Love and Marriage

We had a young married couples dinner and seminar at church last night.  It was really good, we learned a lot and had tons of laughs with each other.  One of the exercises we did required us to write on an index card one thing that we did not like about our spouse.  We were to write down that one thing that drove us crazy and then turn our card over so that no-one else saw what we wrote.
Of course I knew immediately what annoyed me the most about Joe so I quickly wrote it down, turned my card over and put my pen down.  When I looked at Joe, I saw him sitting there staring at his blank card in front of him.  I felt guilty that I had come up with a negative item about him so quickly and here he was still trying to think of something negative about me.  I leaned over and put my arm around him and whispered, "It is so sweet that you are having such a hard time with this."  To which he replied, "Well he said just one thing and I'm having trouble narrowing it down!"

A Woman's Prayer

Every marriage has its ups and downs. Anyone who believes otherwise is lying to themselves. Hopefully there will be many more ups than downs, but inevitably there will be times when two married people (no matter how in love they are) will have differing opinions on important topics.
If and when my husband and I have a disagreement, I try very hard to keep it between the two of us and not spread it to the world. I know that eventually things will be better between the two of us, and it is enough work just to make sure that we forgive each other for our transgressions without adding to that making sure that we retract all the things we may have said to other people about something that really wasn't even their business to begin with.

That being said, let me share with you my prayer for the past few days...

Lord, I pray for wisdom to understand my husband, love to forgive him, and patience for his moods. Because if I pray for strength, I will beat him to death!

Joe and I had quite an argument Saturday afternoon and I was so upset that until today, I had not even spoken to him. (This was probably not as much of a punishment for him as I was hoping for.) Monday during nap time I was checking my e-mail, when I saw that my friend Marsha had left a **comment on one of my blog posts. Her comment said, "Good thing he didn't give up chasing you!" I had no idea what the comment referred to since it was in response to an old post, so I went back and re-read this Thanksgiving post.

**Side note here: Thank you to all of you who leave comments. I love to read them. For those of you who have never left one, it is really easy. You just click on the link that says comments directly under the post that you would like to comment on and follow the instructions. Try it out, PLEASE!

Man, talk about being convicted by your own words! As I read the words that I had written less than two months ago, I was reminded of all the things I love about my husband and now I actually can't remember why I was so upset for the past few days. After lengthy apologies from both sides tonight, (yes it took that long even after being given a swift kick by my own words) things are now back on track.
Although it feels good for everything to be okay again, I think I will keep the prayer and print out my Thanksgiving post to read every day or so. I'm sure there will be a time when I will need both of them again!