Having Hanalei in our life has been eyeopening. It’s been a wonderful, terrifying, incredible, hugely stressful, beautiful, messy, absolutely humbling journey. And we are only just in the beginning. With all this confusion, change, emotional ups and downs we lean on these meetings.
After we got married, we made a commitment (yes one separate from our vows) that we would meet once a month to always assure we were on the same page. We called these Monthly Marriage Meetings. These meetings have SAVED our marriage. I don’t say that lightly. they SAVED us. and when Hanalei came, they were the only things that made us keep fighting to stay fighting. You know why? Because God is at the foundation of every meeting. He calls us to face hard topics, and together during these times we tackle them. the three of us. •••

The meetings themselves are pretty basic. We first eat, because if either of us are hungry, we get distracted haha 🙈. I become a “hungry-etta”. So we eat, and after we eat we open our planners, and plan the next month ahead. We plan out date night (I never realized how much I missed dates until after we had Hanalei — AJ looks like a fox all dressed up!). Then we lay out the rest of the month with church, events, his days at the hospital, my scheduled conference calls, commitment to friends and family,  etc. After, we discuss how we felt the previous month went and talk about how we could improve, and what we felt we kicked butt in 💪🏽(affirmations in marriage are incredibly important because validation during these early parenthood months keeps the new young parents believing they can do it. I can’t tell you how many times a day I say “I don’t think I can do this”. Affirmations kill that negativity). We jump into the current month and choose three main priories we want to work on. they can be anything from more time with friends, to fitness, to making sure there is clean unders and pants to wear. Once those three priories are made, we create action steps and these steps have to have measurable goals, dates attach to them and plans of when these goals should be completed.

Once that’s all laid out, we conclude with ANYTHING thats been on our hearts and minds. This is probably the HARDEST but most important part. We share, without judgement and completely venerably, if we have hurts and want to share joys. This is where we come back together and become stronger. God is so apparent during this time because we call to Him to help us understand and be patient with one another. You’ll find a lot of imperfections in the hurts and one of my biggest issues is I don’t want my husband to see me flawed, so it’s important that we have this time to remind each other that we need each other to get through what hurt we may be feeling. We also celebrate joys. and usually show photos back and forth of Hanalei, lol. I’ll tell you, we are so far from perfect, and we fight bad. like really bad. Ugly, mean, and hurtful. But God knows this and he’s create this tool for us so that we can get through those times. Thanks God He knows AJ and I as a couple and not just as individuals. Our marriage would be lost without Him.

Wow this was lengthier than I intended. I should have made a live about it. if anyone wants to talk more about Monthly Marriage Meetings (we call them M3s) Comment, DM, email… i’m always here to talk.