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At the end of our most recent State of Our Union meeting, Mark asked Dawna: "What's one thing I can do this week that would help you in your vocation?" Her answer: "Communicate. Communicate. Communicate." It had been a rough week. Mark was finishing the last week of his summer online course, and the grading was absorbing most of his time. He was also working with a church in Oregon, 2000 miles away, to organize his father's funeral mass. The problem was that as Mark's stress

"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest... my yoke is easy, and my burden light." Most married couples know something about labor and burden. We know it from the outside, in the form of jobs, school schedules, medical appointments, and finances. We know it from the inside, in the ongoing work of staying close to another person across years and decades. The good news is that marriage itself is one of the primary ways God gives us that rest. Yo

Many years ago, Mark's father shared a conversation he and Mark's mother had early in their marriage. His mother had told his father that she loved God most, him second, and herself third. He'd told her the opposite: he loved her most, God second, and himself third. He said he was even a little hurt that she didn't love him as much as he loved her. It was an absurd conversation between two newlyweds, and Mark can't remember why his father shared it. It stuck with him because