Inspiring While Being Inspired

Yesterday, I celebrated eight wonderful years of marriage to my best friend, lover, chief encourager and husband. Every day I’ve awoken since 2003, he’s inspired me to be a better friend, person and wife. He’s accepted me just as I am, with my innumerous flaws and quirks, and never insisted I change or get better but rather simply inspires me by his unconditional love.

For those who’ve noticed I’ve not blogged much over the past week, please forgive me. The last week of December around the Weaver household is always jam packed. My husband is a Christmas eve baby (this year we celebrated his 40th bday), we then celebrate Christmas with family, our wedding anniversary is the 27th and then just a few days later we celebrate New Year’s eve. That’s four holidays in just one week. Whew!

So if you’ve been looking for my normal daily postings, I promise I’ll get back to that right after the New Year. But something tells me we’re all so busy during this time of year, it’s possible few have noticed.

A couple days ago, Keith and I took our favorite 7-year old (our niece, Jayla) ice skating, and I wasAlthough I’m nearly 30 years her senior she teaches me so much. reminded of how amazed I am that I get the opportunity to inspire people daily through this Club. I’d not been on the ice in at least 20 years so I wasn’t sure if I’d even remember how to stay upright. Jayla had gone ice skating a few weeks prior for a friend’s birthday party so she was feeling pretty confident. That was, until we hit the ice.

The first 10 or so times around the ice, I was watching others who skated slightly better than us (most people were wobbling around trying to figure out how to skate and many kept finding themselves sliding across the ice on their buttocks). After watching the moves of those managing to stay on their feet, I felt myself becoming more and more comfortable. Enough so, that I stopped gripping the outer ice rink wall with my right hand.

Jayla, on the other hand, was still getting the hang of it. She asked that I hold her hand and we’d just skate together until she became comfortable. Around the 10th or 11th lap around the rink, she was ready to let go of my hand and skate on her own. But she wanted me to stay close by just in case she fell.

Near the 17th or 18th lap around the rink, she was feeling good and no longer needed me to stand watch. As I skated 6 or 7 feet behind her, I saw her begin going up to others who were struggling to skate asking them, “Would you like me to help you skate?” This was a 7-year old who’d just remembered how to skate herself, and she was now offering her help to kids twice her age.

At one point, as she began to feel more confident, she saw a few people take a tumble on the ice andJayla on her own with Auntie Fawn well into the backdrop. commented, “I don’t think many of these people know how to skate. They just keep falling.” Watching as her confidence increased so quickly made me chuckle a bit inside. She was offering to help while she was still learning herself.

I immediately began thinking about this Club. I’m a marriage advocate, not a counselor. I distnguish the two greatly because a marriage advocate inspires and encourages, a counselor counsels. I am inspired by this Club as much as I hope to inspire. Many of the things I do daily in my marriage I’ve learned from members of this Club.

Each and every day, you inspire me. You encourage me to be the best wife I can be to my husband and you inspire me to love without limits. My goal is to encourage you to inspire others through your love for marriage and your husband. When you’re sitting among a group of women who begin husband-bashing, my hope is it will be your voice that rises above that situation and turns the discussion positive. It only takes one person to completely change the course of a converstion.

So today, as I’m thinking of the past 8 years with my husband, the ice skating excursion with my niece, and this Club, I am incredibly grateful for all three. You have taught me so much. Not that your intention was to teach, but my objective was to learn and thus the two go hand-in-hand. So thank you for inspiring me as I hope to inspire you.

Until tomorrow…make it a great day!

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Fawn Weaver

Founder at Happy Wives Club

Fawn Weaver is the USA Today and New York Times bestselling author of Happy Wives Club: One Woman's Worldwide Search for the Secrets of a Great Marriage, adopting the same name as the Club she founded in 2010. The Happy Wives Club community has grown to include more than 1 million women in over 110 countries around the world. She’s an investor in real estate, tech sector and lifestyle brands. When she’s not writing or working, she's happily doting over her husband of twelve years, Keith (and sometimes manages to do all three simultaneously).