Tips for a Healthy Marriage from The Romantic Vineyard. We love it and also highly recommend you obtain it if you can. Within the book they have a great compilation (arranged month-by-month) of marriage advice, date ideas, as well as questions you can ask each other. Here are 7 of the many questions we asked each other during our anniversary staycation date times:
• What do I do that makes you smile?
• What is your favorite time of the day? And why is it your favorite?
• What was different about your family as a kid as compared to other families?
• What do you love most about our home?
• Where is your dream vacation if money weren’t an issue?
• What do you especially like about our marriage?
• What is your favorite romantic memory we’ve made together?
Bonus Questions:
On a side note: since our anniversary celebration Debi Walter came up with another set of fun questions we can ask each other. So this gives us (and you) the chance to let the celebration continue on for another date time. How fun?!
Plan a fun meal and/or dessert to enjoy together. And then for your conversation time, just talk about your favorite things. In the link below there is a list of 25 suggestions. For example: Talk about your favorite “pet.” You can also talk about your favorite “place on earth.” Get the idea?
Just peak into the linked list, make a copy of them and use it for a very relaxed, and interesting date night:
• 25 of MY FAVORITE THINGS DATE IDEA
A Great Connection
We have to say that our Anniversary Staycation day was great! It was truly a time of great connection. During our anniversary staycation we slept in late, cooked together, ate at a few local restaurants, and more. We took walks, played games, took “naps” together, and made great memories. It was all done within 20 miles of our home. How practical can you get? And yet we didn’t feel cheated by the simplicity of it at all.
Some couples would enjoy going to the park, lake, picnicking, riding bicycles together, etc. The nice thing about this concept is that you can customize it to work for your mutual likes. Just do it! Celebrate this notable time in whatever special way you can. Enjoy!
Cindy and Steve Wright
— ADDITIONALLY —
We give a lot of personal stories, humor, and more practical tips in our book, 7 ESSENTIALS to Grow Your Marriage. We hope you will pick up a copy for yourself. (It’s available both electronically and in print form.) Plus, it can make a great gift for someone else. It gives you the opportunity to help them grow their marriage. And who doesn’t need that? Just click on the linked title or the picture below to do so:
ALSO:
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Filed under: Romantic Ideas
Congratulations on 46 years of marriage! You two are such an encouragement! May you be blessed with many more wonderful years together!
My bride of 17+ years and I have also learned how to “turn lemons into lemonade”. We will often combine the errands and shopping that we need to get done with a “date day”. We might start out the day with a stop at Starbucks for a morning treat, with additional stops at the post office, the bank, and wherever else we need to go. Then after mid-day shopping at Costco, we enjoy our $1.50 Costco hotdogs and soda. We talk in the car as we’re driving around, to a background of Bible teaching and Christian music. For us, it’s a near perfect day: We accomplish what we need to get done, we spend some quality time together, and we have breakfast and lunch for less than $15 total. What could be better? :>)
Thanks M, for your encouragement, and the blessing you are extending to us. Also, thanks for the marriage tip. This is a great way to take a less than desirable situation, and make it into a joyful one by building enjoyable perks into your errands. We love, love, love it!
I love this. Also the reference to the books. I will definitely purchase. I just need to read the books I already have at home on marriage SMH this July we will be married 20 yrs; we have only read 2 maybe 3 books on marriage. Wow as I write this I am disappointed in myself :-( But Praise God we have made it this far. Sadly so many struggles but this next 20 years are going to be GREAT!
Congratulations Cindy and Steve for achieving 46 years of marriage by God’s grace. You have been such an inspiration to me and my circle of friends and may the Lord continue to bless your marriage and ministry more and more.
Prayer request: Please agree in prayer for my spouse Daniel to stay faithful, loyal, committed and for open communication between us at all times. Thanking you in advance
Lerato, We join you agreeing in prayer for your marriage and for Daniel to come to the realization that when he vowed to marry Lerato, he vowed to stay faithful, loyal and committed for life to her, and her alone. We ask you Lord, that you open Daniel’s eyes to Truth, and work within his life to thwart any unfaithful plans he has. Make him so uncomfortable in every sinful situation he walks into, that he is repelled by it. Show Lerato how to live in such a way that his attention is drawn her way –to live with her in faithfulness, honesty and openness. As a result, we agree in prayer that open communication will become a regular way of life for them to live together. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.
Hello You great ones… this is Jemima from Nigeria and I have followed you for years and have been so blessed by every article. Congratulations for 46 lovely years…Jesus be glorified…..staycation is awesome..very practical and full of love…..it works just fine.
Thanks Jemima, We really appreciate your kind and affirming words. Sometimes it’s nice to get away, if we can, and other times it can be nice to do things within the radius of our homes. Thanks for the affirmation. :)
Congratulations Cindy and Steve. May the Lord keep sustaining your love and strength in your marriage. May he give you better blessings than that of the former years of your marriage in the name of Jesus. Amen!
I love all your facebook posts, even though I’m not married, and share them with my friends and relatives. God bless you both richly.
Thank you Natasha. You have blessed us in saying what you have… may God receive all the glory and praise. He is so very good to us, isn’t He? May God bless you as you reach out to bless others :)