Video Transcript:
so how do i maintain a healthy marriage while i’m in ministry well simply put what you prioritize will see health that’s the case in my backyard right now we have just moved into a new house we bought a little like half acre block of land out there in anderson south carolina and the backyard was kind of wild and we’ve got a plan for the backyard a little bit of landscaping and a veggie garden and you know some kind of natural area but we’re working through it i kind of piece by piece and right now we’re really focused on the vegetable garden and it’s coming along nicely i never thought i’d be that much into kind of you know veggie gardening but once you see your first radish you get kind of lose your mind you get really excited so if you look in our garden in the corner here there’s a beautiful vegetable patch but the rest of it is all pretty kind of overgrown poison oak poison ivy i didn’t know about poison oak or poison ivy until my wife and i get covered in all these rashes and like what is this stuff and it’s like kind of america is attacking us and and so so we’re learning really really quickly uh and that’s basically uh that’s what marriage that’s what basically life is like especially if you’re a pastor in ministry you can be an okay preacher uh but if you are only just an okay husband or an okay wife you can have issues down the track but if you’re just an okay preacher or leader or a pastor but you have a thriving marriage i tell you now all those other parts of your ministry will thrive eventually as well and so when it comes to prioritizing that’s something that i’ve taken really seriously throughout my journey beyond just like a date night and i think that’s really important but i sometimes feel that if you can just check off like you know every wednesday night i take my wife out to the same restaurant we kind of have the same kind of food we eat the same kind of dessert and then we drive home exactly the exact same time every i i think that the whole kind of date night thing i think is important i think it’s really uh i think it’s pivotal that we that we schedule time but even more than that uh we make it a priority to to to share to communicate to hear uh to truly listen uh to the other i think intimacy is something which is so much more than just those moments of feeling connected i believe that intimacy is the fruit of a disciplined time of connection and communication so krista and i we do that it is a date night but it’s so much more than that it is really a space where we focus on deeper connection as well as that we prioritize our sabbath together our weekly rest together we prioritize vacation together whatever you prioritize you will see health in as a minister as a pastor as a leader prioritize your marriage you get that right all the other parts of ministry then have an opportunity to flourish as well