May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine.
Song of Solomon 1:2

When Barbara and I were working on our book Rekindling the Romance, I went online and typed "romance" in the Google search engine. Guess how many of the top 10 sites listed were for married couples? One!

Makes you wonder if romance has become an endangered experience after marriage. Is it like the way the late comedian Minnie Pearl put it? "Gettin' married's a lot like gettin' into a tub of hot water," she said. "After you get used to it, it ain't so hot."

Believe me, it doesn't have to be that way. Sure, there are a lot of barriers to romance in your marriage--primarily the hectic pace of your lives. But you married each other to become intimate partners, not traffic controllers, and that requires time just being together.

Barbara and I certainly felt the tug in our own lives when our schedules got crowded and the kids started adding up. With six children constantly chirping with needs, we found that we had to plan regular date nights just to get away by ourselves. Frankly, if we hadn't had this touch point in our lives, our marriage could have easily dissolved into two high-performance people doing their own thing. Existing individually without really sharing life.

When our children were little, we would either get a babysitter or we'd plan a fun date at home after the kids had gone to bed. Sometimes we'd create our own restaurant atmosphere, complete with candlelight and a gourmet meal we'd prepared together. When we finally sat down to eat, we'd just focus on one another.

Don't let the romance slip out of your life. It isn't dependent on the newness of your marriage but only on the freshness of your heart, the tenacious desire not to let the crush of life keep you from having a crush on each other.

Discuss
How could a weekly date night become a reality for you and your spouse?

Pray
Ask the Lord to help you both for the creativity and for the perseverance to keep the home fires burning.