Hello again after a very long, long time. I've decided to start blogging again.

But the focus of this blog will change. It's going to be more thoughts and ramblings about life in general, and my life in particular.

It occurs to me that I've never really introduced myself, or if I have, it was such a long time ago that I really should do it again.

I have been married for 2 years to the most wonderful woman on earth, who I will thenceforth call "My love". We have suffered the pain of miscarriage twice, and I mourn the loss of our two children everyday. In fact, I've posted a link to my wife's blog.

I work as an Accountant. I've worked in the accounting field for over 20 years.

The thing that I consider to be the most important fact about myself, as you will undoubtedly be able to tell by the posts I made years ago, is that I'm a Christian. Me and my wife both attend a Lutheran church.

Over the last three years, I have formulated a few beliefs about love and marriage that I want to share with you. Me and my wife were big fans of the television show, "Jon and Kate plus 8", key word being were. The tragic unravelling of their marriage in public has made us permanent non-fans. What broke the camel's back was the last episode we watched where they basically said they were divorcing for the kids.

I feel I should tell you about how both me and my wife have arrived at a common perspective on marriage. She is the child of divorce, my parents will be celebrating their 52nd wedding anniversary this year. From these backgrounds we've come to this perspective: You don't divorce for the kids. You WORK ON YOUR MARRIAGE for your kids. Divorce is preferable to staying in a loveless marriage, granted, but there is a third option, rebuilding your love. Marriage is work, but the rewards far outweigh the effort.

Having said that, I realize the stresses on their marriage were enormous. The stress of raising 8 children, the TV show, book tours, travelling all over the country, etc. must be hard. This is why it was so important for them to work on their marriage, to put each other first.

There is something that really struck me in that episode. They both said that the children were the most important to them. I know it sounds good when parents say their kids are the most important things to them in the world. But honestly, since the parents' relationship is the foundation of the whole family, a person's spouse should be considered more important than the children. It really should. A person really should consider their spouse's needs and wants as the foremost things that must be met.

Now of course, children need more of Mom's time and effort than Dad does, and vice versa. I just think that Mom and Dad's needs of each other come first over the kids, even if that only means a few minutes a day. He's worth that, and she's worth that.

You put each other first for the kids benefit.

Now I realize that me and my wife don't have kids yet, these beliefs are still more theory than practice. But's a theory we agree on and will do our best to put into practice if and when God blesses us with children.

P.S. I did read all of Sam Harris' "Letter to a Christian Nation", and although I agreed with a lot of what Mr. Harris said about Christians, but almost nothing about what Mr. Harris said about Christianity.