I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what couples should know before they get married. For one thing, I’ve been making some updates and revisions on FamilyLife’s Preparing for Marriage workbook, which is used by thousands of pastors and counselors around the country each year for premarriage counseling. In addition, my younger daughter, Missy, was married recently. As a parent you think of all the things you should tell a child before marriage, and nothing ever seems to be enough.

#1: Marriage is not all about you. It’s not about your happiness and self-fulfillment. It’s not about getting your needs met. It’s about going through life together and serving God together and serving each other. It’s about establishing a family. It’s about committing your lives to each other even though you may be very different in 10, 20, or 40 years from the people you are now.

#2: You are about to learn a painful lesson—you are both very selfish people. This may be difficult to comprehend during the happy and hazy days of courtship, but it’s true, and it shocks many couples during their first years of marriage. It’s important to know this revelation of selfishness is coming, because then you can make adjustments for it, and you will be a lot better off.

#3: The person you love the most is also the person who can hurt you the deepest. That’s the risk and pain of marriage. And the beauty of marriage is working through your hurt and pain and resolving your conflicts and solving your problems.

#4: You can’t make it work on your own. It’s obvious that marriage is difficult—just look at how many couples today end in divorce. This is why it’s so critical to center your lives and your marriage on the God who created marriage. To make your marriage last for a lifetime, you need to rely on God for the power and love and strength and wisdom and endurance you need.

#5: Never stop enjoying each other. Always remember that marriage is an incredible gift to be enjoyed. Ecclesiastes 9:9 says, “Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which He has given to you under the sun; for this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun.”

Enjoy the little things of life with your spouse: the food you enjoy together at home or in restaurants … the movies you like … the little inside jokes nobody else understands except for you … the times you make each other laugh … the games you play together.

And focus on making memories together: Plan special dates and weekend getaways. Make sure you reserve time for each other after you have kids. When you are old, you won’t look back and remember how great it was to buy that new furniture or watch that great show on television. You’re going to remember what you did together and saw together and created together.

How about you? If you were talking to an engaged couple about what you wish you’d known before marriage, what would you say? Write down your thoughts in the comments section below.

Many wonder why there are more women shopping in any given natural foods store at a certain moment than there are men. Some questions that are asked are whether or not this is due to the shop being a natural foods store or whether it is an indication that women are still doing the majority of the grocery shopping. While both positions can certainly be argued, most women will tell you that not only do they do more of the grocery shopping, but also that they are much more concerned about healthy lifestyles than the men they know are. In the 1980s, having a healthy lifestyle meant doing aerobics; in the 21st century it means doing yoga and eating organic foods.

Women are so concerned with this type of a healthy lifestyle because they read much more about health and fitness than men do. Of course, these are generalizations and there are plenty of exceptions to the rules, but in general, as can be predicted by counting the number of women’s health and fitness magazines and the corresponding number of men’s health and fitness magazines, more women are reading about this topic than men are. Of course, in today’s day and age, just as many people are reading online as are reading in magazines (perhaps even more) but many websites for health and fitness are more geared toward female readers.

Most mothers consider taking care of their families in a healthy way a very high priority. In order to do this, they want to be informed about what all those things that are now being added to the majority of mainstream prepared foods (namely hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup). In order to choose the best foods for our own body and for the people around us, one must be able to analyze the ingredients on the back of the box. One way to do this is to go through the regular supermarket reading the lists of ingredients on every jar and box that you might purchase.

Perhaps an easier solution is to shop at a natural foods store, where they don’t sell foods that have hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup in them. More and more women are turning to this alternative because although the food in such shops is more expensive than mainstream food stores, it can not be denied that obesity and diabetes are becoming frighteningly common in the US.

It seems that more women than men are concerned about this fact and looking to find ways to fight it. Of course, eating organic foods is not the only answer, other lifestyle factors have to be addressed too, namely exercise and one’s general activity level (i.e. do you spend your evenings in front of the television or in the garden?). All of these factors have women hopping to attention and trying to find solutions through organic food stores, yoga and maybe even a little meditation.