PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 100: HOW CAN YOU ENJOY INTIMACY IN YOUR MARRIAGE WITH BABIES AND TODDLERS AROUND?

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

EPISODE 100: HOW CAN YOU ENJOY INTIMACY IN YOUR MARRIAGE WITH BABIES AND TODDLERS AROUND?

Rocky Barrett: Welcome to the podcast, From our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy Campbell: Well, hello ladies, again. Today is so exciting for two reasons! One, this is our podcast number 100. I can’t believe it that we’ve got up to this. It’s amazing! And, because that’s special, I have my daughter, Serene, with me today. I’m so excited because she is such a busy mom with all her children, her older children and her little ones and Trim Healthy Mama. If I can get her here on a podcast it’s amazing because she’s always doing her own podcast.

I’m sure so many of you listen to the Trim Healthy Mama Poddy and the Unshow. So she’s just poddied out.

Serene Allison: Oh I love podcasts! I love talking and I love talking when I don’t have to get dressed up at all.

NC: Oh I know! I love podcasts for that reason. Oh goodness me, when I actually have to go and do a talk show and you actually have to go and get all dressed up and put on your makeup. It’s just so lovely to sit here and talk, isn’t it?

SA: Exactly. You don’t have to wash your hair. It’s awesome!

NC: While everything is sort of happening here today, we send this podcast out every Tuesday morning to you but it’s actually Sunday that we’re here doing this. We had church here this morning down in our basement. It is our big Above Rubies packaging room, but we use it for everything and all our social gatherings and for church.

SA: Weddings and baby showers!

NC: Oh absolutely, everything! So we had that this morning and then fellowship meal, which we do every Sunday. Then Nadia, she has been filming in another room.

SA: Do they know who Nadia is?

NC: Well Nadia Mutana. She does a YouTube called “Loving Mothering.”

SA: There you go. I wanted plug them in. That’s awesome, awesome.

NC: She likes to interview anybody she can. She’s just been interviewing Evangeline and our friend, Pam, who’s here from Oregon, and they’ve been talking about that in one room and we’re here podcasting in another room.

SA: A bunch of loudmouth talkers, we are!

NC: Here we are just out on the hilltop but sending out our messages to the world.

Anyway, a couple of podcasts ago was number 96. I was talking about the subject of how taste is a food discerner. It discerns the food we eat, physically, but the word that’s used in the Bible is the same word that’s not only used to taste food but to discern, to discern whether something is right or wrong. You will have to listen to that podcast if you didn’t get to.

But on that podcast, I remember telling you how that Serene has these very sharpened taste buds.

SA: Well I’m not blowing my own horn about that.

NC: Well I’m blowing it. You won’t be blowing it!

SA: Okay.

NC: But she can! I taste something and think, “Oh that’s lovely!”

SA: Well not everybody might agree with me. I might taste a Dunkin Doughnuts doughnut and think it’s repulsive! People will think, “That’s not very discerning of you.”

NC: I don’t know but you usually do know what’s in things. I was telling you about how she makes these ugly things at home for herself. She doesn’t put them in Trim Healthy Mama because they’re filled with super foods!

SA: I don’t call them ugly things; they’re my “Yuck-Yums.”

NC: But we call our chocolate ugly chocolate.

SA: You call it ugly chocolate, yes.

NC: I call it ugly chocolate.

SA: But “yuck-yum” is my term for anything that is so yucky it’s teetering on the side of yummy at the end.

NC: Actually the other night when we went over to your prayer meeting, there were all the little children, Solly, Havey, and Remmy. They were all trying to get into your yuck-yum.

SA: Oh it’s delicious! You should try it. It’s actually in the Trim Healthy Table book.

NC: Yes but I think you put more things in.

SA: Oh I do.

NC: What are some of the things you put in it that you wouldn’t put in for anybody else?

SA: I think I was pretty descriptive in the book. It’s always a base of my double fermented raw kefir, which is always so creamy and delicious and sour. I just fill it with baobab, whatever berries I have whether it’s cranberries, raspberries or wild blueberries. I add that and then I do maca or any kind of ashwagandha or matcha or any kind of super food. I throw in all the super foods. It’s just a hodge-podge of different things.

Moringa, I throw in that. Turmeric, I love turmeric. Even raw turmeric root, not the powder but the actual root. It’s just delicious! I’ve bought it like a paste.

NC: Yes, you’ve told me you’ve found the paste at Walmart. Tell me about it.

SA: I found it in the gluten free section, maybe. It’s a paste but it’s processed raw and it’s totally no preservatives, amazing stuff. So a plug for that but I forget what it was called. But it’s amazing. I throw it in my “yuck-yums” all the time now.

NC: So what isle is it in?

SA: I don’t remember!

NC: Oh well they change the isles all the time! Doesn’t that upset you? You go to get something, you know where it is, and then it’s not there. They’ve changed the isle. They like to go around and change it!

SA: They do it purposefully, Mum! Just for you!

NC: Yes, just so they can purposefully send us around to buy other things.

Anyway, we have a special thing we’re going to talk about today. It’s a question that has come in and I thought, “Oh I’ll wait till I can get Serene to talk about it.”

But before we do, I’d like to read you something. Sometimes I read you a poem but today I’d like to read to you words from one of Serene’s songs. I think it totally personifies who she is.

SA: That’s embarrassing doing it right next to me, though.

NC: Ha ha, anyway! It’s a beautiful description of motherhood. It’s one of her songs from way back on their album, Peace all over Me. That was the first CD you did for mothers. Serene and Pearl were signed to a record company but when they came home and began having all their children then they began to record songs especially for mothers.

Peace all over Me, well, that’s just out and you can’t get it now. But you can go to my webpage aboverubies.org and you can download it. It’s there for you. You would just so love it.

This song is called “El Shaddai.” Let me read a little bit of it because I love these words.

Serene writes here, and it’s speaking about God Himself:

“Deep within Your heart You hold a source

For everything that’s tender, soft and kind.

To caress the world with warm affection

You thought of a mother, beautiful design.

“As I hold this baby in my arms

I’m like a picture of You,

To nurture with Your love

Is what You made me to do.”

I love those words, don’t you?

SA: It’s so funny because it reminds me of the time, we had my baby shower for Solace. You played the game where people read out a stanza or a poem of a famous speech and we had to guess who it was that wrote it.

NC: We wrote them out on cards and read them and asked, “Who wrote this quote?”

SA: Yes and I thought, “Some president or something.” Because it was my baby shower you decided to pop in something of mine. We were all guessing and even I was guessing who it was, and I had no idea, because I had written it a long time ago, that it was me!

It was what you just read. I was like, “Oooh, I’ve heard that before. That sounds familiar. I’ve heard that before.” But I didn’t even realize that it was me!

NC: Yes, you didn’t even realize it was you! I remember even putting in a quote from Evangeline, too, and nobody could guess that. It was quite fun! That’s right.

But I love those words. You can go and download that song.

How true it is that when we are embracing our children and embracing motherhood we are like a picture of God. We picture Him because He is the Source.

Where does motherhood come from? We didn’t make it up. It comes from God. He’s put this innate anointing to nurture in us.

When we do this, we’re like a beautiful picture of Him. I love that.

Anyway, what is this question? This person wrote in and asked, “How do we keep the romance going in our marriage when we have a little baby and little toddlers all around? We feel so tired.”

Yes, I can remember those times. It can be very real.

But I thought, “Well I need to get a mother who’s in that position to help me answer that question.”

Although Serene is maybe what you could call a . . . well how could I ever in the whole of the world call you an older mother! You’re only forty-three! But some mothers think that they are older mothers when they are forty-three!

SA: They think that’s old, yeah.

NC: They think that’s old, goodness me!

SA: Nah. I think I’m seventeen.

 

NC: I know. You only look like it.

SA: No I don’t, ha ha.

NC: But she already has children who are married, and she is a grandmother. But she still has little toddlers around. Her little baby, Solly, is now two but she’s her baby and you’re still hoping for more, aren’t you?

SA: Oh yeah, bring it on God!

NC: Yes.

SA: I love presents so it’s hard to not want a present when you’re a present lover.

Every time I have another baby it’s like opening up another gift like, “What’s it going to be? What personality will it be like?” It’s just so fun!

NC: Oh I know! And that’s the amazing thing when you look at your children and how they are all different. Some of them, you know, are very dark and have black hair and are dark.

Then you have different ones pop out!

SA: Red heads and blue-eyed babies.

NC: Little Vision popped out! Oh goodness me, I couldn’t believe it when he was born because he is redheaded and freckled like me.

Then Solly popped out with her blue eyes, little round face, and her personality that she has!

How can people not want another baby? How can they deprive themselves of the most awesome gift you could ever give?

SA: It’s like depriving themselves of a gift of love. It’s like love is born every time. It’s a best friend for you.

NC: And haven’t you said every time that when you have a new baby, not only are you filled with love for this new little baby but you are renewed in love for all your children, even your older ones.

SA: The whole household gets blessed, I believe. Your maternal instincts get renewed. I start to remember those older children when they were the babies.

I don’t know, I feel like everybody gets a dose of that new, fresh love I have for the little baby. They have that as well.

NC: Exactly, because you have those hormones of prolactin and oxytocin flowing. They not only flow out on the baby but on the whole family.

SA: Yes.

NC: Yes, it’s just God’s wonderful, wonderful way.

Well, we need to perhaps look at this question.

SA: And this goes into the question. It can flow out on your husband as well. You can let that love flow out on your husband as well.

NC: I’ve already actually asked the question; how can you have romance when you have toddlers and babies around you.

I think one of the things, and I can remember because I’m trying to remember now because I don’t have toddlers around now. But I can remember when I had my first three. I had my first three in seventeen months. Wesley was only 17 months when the twins were born, unexpectedly. Back then we didn’t have ultrasounds or anything like that.

I didn’t have a clue and out popped twins!

SA: Well let me just tell you this, I just had a little thought. You can still imagine it in your head, too, even though you don’t have the business of little babies all throughout your house anymore.

NC: But I do quite often!

SA: Oh I know, I know but through the night and everything. See, we fill our lives with something, unless we’re people who want to spend our lives painting our nails and staying in the bath all day, but rarely can people afford that.

We’re going to fill our lives with something. We’re always going to “can’t have that” excuse, “Well, I’m just so exhausted.”

Mum, you don’t have the babies to get up for but you’re up at four or five in the morning for other reasons.

So I’ve noticed, if I’ve had a little natural break between babies, which just so happens, I’m filling my life with a new hobby. I’m going to take up painting again or out comes the guitar. I’m up in the morning coming up with something.

You fill your life with something.

NC: Exactly.

SA: I’m looking at my older, now twenties, daughters that live in the home. They’re not married with children yet but they’re filling they’re lives.

One of my daughters works super hard. She has to be up at four in the morning. She is so busy and she’s exhausted. She doesn’t have children.

Hear my heart, I say this with compassion because I’m right there with you. I’m not even a scheduled person so my babies are right there in my room, so I understand, I’m right there with you.

But I feel like we have to take a step back and ask ourselves, am I, could I, be using this as an excuse?

As humans we busy ourselves. Maybe we’re exhausted with the children but maybe others are exhausted with their job. Other people are exhausted with huge projects or whatever, so maybe it’s not necessarily motherhood that’s exhausting us.

Maybe there’s practical things that maybe we can do to preserve energy. Mum and I can look at that as we go along but I just wanted to hit that nail on the head in the beginning.

Let’s not blame motherhood because it’s like my daughter blaming the factory job she’s working with. Hey, it’s something that she’s earning money and saving money for missions and there are blessings to motherhood.

It’s not necessarily motherhood.

I look at Pearl, my sister; she’s not necessarily in that season of having babies. In her season she’s older now. But she is such a productive woman. She’s not as busy with little ones but she’s doing so many incredible things because you just want to fill your life. You don’t want to be bored.

NC: No! You do, you fill your life. Who wants to be bored? So you do: you fill your life.

I think a lot of it is our attitude. I do remember those times feeling very tired. But then I had to think of ways, “How can I still be fresh for my husband?”

I didn’t always manage to do it very well. But I would try. I would get the children ready for a little nap after lunch and I would try and maybe have a little nap with them. You can do that if you take your baby to bed with you and just let your baby nurse.

SA: I think that’s the key. That was the key for me. I want people to hear me. I’m not saying everybody is the same. My babies love to just nurse anywhere and lay down with me and nurse.

But I’ve just started to realize, even in our family, not mine personally but just young mothers that I know, that there can be some babies who are just not the comfort kind of nursers.

They are just so enthralled and stimulated by distractions and things versus babies that just want to be held in an ergo.

But I feel like if your baby is prone to wanting to have that laying down and going to take a nap with you, that was my key, just using that time to rest. I’m not making my baby sleep by itself so I can go and get a bunch of stuff done. No, go lay down with the baby.

NC: That’s a temptation. Oh goodness me, when you’ve got these little ones around you, and really, to get things done in the day is well-nigh impossible. That’s all your doing.

You think, “Oh they’re having a nap! I can go and do those other things that I want to!” But you do them and you’re going to be exhausted later in the evening.

SA: I feel like there’s seasons that we need to realize and not push ourselves to be the supermom.

I think communication is a big key. Communicating with your husband and saying, “Listen, I would love to have a gorgeous dinner on the table for you and I would love to have a clean house but I need to have energy for you.”

Put priorities down. Maybe your husband would rather have a simple dinner and maybe the laundry not folded, and you have energy for him.

You can’t do everything. Maybe when you have older children and then they can start helping out you can start more bringing on the amazing meals and having the house a little bit more perfect.

Maybe your husband would not prefer a house that’s not always perfectly picked up but a woman who’s super excited that her husband is home and that she has preserved energy for him.

NC: Yes, I think that’s right. It’s your mindset and having the right priorities that we are wives. Yes, we’re mothers, but we are wives. God has created us to be one flesh. That’s what marriage is.

SA: And it was first. Marriage was first and then came the family. We’re not diminishing the children, but we don’t want that to be an idol in our lives to the point where husbands go by the wayside. Then on the other balance, where it’s all about dates with the husband, and you’re leaving the baby every second night.

NC: Yes, that’s wrong, too.

SA: Yes, there has got to be a balance.

NC: I think it’s amazing, too. Now you manage to have a good sex life.

SA: Yes, amazing!

NC: You have your two babies with you.

SA: Well, we just kicked out our four-year-old because it’s just a bit beyond. He tries to come in all night and we just walk him back to bed. He had a little bit of issues that we had to deal with, some emotional issues. He’s a special, beautiful individual and we just couldn’t train him like the others.

NC: No. And you still have Solly there at two years old.

SA: Yeah. She’s in a little crib there beside our bed but she’s totally connected and she’s escaping it all night and coming into bed. But it wasn’t that long ago that she was totally with us in bed.

NC: Right, but you still don’t use that as an excuse.

SA: No, exactly, I mean children sleep.

I feel like you said, Mum, its priorities. For me it’s preserving energy. It’s saying, “Okay, I’m going to put a particular worth on the intimacy in my marriage.”

It’s more important than the laundry. This may sound terrible, but sometimes my babies will just get a rag bath and they won’t have the full bath that night.

If I’m that exhausted I’m like, “If excellently perfecting the whole night time routine is going to take every skeric  of my energy where I can’t have night time routine with my husband, then they’re going to just get a rag bath tonight and an extra kiss on the forehead.”

Maybe they go to bed and it’s not their perfectly matching pajamas, but they got tucked in, they’re healthy and happy.

NC: I don’t think I’ve ever seen your children in matching pajamas!

SA: No, they don’t ever get in pajamas! I’m trying to put a good face on it. But I preserve energy for my husband.

NC: I love that. I think that’s the key, ladies, those three words: Preserving energy for your husband. If you don’t think about it during the day, you’re going to let your energy be taken up in so many ways.

SA: That’s the other thing: thinking about it. It’s not a worldly thing. That is not an ungodly thing. It is a beautiful thing.

That’s how a woman’s whole body was designed. Well that’s how every human being is designed. Our body follows our mind.

But because women are a bit more “crock-pottish” than a man, we need to think about things more. If we’re just thinking about laundry and to-do lists and errands and homeschooling all day and we don’t take one skeric to think about our gorgeous husband and how much he means to us, then when he comes home we just aren’t in the right frame of mind.

NC: No and thinking about how he is most probably going to be wanting you.

That’s another thing. We keep thinking of things, that is not only trying to have that little nap in the afternoon but going to bed with your husband.

There is another temptation because you’ve been so busy with the little ones and everything throughout the day, you get them to bed and then you’ve got “me time.”

You think, “Oh now I can do this and that” and your poor husband has gone to bed by himself!

SA: And not realizing that that “me time” really would be time with your husband.

Maybe it would be great to look into the fact of how healthy it is for you and how healthy it is for your immune system and how healthy it is for you physiologically and emotionally.

In so many ways, physical intimacy inside of marriage is actually an incredible immune booster. It actually takes away headaches. It’s a dopamine rush. It takes away depression.

I don’t think it’s exhausting at all when you have been thinking about it during the day and you have preserved energy. I think it’s a godly thing and you’re all geared up for it. It’s fantastic because you’re ready and excited.

But say you weren’t there, and you weren’t geared up. I think it’s more exhausting to say, “Oh not tonight” and push him away and start going through all those little uncomfortable conversations where you’re trying to move your foot over so it doesn’t begin anything.

I feel like that’s more exhausting because when I’ve done that, I go to bed feeling guilty and feeling awful. I don’t go to bed feeling relaxed or close to my husband. I go to bed knowing that I have deprived my husband.

I don’t go to bed feeling rested and so I don’t have a good sleep. That’s more exhausting. It’s better to just give to your husband and serve him.

It doesn’t have to be a big old lipstick and high heels. It doesn’t have to take a million years, you know! I think it’s beautiful to have celebration times, but it doesn’t have to be a big ordeal every time.

NC: I think that’s another thing, too. There are times that are lengthy times and celebration times where you put aside especially. But there are so many other times when you just say, “Okay, this is just part of life. Yes this is just part of our lives together because we are one.”

SA: Exactly.

I feel like that was a big thing in my life, realizing that it does not have to be this big thing where I have to be perfectly prepared like Esther in the Bible, soaked in milk and honey all day.

 I don’t have my hair washed or put on my mascara. Oops, I’ve got a little bit of baby spew on my nightgown or something.

I think sometimes in our culture we feel like we have to be Miss Perfect or Miss Beautiful. I just feel like WILLINGNESS IS BEAUTIFUL. Offering your body is beautiful.

A willingness to serve and love is an act of selflessness but it’s actually an act of giving back to you, like I said.

NC: It is because if you’re depriving your husband, you’re also depriving yourself of oxytocin, and that beautiful glory that you’re going to receive yourself.

SA: Exactly.

I put on a huge meal for my family on Friday nights. It’s a beautiful meal, like I pull out all the stops. I just cook all day and I’m so excited.

But for the most part during the week, it’s just soups and I’m throwing things together. It’s all hearty food but it’s quick. I think that’s like my married life. I don’t always feel like, “Oh I have to preserve energy for this big ordeal.”

You know, like the dance and I have to be like some Egyptian belly dancer there. No, it’s like Mum said: it’s part of life.

NC: Well you might do that on the odd occasion.

SA: Oh more than an odd occasion but that’s because I’m into this whole thing! It’s exciting! You see, the more that you do the more that you get an appetite for it.

I feel like as women, especially as nursing mothers, because nursing mothers have a different hormonal profile with the oxytocin and the prolactin. Oxytocin is a love hormone. Its released in marital intimacy and nursing. It’s a connection hormone. It’s wonderful.

But the sex hormones, the estrogens, they are dropped during that time. But I’ve noticed, when you think about your husband in a way, knowing it’s so godly and so beautiful, when you think about your husband, those hormones start turning on.

It doesn’t matter how many times you nurse. I have totally changed my brain just by my thought patterns in the day, not by thinking about my to-do list and all that I have to get done but by thinking about my husband.

I have beautiful dreamy days about it and the nights are gorgeous. I have all kinds of amazing energy because the hormones are where they should be. But it all starts in the mind.

NC: Absolutely.

SA: I’ve been nursing pretty much my whole married life. I could have used that as an excuse.

They’ve actually done scientific studies now where they’ve actually taken women who have lower hormones because of their season of life but with their thought patterns there were detectible changes. It was detectible changes even in blood tests.

NC: So ladies, so far, we’ve got two points that you’ve just got to get hold of:

One: Preserve energy.

Two: Think about your husband during the day.  Think of intimacy with him. Dream about it, yes!

SA: And communication. Ask your husband, “Would you prefer the roast dinner every night or would you prefer more simple meals because I am preserving energy for you?”

I think he might be all about it!

Maybe it’s like, “Would you like me to have all the laundry folded or do you not care? Would you just rather me be available for you? I can’t do everything.”

I feel like we as women just try to do everything, but we have to set worth on intimacy I feel like more than anything.

It’s exercise. I don’t know about everybody, but I feel like to me, exercise has always been important, and I like to tick that box.

But I’ve had to realize that if I’m going to have energy to make my body beautiful for my husband but I’m not going to be willing to give it away, that’s just wrong. There’s something perverted and weird about that.

Rather, just give your body away and spend that energy for that, than just making something beautiful andI’m denying my husband.

Preserve energy even if it means you don’t go for your walk. Use energy with him because that actually is exercise.

NC: Yes it actually helps you lose weight anyway, so they have found with studies.

SA: And remember this point because this was a huge one for me: Remembering it does not have to be a huge, big ordeal every time.

NC: That’s another one, yes, exactly.

SA: That really is what released me. I don’t have to save energy for this hour long, big Romeo and Juliet thing. It doesn’t have to be this huge thing. Maybe it’s just the simplicity of marriage.

NC: Yes, if only we could get that.

I love this quote that I read the other day by Matthew Henry, a commentator of the Bible. I hadn’t read it before.

He says: “A man’s children are pieces of himself, but his wife is himself.”

Don’t you just love that?

SA: That is beautiful.

NC: We are one. That’s the fact. God created us to be one. I’m his and he’s mine. We’re one together. If we’re one together how can we be depriving one another?

Maybe before we move on, I should read that Scripture. You most probably all know it but it’s good to read again. It’s good to bring in a Scripture.

First Corinthians 7:2, 3: “Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence . . ..”

Doesn’t that sound so unromantic? That’s the King James Version of it!

SA: Yeah. You need to get The Passion Translation on that one!

NC: We should yes! We better look that one up. Look it up in The Passion Translation.

First Corinthians 7:3-5: “ . . . and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”

Incontinency—another big word from King James! That just means that you’re not coming together.

The only excuse that it gives there for not coming together is if we’re in a season of prayer and fasting. Do you notice it doesn’t say, “Except for when you have a baby or little ones”?

It doesn’t say that. It only gives that one thing.

I would love to just tell you what that word “defraud” actually means. Now listen, precious ladies, because we need to be reminded. It’s the Greek word apostereo and it means “to deprive, to despoil, to make destitute, to keep back by fraud, to steal, to rob, to bereave.”

Now that’s pretty powerful.

SA: It’s powerful because I feel like maybe some of us women in the church might think, “Oh my husband’s desire is a little bit yucky. Why are they thinking about that all the time?”

But it’s a godly thing. It’s an awesome thing. It’s a beautiful thing. His desire for his wife is beautiful. A good healthy desire should be there. It’s not a weird thing. It’s not, “Oh what’s wrong with my husband’s brain?”

No, what’s wrong with your husband’s brain when it’s not that way? That situation is sad, and some wives have to deal with it. They need to have compassion on their husbands for that and get them help with some hormones or something. It can be switched around.

NC: Yes, because as women get older or men get older, they can be lacking in hormones and sometimes that can be the problem. For both husband and wife, if we’re not thinking or dreaming about it, there’s something wrong with us. It’s not normal.

SA: The devil has tried to make us as Christians think, “Oh well, it’s not good to think about. It’s not very holy to think about it. It’s not very redeemed.”

Well it very much is! Yes!

NC: Do you remember a dear friend of ours, Sally Ott?

SA: Oh yes, that’s right, she was the mother of 16 children or something like that. She couldn’t nurse properly or something, do you remember? She had 16 children back to back. She was such a peaceful, amazing mum.

I remember being at a wedding shower that she had come to. I think I had three children at the time. All of us young mums were just sitting in a circle talking and having tea or something. We were all there for a wedding shower, so we were all about marriage and everything.

She came up to us or maybe we asked her advice on what she thought, but she said, “If I could give you advice, it would be: ‘Never be too tired for your husband. I made it my goal from the onset of my marriage that I would never say, ‘Oh darling, I’m too tired tonight.’”

She said, “I preserved my energy and I never turned him away.”

And this is the lady who had many, many, many children. It is such an inspiration.

NC: That’s beautiful.

That is another point you can make: never say no. That’s a point that I’ve made in our marriage is “Never say no” because you are depriving.

You think, “Oh I’m looking after myself. I’m too tired or I’m this or I’m that.” But really, you’re not blessing yourself because in the end you always get blessed yourself.

SA: Yes and it doesn’t take long even if you are exhausted and haven’t been thinking about it and haven’t been promoting the atmosphere in your brain.

It doesn’t take long for things to usually catch up if you’re very involved in your brain and not thinking about the laundry.

NC: One more question: What do you think about if people should make it certain times or just rely on the spontaneousness?

SA: Well you know, I think that’s involved with the personality. My personality is free spirit, so I feel like throwing up when I hear the word “Scheduling.” I don’t even know about the word schedule for anything in my life.

So if you’re the scheduled type, wonderful, it sounds fantastic. I just feel like whatever works.

My encouragement as a mom with children still in my bedroom and young children still getting up through the night is that there is always a possibility.

NC: I love that word: Always a possibility.

For me, we do have one special day of the week that we do schedule. Of course we make that a point no matter what. It’s our special time. But that’s just kind of like a foundation because we are always open to spontaneity.

Goodness me, it would be disgusting if we had a week where there was not more of our coming together. We just love it. We have that beautiful, special time that we put aside. That is just there but we are always open to spontaneity.

That’s why I believe it is important always to go to bed with your husband because you never know what’s going to happen.

SA: Well that doesn’t happen with my husband and me. I believe it’s a beautiful thing to go to bed at the same time, but I go to bed early, but my husband loves to stay up. He has such an exhausting job and so he has to kind of depressurize all the responsibilities that he has to do during the day.

And we have all the teens in the house and they’re all whoo- hawing and heeing and he loves to whoo-haw all around and I’m like, “I’m out of here! I’m going to bed with the babies!”

So I think everybody’s different but that doesn’t mean it’s an impossibility either.

It’s either like, “Come, put me to bed, darling” and then you can go up.

Or it’s like, “Come, be prepared to wake me up” and then be prepared if you don’t want him to put you to bed first then you can wake up. It’s always to be able to be available I feel like. We don’t usually go to bed at the same time.

NC: Well I feel like we don’t always either, but I like to. Then again, I think it’s good popping in that other thing for many wives who will use that time just to do other things.

SA: The worth of being together in intimacy has so much more value than ticking off another list than folding the laundry or checking homeschooling math tests.

Let them go by the way.

Women sometimes, they might be like, “Oh time for me. I’ll go get a massage or whatever.” You can think of that as your time, but you can go get your personal masseuse.

NC: I know, exactly! You get more than having a massage. Goodness me, it’s far more exciting!

SA: You can see that just as your time because you get somebody adoring you.

NC: That’s how it’s meant to be, absolutely. Anyway, thank you, because I think you’ve just shared so much wonderful blessing.

SA: If it can happen in my marriage it can happen in anyone’s because, like I said, we are just the total non-schedule type.

I can put my baby to bed now because she’s two. Up until then I was so gung-ho with my first set, train them all and all so wonderful; but I’m kind of like a grandmother now and they’re all a bit naughty and untrained.

I’m a bit relaxed and I’m like, “I’m sure they won’t be doing that when they’re twenty. They’ll be fine.”

I haven’t even started even potty-training my two-year-old!

The point is that if I can still have a rocking marriage, you guys who are more scheduled . . .

NC: With fourteen children!

SA: Yes! Then it can happen for you. My point is that there are no impossibilities.

NC: No, and we’ve been talking about mothers with little ones but then there’s another whole realm of women who are getting older, into their sixties or seventies or maybe eighties.

SA: That’s where you can talk!

NC: I remember reading when I was a young mom how this mother asked this eighty-year-old woman, “When will you be too old to have sex with your husband?”

She said these amazing words and I never forgot them: “Well dear, you will have to ask someone older than me.”

I love that. I thought, “Oh my, I wonder if that could be my testimony when I get older.”

Well, I haven’t got too long till eighty, so I think I’ll have that testimony!

Maybe I’ll have to say, when I’m in my nineties and you ask me, “Well my dear, I think you will have to ask someone older than me.”

SA: That’s fantastic. I say to my husband all the time, it’s a famous saying, I love this saying, “Grow old with me, darling, the best is yet to come.”

NC: I think that’s what we would say in our marriage. When Jesus made the water into wine, He kept the best wine until last. That’s what they said, “Wow, they kept the best wine until last!”

But that’s what God always does. In every marriage there’s challenges, there’s issues, there’s things you’ve got to work through. So many give up today, even in this area of intimacy in your marriage. But never give up. Keep going because as you do and you’re faithful, God always brings out the best wine at the last.

You think, “It couldn’t get better than what I’ve got.”

Yes it can. It gets better and better and better. Amen?

SA: Yes, amen.

NC: Let’s pray.

“Dear Father, We thank You, we praise You for the way You created us. Your plan, even for marriage, it’s beyond anything we could ever even dream about. That You could even think it up to bring such glorious blessing into our oneness together. Lord, You designed it. We can only say that You are so amazing.

“I pray for every precious married woman today, young marrieds with their babies and little ones around them. Even older women who kind of think they’re getting old, Lord God, I pray that You will just keep them, Father, in Your perfect plan. Help them to see this is Your perfect plan for marriage. While they’re married, this is what is meant to be happening.

“Lord, that You will bless them. Bless their marriages. Lord God, that You would come into their marriages and do beautiful things in both the wives and the husbands in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

SUMMARY OF POINTS FOR YOU:

One: PRESERVE YOUR ENERGY FOR SEX WITH YOUR HUSBAND

Two: THINK ABOUT YOUR HUSBAND SEXUALLY DURING THE DAY

Three: IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A HUGE BIG DEAL EVERY TIME (sometimes it’s a celebration; sometimes quick and simple)

Four: NEVER SAY NO

Five: GO TO BED WITH YOUR HUSBAND WHEN HE GOES TO BED (OR BE AVAILABLE WHEN HE NEEDS YOU).

Six: REMEMBER, GOD KEEPS THE BEST WINE UNTIL THE LAST

 

 

Transcribed by Morgan Roth