"The Marriage Advice Worth Passing Along When I was a teenager, I spent many of my weekends, when I was not busy with school activities, traveling on lay witness mission trips, LWM. These trips were aimed at helping little churches breathe life into their congregations. It would often bring a fire of the Holy Spirit into their youth program and their church as a whole. One particular LWM group I participated in was led by an old farmer, and his old wife, they have been married longer than I knew people could live. He had lost one arm at the elbow, in a combine accident, and his wife was a meek and quiet Farmer’s wife. When I was about fifteen years old this barn preacher gave a teaching to our youth group. He taught us what it meant to truly be yoked as Christ designed it. He said to us “marriage is not 50-50 It’s 100%-100%. “ That was mind blowing, I had never heard anyone teach about marriage like that. What he was saying was, marriage is not a give and take, it’s give and give. Jesus’ modeled that kind of sold out, servant leadership to His followers and to us His bride the Church. It is the true design God gave us to become one flesh. The preacher also challenged us to start praying for our spouse. Not who we would get as a spouse, not a romantic notion of happily ever after, but that our intended spouse would be protected and make wise decisions along the way. Although naïve, at the age of fifteen, I began praying for my future spouse. Both of us, it turns out, made many mistakes and poor choices along the way, but God is faithful and brought us through so we could eventually meet. Curtis and I both needed the prayer of others to get us to the place where God could bring us together. We continue to make praying for each other a priority. We have adopted a 100%-100% commitment to our marriage. We still have difficult days, arguments, and misunderstandings. There is no perfect relationship except between Jesus and His Bride the Church. Perfection is not the goal, persistence is!"

From: Spring - Who Am I? Section

Curtis and I have stuck to this 100% / 100% mentality as closely as possible. Or as Curtis likes to say, “Keep it a hundred!” It is the only way to truly live the Honeymoon Life.