Conscious Effort

Coffee in hand I curled up to watch my guilty pleasure "Oprah's Next Chapter." This particular episode  she was interviewing the one and only Bette Midler. I have always been a fan of Bette. My mom use to always play her music when I was growing up, and she also happens to be in my favorite Halloween movie "Hocus Pocus" As I curled up I listened intently as she talked about her legendary show business career.

When Oprah began to talk to Bette about her 28 year marriage I simply loved what her husband said when sharing how they have made it all these years.

"we made a conscious effort to create the life we have."

I just love that, because any kind of relationship takes work. But it was the "conscious effort" part that I loved. They didn't expect to have a happy marriage unless they worked at it. 

Growing up I use to hate when my dad would tell me marriage was work. Being the helpless romantic that I am, I wanted to hear that marriage was a breeze and each day is perfect and romantic. But, the older I have gotten I have come to find that any relationship, but specifically marriage, is something you have to make a "conscious effort" to maintain. 

my motto is, "you make time for the things you want to make time for." 

If your relationships (marriage, friends, family...etc) matter to you then you will make the time to spend with those people. My mentor/friend Melanie always shares with me this nugget of wisdom about when she first got married. She was talks about how before she and jimmy got married she, like most girls, had this fairy tale idea of what it was going to be like to be married. But she quickly found out that after the honeymoon life starts. That is when shares about what her new dream became, "doing life with him became my new dream. Just the every day stuff like taking out the trash became my new dream. I loved getting to just do life with him." 

It was finding beauty it the mundane, every day stuff. Realizing that this was the man she was getting to do life with, and that became the new dream come true. But, she always reminds me that marriage takes work. It helps that she and jimmy are not just husband and wife but best friends. They were friends LONG before they were even boyfriend/girlfriend. But, that doesn't mean they don't still have to make the choice each day to get up and chose to love each other. 

I don't have any super-spiritual point. I just really liked what Bette's husband said and wish more people understood that anything worth having you are going to have to work at. Godly marriages are not going to be handed out on silver platters. To have a Christ-centered relationship you BOTH have to make a "conscious effort."  You put THOUGHT into it. 

Just was a great reminder that for any relationship I have (friends, family, future husband...etc) I need to be consciously making an effort in those relationships. 

I have a hand full of friends who I have been friends with for YEARS--like 13+ years--and I can tell you it takes work. You have your good and not so good seasons but to maintain any kind of friendship it takes a willingness to see it work and be all it can and was meant to be.