In August of 2005, Vitaliy’s entire family was in a car accident in Ukraine. Tragically, his mother, father, and little brother did not survive. His two younger sisters survived but were in critical condition. And his brother-in-law walked away with minor injuries.

As one can imagine, this was a very trying time for us. But it was also a defining point in our relationship. After a long discussion with Vitaliy, family and friends, and an immense amount of prayer, I decided to quit school, pack my bags, and head to Ukraine with one mission in mind.

My goal was to keep Vitaliy laughing in the midst of serious pain.

Obviously, there were other factors to this trip. Other areas of importance. But this was rooted in my heart; it was an underlining focus as we lived out the tragedy in Ukraine.

Grief and pain look different for every person. I am not suggesting that you try to avoid or medicate your pain, grief or stress with laughter. But here is what I am saying.

Life is hard. And marriage is even harder. You may be faced with a serious tragedy or just the stress of every day life. But when trying to navigate through your own feelings and those of the one you love during these times, it only makes things that much more difficult. It’s easy to get lost or stuck in the labyrinth of emotions. It easy to lose each other in the mess.

I recommend incorporating some laughter into your life. To loosen up that tenseness in your body. To remind yourself that you do enjoy your husband/wife who you wake up to each morning. That there is more to life than whatever problem you’re currently facing.

Find a way…no! MAKE a way to laugh with the one you love. It will give you and your relationship the break it needs. The love it needs. And you’ll be able to return back to life’s challenges, hand in hand, ready to face whatever lies ahead TOGETHER.

I’m just going to come out and say it. There is something that your relationship needs that you keep putting off.

We know because we’ve done the same thing. Vitaliy and I have gone without drapes on our bedroom windows for more than five weeks now. We got rid of our old ones with every intention to replace them the same weekend, but never found what we were looking for. Then week after week, we kept saying, we’ll get to it…next week.

I’m sure you can infer that our love life started to pay the price for our neglect. With no window shades and a popular play area for our neighbors’ kids right outside our windows, we were very limited on when we could have fun in the bedroom. Like how I worded that? Just trying to keep it real, yet classy.

Moving on, this past week we were determined to fix the problem. As you all might know, if you neglect your love life in marriage, things will quickly start to go downhill fast. Desperate times, cause for desperate measures. We designated date night last week to finding drapes for our windows. And we were determined not to return home without them. Three Target stores later, we arrived home around 10pm with drapes in hand.

We slept that night with our windows covered in a cocoon of privacy, peace and love. Get your mind out of the gutter people! You’re missing the moral of the story.

Do not put off until next week what your relationship desperately needs today. It’s possible it’s something more substantial than window drapes, but that is what our relationship needed. You know what it is. Designate this week’s date night to working on that area. Date nights can be all about having fun, but most of all, they should be spent investing in your relationship. And if you don’t have a regularly set date night, then go ahead and start there.

This is us on our anniversary weekend trip back in August. Happy as clam be! But in order to keep it that way, it requires work.