We were sitting in the doctor’s surgery waiting room, my eldest son and I. I was flicking through a magazine and he was watching the Morning Show on the TV screen with subtitles on, so despite the noise in the waiting room, everyone could follow along. The news story of the day was Ashley Maddison. On and on it went, and my big boy sat mesmerised by this story.

We got in the car a while later and it came out. “Mum, who is Ashley Maddison and what does cheating mean?”

It’s in these moments that I wish my kids were still 3. Blissfully unaware of the messed up world we live in and concerned only with what craft they are making on Playschool that day, and not the latest news headlines.

I answered his questions with the facts and ended by saying “Mate, it’s a crazy, messed up, broken world we live in. People make dumb decisions all the time and the consequences are always painful and never worth it. But right now, all you need to know is that Dad and I are committed to each other and love each other very much.”

This conversation nagged at me for most of that day and into the days that followed.

So here is what else I would have said to my son if he was old enough to hear it.

The reality is we’ve hit middle age with a big loud thud. There, I said it out loud.

Long gone are the innocent days of kitchen teas, white dresses and bouquets of flowers and romance-filled honeymoons.

We’ve woken up and found ourselves and many of our friends, treading water in a rough ocean of raising kids, building careers, illness, mortgages, homes to keep, financial stress, study, ministry, staying fit and the general ‘crazy busy-ness’ of keeping up with the speed of life these days.

The world around us keeps getting louder and louder and it’s getting harder to drown it out…..

“You’re not where you thought you would be by now” it screams.

“You’re messing your kids up, everyone else is doing a better job raising their kids than you.”

“Your home isn’t enough.”

“You are not as successful as the rest of them.”

“Everyone else is having more sex, more fun and better holidays.”

“Her husband is around way more and just so supportive and romantic all of the time. You must have married the wrong person.”

“His wife is perfect, she’s always got everything under control, she’s alway patient and loving. You’re the only one married to the one who is finding life hard. Maybe it’s time for a change.”

Even though most of what the world is screaming is a lie, the truth is that It Is Hard.

Choosing To Stay Married. Choosing Faithfulness and Commitment when the world says the grass is greener somewhere else.

15 years of marriage has taught me that it’s not a walk in the park, and it doesn’t happen by accident. It takes energy and effort, and this is hard, especially in a stage of life where most of us are lacking in spare energy and effort and some days, we are barely just surviving.

If you had told me when I was first married that I would one day say to the man I live with “I feel like I haven’t seen you in weeks” I wouldn’t have believed you.

If you had told me that having children would completely empty me out at times and there would be days I can barely speak when he walks in the door from work, I wouldn’t have believed you.

But this is where the rubber hits the road in being a grown-up.

I chose to say ‘I do’ to my husband all those years ago, before the kids came along, before earning a living became all so consuming and life just got bigger and more complicated. The choice back then was a no-brainer, it seemed easy even. I could have screamed ‘of course I do and I will forever until death do us part” during our wedding ceremony, I was that certain.

But now the world says, its getting harder, it takes more effort, it isn’t like it used to be, so maybe it wasn’t right after all and you need a change?

Well to that I say no. And as marrying my husband was a choice, staying married to him is making that same choice, over and over and over again.

The kids have finally gone to bed, which seems to be getting a little later now that they’re getting older.

We sit on the lounge together at the end of the day, if he’s not at work or church or a meeting….

Just him and me. And the computer, iPad, phones, bills, unreplied emails, unfinished work, laundry, ironing, unopened mail, decisions hanging in the air about the kids, their school, their health, their friends, our families and their needs, a pile of books not read on how to do it all better, stress from the day that was, anxiety looking at the schedule for tomorrow. If there is any conversation at all, it is mostly about any of the above things. Hardly romantic, but just two people managing life, family, home and a business together.

We’re physically together but there is so much between us it can be so hard to really see and hear each other anymore.

From memory I think it was after the birth of our second son, when we were going through a particularly hard time due to my husband starting a new career, money being tight and me recovering from a break down (for another post at another time) that we realised going out on date nights together was going to be almost impossible.

How on earth were we going to carve out time together when there was no money, not much time and not always a babysitter available?

So the Home Date Night concept was born.

Basically, we started choosing a night in the diary and blocking it out. I would feed the kids sandwiches or something simple for dinner earlier than normal and try get them to bed. When my husband got home from work, we would have dinner on our own, (something we love to eat!), either a favourite meal of my husbands that I would make, or my favourite takeaway that he would bring home with him. If I had time, I would try and make his favourite dessert, Creme Brûlée or Tiramisu. If it was up to Andrew, he would bring home Almond Magnums or my favourite chocolate treat for dessert. It’s always good to know what each others favourites are.

The one rule for this night that made it different to every other night was that everything else had to be set aside. No phones, computers, work, study, laundry, mail, major decisions, controversial topics. We both had to commit to that or else it wasn’t going to work.

Pretty simple really. The 2 of us, a meal, a candle and usually a favourite movie or tv show, on the rare occasion a game, or just listening to the music we love. Not a great deal of fuss, but the important bit was what wasn’t there – the kids or the rest of the world.

This was a choice we would make and we keep making it, over and over again. Shut everything else out and just be us again.

It has become essential to us surviving. Carving out the time by putting it in the diary, and to the best of our ability, sticking to it. By doing this we are saying “You matter, you are still the most important person to me.”

Yes, kids get sick on Home Date Night. Yes, last minute work things come up on Home Date Night. But as far as is possible, we stick the dates in the diary and stick to it.

I am so thankful to God that we started this tradition years ago. The reality is that life seems to be getting harder, not easier, and it’s simple habits like this that are becoming essential to us staying connected to each other in a world that seems hell bent on tearing us apart.

We are a constant work in progress. We are constantly starting again and each new season we hit seems to bring a new set of challenges and pressures.

In this season of life, it’s a little easier to actually get out on a real date, so we try and prioritise that too. I am sure there are a thousand more ways we can keeping working on ‘us’, but our very simple, very small Home Date Night concept is going to be around for a while yet…..just me, my man and an Almond Magnum and I’ll be a happy girl.