Adding a Love of your Life While Protecting Another

May 10 something fantastic happened.  The Lord blessed us, and Joel and I increased our family number by one.  James Matthew Kimberly was added to our home and our hearts.  He is amazing.  My love for him increases daily.  He is 5 weeks old tomorrow.  In that time I have spent a total of 2.5 hrs apart from him.  I have enjoyed virtually every moment with him since he has been born minus a couple crying sessions that got to me.

Biblically our priorities as believers are supposed to be...

1. God
2. Spouse
3. Children

This is contrary to what our culture tells us, which is

1.  Children
2. Children
3. Children
4. Children
5. Self
6. Spouse
7. God Who?

I have always looked at that cultural phenomenon, and said that I would never fall into this boat.  I have an awesome relationship with my husband.  He is an incredible man, and it is really just easy 99.9% of the time.  We get along great.  We have shared interests.  We are both big quality time people, and have always made this a priority.  We have a monthly marriage meeting where we discuss the good, bad, and ugly along with what we are going to do to change those areas that need improvement.  We write it all down in our marriage binder.

However, I am beginning to realize that these ideal priorities have just become even more challenging.  I have often placed my husband above God in this line-up, which ultimately shoots me in the foot.  I love Joel much better when he is second to God.  Nothing increases my capacity for love like Jesus Christ.  God IS love.  Now I am going to have to guard against putting Jimmy in that number 1 slot and dropping God down even lower then before.

New Challenges With My Relationship With God:

• Less time
• Less sleep
• Fewer ministries during the week 
• Difficult to get through a full church service without baby requiring attention

Challenges with my relationship with my husband include the following... 

• Less sleep.  Shorter fuze.  More emotional.  
• Cannot go on one on one dates yet.  
• I am home with the little man all day and know how to calm him better due to this.  I told Joel what to do all of the time as a result to my "knowledge" for most of this time.   
• He does things differently than I do, which makes me want to correct him.  
• The 6 week rule

I am learning that my marriage is going to be less easy from now on.  We are both going to have to be more intentional with our time, our words, and our actions.  I know that God knows best though.  Just like I love Joel best when he is second to God, I know that I will love Jimmy best if he is third to God and Joel.  This is going to be a new and exciting learning process.  We are newbies at this and I hope that I will be able to add to this list exponentially in the future, but here are the few things what I have learned so far in this new journey...

• Make time to be in the word and in prayer no matter what.  I do it during his nighttime feeding, because that is when everything is quiet and still.  Joel and I also like to be in the word together, and we cannot procrastinate this into our night, because it often will not happen.  
• I need to ask Joel for help if I need to get extra sleep.  I initially did not want to short his sleep at all because I am on my maternity leave and he works his butt off at work.  However, the little sleep that I was running on caught up after a couple of weeks, and it made me unpleasant.
• I need to let Joel figure out how to calm him down on his own and let him do things differently.  
• I need to seek out new ways to have quality time at home.  (Stroller walks, staying up 15-20 minutes later than Jimmy and hanging out, etc...) 
• We both need to increase our flexibility.  Sometimes we will be late, and that will not kill us.  

Our new addition is SO amazing.  I love life more every week.  I just need to make sure that while I am getting something new, I do not start the slow and long process of distancing myself from something even more important.