The Four Batteries

Each week as I sit down to right my blogs, I find myself writing about marriage in some capacity. Micah and I will never claim to have it all together, but we’ve worked hard to get our marriage where it is today with counseling, retreats, other couples speaking into us, and a lot of intentional conversations. This week, I knew I wanted to share more about our rhythms but didn’t know where to begin - thankfully, my teammate mentioned a term we’ve coined: The Four Batteries.

In short, Micah and I believe we (and other couples we’ve seen, but as usual, I can’t speak directly into your relationship) have four batteries that keep us charged. In case that may sound odd… just consider categories for being “tired.” They are as follows:

Spiritual

Mental

Emotional

Physical

Being able to define each of these, and using them to communicate has SAVED us so many tiffs, laid the ground for expectations, and clearly given the other person a ‘status update’ of where we’re at. Micah and I walked a couple through pre-marital counseling from 2020-2021, and discussed the batteries in detail with them. (Hi Ben and Alex, hope it’s still helping!)

Let’s start by how we have defined each of these batteries:

Spiritual - my relationship with Jesus. We’ve used guiding questions over the years to become clearer for what this means for each of us personally. For me, my spiritual battery is full when I’m in the Bible everyday, praying, worshipping, surrounding myself with Godly women, attending church, hosting our small group, and searching for Jesus in the mundane. My spiritual battery is low when I’ve missed church, our small group can’t get together, I’m not pursuing life-giving friendships, and/or there’s a lull in me reading my Bible/hearing directly from God.

Mental - simply put, how much I’ve used my brain recently. For me, if I’ve been working a lot on our systems at home, plus my client work, plus processing my own thoughts - I’m DONE. I’m mentally exhausted. However, if I’ve been reading a lot, my clients are running smoothly, my kids are playing nicely with each other, and I’m not feeling like I’m jumping through mental hoops, I’m soaring.

Emotional - I feel like this one explains itself. If I’m emotionally drained, the likelihood that I’ve been disciplining the kids a lot, potentially in a riff with Micah or a friend, I had a hard conversation with someone, or I’m dealing with anxiety - I’m emotionally drained. If Micah and I are in a great season of our marriage, my friendships are solid, and communication is pretty good with anyone I’m in contact with, I’m good! But also, if I’ve read an emotionally heavy book, I notice my tank really dwindles.

Physical - again, pretty self-explanatory. But, for me, if I’ve worked out and had a normal work day, I’m feeling great physically! If I’ve chased my kids all day long, plus laundry, plus exercise, plus whatever else - done. My feet hurt. Goodnight.

If step one is simply identifying these batteries for better communication, step two is learning what recharges those batteries, OR learning what you can/can’t handle when a particular battery is low. Physically tired? Let me lay down, but we can talk about whatever. Mentally tired? Don’t ask me about our budget, scheduling, or anything like that… but you can tell me a funny story!

Now that we’ve defined these, imagine if you used these in your marriage, or relationships. For us, it looks like this:

“Hey babe, the kids have been a lot today. I’m emotionally and mentally drained from them, but physically I’m okay and would love to snuggle and hangout tonight.”

Or

“Hey I’ve worked out REALLY hard the last three days and I can barely walk, and work has been really hard, I could really use a night to recharge my brain and relax.”

Or

“Babe, I’ve really struggled in my relationship with God this week. Because of that, I feel off from a foundational level, but all of my other batteries are okay. There’s still an undercurrent that I’m trying to identify with God, but I’m mostly okay otherwise.”

You find what works communication wise for you. For us, this has led to not having the internal thoughts of ‘wow he seems really distant tonight. I can feel the tension radiating off of him but he says it’s not me… but I still feel like I’ve done something.’ Or ‘She seems SO anxious and snapped when I touched her earlier today. I don’t know what’s going on.’ This way of communicating with and understanding each other has mitigated SO MANY issues between us.

Side note: it has also helped us to simply say things like “Hey, tough day. If I seem mad, it’s because I’m really mad…but it has absolutely NOTHING to do with you. But if I seem tense, I am. It’s just not at you.”

The more you can lay it out there in a clear way, the better for everyone. Clear expectations, communication, and then forgiveness when necessary. We know a lot of people say communication is the key to a great marriage, we believe it’s Jesus and forgiveness. Anyone can communicate, even if you suck at it, but forgiveness is truly what pushes a marriage forward when communication breaks down. We all know we’re going to screw up at some point. The question is - Are you able to forgive and move forward?

I’ll leave you with this. Living disconnected from healthy or no community will lead to an unhealthy place. Some of you know this from firsthand experience. Also, if you don’t have God at the foundation, there’s no steady rock to lean on because we’re left with our own thoughts and feelings without a waypoint forward. So, my suggestion is to be in healthy community, spend time reading the book of John, and use clear communication with those around you.

Hoping your batteries are charged this week!