I submit to you a new blog series over the next 40 days! Let's call it "40 Day Love Fest"....cause it sounds cool.
John is forbidden from reading my blog for what I have told him is an indefinite amount of time, because I've recently decided to do the Love Dare book, and he doesn't know about it.
My commitment is to do the dare each day for 40 days, and write a short post each day for you about how it's going.
I will be completely honest. Our marriage will not look very good at times. And I will show you just how immature I am. (all of which makes you more excited to read it I'm sure...come on! Those gossip columns don't sell like hot cakes for no reason!)
Here we go....pack a lunch.
Day one:
The Dare: For the next day resolve to demonstrate patience and to say nothing negative to your spouse at all. If the temptation arises, choose not to say anything.
Based on the verse: "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." Ephesians 4:2
Point that impacted me most: "Patience helps you give your spouse permission to be human. It understand that everyone fails. When a mistake is made, it chooses to give them more time than they deserve to correct it."
Wow!
So...it actually hasn't been as hard as I thought. But I admit I haven't had serious annoying things come up that have pushed it as much as I thought. I did realize though how often I am the one that starts fights. I don't know if you knew this about me, but I tend to have a chronic case of diarrhea mouth. (which is a disgusting but completely fitting example of when you don't even control what you say at all and crap comes out way too freely). So today when Lincoln was bossing me around and I said "Lincoln, mommy doesn't obey you...who do I obey?" and Lincoln responded with "Daddy" to which john replied "you got that right" and I felt the urge to let out a big fat "Yeah Right--like that's ever gonna happen" but I instead responded with "No, mommy obeys God." (I think I actually made an audible "mmm"...when the words were getting ready to jump out of my mouth and I was trying to stop them.) Clearly this is a funny example of something John said (he wasn't being serious--so it wasn't too hard to keep my mouth shut).
But there has been more than one time where I've felt myself want to say something that I know would have snowballed into a huge eruption, and I chose instead to not say it...and things coasted along.
All that to say that so far...it's been a good thing for me. But, did I mention it's only 2:00pm?
2 comments:
Oh you'll love doing this! I finished going through it about a month ago, without Aaron knowing. It was amazing. I showed him the book at the end (we had watched the movie together, previously), and now we both have it at the kitchen table to continue reading as a devotional (I would say daily, but sometimes Conrad's breakfasts don't go as smoothly as planned...) :)
We have the movie Fireproof just waiting to be watched. I am looking forward to it based on all the interesting, encouraging, and uplifting things I have heard about it (and ya gotta love Kirk Cameron). :-)
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