Our garden

Someone once said to me, "Marriage is like a garden, you have to water it to make it grow". That stayed on my heart until I identified what it meant, and now I have it hidden there.
You have heard me say many times, how lucky I am, how happy I am and all those things are true and even truer now. Well after we had kids, our world changed- like everyone else's, we had different responsibilities, we couldn't afford to do the things we used to, let alone find someone to keep them for us. So going into a few years full of financial stress, a wife lost in mothering and a husband lost in work, we did start growing apart from one another. Then I thought about about our marriage being like a garden and I knew it had been a long time since it had been watered.
But, truthfully our garden was dead and water just sat like puddles on top of the hard ground.
I came across a book that was given to us when we got married that was covered in dust called The Five Languages of Love by Dr. Gary Chapman. In the book, he identifies five basic languages of love and then guides you towards a better understanding of each one, Quality Time, Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. Your emotional love language and the language of your spouse may be as different as Chinese from English. No matter how hard you try to express love (or for me, water our garden) in “English”, if your spouse understands only “Chinese”, they will not be able to understand or relate. As I was reading the book, Jason recognized an immediate change in our relationship and began reading the book with me and now we live by the book.

Both mine and Jason's parents are divorced, Jason's divorced early in his life and mine when I was in my late 20's. Jason grew up being torn between his mom and his dad, and I grew up having my both my parents, but in an unemotional home and neither of the two is something we want for our kids. We want them to see us hug, kiss and hold hands and do things together as a family and only with each other.

Jason said he once read 'The most important thing a father can do for his kids is to love their mother' and that's what he has hidden in his heart.
So even though money, time and a grounds-keeper is a huge factor, we strive to find ways to water our garden so that it never dies- not only for us, but as a irreplaceable gift to our children.