Friday List Days: 5 Reasons Getting Away with your spouse is worth every penny

Beth and I get away without the kids for a night or two once a season (4x a year).  Here are just a few benefits of getting away:

1. You discover each other again.

Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People said that all of our activities fall into one of four categories:
-Urgent, but not important
-Important, but not urgent
-Urgent and Important
-Not urgent and not important

When you're at home, so much of life can be consumed by the "urgent, but not important."  When you get away, all of it (dishes, unfinished projects, holes in your screens, emails, phone messages, poopy diapers, groceries) are out of sight and out of mind.  That leaves: your bride or groom.  Suddenly, you have time to discover them again-minus the urgent, but unimportant distraction.

2. Your internal motor can idle.

When you take time to finally slow down and just be, you can recharge your batteries.  Once that happens, you can really l o o k at your spouse again and really l i s t e n.  When we get away we always build in time to let each other have individual time to do whatever-read, sleep, walk, pray, write, putz, think.

3. You can laugh again.

One of the joys of dating is doing fun stuff with each other.  When you get away, do that stuff.  It's hard to take time to have fun together at home sometimes.  There are so many urgent items to take care of.  But when you get away you can read together, play a board game, go for a walk, play tennis, play putt-putt, watch movies, eat at a pizza place, whatever.

4. You can finally talk about the tough, but important stuff.

You know those items that you'd really like to talk through with your spouse?  I'm talking about things on a heart level that would really help your marriage or future or family.  At home, it's hard to have those conversations because when can you do it when you're not tired, or won't get interrupted? Getting away is a great time for this.  Plus, you can plan on it and surround it with good downtime so you can connect first and also have some fun time to decompress after it.

5. .....
Where is it?  Ah, this one is for tomorrow!  :)