Love Dare: Day 11 &12

  I'm a little behind on the blog, so I'm doing a few days together here. 
I'm not gonna lie, this past week was a tough one. I let life situations get the best of me and lost my focus and the strength I built. I have been really hard on myself because of this, but I knew this was coming. 
That's a part of the journey. God can't mold us on the easy days...


Day 11: Love Cherishes

What need does your spouse have that you could meet today?  Can you run an errand?  Give a back rub or foot massage?  Is there housework you could help with?  Choose a gesture that says, "I cherish you" and do it with a smile.

For today's dare I knew I had to work all day, so I planned ahead and did something for him a few days prior. On that day we got to spend some alone time together and it was really nice!


http://www.klove.com/blog/post/2010/01/16/Love-Dare-Day-11.aspx

Day 12: Love Lets the Other Win

Demonstrate love by willingly choosing to give in to an area of disagreement between you and your spouse.  Tell them you are putting their preference first.

  It's funny that this is the challenge today! Haha!  This day started off bad from the start. We had planned an outting with our kids and we had started bickering from the first text sent in the morning. I thought he was coming off rude from something I said and it just snow balled from there. Our kids had a great time and I'm glad we had that opportunity to bring them out together! That is one thing I am SO grateful for! Our family time is priceless to me now because I rarely get to spend time with both of them together and it's important they see us together still as a family, because we will always be one. (Even on the days we aren't getting along as good as we'd like.) Our kids are so amazing and deserve our best! 
I had a talk with my step-daughter on our way to church the following day and told her how much I loved Daddy and that I was working really hard to get our family back together because that is what God wants me to do and talked to her about obedience and even though we may not feel like doing nice things for someone because they hurt us, it's important to forgive and be kind.
 It's hard to explain hard life lessons to a 6 year old.  Haha! 
She seemed pretty happy about it all and asked questions about the Love Dare and asked, if at the end I had to hand it in to someone and get graded on it...I told her God grades it and sees how we change. 

  Over the previous few days, I felt like everything I had been working hard toward just went down the toilet. I started letting all my fears, insecurities, hurt and resentment toward him get the best of me. All the things that went wrong in our marriage and all the hurtful things he has said to me in the past (and negative things I have said to him out of my hurt as well) were being repeated in my mind for about 3 days and I became unfocused and lost my strength.  I started losing my patience with him and relying on my own strength to get through the day, instead of relying on God's. That was a huge mistake. 
  I kept thinking, "why am I doing this? If he really loved me unconditionally, he would never give up on our marriage. Am I not good enough to fight for? This is pointless..." 
It was all like a record of wrongdoings on repeat...over and over and over again. It's hard to heal when there are so many unresolved issues that we still need to work through. Hence, why I wanted so badly for us to meet for counseling last week, but he decided not to come. I knew there were things still blocking me from moving forward on my journey. 
  Soooo, with day 12 being a disaster, I decided to do that day over again. So yesterday was a lot better than the day before, but not perfect and it didn't end how I wanted it. But that's life, right? I prayed a lot last night and again when I woke up this morning. I prayed for God to renew my spirit, help me regain focus and help me work through all my unresolved hurts. 
 The lesson today just reminded me of how passionate we both are about our opinions and we definitely still have a lot of work to do in learning how to communicate and compromise better. Patience is a never ending lesson that we will have to keep re-learning our whole lives. 


http://www.klove.com/blog/post/2010/01/17/Love-Dare-Day-12.aspx