the gift of attention

"Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention." 
-Jim Rohn

this last year, although i sometimes try to convince myself that it wasn't as hard as i thought it was going to be, was honestly probably one of the tougher ones for our relationship. 

both of us had many moments where we felt ignored, 

unimportant

forgotten, 

unappreciated, 

and basically unloved. 

and since we were both had similar feelings, we each expected the other person to step up and fix it {we're both stubborn, see.} 

it.was.hard. 

we had many many of the same conversations over & over. 

we had many good & bad days going back and forth trying to make amends. 

but really what we were both lacking was ATTENTION. 

it was a busy time. Adam is in school, i'm managing Elijah & the home, and with all that we had on our plates neither of us took the time to just give each other the attention we both deserved. 

the last couple of weeks since Adam has been done with school & boards has really made me see how much we truly missed each other. 

it makes me sad that we didn't take time before to focus on the simple things like watching a movie together, giving kisses when we get home, and complimenting each other on the small things that get done around the house. 

i can already tell a big difference in how we act and treat one another when we work on giving our full attention to each other. 

life obviously gets hard and busy and it's easy to let things fall by the wayside. 

and i honestly didn't even realize how much we were sacrificing our relationship until it kind of slapped us in the face. 

but now i understand that no matter how much we love each other, if we aren't consciously making each other our #1 priority then it's not going to happen naturally when times get tough. 

appreciation, 

quality time, 

attention attention attention.

{this is my new marriage mantra}