Several years ago, a friend came over to my house. I had invited her over because she was good at organizing and home decorating, and I am not. As we reviewed the things I needed to accomplish within the house, she looked at me and said, “What you need is peace.”
Looking back, I believe that statement hit the core of what I was experiencing at that time. I was struggling as a new mom, and as a wife.
I didn’t feel like I had peace, and my home reflected that. But more importantly, my heart reflected it.
I recently started a Bible study with a couple friends called Everyday Peace by Katie Orr. As I started reading the first few pages, I came to recognize something: NOW, I do have peace.
I no longer feel the unrest in my heart that I felt many years ago. Sure, there are still days when peace may elude me. And I’m excited to dig deeper into God’s word to have a greater understanding of peace.
But for the most part, I have an inner sense of peace the majority of the time. And that is a really great feeling, friends.
I want to share with you a couple things that I did that made a difference for me, and I hope they will help you, too!
How to Have More Peace in Your Marriage and Motherhood
- Focus on Yourself
- Focus on Your Marriage
Okay, I know that sounds backwards if we are talking about marriage and motherhood. But ultimately, in order to have peace in my life, I needed to begin to take care of my own needs.
I had to stop relying on other people – my husband included – to meet my needs. This includes my spiritual wellness, physical wellness, relational wellness, and personal wellness.
I realized that peace had to start from within.
There’s a song by Jon Foreman that says this:
Inner peace is hard to find
Peace of heart and peace of mind
Feels like I’m running all the time
Like I’m at war inside
I’ve been fighting all my life
Changing the circumstances of my home would not bring long-lasting peace. But changing the circumstances of my heart would. So I began spending more time in God’s word. I started a Bible study with some other women, because I wanted to personally go deeper in my faith.
I also needed to recognize who I was in Christ.
I attended a women’s retreat shortly after my daughter was born that made a huge impact on me.
The take-home message for me was this: I can be happy because of who I am in Christ, and because of what He has done for me. I don’t have to rely on the people or situations around me to make me happy.
[bctt tweet= “I don’t have to rely on the people or situations around me to make me happy.”]
Likewise, my inner peace is not reliant on the circumstances of my home or my possessions.
Another part of “Inner Peace” by Jon Foreman says this:
How can we be ourselves
If we don’t know who we are
Another step I took towards having more peace was to begin paying closer attention to self-care.
I started recognizing the things that I really loved doing. And I decided to start doing those things more!
Essentially, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my past, and I tapped into the things that really make me excited and fill me up.
In a way, I had to re-learn who I am.
It is often said that women can lose themselves in the midst of motherhood, and I think this is very true. It is easy to pour ourselves into our children, our husband, our careers, etc, and forget that we must pour into ourselves.
It’s important, though, if you want to have more peace in your marriage and motherhood, to spend time focusing on yourself.
The other big thing that I did was focus on my marriage. Even when things were really difficult in our marriage, my husband and I did not give up.
I realized that if I wanted to have more peace in my marriage, it was going to require some effort on my part. I was going to need to look for areas where I needed to change, instead of simply praying that God would change my husband.
[bctt tweet= “If I want more peace in my marriage, it’s going to require effort on my part.”]
Yesterday my husband and I went out to lunch together. It was a spur of the moment decision – we both happened to be working at church that afternoon, and our meeting got cancelled, so we had a rare chance to go out without our daughter.
It was a simple thing, but as I sat there across the table from him, I couldn’t help but think how much I love him. And, how much I love our marriage!
I feel really blessed to have this relationship with my husband now. But it hasn’t come without a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. Okay, thankfully there hasn’t been any ACTUAL blood, but there have definitely been plenty of tears.
Those tears were often a result of conflict – basically, a lack of peace.
There were times that we simply were not communicating well. We were not on the same page, and we were not staying connected on a regular basis.
Thankfully, we worked hard and made changes, which brought us to the point where we are today: A place of peace and truly being able to enjoy our marriage!
If you’d like to have more peace in your marriage and motherhood, then I’d love to invite you to join my FREE Marriage Challenge.
