We live in Colorado where everyone has a dog. Most businesses are dog-friendly, meaning they have water bowls on the floor beside the counter for your furry friend's convenience. Every park has a pooper scooper bag dispenser. (If you don't already know what that is, I can't explain it. I refuse to get close enough to the dispenser to actually understand.) And yesterday at my chiropractor two dogs ran down the hall past my exam room chasing each other. No one stopped them or even acted like it was abnormal.

So yeah, there are a lot of dogs. And since I've moved here I catch myself doing a weird social thing where I talk to people's dogs instead of actually talking to people. For example, I'm walking down the stairs from my apartment to my car and my next door neighbor passes me with her two small dogs. I bend down and say, "Hello there. How are you doing today?" in a babytalk voice, smile briefly at my neighbor and keep walking.

I've been doing this for months and probably would have gone on doing it if Brian hadn't pointed it out last night on our walk. As we passed a woman with a chow, Brian said hello to the dog. And when we were out of ear shot he turned to me and said:

"Oh my gosh. I just said hello to her dog instead of her."

"Yeah, so." I replied. "I do that all the time."

"Well, don't you think there's something weird about that?"

Yes, now that I think about it I do. No wonder it's taken us two months of living in an enclosed apartment complex to finally meet the three couples who live within 20 feet of our front door. I spent the first 6 weeks talking to their pets! Why am I so afraid to risk polite conversation with strangers?

Sunday at church I snuck out of the service after communion to use the ladies room. There was another woman at the sink washing her hands with me. She said hello very confidently and made a comment about how the fourth floor ladies room had a line. As we were walking back to the sanctuary, she extended her hand and asked me what my name was. Hers was Alisha. I was so impressed with her. Impressed with her ability to introduce herself and make a flight of stairs worth of polite conversation. Which brings Brian's question back to mind, "Don't you think there's something weird about that?"

And again, I do. If I've become so inwardly focused and insecure that it's difficult to greet my neighbors and shocking when strangers talk to me, how am I going to make friends in a new city or share God's love with the people around me? Does anyone else deal with this struggle to relate?

As you and your spouse grow in becoming one, have you found a good way to make your calendars one?

The day-to-day life of most marriages involves scheduling of some sort--lunches, errands, business travel, holidays, vacations, family visits, church activities, doctor's appointments, special ocassions, and so on.

Get these scheduling details right and you can enjoy a productive, coordinated life. Get them wrong and you can have some major frustration, disappointment or even blow out fights.

While it might seem easy to write off scheduling mistakes as simple oversights, certain calendar items can pack lots of emotional punch ("Why didn't you check with me before booking that fishing trip?  That's the weekend of my best friend's wedding.")

For what it's worth, here are a few thoughts I've had recently on making schedules work in marriage:

Create and share a calendar

Much of the hi-jinx of scheduling comes down to what style of organizer you are. You might be a post-it note person or an old-school print calendar keeper while your spouse is a high-tech mobile calendar kind of person. Whichever approach you take, you need some kind of intersection point. If you're not already doing it, you might want to explore tools such as Google Calendar that you can easily update and then share. As Mac users, Candice and I have been experimenting with our iCal program, but we still end up cross-referencing a lot between electronic and print calendars.

Plan early

Candice and I were caught off guard a lot in the early years of our marriage by how quickly our calendars got filled up--especially around Christmas time.  Now, we go out of our way to plan ahead. As we approach a new year, we try to go ahead and plug in big stuff that we already know about. As each new season begins, we go back and plug in seasonal plans (which is really helpful for the Christmas season). This helps us to make sure we have our "big rocks" in place before other opportunities come along.

Update often/adjust expectations

Some of the plans that land on our calendar (for outings, time with friends, etc.) sounded like a good idea at the time, but then need to be adjusted. As much as possible, we try to review our commitments each week to see if we need to adjust any expectations. Some days, we have to pass messages back and forth as we sort through business travel options, family vacations or even doctor's appointments that have to be rescheduled. It can seem like a hassle in the moment, but we still prefer that to the alternative of frustrating each other and letting our schedules come between us being one.

How do you make your schedules work?

"Wow," I thought. "A whole year of grain.... Wow."

I was in Germany. Specifically a picturesque little town named Rothenburg where every street was bricked, every window had an overflowing flower box and a centuries-old wall that used to protect the city now served as a place for tourists to walk and see the amazing countryside views. My hubbie and I were on the Night Watchman's Tour--following around a man in traditional "town night watchman" garb and learning interesting facts about the town.

That night, I remember being delighted and intrigued by the wealth of information our guide provided. But there's only one tidbit that I remember to this day, nine years later.

It was that each town household, no matter how rich, no matter how poor, was required to keep one year's supply of grain on hand at all times. No excuses. No exceptions. There was even a town official, the guide told us, whose job it was to inspect each family each year to ensure that they had their supply.

The reason? Siege.

Evidently, the town's wall was very effective. It had withstood attacks for centuries (right up until the advanced machinery of World War II). When enemies could not compromise the wall, they would lay siege to the town, surrounding it on all sides, refusing to let anyone or anything get close to it. The town had a reliable water supply, our guide said, but a lack of food would have driven the town to panic, starvation and defeat.

Solution: every family, a whole year of grain. By the time a year was over, most enemies had given up, their forces quite tired of the Rothenburg countryside and war.

The townspeople had no idea if, or when, siege would come. But they were ready. Every single one of them.

That got me to thinking, am I ready for a mini-siege in my own life? No one plans to lose your job, have your car engine blow or be laid up by surgery or illness. But maybe that's the problem: We don't plan.

According to a recent article at MSN Money,

"Experts have traditionally recommended having an emergency fund that could last three to six months, but HSBC’s new survey finds that only 39 percent of respondents are prepared for this."

A majority of those with household income of less than $50,000 could survive on their savings for less than a month. Those who earned $100,000 or more? Almost a third had less than three months.

Crown Financial Ministries writes,

The Scriptures encourage us to plan for the unexpected and equate planning with being wise. “Go to the ant, O sluggard, observe her ways and be wise, which, having no chief, officer or ruler, prepares her food in the summer and gathers her provision in the harvest” (Proverbs 6:6-8).

So what about you? Have you and your spouse set up an emergency fund? Do you have your year of grain?

Our first autumn as a married couple, Steve and I bought and carved a massive pumpkin for our front porch. The next night, we witnessed our first Colorado blizzard. By morning, our pumpkin's now-frozen smile was collapsing into what looked a lot like a dentureless-grin. Thus began our adventures in honoring traditions.

One of the most satisfying things about our first year of marriage was merging all our traditions. I brought some from my family, he brought some from his and we forged some new ones together. But after a few years, the volume of traditions got a little crazy. We didn't have enough holidays and weekends to squeeze in all the parades, fairs, orchards, museums, parks, hikes, hotels, shows, movies, songs, and more that had come to represent how we do holidays. What used to feel like celebration now felt like comlication. It was time to pare down to essentials.

It wasn't easy, but we had to cut the good things we were used to juggling in order to make room for the best. If you already had a lot of traditions before you got married, this can be especially tough. It helped us to agree that we weren't competing for whose family's traditions would prevail (his or mine), but what would we choose to make ours.

And it turned out that a few simple traditions were more fulfilling than trying to cram every festive experience into a short season. As I wrote in Adding Meaning to the Holidays, "Doing things that remind us why we're celebrating in the first place — rather than loading our calendars with a growing list of activities — is what gives our lives context and makes for memorable and lasting traditions.... A meaningful tradition should rekindle good memories, reinforce relationships, help you relax and re- establish priorities."

Now that we have four little tradition-makers of our own, I'm glad we simplified then. Especially since now it doesn't take much for our kids to declare yet another "tradition." ("Dad, did you notice today is Arbor Day? And we had breakfast together as a family at Cracker Barrel! Dad, we just made a new tradition! Oh, and Dad, what's Arbor Day?")

In the months leading up to our wedding Brian and I read a lot of pre-marital books. It's probably more accurate to say I read a lot of books and narrowed down the really good ones for Brian to read. There were chapters in all the books we read about dealing with in-laws. As far as marital problems go it sounded like in-laws are right up there with sex and money. Before reading those books I was excited about the new family that Brian and I were gaining by getting married. But everything we were reading made me a little nervous about running into in-law issues.

During the time my anxiety was building I had a bridal shower where Brian's mother did something that eased my fears and set an extraordinary example of motherhood. When I opened her gift there was her apron that I had worn many times while cooking at their house. At first I thought she was giving me her apron (which would have been awesome because I've always admired it) and and then she stood up and said that there was another part to the gift she wanted to read to me. She opened a sheet of printed paper folded like a card and began to read:

Dear Ashley,

As I cut these apron strings in my relationship with Brian and give them to you, they come with the following promises ...

I promise to give you and Brian privacy and independence. I will never "drop by" without calling to ask if a visit is convenient. I will respect your boundaries.

I promise to not put pressure on you to produce grandchildren.

I promise to never gossip about you. I will defend you and promote you to others.

I promise to keep my opinions about your housekeeping, cooking, finances, personal tastes and parenting to myself. I promise not to give unsolicited advice about the way you live.

I promise to be flexible about the holidays. I will enjoy being with you whenever we can be together.

I promise to never feed your children "forbidden foods." I will uphold all of your house rules.

You and Brian will be a new family unit, with unique characteristics. I promise to cheer you both on in that uniqueness.

I promise to support your marriage over my relationship with Brian. You are the number one woman in his life.

I promise to pray for you, love you and respect you as I do my other daughters.

With God's help, I promise these things joyfully and sincerely and this old apron with it's newly grafted strings will be a reminder to me of these promises.

And with that, she cut the strings off of her old apron and gave them to me. It's only been three months since those promises were made (I'm the resident newlywed) but so far every one of them has been kept. Even though my in-laws have done their part, I'm learning that it takes both parties to prevent the in-law issues I'd heard so much about.

There are days when problems arise and my first reaction is to call my mom. For the last 20 years she's helped me sort through crises and comforted me when I'm near inconsolable. Brian and I don't have a 20-year history and he doesn't always know what to say when I'm sad or stressed, but if I go with my first reaction to call my mom, he will never get the chance to learn. By making the choice to take my problems to my husband I'm sometimes left feeling misunderstood, but other times my emotional needs are met in a way no one else (including my mother) could have. And even when my needs aren't met in the way I wish they were, it's worth it because becoming one is a higher value than always feeling understood.

As Ted would say, I'm no in-law expert but I have a hunch that healthy in-law relationships depend more on the couple's priority to cleave to their spouse than the in-law's promise to respect their boundaries.

Let me say right up front: I am not an expert.

OK, I might have some expertise in editing, writing contracts and playing keyboard, but I am not an expert when it comes to being either a husband or a father.

I've done some sacrificially loving things during my nearly seven years of marriage. And I've done a lot of thoughtless things. I've forgotten my wife's birthday (something I've not done since our first year of marriage), I've slammed doors when I've lost my temper, I've chosen laziness over love.

There's a lot of evidence that I'm no relationship expert.

But maybe I can be a mentor. Maybe I can share some of what I've learned over the years my wife and I have been together. Maybe I can share some of what I've learned in the years since becoming a father of three.

And maybe I can learn from those of you who are just starting out married life together. I think that'd be especially cool.

I look forward to the ensuing conversation, to being vulnerable for the sake of our marriages and for the honor of our Lord. Kinda like a small group, except a bit less threatening.    :-)