Soon Mr. and Mrs. Murphy the Younger will be celebrating their anniversary! Their love for one another is forever cheering and encouraging me! Mr. Murphy and I have been blessed in our own marriage and we pray that the MurphyBros will have beautiful, love-filled, lasting marriages, too. I ❤️ love! 🥰
When I think back on my life and the people who have influenced it and my marriage, my own dear mother comes to mind. When I was a child and was planning a play date or adventure with one of my friends, I innocently asked my mother, “Mom, who’s your best friend?” I was unsure, as I couldn’t really remember her spending large chunks of time with anyone in particular.
“Dad is my best friend,” she replied.
“No, I mean, someone not in our family, you know, a real best friend,” I vehemently explained.
She gently replied, with all her maternal wisdom, “Dad is my real best friend! And someday I hope you find yourself married to your best friend, for it is a true gift.”
When Mr. Murphy was in college and we were dating, he lived with his maternal grandparents for one summer. Consequently, we spent a lot of time hanging out with them. They took us out to eat, to church, we watched movies and baseball games with them and played cards and dominoes with their group of 70-something friends! It was a blast. I enjoyed asking them questions about their dating and early married days and sought any advice Grandma Ruth might have for me. She told me that the best advice she had was to always say “Sure, I’ll go!” to any invitation from my sweetheart, even if it was just to the hardware store.
“Just drop whatever you’re doing and join him! Because it doesn’t matter what you’re doing as long as you are doing it together!”
These two women in particular spoke truth and wisdom into my young life and it has stayed with me! I pass their advice on wholeheartedly!
Another one of my heroes and influences is J. R. Miller (1840-1912), a pastor who wrote letters as a way to minister to others. I also value his marriage advice...
“No marriage is complete which does not unite and blend the wedded lives at every point. This can be secured only by making every interest common to both. They should read and study together, having the same line of thought, helping each other toward a higher mental culture. They should worship together, praying side by side, communing on the holiest themes of life and hope and together carrying to God's feet the burdens of their hearts for their children and for every precious object. Why should they not talk together of their personal pride, their peculiar temptations, their infirmities, and help each other by sympathy, by brave word, and by intercession to be victorious in living? Thus they should live one life, as it were, not two. Every plan and hope of each should embrace the other. The moment a man begins to leave his wife out of any part of his life, or that she has plans, hopes, pleasures, friendships, or experiences from which she excludes him, there is peril in the home. They should have no secrets which they keep from each other. They should have no companions or friends, save those which they have in common. Thus their two lives should blend in one life with no thought, no desire, no feeling, no joy or sorrow, no pleasure or pain unshared.”
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In this season of weddings (maybe not this year😷) and anniversaries, send some snailmail to celebrate and encourage another couple!
Go postal, people! It’s lovely!
XOXO,
Mrs. Murphy
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