Tag: married life

Five Years in the Making.


I proposed five years ago to the light of my life.

Marriage is hard work, a daily deliberate choice to merge, invest, pour out, and share dreams alongside, even when they collide. It’s not poetic or romantic most of the time, not the way we’ve seen it in soundbites and highlights. Real love meets down in the dirt, the grit, the mess of the other. That’s where the good stuff happens.
— J.S.

3 Habits Every Married Couple Needs to Know | Marriage & Faith


Marriage can be extremely difficult work. Here are three daily habits which I strive to practice (imperfectly with much stumbling) in marriage. Also, how Christian faith becomes practical in our relationships.

The video is slightly adapted from my viral post “3 Lessons I Learned Instantly In My First Week of Marriage (That I’ll Need For Life)”

This is part of a series of videos called “Where Faith Meets Life,” covering topics like politics, abuse, marriage, and mental illness.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/jsparkblog

Be blessed and love y’all, friends!
— J.S.

Road Trips


We drove up for a wedding over the weekend. You learn a lot about another person on long road trips, and a lot about yourself. I learned that I’m not as laid back as I like to think I am, that I’m an upside-down turtle at multi-tasking, that my bladder has shrunk to hobbit-like levels, and that when both the GPS and my wife tell me to take a left turn in five-hundred feet, the surface of my brain instantly breaks out into hives. I also learned my wife is infinitely patient, knows when I need a hit of coffee, graciously endures all my u-turns, sings and dances in an untinted car with zero shame, and will listen to me talk about one single subject for hours. She can also sleep immediately in the car on command, in the middle of a sentence. Here’s to my wife and road trip partner: to many more u-turns together, both figurative and literal, and to dancing among strangers.
— J.S.

I Love You Just Because

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I love you just because I love you. It isn’t for anything else but you. Not for cash or status or my ego or an accessory, not because I’m afraid of loneliness, and it’s beyond the first bursts of chemistry. Love is hard work and it requires all of me, everything, with no guarantees, except the love in itself that’s promised and true. That’s just-because love. I love you for you.
— J.S.