Today's Dare
Recognize that your spouse is integral to your future success. Let them know today that you desire to include them in your upcoming decisions, and that you need their perspective and counsel. If you have ignored their input in the past, admit your oversight and ask them to forgive you.There is a few sentences in this chapter that stood out to me that I kept reading over and over, "Love must be willing to act alone if necessary, it is always better when it's not just a solo performance. Love can function on its own if there is no other way, but there is a "more excellent way" (1 Corinthians 12:31).
This tells me that marriage should be 100/100, both in complety! But sometimes it's 60/40 or 80/20. When one partner is weak, the other NEEDS TO BE STRONGER. We are called to lift up and encourage one another, especially if one is struggling for any reason. "Two are better than one because they have a good return on their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion."(Ecc. 4:9)
Jesus lifts us up and carries us when we fall, our spouse is called to do the same. We are imperfect people and imperfect spouses. Marrying someone means you are accepting their imperfections and promising to help them through any struggle. Not push them away when those struggles or disagreements happen.
We all have differences and in our marriages. Some more than others. Our differences can compliment each other if we let them or tear us further and further apart. We each have things we do better than our spouse and we can't let our differences cause conflict. We need to learn to embrace our spouses gifts that are different than our own. (This can be incredibly difficult, especially for an OCD person like myself that is used to having things done a certain way. Haha!)
I have been guilty of not taking my husbands advice and ignoring his input so many times! I know that when we were together, he only wanted the best for me and our family. Sometimes, I didn't understand his logic for something and went the other way. That was wrong of me and God calls me to have total trust in my husband as the leader of our family. I guess sometimes you just have to learn things through your own mistakes and do better next time.
We have had so many wasted opportunities in our marriage to embrace the others "gifts" and wasted opportunities to spend time with one another as a family because we can't get past those differences and we allow the hurt and pride to take over. But it takes both husband and wife to work together to progress forward in the marriage. You have to BOTH agree to never give up on one another, no matter what. Marriage will never sustain through all the stress and hardships that life throws at you if one of you gives up when it gets tough, even when "tough" lasts for a few years. Life is tough and it's never blissful 100%.
Just because we haven't complimented our spouses differences in the past and embraced their gifts, doesn't mean we can't change and make the effort to do it- starting from today! It's a lifelong journey of learning and re-learning. Our God is a God of 2nd chances and renewal, we just have to be open to His healing!
http://www.klove.com/BLOG/post/2010/02/07/Love-Dare-Day-33.aspx
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