0:00Episode 4197, remember when? [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Mom's, it's time to rediscover, rejuvenate, and renew whom you are in mind, body, and spirit. Welcome to Create Your Now, Your Best Selfie, the show that help you do just that. Here's your host, certified life coach, personal trainer, and nutritionist, Christian Wardo. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Happy every day, welcome to the weekend. Yes, it's relationship builders. Come on, who you sleep in with. Hopefully, you still have a little love in your heart. Well, we're going to dive into that. Remember when? For those of you who are brand-new to Create Your Now, welcome to the Socrutable Family. I'm so delighted of your presence. If you already even have the opportunity, you want to head on over to CreatureNow.com, where you can learn more and sign up for the Kisses newsletter. To keep it simple strategy, everyday solutions, to live, love, and impact. Well, this episode is brought to you by AIM, Inspiring Connection, and Community. All right, well, I got to get this off my chest.

1:00Mama Sports Center here for a moment. Did you watch the president's cup at all? You know what? USA was doing really, really good. Okay, this is golf, by the way. You're like, what president's cup? What do you mean? Yes, so that's happening in golf right now. We've got the WNBA that's coming up right next week. I believe they start the whole playoff session there. Not with it there. But anyway, go back to golf for me here for a moment. USA was leading three to two. Day two. Not so great. We went down five to three. I believe was the last that I saw. And the international, they're doing great. USA not so much. I mean, they had some great hits, but you know, it's the win right on the score card. How's your team going? Did the Packers win? No, they didn't. Did they? Nope, they did not. You're like, how but that was my team. And you're like, how could the Atlanta Falcons do it with, with Pennix? And just coming back after like 311 days, I think, or something like that, he had not been on the field like almost 10 months. Crazy, right?

2:00We can keep track of scores like this when it comes to sports. And even our kids sports, regardless of their ages, right? You may go and play sports now. Maybe you go play rock-a-ball with your friends and your buddies. And you're like, yeah, this is awesome. You keep score. But the problem is when you come home, you're still keeping score. You're keeping score with the person you're sleeping with. And that build attention there. And so we're doing this new series. We're in the second week of it, I believe. I think I'm already losing track, but falling in love all over again. And I think this is a great way to kind of kick off the fall new year into the real new year. And so whenever you're listening to this, just think of this as like, this is a fresh start. And you know, when you got married, right? And you found the person, the one, right? Kind of think about frozen. My granddaughter loves frozen. She sings it. It's so adorable. I mean, how can anyone who's little like that and be so cute do anything, you know, not cute, right?

3:06But there's Anna in the movie, frozen the first one. And she's out looking for the one, right? And sometimes I am when I'm writing this stuff for relationships and marriage, I'm thinking the one. We're always looking for the one. And let me just say this. Maybe you thought you found the one. And it ended up not being the one. For whatever reason, it doesn't matter. Okay, it doesn't matter if it was abuse, it doesn't matter if it just didn't work right. If you know, whatever you couldn't come together on your dreams, building a life together, whatever the thing is, okay? I just want you to know right now that you're loved, regardless of the season that you're in when it came to your marriage or if your marriage ended. And I think that's important to be noticed in that manner. So as we go through this, I want you to look at it through your lens. I'm going to have to kind of talk generalities here. If you want to reach out to me, please do. I'd be happy to talk with you. We're getting closer.

4:07Hopefully we're going to be opening up aim soon. I just, there's a lot of moving parts of my life right now. And I'm doing the best that I can to move it. Because as you know, I don't have like 20 people behind the scenes working, right? The website you see, I create it. And I'm not putting myself on a pedestal. I'm just saying thank you for your patience. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for being with me on this journey called life. Because we're better together. And if your marriage is one that you've had your ups and downs and all around, I want you to fall and love all over again. I want you to have that connection, especially as you get older and the kids are getting older. You've got to start redefining who you are as a couple. You know, every love story has a moment tucked inside that changes everything. Maybe it was the way he looked at you from across the room. Maybe it was a conversation that went three hours longer than it should have, because neither of you wanted it to end.

5:08Remember the good old days? Mm-hmm. You're like, I can't even get two minutes with him. That's me. That's me. Maybe it was nothing dramatic at all, just a quiet knowing that settled into your bones and whispered, this one, this is the one. Whatever your moment was, it marked the beginning of something God had been writing long before you ever knew his name. Remember when? Because the best way to move your marriage forward is going back to the beginning. Now I know what you might be thinking. Christian, we are not the same people we were back then. And guess what? You're right. High five way to go. You're not. Life is done. What life does. It has layered on responsibilities and routines. Sleepless seasons and silent frustrations been there. Yep, we all have moments of deep joy and stretches of deep exhaustion. The couple who once stayed up until two in the morning talking about everything and nothing now falls asleep mid-sentence on the couch by nine.

6:11Or maybe it's not even mid-sentence on the couch. It's we're getting ready for bed at eight o'clock and we're asleep at eight fifteen in bed. And that's okay. Growth looks different than it feels. You know, going back to the beginning isn't about pretending those layers don't exist. It is about remembering what it's underneath all of them. Because underneath the bills, the carpools, the calendar, that never seems to have an F-room, there's this foundation. And that foundation was not built by accident. It was built by God. Jeremiah 29-11 says, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Now it's easy to think that that verse is just about your individual life and what you're going to be when you grow up. We think about that in our career planning and what am I supposed to do in my purpose? But we forget that it's about your whole life,

7:12which makes it about your marriage too. God had a plan when he brought the two of you together. He saw the beginning and he already knew every chapter that would follow. The good, the bad, and the ugly. And when you go back to the start of your story, you're not escaping the present. You're reconnecting with the purpose that has been holding you together all along. I want you to think about it this way. When a tree is struggling, you know me and my oak tree, right? Well, I've got three baby trees and I'm really taking care of it. I have a lot of baby trees actually, but our newest ones, there's three of them. And so I always go back to my trees, right? Because I wish I had a green thumb all the time, but there are days I struggle on these trees I'm watching. But you know, you've got a tree that's struggling. And when it's leaves are dry and it's branches look tired, a gardener does not just look at the surface, right? She checks the roots. She makes sure the foundation is still being nourished, still being watered, still connected to what gives it life.

8:14My friend, your marriage is the same. The fruit you see on the outside, the way you communicate, the way you serve each other, the way you show up day after day, all of it is connected to the roots and your roots live in the beginning. Song of Solomon, chapter two, verses 10 to 13, paints this picture so vividly you could almost fill the warmth on your skin. My beloved spoken said to me, arise my darling, my beautiful one, come with me, see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. Do you feel that? There's this invitation in those words to come out of whatever cold season you've been standing in and step back into the warmth of what love was always meant to be. Not a love that ignores the hard things, but a love that remembers it was built to outlast them. Maybe your beginning was full of butterflies and big romantic gestures, or maybe it was quieter than that, a steady friendship that solely turned into something

9:19you could not walk away from. Either way, there was something real there, something true, and the beautiful thing about truth is that it does not expire. You want to hear that again? The beautiful thing about truth is that it does not expire. It does not lose its power just because time has passed. It simply waits for you to come back and draw from it again. Thomas Merton once wrote, the beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves. When you first fell in love with your husband, you were not trying to change him. You were captivated by who he already was. You were captivated by the way he laughed, the things he cared about, the way he made you feel seen. And somewhere along the way, it's easy to trade that captivation for correction. To start seeing what needs fixing instead of first what made your heart skip a beat. Going back to the beginning as an invitation to see him again, really see him.

10:23The way you did before the world got so loud. Revisit your roots. That is your kiss to keep it simple strategy. Revisit your roots. And I know sometimes that seems scary because you're like, yeah, but that might bring up some other things. That's okay. Make space for those other things to come up and give yourself that opportunity to heal. We're not going to really go down that road right now. I really want to keep you focused on the roots. Weird all started the good. Not necessarily the bad and the ugly. Yes, that's going to come up. But let's go back. What if the key to falling in love all over again is not learning something new, but remembering something you already knew? So the N-E-W versus the K-N-E-W. That's a plan. Words, right? Okay. Work with me here. I want to keep you awake. Pay attention. Pay attention. No. It's hard. Sometimes we look at this stuff and these deep thoughts and you have no idea what goes

11:25through my mind to different things. I'm traveling back and forth between states and my husband's actually traveling right now. And he called me up and honestly, if I can be so honest, I was like, you know what? He's really kind of interrupting my plans. Now, you know what I talked about how you could talk for hours upon hours upon hours. Here I complained, you don't even sit down and have a conversation with me. Yet, when I am by myself, I already had plans because I knew he was traveling on business. He still calls me an interrupts me, but I must remember we're having conversation. And that's a good thing. So I was like, I'll have to wait again until he's done. I can replay it. It's all right. Even though it was live, I had registered for it. I'd paid for it and I was like, okay, I'll do this, right? Revisit your roots because sometimes what we say we're missing is right in front of us and we're ignoring. What is it for you?

12:25Maybe it's remembering something you already knew, K-N-E-W. What does it look like in real life? Number one, pull out a photo or a memento from your early days together. Open up that wedding album that has been sitting on the shelf and touched since your last anniversary. Dig out the box of old letters or ticket steps or that silly souvenir from the trip where everything went wrong and you laughed until you cried anyway. Find something tangible, something you could hold in your hands. And spend 10 minutes looking at it together this week. You don't have to plan a deep conversation around it. Just sit next to each other and let the memories do the talking. You might be surprised how quickly a faded photograph can make the present fill a little brighter. And actually bring you closer. As we're going through boxes right now and getting ready for things and shifting stuff here and there from one state to another state and one house to another house and one house to storage. And I mean it goes on and on.

13:26I find these things and I'm like, and sometimes it catches me off guard and I'm just like, I gasp. And other times it's like, oh really? And it's kind of mixed right? Sometimes it's like, yes that's awesome and oh not so much. Or wow I remember or it takes me somewhere else. What I ask for you to do is to look for the good in your memories. You know one couple I know found their old wedding guest book in the back of a closet and spent an entire evening reading the messages people had written to them. By the time they closed it she said it felt like their vows had been renewed without either of them saying a word. That's pretty awesome. All right I can remember our wedding. I'm one of those weird brides that actually remembered or still remember most of our details of the wedding. I was that involved. It wasn't because I was the bridezilla.

14:27I did keep things in order however I will say it that way. But I remembered because I was present. I was intentional. It was my wedding. It was our wedding. And we had a beautiful wedding and we had such a great turnout from family to friends. Family that had come from states upon states removed. We had you know third and fourth generations coming. It was amazing. We had friends that became you know co-workers and co-workers that became like family. I mean all of this stuff and I look at and I'm like it's beautiful but sometimes we forget those moments. Go back. Revisit your roots. Number two ask your spouse one simple question. What is your favorite memory of us? Now this one requires something that does not always come naturally especially when you're talking about when you've been married for a long time. Genuine curiosity.

15:28So do not assume you know the answer. Do not do not. Do not fill in the blanks for him. Just ask and then do the most loving thing you can do in that moment. Listen. Just listen. Listen without planning your response. Listen without correcting the details. Listen the way you used to listen when everything he said mattered to you because you were still learning who he was. Listen. Because here's the truth. You're still learning who he is. People are not static. Right? The memory he holds dearest might not be the one you expect. Maybe it is not the grand vacation or the wedding day. Maybe it's that Tuesday night when you brought him coffee without being asked or the way you held his hand in the hospital waiting room and did not let go. When you hear what he treasures you learn what love looks like through his eyes and my friend that changes everything. Everything. So ask him what is your favorite memory of us and maybe there's a few

16:28but just revisit one at a time. And then finally number three, recreate one small thing from your dating season. Now this is fun. But I want it to be a positive thing not a negative. And I say that because we've had many experiences in our days of dating because we dated for three and a half years. That's a very long time to date. And in that time frame, I went to two major universities and so did he. And we both went to community colleges and so did he. And we were both going for major career goals where we had to go to postgraduate and all of this and things happened. We had to squeeze in our wedding time. And we had like less than four months to plan our wedding. It was crazy awesome. But I want you to recreate one small thing from your dating season. And this isn't about booking a five star dinner or planning an elaborate day now. If that was your thing, then go for it. But this is about intention.

17:30Think about the little things that made your early days full of life. Maybe there was a restaurant where you always split the same meal. A song that played every time you were together. A drive you used to take just because being in the car together felt like enough. Pick one of those things and do it again. If that restaurant is closed, it's been gone for years. ours was Boston Market. I don't know if you're familiar with that. They had the freshest foods you could have. It was faster food but not fast food. And if I didn't want to cook, that was a great thing. And it didn't break the bank. And it was wonderful when we were just the two of us. And even when we had our first, got a little bit more complicated when we had our second. But what restaurant was that for you? Maybe you recreate the dinner at home. Right? The key is it doesn't have to be perfect. It has to be purposeful. You know, one woman told me that she and her husband used to get gas station coffee and drive the back roads on Sunday mornings when they were dating. They had not done it in over a decade.

18:32So one Sunday she woke up early, filled two styrofoam cups and told them to get in the car. She said he smiled in a way she had not seen in the years. That is what revisiting your roots looks like. Small, deliberate, and full of love. I mean, I can remember one for us, especially when the kids, well, I should say actually when we started having kids. But before that, we loved to go to open houses. And so we would go into neighborhoods and we would just look and we would dream. Because we knew what we were going to do and we were going to build our house. And what did that look like? And as we had kids, we would go after church, we would go eat. I would pack lunches or whatever. And we would go and wear them out. And we would go to three or four or five houses and we would come back for nap time. Then I would get a nap in. And then we started our afternoon which led into the evening on Sunday. And off to bed that they went. And that was just something that we did. One of these days, guess what? I think I'm going to pack a lunch for the two of us and we're going to go house hunting. Oh, but we'll leave that one for another episode. You know, one thing you got to understand, the enemy of a good marriage is not conflict.

19:35It's not even distance. It's forgetfulness. When we forget where love began, when we start to believe it has nowhere left to go. But when we remember, when we go back to the well of what God started and draw from it again, something shifts. We start measuring our marriage by what it lacks and we start marvelling at what it has survived. My friend, your love story is still being written. Every single day and the author who began it is faithful to continue it. So this week and to next, take a step back not away from your marriage, though, but into its beginning. Let yourself remember. Let yourself feel. And let God remind you that what He had started in love, He has every intention of finishing in love. Go in peace. Be present. Be incredible. Be you. I love you so very much. I cannot wait to see you on the other side.

20:35But see tags and lots and lots of love. We'll talk to you real soon. Have a glorious blessed day. Bye-bye.