Parents, can't find time to date your spouse? You're indirectly robbing your kids of a special inheritance

I did a Twitter thread a couple days ago on healthy rhythms.

Without knowing, I realized that much of the rhythms Grace and I have in place are around keeping our marriage as healthy as possible.

We are not perfect. We fight. It's not pretty.

But I can say with confidence we are intentional about putting in the time and the effort the time and the effort.

Soon after posting, I spoke to a friend and they asked, "How exactly do you find time to date your wife?".

It's a loaded question:

• Who's going to watch the kids?
• We're afraid of leaving the kids with our parents.
• We don't have the finances for it.

This is all some version of the following script: We're afraid of leaving our kids with X because of Y.

I get it. These are legitimate questions.

It's worth noting that for some, these are just surface level questions. You may start here and unearth something like, "We haven't dated in years, how the heck do we even start."

I digress, that's an entire post in and of itself.

Our kids lives are precious. But this is truly a small risk to invest in our marriage.

I understand the fear.

• Your kids will hear an older kid say a potty word.
• Grandparents will give them soda first time.
• They'll skateboard down the street only to fall off and bump their heads.

Parents, this will happen.

What will also happen:

• They'll tell you how Grandpa keeps saying bad words and how he shouldn't be doing that.
• How their older brother took care of them by putting a band-aid on their ouchie.
• How special it was to stay up till 1am eating junk food playing games.

Can I say something? Your kids are strong and resilient. You are also a good parent!

Trust that they'll do some of what you've been teaching them. They will make you proud more often than they'll disappoint.

So please, don't rob your children of the opportunity to experience the world because of your own fears.

You want to know the best part about it? When you pick you kids they'll say, "Mommy! Daddy! Where'd you guys go? What'd you do?".

You can respond back to them in confidence, "Mommy and Daddy went on a date and like you, we had an awesome time."

Did you catch that?

This is actually the most important thing that starts to happen when you regularly date your spouse...

You begin to model out what it looks like to maintain a strong and healthy marriage. This is an incredible inheritance that you'll leave your children.