I remembered that Dr. Gary Chapman taught a series on the four seasons of marriage. He wasn’t the first person I heard describe marriage in the four seasons, but it is the one I remembered. I will provide a basic summary of what I recall from his videos on YouTube and book. So, I decided to use his four seasons of marriage and the things I learned about evergreen trees and why they stay evergreen through the seasons to set up our conference. 
Dr. Chapman starts his series of Seasons of Marriage with winter because he says that most couples show up in their winter season for counseling. But for our purposes, I want us to start with the season of spring because this is where most couples begin their relationship—SPRING! Oh, the season of spring is so glorious. You remember the wonder of it. It is filled with excitement and discovery as you begin to get to know each other. Your heart is open and full of optimism. Communication is so easy and flows without effort. Both of you delight in connectedness and communication.
This season is often considered the honeymoon phase. It is so much fun to watch and yes, it is a little bit sickening to watch, too! Greg and I laugh all the time when we are with our daughter and son-in-love. They are young newlyweds and whenever we are together, they are so excited about their love that when we ask them a question, they will stare at each other as they answer and not even look at us. It is hilarious! Spring is simply glorious! I started here because I want couples to remember their story and the incredible glow of spring!
The crazy cycle of marriage does not allow us to grow neatly through the seasons. They are not linear or orderly for that matter. We can be in the moment of spring and suddenly find ourselves in fall. Wait, what? How is it that spring moves so quickly to fall? What about summer? Well, with marriage it happens. It happens when we allow relationship drift to creep in. We stop communicating and we feel less connected. We might discover that we pursue things that fill our love tank, but not our spouses and suddenly we realize that we are both doing things, but they are not together. This is a critical time in our relationship because if we do not stop and find ways to connect, relate, and communicate deeper truths, we will find that our spouse can quickly become more like a stranger than our lover. We do not want to allow ourselves to drift too far into fall. If we do, we will find winter soon approaching with its cold isolation.
The only reason I am able to write this out is because we as a couple know this reality so well. Early on in our marriage Greg would travel for training and I had to stay home with the kids. I really struggled in this season because I felt so alone and isolated in parenting. It was so hard for me to not be angry at Greg when he returned because I was envious of him traveling. The irony of it is that Greg didn’t like traveling. He was envious that I got to stay home and just be with the kids. We had to work hard to communicate and not fight during this season.
