When Was the Last Time You Tried to Change Your Spouse?
Insights:
When was the last time you tried to change your spouse or tell them that they were wrong? When was the last time you did not want to deal with your spouse because they were so different from you?
Nancy and I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to change each other. Yes, we did that a lot more in the first years of our marriage, but it can still happen today. There are things that we do not agree on and there probably always will be. Today we handle these differences differently.
This is what we have learned:
We have differences.
God created us with differences.
Those differences will either unite us or pull us apart.
With those three affirmations, our next step was trying to figure out how to let our differences connect us and grow our marriage. We realized that neither one of us had created space in our individual life for the other’s differences. Neither one of us was embracing the differences of the other. That needed to change.
Imagine your heart as the part of you that embraces or rejects your spouse. Sometimes we can close our heart to our spouse and build a wall around it. We focus on all the negative things about our spouse. Then there are times when we open our heart and focus on all the good things about our spouse. We stop looking at our spouse’s differences in a negative way, embrace them and create space for our spouse to be who God created them to be. When I create space in my heart for Nancy, I look at our differences in a different light. I can let her be who she is and not try to change her. I can focus on the positive in our differences and realize how boring our marriage would be if we were exactly alike.
Today with God’s help, I have created space for Nancy - not just the things I love about her but all of who she is. As we have both learned to do that, we both have experienced freedom. It is not our job to change or fix each other. That is the job of the Holy Spirit. Our job is to love and embrace and accept each other as the imperfect gift God has given us to do life with.
Questions For You To Think About:
Today, is your heart open or closed to your spouse?
Are you creating space in your heart for your spouse?
Are you embracing every difference you see in your spouse?
2 Minute Drill
In this short clip from my interview with John and Stacy Eldredge, they talk about how their past stories impacted the early years of their marriage.
Quick Hits:
This Week’s Quote: Steve Harvey was born on January 17, 1957 in West Virginia where his dad was a coal miner. As a child, Steve had a severe stuttering problem which he later overcame. Before turning to comedy as his career, Steve was a boxer, an autoworker, an insurance salesman, a carpet cleaner, and a mail carrier. In the 1980’s Steve was homeless for three years. With all of that in his background, Steve Harvey is known today as a comedian, a TV host, a producer and an actor. He has won many awards including being a 14 time winner of the NAACP Image Award.
“Use adversity to your advantage. Don’t let it stop you.”
“It never ceases to amaze me how much people talk about relationships, think about them, read about them, ask about them - even get in them without a clue how to move them forward.”
This Week’s Trivia Question: Which band wrote songs that also served as the theme songs for CSI, CSI: NY, and CSI: Miami respectively?
This Week’s Did You Know: Lobsters have clear blood. A lobster's shell changes color when exposed to heat and their blood is initially clear and turns blue when it hits oxygen.
Something To Talk About! Would you rather have 100 duck-sized elephants or 1 elephant-sized duck?
Awesome Marriage This week
AM Podcast: Do Christians Have To Stay Married No Matter What?
The Awesome Marriage Podcast is back with new episodes in the new year and we are starting by digging into a question we are often asked.
AM YouTube Channel: “Boundaries To Help Restore Broken Trust”
Rebuilding trust is difficult. Do healthy boundaries help?
AM YouVersion Plan: Marriage On Hold: Kids
This plan deals with a common problem. Where does our marriage fit when we are raising kids? LifeChurch Pastor Tony Doland and his wife Natalie join me as we look at this issue.
This Week’s Trivia Answer:
The Who!