Love Dare: Day 5 Love is Not Rude

 

Today's Dare

Ask your spouse to tell you three things that cause him or her to be uncomfortable or irritated with you.  You must do so without attacking them or justifying your behavior.  This is from their perspective only.

  I gave my husband this question on a piece of paper a few days ago so he would have time to honestly think about it and return it to me when it was time for me to read it on Day 5.....let me tell you, the last thing I want to hear is what I'm doing wrong in his eyes and why I'm making him uncomfortable and irritated. 

His answers were hard to read. 

  I knew that God was preparing me for them though over the last few days and they were going to be things I really needed to focus on and take honestly to heart. They were things he has voiced to me in the past, but out of anger and I didn't want to hear it and it wasn't said in a context of loving change. 
I think that makes a HUGE difference! You need to be READY to hear something to have change actually come from it. Otherwise, it's just in one ear and out the other because its said to you in the middle of an argument or a non-loving confrontation of some sort. 

  Over the last week especially, God has been working hard on my heart. Re-shaping it and rebuilding. I actually had a good conversation with him yesterday. Well, it was kinda just me telling him what I'm experiencing on this journey and understanding why God is bringing us through this and him listening. There was no argument, so I would call that a step forward in the right direction. Talking and listening. 
  The Lord has been throwing things at me constantly throughout the days to remind me of His work and blessings, to learn to give Him constant glory in it all. Even with the struggles. I honestly have so many reasons to just give up, really I do. Being rejected daily, feeling I'm not good enough and that I have majorly failed. Feeling completely unloved and that I should just let go and move on.
But God pulls on my heart and reminds me that I have so many more reasons to FIGHT! 
To NOT GIVE UP!

     My husband has shared with me that his faith has definitely suffered because of the struggles in our marriage. He used to have such an amazing relationship with God that it literally beamed out of him everywhere he went! He shined so brightly with his intimate relationship with God. It was one of the main reasons I married him! I told him I used to be so jealous of that, because I wanted that too, but I didn't understand the sacrifice and surrender it takes to get to that point.
     I feel like our roles have sort of reversed now. My faith is growing stronger and stronger each day and he is in a dark place. I feel immense guilt for this! I am partly responsible for being a part of taking a man, so strong in his faith to so low and constantly feeling like he can't move forward because the waves of life's problems are constantly crashing down on him, where he's not able to breathe and wants to give up completely. Now making him angry with me...and with God. That was not what i was suppose to do as his wife and in this I feel like I majorly failed. I am to lift him up and support him always. I didn't do these on a consistent basis and we were not united as we should have been.
I told him that I know this process is for him, just as much as it is for me.
  Another thing I'm learning is that in a marriage, you are both never putting in the same amount of work at the same time. It's rarely 50/50. Most of the time its always one doing more work than the other. We need to carry the other when they are weak because that's what Christ does for each of us, it's what he asks us to do for others, especially our spouses...

  It comes down to the major lesson that God wants us to experience with our spouses....
Sacrificial love..
Learn to love, expending NOTHING in return.
Only then can we truly grasp Christ's love for us.

God cannot remold us until he breaks us COMPLETELY down first.


http://www.klove.com/blog/post/2010/01/10/Love-Dare-Day-5.aspx