Love Dare: Day 26 Love is Responsible

Today's Dare

Take time to pray through your areas of wrongdoing.  Ask for God's forgiveness, then humble yourself enough to admit them to your spouse.  Do it sincerely and truthfully.  Ask your spouse for forgiveness as well.  No matter how they respond, make sure you cover your responsibility in love.  Even if they respond with criticism, accept it by receiving it as counsel.

   For the past week I haven't moved past Dare 26. I have had a lot of family issues that came up suddenly & everything else has been put on hold. This past week has been emotionally & spiritually draining and over-whelming for me. I haven't been focused on my dares and I haven't been focused on Gods work in me. I've had very little sleep and it's been hard to keep my mind focused on anything. I have felt a lot of guilt for this, but know that I had to take care of some other responsibilities and things I have been asked to take care of.
   This is a hard chapter for me...well, the 1st sentence of this chapter says, "Today will be hard."...That's an understatement. We all have a hard time with personal responsibility. It's hard to admit when we've made mistakes, no one wants to be wrong. That's why there are so many prideful people (like myself). Everyone points out the faults of others to justify their actions. We all have been guilty of this. That our wrong-doings are ok, because someone else has done worse in our eyes. We put blame on others and excuse ourselves. This is a very difficult thing not to do.
We need to stop passing blame and judgement and start taking responsibility for our own actions and wrong doings. If we hurt our spouse (or anyone else) in ANY way, we need to apologize and try to make it right. Even if you think you did nothing wrong. Your spouses hurt is a valid emotion they are having to something you did.
It's not about being wrong or right, it's about taking responsibility for hurting another person, either intentionally or unintentionally. We have to take our hurts to the Lord. We are all sinners and we have all hurt other people, some more than others. In 1 John:8-9 it says, "If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. However, if we confess our sins, God is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all righteousness."
 
   In this chapter it asks us if we have wronged or wounded our spouse in any way and never made it right. Part of taking responsibility is admitting when you've failed & asking for forgiveness. God wants there to be no unresolved issues between the two of you. They say, to do this sincerely you MUST swallow your pride and seek forgiveness. Ask God to convict you, where you need convicting, then get right with your spouse. You don't want small problems to keep rearing their ugly heads because you never properly worked out that issue & now it's a HUGE issue that has created lots of resentment. When that happens, it's a lot harder to work through the issue that was initially  just a "small thing" or sometimes it's big things that we never properly work through and heal from and a result is a whole lot of damage that's done because of built up anger, resentment and insecurity  about it. Both of these small and big issues have been things we haven't properly worked through in our marriage and now almost 4 years later, divorce was a heavy reality for us.
   Soooo, the bottom line of this chapter and dare is to make right what you did wrong! We have ALL hurt our spouses in some way and we need to take their hurt seriously! We are called by God to do that. To stop justifying our wrong doings by pointing out others faults and putting the blame elsewhere. None of us are perfect and we will never be and we can't expect our spouse to be either. But, if we know they are hurting, we need to be there for them and help them heal...through love.


http://www.klove.com/blog/post/2010/01/31/Love-Dare-Day-26.aspx