Jesus & The Temple Courts

One day, Jesus was in the temple courts.

He saw the very poor being exploited and charged double and triple prices to purchase birds for their sacrifices.

He knew the Father in heaven would be incensed.

But he also knew that the elders were in charge, and he couldn’t shame them.

He said, “Well these are our people, and this is how they act, and what can I do about it?”

“We’ll just make sure the elders are happy even when they’re sinning against God and exploiting and harming people.”

Jesus & The Elder

One day, Jesus saw an elder in the synagogue.

This elder’s parents were on the street, begging for food. The elder lived in a comfortable large house.

He had given some money to the synagogue instead of caring for his parents.

Jesus said, “Well, he’s a long-standing member of the synagogue and someone of rank.”

“We don’t want to upset things. If I say anything about him and his misconduct, it may cause a cascade of other people’s misconduct being exposed.”

“And that would be uncomfortable, for those whose behavior is unlawful. We should probably protect them, their livelihood, and their feelings.”

“The people harmed are strong and have support and can get through it. It’s better to protect the system we have in place.”

Jesus & That Part of Town

One day, Jesus saw an area of town where people worked hard and took care of each other, but they lived in dilapidated houses.

They were struggling every day.

His friends, who were elders in the place of worship, made sure their children didn’t go to the same schools as those in the dilapidated houses.

They made sure they didn’t have the same access to nice food, markets, or roadways.

They never said anything if they saw other children or adults suffering.

They created stories to blame them for their own misfortune.

Jesus saw the poor families sacrificing and caring more than his friends in the place of worship.

However, he didn’t say anything about it out loud.

He didn’t want to upset the order of things or make the elders or more well-off families uncomfortable.

They were already too comfortable in life and cared for by everybody, so why risk making them have to get used to discomfort or accountability?

They were too ingrained in their sinful charade, so why upset that?

That might make them have to repent, rewire their thinking, and learn to love their neighbor as required by God.

No, just let them be. 

From everything I’ve studied, muscle is the key to aging well. I want to be that 75-year-old woman who can jump and dance and lift heavy things.

There are a lot of “lose weight fast” schemes that don’t allow you to properly care for your mind and body. They leave you losing weight through unhealthy deprivation (and false promises) only to gain more later. Bodybuilding can be the other extreme, where people focus on their physique while feeling terrible.

Here’s what I did.

Phase 1: Just Start the Habit

Do the ugly first draft. Move.

I did pushups, sit-ups, planks, dumbbell squats, and weighted arm exercises on our cable machine.

I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t need to. I gave time for my brain and body to acclimate to doing these sessions two days a week. I got more comfortable with how our cable machine worked.

I started reading books and following fitness influencers. Obviously, there are a lot of bad ones. I like the ones who explain the science and understand habit formation and psychology. Forget the ones that promise spot-reducing fat or stupid claims like getting a snatched waist.

My first phase was doing something, anything, and doing it with some basic level of consistency. For me that was 20 minutes twice a week.

Phase 2: Join a Gym and Do Progressive Overload

My friend Earle recommended a local Snap Fitness, so I started there and loved it. They had a special for four personal training sessions. My trainer initially started me on exercises that seemed more cardio/endurance oriented. I had her show me how to use barbells and various machines and let her know my goal was to lift heavy. Because I asked her to show me what to do, it made all the difference. Eventually, I became very comfortable in the weights section.

I had to learn proper form and basic vocabulary like sets, reps, and RPE. I figured out how many exercises and how many sets both worked for me and aligned with what fitness experts recommended.

I learned everyone is paying extreme attention to their own workout, not yours.

The gym membership provided all the tools to work different muscles and add more weight when I was ready. I started by doing full body workouts 3 times a week. I think from a results standpoint, it’s better to work one muscle group a day over 3 to 4 different days. But I’ve really enjoyed my full body workout rhythm. For my quality of life, that works well.

When my Snap Fitness shut down, I went three months without a proper lifting rhythm, just doing random light workouts at home. Then I moved over to LA Fitness, started slow, and worked my way back up again.

This year, I tend to go to the gym just twice a week and sometimes supplement at home. (And studies show the benefits of lifting twice a week!)

Recording My Progress

I keep a digital file where I write the date and every exercise detail with sets, repetitions, and weight used. I note when I change something up, like squatting lower for a leg press or using a machine that’s not properly calibrated.

Documenting exercises is super important. You need this to be able to see your progress. Otherwise, it’s like throwing darts into thin air.

Without it, you might be doing random workouts with little impact. I try to generally do the same things. I’ll make it more challenging with some variation in repetitions, weight, range of motion, or tempo over time. I might add in a new exercise or take one out, but only after a few months.

I try to lift heavy enough that I can do only 6 to 8 repetitions of a lift.

My notes look like this. (It might look like a foreign language to you.)

10/16/2023 2:25-3:06 41 min

2×5, 1×2 75lb single leg extension

1×6 165lb leg extension

2×6 180lb leg extension  (took a lot. Probably not full ROM but a fun effort.)

1×7 320lb, 340lb, 360lb leg press. Sat close, so great effort on first push.

1×6 50lb, 100lb, 120lb smith machine squat

1×4 150lb smith machine squat  (only partial ROM)

1×5 2x25lb bicep curl (x2)

1×8 2x25lb dumbbell overhead shoulder press (x2)

1×7, 1×4 35lb dumbbell bent over rows. Lifted back of bench instead of putting knee on bench

1×8 45lb, 50lb RDLs (new record)

I did take progress photos. But I found for me, the difference in a picture was hard to detect, other than feeling my muscles when I flexed. I’m only just now seeing a real physical difference. I wonder if that’s unique to me? Because in all the Facebook weight lifting groups I’m in, people progress much faster in how they look.

But as you’ll see below, I’m in this for the long haul. Even really muscular people take 10 years to get that level. So in my mind, all I have to do is keep doing what I’m doing, and ongoing results are inevitable. With this mindset, it’s almost mindless. I’m not motivated by quick results. I’m motivated by what I know this is doing for my body and even for my children’s habits and future. I can’t lose.

Tracking My Macros/Nutrition

I began tracking macros religiously and weighing my food. I used a TDEE calculator. I probably calculated my macros a million times. Honestly, I would spend two hours a night reading about nutrition and fitness and poring over studies and medical journals. I was just very curious and wanted to know what the science showed.

With tracking food, it was important to me not to get neurotic about this, where it made me nervous/overbearing or where I had any ego or legalism about it.

I learned and experienced what a difference the right carbs made to powering my lifts and even my morning walk/runs. So I make sure I am properly fed before exercising.

I started increasing my protein intake. I was happy if I consumed 100 or more grams of protein a day. For a while, I had a protein shake with half a banana after working out. Then I switched to plain Greek yogurt with nuts and seeds.

I increased my fiber intake. I add ground flaxseed to my cereal or yogurt. I try to eat various nuts and seeds daily.

I used to stay away from cereal, as it is a refined carb. But I decided I liked the fortified nutrients and now happily eat cereal.

This may sound strange to most people, but I also talk to God about what I eat and check in as I decide what to eat. I do it in a casual “what do you think?” way, rather than a rule-following way, if you can understand. Even when I exercise, I’ll ask God if I should try for a heavier weight as I’m finishing up, or if I should give myself a break.

The Most Important Factor to Me: Mindset

While most things I would read pointed toward seeing results in 12 weeks, I didn’t expect that, and it didn’t happen in any dramatic fashion.

I walked into this as a forever lifestyle.

I’ve dieted only twice in my life, and it was a valuable experiment where I learned about nutrition. I don’t plan to ever really diet again. Since then, I slowly incorporate small things over time that I think will make a big difference. E.g. Eating a veggie with my breakfast.

Lifting weights did not make me skinny. It did not make me suddenly bulky. Bulking takes a lot of work.

I did find my waist got a little bigger. I think that’s due to my age and ethnicity, not lifting weights. I’m an aging Indian woman! We have bellies. I’ve had a belly my entire life, and I used to proudly show it off in my teens and twenties because I thought it looked hilarious. Sometimes I wonder if insulin resistance or some other yet undetected factor plays a role.

Muscle growth happened quickly. My arms started to grow, and my sleeves got tighter. Same with my thighs. I could feel my muscles coming in. It took a really long time, almost two years, to see the definition I wanted. And that definition happened when I ate more. Muscles need food to grow.

I gained weight from muscle, and that’s a good thing. Weight from fat would have shown up a lot differently! I have way less jiggle in my thighs, and can feel the muscle everywhere.

I walk about an hour a day, split up into a morning and evening session usually. Sometimes I turn it into a HIIT session with 30 seconds on and off of running.

I would love to lose weight, but I’m playing the long game and letting body re-composition do its thing. With all the walking and the heavy lifting I’ve done, I might expect to be super skinny with very defined muscles, and I’m not. But I also know other women who lift are doing so at least 4 days a week and eat differently than I do.

There’s the paradox of being closer to a pre-menopausal age. It makes me have to work harder than I would have at age 20 to get the same outcome. At the same time it makes me need this more than ever.

For me, it’s important to keep the long term habit and see the results, rather than possibly burning out.

I’d rather operate in substance and quality of life than appearance alone, if you follow me.

The main results I’ve gotten are:

• Strength. I can lift my kids if I want to. (I hope to lift Sajan one day! ) I feel strong in my posture. It feels great to progressively lift more! There are guys at the gym huffing and puffing and lifting less than half the weight I am.
  
• Good nutrition. I don’t have to do any quick fix yo-yo diets. My body can handle eating more food to fuel my workouts.
  
• Stronger bones (presumably).
  
• Higher probability of longevity and overall good health.
  
• Breaking stereotypes/expectations when people see me at the gym.

I’m mostly proud that this is a quiet habit I have. I just do it, like breathing air. I do it for myself.

Everyone’s body is different, and you can tweak your workouts for the results you want. I didn’t get skinny and didn’t plan to, but many people do use lifting with cardio and a calorie deficit as a weight loss tool.

I think lifting is one of the best things anyone can do for their long-term health. I can’t think of anything better, honestly.

You don’t have to be fit to start lifting. Just work on proper form and get started. It’s addictive. And the older you are, the more you need it. It’s not just for skinny or athletic people. Even once a week is OK and brings health benefits.

And don’t be afraid of the gym. It’s a place for EVERYONE. And everyone starts somewhere.

I’ll be doing another post with where to find helpful information.

I was looking through my notes to find reflections on remorse and nuance, and I came across this reflection on lessons learned back in 2016, six years ago.

“I was so sad this morning. I couldn’t smile. My face muscles don’t work.  I couldn’t look at the reception area because there were too many faces, and when I look at them I usually smile, and my smile doesn’t work today.  I walked around the building and stretched and ran in place and drank water to get my endorphins up.  It was so hard.  I couldn’t talk in more than a soft to medium tone and with a scratchiness.  I had no endurance.”

This describes a morning for me in 2016. My mental resilience was at an all-time low. Through much of the year my brain was drained. Everything took more effort than usual. I was forced to stop and think and become more aware. Also I feel weird sharing this because I imagine people saying, “I’m sorry you experienced this, and I wish I could have done something.”

See, it was also a year of nuance. This mental challenge that I had did not define me. We still lived our lives and had fun and had relationships with people. I did not fake my way through the year. But I had definite moments and thoughts of sadness. And again, I had to try harder to do normal things. 

I learned coping mechanisms to trick my mind into functioning. I learned to take my whirlpool of negative thoughts and imagine them in a bubble. Then I literally moved my finger and popped that imaginary bubble. 

And yes, this actually worked for me.

Negative Thoughts

My negative thoughts kept creating a reality that wasn’t necessarily there. I knew I needed to focus more on uncovering the hidden opportunities all around me.  

This was totally unexpected, but I learned from a Tony Robbins book, Awaken the Giant Within. I realized my negative thoughts could turn into permanent, autopilot patterns in my brain if I let them persist. 

My friends did something amazing when I turned 30. They made a book for me. Who does that? It was a book called “30 things we love about Sheena.” And this year, I would carry that book around with me and flip through it and remind myself that people thought these nice things about me. 

And you know what’s crazy?  There was very little in my life I could possibly complain about. Which caused me to be even more perplexed about why my mental resilience and any sense of hope in life had so substantially faded. 

I would feel guilty about feeling sad and then research anxiety and depression online. And then I’d see that people with anxiety or depression tend to obsess about how they have those feelings. 

I knew I had to focus outside of myself and not get stuck on the negative fake reality inside my mind. 

I am all about trying new things and experimenting to see where change could happen. 

The Therapists

I had started seeing a therapist here and there. And then one month I saw three different therapists. 

I learned a few things. 

1) The reflection time where I could talk and think was priceless. 

2) I needed to carve out more time to reflect. 

3) Therapists (in my perception at that time) are happy when you focus on the future. When you set a goal for the week or month and you come back and say you did it. They get annoyed at anything else. They don’t want to wallow in the mud with you. And that wasn’t hard for me to comply with because sometimes the people pleaser in me comes out. But I secretly became angry with the therapists because I knew I needed more, and I felt they were being dismissive of my feelings. 

4) I love meeting new people and being curious and having deep conversations. So the whole therapy experience was fun and annoying (since they were subtly dismissive of me) at the same time. 

P.S. I’m a huge believer in therapy in case that doesn’t come through here; I just didn’t land with the right person and was cost conscious.

Nuance

The word “nuance” spoke to me all year long, and it still does. 

I often don’t know how to express my nuanced feelings. I rely on the person I’m speaking with to understand it. And that means I often wait until I feel safe that someone will understand what I’m trying to convey. But it’s also true that in some moments I’ll say what I want, and I don’t care if someone gets it or not. 

This word attracts me not just because of this. It is because of everyone else and their stories. Human nature is to hear only the surface, the black and white, and not the nuance of their stories and circumstances. So we miss important truths. And this drives me nuts to no end.

Structure & Systems

Something else that helped me in 2016 was the book Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin. I realized the importance of external motivation. I’m designing my life to have fewer choices in certain areas. For example, I fast a certain meal of the week without question. I try to incorporate rituals in my life, so I have fewer decisions to make with trivial things like what I will eat in the morning. That way I can focus on more important decisions. 

I think God must be preparing me for my next season by incorporating a new level of discipline in my life. 

I’ve always had an artist’s heart. I don’t need structure to function. I question things a lot. But I’ve also always been an adapting chameleon. I intentionally adapt for survival. Instead of quickly adapting so frequently, now I’ve made it my business to be more organized, to plan and prioritize my days. 

Invisibility

I became so focused on functioning and reading and adapting, I lost myself. 

I am a high energy person. Who doesn’t know anymore what to do with that energy. 

Another memorable moment in 2016 was, of all things, my OB-GYN appointment. He actually sat down with me and talked with me and warned me that I was on the path to depression and a host of other diseases if I didn’t get more active and lose weight. He told me to get a Fitbit, so I did. (I’d never had a doctor with anywhere close to this level of actually talking to me.)

Another word that rang at me in 2016 was invisibility. 

I felt like I didn’t exist. Which doesn’t make sense because plenty of people know I exist. But I honest to goodness felt like a ghost walking the earth. As if people could see right through me. 

I wondered if this had to do with me frequently adapting rather than existing. 

When you haven’t existed in so long, you become afraid to exist. It’s like needing a new kidney and being afraid your body will reject it, but oh wait it is your kidney, it’s just been asleep. 

Remorse

Another word of the year for me was remorse. There is something in our human nature that demands remorse from guilty parties.  And if we don’t see that remorse, we start to go crazy. We could let it go, but we’re not robots, and there’s something about human nature that refuses to let us be robots, for better or worse. 

I thought about the guy who knew there was a problem with the Challenger space shuttle.  People all over the world told him it wasn’t his fault. They absolved him of any iota of blame or possibility of blame. 

With all that, his heart wasn’t any less broken. It’s because he needed that validation from a very specific set of people. The people who were in charge at NASA at that time. All these years, they had never said anything to him. 

Finally, NASA officials wrote him a letter telling him he did everything he could have and it wasn’t his fault. NPR played the audio of the man reading this letter. Finally, he breathed, and you could feel all the weight of his life lifted in that breath at that very moment. 

I think about remorse. I think about the historical oppression of different people and the lack of remorse by the institutions and people in power. 

But I’m also afraid of remorse in a small way because what about the volume of remorse I owe people that I may not even know about?

Energy: It’s Being Nourished or Drained

Another thing I learned was the importance of controlling my energy. Yes, sleep and food. But also knowing how what enters the atmosphere affects my mind and body. Negative energy. Coping with negative energy from other people. Also having to do boring, draining tasks, and coping with them.

And that’s the end of my note. It’s 2022 now, and a lot has changed. It helps to see where I once was.

I ask the kids to pick out their school outfits for the week and have them ready to go.

We talk about what they would like to pack for lunch and the importance of having it prepared the night before. They also pick their snack.

Then we discuss what they will eat for their meal when they get home and for a snack in case there is any delay with the meal.

My goal is to prepare them for being physically tired and mentally drained and to let them know this is normal and expected.

If we don’t prepare for this, we risk bigger meltdowns from both the kids and the adults in the house. (Or should I say singular adult because it’s me and not Sajan .)

Meltdowns are OK. They’re a sign of how we feel and what we’ve been through. But the key for me is the kids knowing what’s happening and planning in advance for it when they can.

I remember when one was in kindergarten and the other was in preschool at a different school. I was very calm and patient with them in the mornings but had a pattern of blowing up once we got in the car. Adjusting to the demands of elementary school and having the kids in two schools wore at me.

But I felt empowered once I noticed my pattern of losing my marbles in the car.

I want my kids to be able to do the same.

Plan ahead to minimize stress.

Understand when you’re going through a lot of new things.

Experience the big feelings and let them pass.

Know that this is normal.

The more we have a few vital things planned out, the less thinking we’re required to do when we’re tired and spent.

I shared the mundane details of my day with the Nonprofit Marketing Guide.

A snippet is below.

Before 8:00 a.m. – My morning ritual is to dry roast cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom and then pour in milk and water to prepare a steaming cup of chai.

I sit down at my breakfast table to eat two fried eggs, sip my warm chai, and write in my journal. I take up to 30 minutes to reflect, write aspirations, and review my priority list for the week.

I get my two little ones to school and head to work by 8.

8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m – We have a staff meeting at 8:30 every morning. Then, I respond to email, read articles, return phone calls, and update my to-do list.

I remind myself to focus on …

You can read the rest here.

As part of our summer vacation fun, we visited Color Factory Houston. If you like Instagrammable, thought-provoking, sensory experiences, this is the place to go. Our group ranged from elementary school-age to adults, and everyone had fun.

From beginning to end, we were greeted with colorful, tasty snacks.

The sights and sounds were simply beautiful. In one room, we held hands as electricity pulsed through us and lit up the room. In another, red glasses revealed secret messages from the floor to the walls.

This is the type of place that makes you feel like you’re in a dream.

Adults and kids alike need more opportunities to play and be in the moment and to light up the wholesome creative parts of our mind, and I think Color Factory Houston delivers this.

Kerala Feast No. 1

On Saturday evening when they arrived, my mom had a Kerala feast waiting. Grab a tissue to wipe the drool off your face after looking at this.

There are six different veggie dishes: pavakya, kovakya, beans, eggplant, and more. I love any vegetable thoran. There is chicken, beef, fish, and kachimore.

Red Circle Ice Cream

That night, we went to Red Circle Ice Cream in Sugar Land. This is my new favorite ice cream place. You can get ice cream with a churro or a Hong Kong-based waffle called a pufflelicious. And you can pick various flavors or toppings for your ice cream, churro, or waffle. It costs close to what you might pay for a meal somewhere else, so this is definitely a once-in-a-while treat. The quality of the ice cream is exquisite. The crunch of the churro is euphoric. The drizzle of nutella will get all over your face.

Tex-Mex and Burgers

The next day after church, we had a Pappasito’s fajita lunch at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, a good Tex-Mex meal for our visitors. That night, Sajan grilled up burgers and zucchini for dinner.

Kerala Feast No. 2

On the third day, we drove to Pearland. My aunt and uncle live on the end of a cul-de-sac, where they have a massive backyard. They use it well. Almost every fruit and vegetable you can imagine grows there. (Dragonfruit, anyone?) Naturally, lunch was mostly from the backyard harvest.

After lunch, we headed to my cousins Sam and Shiny’s house, which is on 10 acres with chickens, ducks, pygmy goats, and gardens. The goats recently had two babies, which all of us took turns holding. We melted basking in their cuteness. They’re one month old!

We got out of the sun for a little bit to sip on iced tea and munch on murruku and other snacks.

Later that afternoon, the blazing sun had us craving ice cream again.

This time we headed out to Somi Somi, with “Korean-inspired soft serve in ornate fish-shaped cones”. You can also order taiyaki, which is two fish waffles with your choice of filling inside. I heartily endorse the Nutella and Oreo fillings.

That night we had a pasta and pizza dinner at Shane and Jenny’s house. Our cousin Stan brought pastries from Suzie’s Pastry Shop in Hillcroft, including chocolate mousse cake, cannolis, and chocolate raspberry tarts.

After dinner, we went walking through Shane and Jenny’s neighborhood. It was a Texas wildlife tour. We saw large fish in the local pond. We saw a snake wriggling on the sidewalk. There were big frogs, and finally, a cute rabbit.

The next day, we checked out Color Factory, a very Instagrammable interactive art museum. It was so fun! I’ll do a separate post with the details. Afterward, we walked to Mia’s Table for lunch.

Then we walked to House of Pies for dessert! Houston was a walkable city for us, or at least Kirby was that day.

For dinner, our cousin Andy had a hankering for crawfish, so we ordered our first crawfish of the season from LA Crawfish with garlic butter and cajun seasoning. As usual, the crawfish at the bottom of the bag had soaked up the most flavor.

Every night, we had family prayer together, which was nice.

In summary,

• Kerala Feast No. 1 (Homegrown)
• Red Circle Ice Cream
• Pappasito’s Tex Mex
• Backyard Burgers
• Kerala Feast No. 2 (Homegrown)
• Somi Somi Ice Cream
• Suzie’s Pastries on Hillcroft
• Mia’s Table
• House of Pies
• LA Crawfish

And that, my friends, is how you do a Houston vacation!

The Quick, Short Version

If I had to summarize all of these points into a TL;DR, I would say this, which is what I wrote to a couple before they got married:

Make each other feel seen and understood. Accept each other as you are, and support each other’s growth. Don’t control each other. Fly free but toward your best self and spiritual purpose, as God leads you. Don’t hold in repressed emotions. Talk about and dig deep into your triggers, but give yourself the time and vocabulary to understand your feelings. Know that many of your reactions in life aren’t necessarily about each other but are a response to your past programming. Support each other in becoming the new version of you, while honoring your past, your family, and the experiences that have made you who you are. Take time to think and reflect and be grateful for how far you’ve come.

The Long List: Money, Communication, and Feelings (Beware of Resignation and Resentment)

A lot of what drives each of us in life is invisible. What influences our decisions and preferences is invisible until we stop and examine it. The same is true in marriage.

1. Money tops this list. My favorite podcast is I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. One episode had this headline: “My wife didn’t know I had $450,000 of debt until yesterday.” Talk about money, and discuss it regularly. Track the progress around your money.
2. Don’t hide anything you’re spending. Examine if it’s a sign of distrust from one of you.
3. Communicate clearly. Understand the words you say have one meaning to you and possibly a different meaning to your spouse, so it may take time and asking questions to reach clarity.
4. When listening, try to discern the context and meaning of what is said between you and your spouse. Don’t rob them of the meaning behind their words by solely looking at what you might instantly hear. If you need clarification, ask, but assume the best.
5. Listen to, reflect, and validate your spouse’s feelings.
6. Work on your own baggage. Know your own feelings. If you project your insecurities or unresolved issues on your spouse as if you are the “normal” or “right” one, it is manipulative and can spark deep confusion and dissonance. Acknowledge when you have work to do.
7. Know your spouse’s love language.
8. Develop an atmosphere where you feel safe having deep conversations and evolving together, trying on thoughts, dissecting, questioning, landing on new conclusions. Revisit thoughts that bug you, and leave room for no answers when there are no answers just yet.
9. Be mindful of the energy you bring when you’re with your spouse. Know when you’re draining them or filling them up. Both are fine, but watch your ratio.
10. Regularly stop and assess if you feel brewing resentment or if your spouse may feel brewing resentment. Is one of you checking out? Does the other person feel seen? Is there bitterness, numbness, fading away? I think spouses asked to rate each other on where they land in this area will often be surprised at or not grasp how much one spouse has already long checked out.
11. If you need to change and something is hard for you to do, understand that baby steps are OK. We all have to get better. You might regress, but keep taking steady steps forward. Track and communicate about your progress.
12. See each other. Not for who you want the other person to be but through a lens of both your own love and how your spouse sees themselves, feels, and moves through their daily life.
13. Don’t try to control each other. Help each other to be free.
14. Encourage each other and expect the best.
15. Don’t define each other by your failures.
16. Joke and laugh every day.
17. This may be the most important one in my book. Is there psychological safety in your marriage?
18. What are you (consciously or unconsciously) training your spouse to do? A spouse in a Ramit Sethi podcast interview said, “He always returned my birthday gifts, so now I don’t even try.” Are you training your spouse to do the following: 1) They no longer attempt something; or 2) They try in overdrive to please you because they hear your judgment in their head. All because they can anticipate a controlling, critical, questioning, or manipulative response from you as a rule and definitive pattern.
19. Watch your logic or literalism. Sometimes, people who are logical or overly rely on using the word logic to justify their decisions only value things that benefit them or that are valuable from their perception. They don’t place value on the things valued by their spouse, placing their spouse in the position of always having to prove themselves to the point of exhaustion and resentment. Often, what they represent as logic is simply their own perception of what is valuable. This leaves their spouse in the cycle of not feeling seen or heard or respected and having to become resigned to it or drained from needing to constantly prove the value of what they value.
20. “Morals do not equal preferences.” I heard Don Miller say this in an Instagram reel. “Just because you prefer to make the bed a certain way or load the dishwasher or certain way does not make it a moral issue.” Or as Sajan and I like to say, just because you like it one way doesn’t mean it’s the right way.
21. Understand the world is not black and white. When you can begin to see the world in a spectrum of preferences and options, you can learn to refrain from instant judgment. That makes it OK for differences like one person wanting to exercise indoors and another wanting to exercise outdoors. One does not have to be objectively better than the other. The value of it from person to person will differ, and that’s OK.

One thing I know is that circumstances and life can change in an instant or like a slow boil. What’s tenuous now can get stronger. What’s strong now can wither. Those who teach on marriage and relationships can find themselves exiting those same relationships.

Ongoing assessment, self-awareness, and humility may be the antidote. Simply asking questions and noticing can go a long way. And I am an expert? No. These are simply thoughts and observations, hypotheses to be debated and refined.

I loved visiting Natural Bridge Caverns when I was a kid. Back then, when I saw our tour guide, I decided I wanted to be a tour guide when I grew up, which actually came true in various opportunities I’ve had!

Sajan and I visited the caverns for our one-year wedding anniversary, too. It looked exactly the same as when I was a kid.

But since then, it has changed! It’s like a theme park now. There are multiple gift shops and eateries. The biggest change is a huge zip line, ropes, and climbing course. There’s also a cool water tower with stations where you can wash bags of dirt to reveal exquisite rocks.

We started off on the Twisted Trails course. The younger kids enjoyed the Twisted Tykes version. It was so fun! I was so proud of the kids for being brave on the zip lines and walking on thin boards and steps a few stories up in the air.

We rushed to make our Discovery Tour in the caverns. This entire place was packed. I think they usually do tours every fifteen minutes, but it seemed like they did it every 7 minutes during spring break. Instead of the typical one tour guide, there was a different guide at every stop on the tour, and each had a 30-second spiel. The caverns looked just like I remembered them.

After the tour, we went through the gift shop. We watched the little ones enjoy washing their bags of dirt in the water tower trough and uncovering fancy rocks.

I woke up and watched the sunrise on the fourth floor of the Lighthouse, joining two of the kids who were already up there. What a sight!

After breakfast we drove 45 minutes to the Canyon Lake area. We did a self-guided tour with eight stops. Each stop explains what’s happening on the gorge as you walk along it. The Gorge was carved by floodwaters in 2002, only 20 years ago! And there are ancient rocks and fossils. This is a great real-life geology lesson.

After our 2-mile walk of the Gorge, we ate lunch, then headed back to Miller Creek for more fishing and exploring.