What am I willing to sacrifice to make
my marriage stronger?
“Making sacrifices for our spouse sanctifies
our relationship…
A
godly approach to marriage will entail inconvenience and sacrifice.” 1
I
want to be transformed in the process of being sanctified.
Therefore,
I must be willing to sacrifice giving up my residual resentment
of holding onto hurts
from the past.
This
full form of forgiveness allows sanctification, illumination, and
transformation!
I could hardly wait to participate
in the class assignments this week to plunge my husband and I into a quest to
discover more about each other in our love maps!
This week we celebrated our wedding
anniversary and things most definitely didn’t go as planned. As Thursday is our
only day off each week, we try to protect it and guard it as ‘our time’.
I think of our Thursday’s as sacred
time together since we have had literally so very little time during our entire
marriage!
I am sad and embarrassed to say that
I didn’t respond with Christlike attributes when my husband’s boss called him
in to work unexpectantly on Thursday. This disrupted our plans for the day. In
turn, my thoughts and dialogue crumbled to match my emotion.
I am finding that it is easy to yank
and pull at the tops of my weeds of resentment that have built up over the
years, but it is quite a persistent challenge for me to completely uproot those
weeds from their deeply set roots.
We already knew that we would only have part of the day for us today with the corn harvest and my husband’s Church leadership meeting tonight, but I wanted our afternoon together for the activities from this week’s class assignment to cherish one another!
Guess what?
After I voiced my disappointment and got it out of my system, we counseled together and brainstormed some ways to be flexible in how we spend time on Friday night for date night/anniversary evening! The postponement only caused me to have greater anticipation and appreciation for the time we later had together!
I will continue to strive and work
toward a Zion-like relationship. In a humbled state, with a softened, broken
heart, I can make one small baby step toward learning to turn my weaknesses
into strengths.
Each day, each hour, each moment, I
can choose whether I will speak and act with a Christlike nature, having
charity towards my beloved spouse.
Some
days, I can only take it one moment at a time. Zion, what a beautiful long term
goal!
After a week of completing John
Gottman’s exercises in creating our Love Maps and deepening our Fondness and Admiration,
I feel very blessed that my husband and I are connected through emotional
intelligence by knowing each other intimately.2
 |
| We really do have a strong, positive relationship! |
We know
each other’s dreams and worries…
we even
know each other’s fondest unrealized dreams.
We are
beginning to become more and more unified and we are showing more and more charity
towards one another!
We actually
are creating a Zion-like marriage, by becoming pure in heart.3
“And
the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in
righteousness.”4
This truly is the type of marriage we are building, one day at a time!
And
that makes our home a little bit of heaven on earth!
1.
H. Wallace Goddard, PhD, “Drawing
Heaven into Your Marriage”, 2009. 37 - 52.
2.
John M. Gottman, PhD, “The Seven
Principles for Making Marriage Work”, 1999.
3.
Doctrine and Covenants 97:21.
4.
Moses 7:18
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