“Practical wisdom from mentors can help you learn to do the first-year tasks of marriage right the first time. Which would you rather do — keep making the first-year mistakes of marriage for ten years OR learn the first-year skills of marriage in year one and move forward with growing a successful marriage?
…Why not seek out a mentor couple to share their love and experiences with you? They have helpful stories to share from lessons they have learned. They have road maps of experiences to help you with to find your way in dealing with communication, couple friendship and dating, finances, in-laws, solutions to problems, recreation, intimacy, and healthy marriage habits.” (Dr Ed Gray – www.12conversations.com)
Does that describe you? Are you experienced in what it takes to make a marriage healthy? If you are, newly married (or about to be married) young couples can use your help. Because:
“Great marriages are not the result of good luck, finding the perfect soul-mate, or waiting for just the right moment (although all of those things are helpful, they aren’t everything). A great marriage is made, not born. To achieve a great marriage, couples must go into it with a clear purpose and clear intentions.” (K. Jason Krafsky, from the book, “Before I Do”)
To have a great marriage, intentionality and building upon a firm foundation is important. Just like building a house, if couples don’t begin with a good start — building upon a firm foundation, they will make things more complicated and difficult in the future than it has to be.
And you may know that principle first-hand because perhaps you made your share of mistakes in the beginning and didn’t have anyone to help you make less of them. Perhaps you can change that for another couple and shorten or decrease their pain.
They will likely come into the marriage thinking they know how to love each other in such a way that their marriage will out-shine others, but as we know, it usually doesn’t take long before they find out differently and have difficulties. An older, more experienced couple that has “been there, and done that” can show them that it isn’t so unusual and not to be surprised by the problems they’re encountering.
But once they find themselves heading in the wrong direction it’s so much easier to correct the bad habits before they get too ingrained into the relationship and do too much damage, than it is to wait until later.
To explain further on how much your help is needed, we will provide below a link to the web site for the wonderful ministry of Family Life Today so you can read an article they have posted on this subject.
To read the article, please click onto the link below:
To read another article on this subject, posted on the web site for the great ministry of Focus on the Family, please click onto the link below:
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(USA) Jeri wrote in to the ministry, giving the following advice: Hello, This is my first time writing, but I have been reading your E-articles for a couple of years. I am over 50 years of age and I am a happily married female. This is my second marriage and one that God provided after my first husband left me in my 27th year of marriage with him. He left me for a short term (several years) relationship with a younger woman. My Lord was my anchor during my grief and pain and he also led me and my current husband to each other. While each of us has an adult child, we have no grandchildren.
No marriage is without problems. Still, while the problems will come we feel it is important for couples, in particularly young couples to be sure to spend time with each other in a date type of situation. So for those of us who have learned from our mistakes I would like to recommend that if you can to mentor a marriage. Take on at least one young couple to sit with the kids at their own home as often as they need you, preferably monthly minimum. Give the young couple a child care cost free way to get out together for a movie, dinner, picnic or just to be alone together somewhere away from pressures of the home environment to relax and talk.
For us, it is a double blessing to spend time with the youngsters and eat, play and read with the children while we develop a trusting adult/child relationship that we enjoy so much. At the same time, the young couple reconnects in the way they did before they had the pressures and responsibilities of a family and relax and enjoy themselves in the same ways they did when they were falling in love. It is truly a win…win situation.
My recommendation I call Mentor a Young Couple is to sit with the children regularly at no cost so that they can have that special time together.
May the Lord Bless you in ways you can not imagine as he as for our marriage.