Well, after I stepped back from my confusion, I called my paralegal and she told me to go into her office and look in a super secret hiding place. There I found a letter from my wife. To paraphrase, she told me to go home and pack my stuff that she had taken care of a babysitter for the weekend and we were heading down to Atlanta for a weekend of rest and relaxation – just the two of us.

We haven’t been able to go anywhere by ourselves since last August when our son was born. It was definitely a welcome weekend. A chance to get away with my wife and spend some time with her, alone. We got a chance to spend the weekend doing some cool stuff like checking out the Georgia Aquarium, we slept in and got a chance to sleep through the night without waking up a couple of times to comfort the baby. And my favorite part – dinner Saturday night at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. Awesome!

I thought I was doing good last week planning a date night with Stephanie, and here she goes showing me up by planning a whole weekend. I guess I need to work a little harder.  This was definitely straight out of Song of Solomon 7:11:

Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside,
let us spend the night in the villages.

What an awesome thing it is to have a Godly wife!

I know my wife needs to be pursued by me.  She wants me to love her – and I do.  She wants me to go out of my way to show her so she feels special.

Before Stephanie and I started dating we were friends.  I must have had a crush on her.  I didn’t date much in high school – I was pretty shy and pretty much scared of girls.  I guess I was afraid of rejection or failure.  Anyway, I was prompted to ask Stephanie out when some of my football teammates threatened to do it for me.

Well, the first time I got the guts to ask her out went something like this:

Tripp (While walking down the hall after Physics class): Would you like to do something this Friday night?

Stephanie: No.

    LONG PAUSE…can you hear the crickets chirping too?

    Stephanie: I have to work on Friday night.  How about Saturday?

    Tripp: Sounds great, I will pick you up at seven.

What I was really wanting to get at in this post (or series of posts, however it turns out) are the things I did after that.

First things first: Put your best foot forward.   When I was preparing for my first date with Stephanie I did a lot of things that I probably don’t do now when I want to take her out.  The first thing was make a plan.  Now a days, when we are going to do something, we get in the car and I ask her, “what do you feel like?”  I don’t have a plan.  But on the first date, and for a long time after that, I worked hard to come up with a plan that would take us through the night.  My excuse for not having a plan now is, I want to do what she wants to do.  (Maybe what she wants is for me to be thoughtful enough to make plans for us and not to pick a restaurant that she doesn’t like, but to know her well enough to pick a place she likes to eat and pick an activity that she likes to do).

I made sure the car looked good.  Had it washed, cleaned up and shining.  I can’t go making a bad impression and picking up a beautiful girl in a dirty car.

I took a shower and put on a nice looking outfit.  I had to try and impress her.

I showed up early, but not too early, and I brought her some flowers.  Doing this shows her a couple of things.  First, the date means a lot to me and it is important that I am on time so we can maximize our time together.  I brought her flowers to make her feel special.

When we left, I opened the car door for her.  We didn’t have the radio turned on as we drove so we could talk, and so I could pay attention to her and drive.  Once we got to the restaurant, I opened the door for her.   After dinner, I paid and we left and headed for the movie theater.  I guess that wasn’t the greatest place for a first date, but it was alright.  We saw one of the worst movies ever, “The Man Who Knew Too Little.”

After that I took her home at a reasonable hour out of respect for her and her family and walked her to the door.

I had a great feeling after that first date.  Somehow, I knew deep down she was the girl.  I tried to keep up with the level I set for the first date.  I always tried to have a plan.  No matter what we did, it was planned before we did it.  After we got married, I guess life just happened.  We really stopped “dating” and just went with the flow.  Now, having a 7 month old baby makes it even harder because time is much more precious due to our work schedules.

Even though it seems harder to do the things we did in high school and college to put our best foot forward, I think it is necessary so our marital relationships continue to thrive.  I mean, this is the most special human relationship we have in this life.  We need to WORK to make it the best it can be.

Here is the challenge:  Plan your next “first date.”  Work out your schedules and take your wife out.  Just you and her (no kids allowed).  You need that time to talk about grown up things and grow your relationship closer together.  Plan the entire night.  Don’t expect anything (to be read: sex) in return.  Then, spoil her.  I would further challenge you to do this more than one time.  How about once a week or once a month.  You need this time with your wife too.

Then, along came Cole.  Now, we still have to work hard to take care of the house payment and the student loans from law school.  But we are torn.  We want to spend a lot of time at home as a family, especially with our son.

One of the things that have been sacrificed is our personal time together.  Our relationship is not distant or bad, it is still great.  We love each other tons.  We just don’t get the same personal time together.  That eight hours per night while we’re sleeping doesn’t count!

It is my goal to bring back the spark in our marriage.  To go back to our “dating days” and to pursue my wife like I did when we were dating.  I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do – but I have to try!  Any ideas on things I can do to make our marriage more romantic?  To pursue my wife?  I am going to begin to write a series on being a good husband, how to pursue your wife, and how to make her feel loved.  Basically, I want to put on a romantic husband clinic.  But I want to say up front, I am not in a position to teach on this topic.  This is something that I need to learn and something I feel like I’m being called to learn myself and that I should share with others.

It was the first time in longer than I can remember that we went on an actual date.  I feel like such a chump for not thinking about doing something like this sooner.  Maybe it is laziness or complacency, or maybe because we have been together for such a long time (we started dating almost 11 years ago).  The truth is, though, if you want something to be great you have to work at it!

When I got to work this morning I had an “inspirational quote” in my e-mail inbox that I thought hammered home my night last night.  Here is it:

 ”There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.”

- Denis Waitley

    For so long, I have made excuses: we’re too busy at work and when I get home we just need to rest; we have a new baby and he exhausts us and once we get him to sleep we need to sleep; we just don’t have the extra money; and on and on.   The trust is I just tried to accept the conditions as they were.  I felt like we had a good marriage and that I didn’t have to work too hard to keep things going.  After having our son, and I lost the full attention of my wife, I felt like that wasn’t acceptable.  I can’t imagine how she feels, because I’m sure that she has felt like this for a long time – long before we were blessed with Cole.

    So last night was my first step in accepting the responsibility for situation as it is, and taking affirmative action to change it.  I think it worked.  At least step one was a total success.  I’ll keep you updated!