Yesterday afternoon Lea and I had our second session of pre-marital counseling with Pastor Dan Houck who will officiating our marriage. In this session we talked a lot about expectations and where they come from. The word “expectation” can be a challenging word to define, you find expectations all around you. Lea and I were challenged to think upon where our expectations come from, and what expectations we have on our married life together. I am thankful and encouraged that Lea and I have had little trouble communicating, even from our first date (just look at our monthly cell phone minutes)!

Over the last few months Lea and I spent time communicating on who will be expected to take out the trash, pay the bills, mow the lawn, cook dinner, and do the dishes. This is important because I believe that communication is about setting expectations. We each grew up under different roofs where our families handled things differently. If Lea and I are going to have a committed and healthy relationship we must be open to sharing our expectations for each other, for our future, and for our relationship. I find it challenging sometimes to do this because it is quite easy to ignore. To be honest, it can be difficult to share my expectations of Lea, a lot of that comes out of the fact that as soon as I speak, I realize how selfish I am. The important thing I see is that Lea and I must continue to strive towards communicating our expectations because anger and frustration are rooted in our unmet expectations. If I don’t communicate my expectations for Lea how will she ever know what they are?

Occasionally I have internally and externally gotten frustrated at Lea because she has not met my expectations in one way or another…the problem is I never spent the time to tell her what my expectation was. What I have learned is that sharing expectations requires honesty. We must be transparent with our spouse and others when communicating our expectations, it’s essential to having a healthy marriage.

How about all of our friends…how has expectations played a role in your dating, engaged, and married relationships?

After these crazy snowstorms, I have become more and more eager for warm weather. And this eagerness has made me think many times about my next tropical adventure-our honeymoon! Jeremy and I realized that we have not blogged about the honeymoon yet, although it was one of the first big decisions we made during our engagement.

In early December, we started thinking about where we should go on the honeymoon, because, let’s be honest, it’s one of the best parts of wedding planning. Jeremy’s only input was that he wanted a very relaxing trip. I had dreams of snorkeling again, because that was my favorite thing we did in Hawaii. However, our finances made it look like we would be taking a short trip to the mountains or a local beach. But…Thanks to a generous gift from Jeremy’s Grams and Gramps, we will be venturing to Sandal’s Royal Carribean Resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica!!!

Our friends Adam and Melissa told us about their incredibly relaxing, fun and pampered honeymoon at a Sandals resort, so we decided to pursue an all-inclusive resort. We met with our friend Sherry, who is a travel agent and owns her own business Jenkins Travel. And I definitely recommend working with a travel agent, because they take care of all the details and hook you up with some serious perks. All that Jeremy and I have to do for our  trip is pack our bags and show up at the airport-the rest is taken care of. And Sherry hooked us up with some free spa cash…I will be loving the massages!  Plus we were informed that we will definitely be able to snorkel, and have lots of relaxing time!

We are both very excited for our first vacation together to celebrate our marriage. And we feel so blessed to be able to have another tropical adventure together!!

Oh yeah, and today is officially 4 months until the BIG DAY!