8-10am
I’ve often heard the saying that people love ‘doing life’ with each other. That’s what happens in marriage. You get to ‘do life’ together and life is going to consist on an ongoing scenic journey along a very picturesque road. It involves high highs and low lows. It takes you through scenic forests and across raging rivers. Tall oaks will offer some shade and rose gardens a beautiful scent.
The trip along marriage lane will definitely take you to places you have never been before. Paul knew what he was talking about when he said, “Love is patient, love is kind!” And those are just 6 of the 58 words he penned in 1 Corinthians 13 vss 4-7 in his description of what love is. If we had to just implement patience and kindness in our marriages today and set them in concrete as ‘non-negotiables,’ marriage would improve immediately. When we do life together, the pleasant landscape is the easy part. It’s the dark, smelly parts of marriage that lead us away from patience and kindness. We become self-centred, proud, arrogant and self-seeking. We highlight the other’s faults and remember them for all time to come. We are not our spouse’s biggest fan, choosing rather to smirk at their weaknesses and smugly rejoice at their failures. We don’t protect, we don’t trust, we don’t hope, we don’t persevere.
I have seen kindness and patience in Mike and it has influenced me to be more patient and kind in return. We are a team. He loves me and I love him. We protect each other. We trust one another. We always hope the best for each other. We persevere. And marriage certainly needs lots of that!
Do we have differences? Oh! Hundreds! Do we have frustrations with each other? Absolutely. But love perseveres. Mike doesn’t try and change me and I don’t try and change him. We are the other’s biggest fan. I’m there to build him up – to remind him of all his strengths & qualities. And he does the same for me. When he is down, I’m there to encourage him to carry on. When I am down, he spurs me on. We are FAR from perfect, specially me! Even after 27 years, our marriage is (and always will be) a work in progress.
That’s the nitty gritty of marriage. But what made me think of all this in the first place was that the drain from the kitchen sink got blocked (again!). I broke the news gently to Mike the other day and yesterday he said he would unblock it. So after he got home, he changed into his overalls (just love him in those!) and he got stuck in…prodding the drain first…
When that didn’t work, we heaved the manhole cover off & he pushed the wire up from that end…
This is doing life together. Job done! Doing it ourselves saved R380! Ahh, I made the evening coffee and Mike got a …
1 Corinthians 13:
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Today, we are playing golf, so I’m getting this blog off early.
God bless you!
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂
Gratitude/Happiness Pic…I lay on the floor and did some sit ups and while I was down there, I had a different view of our dining room table, the window and the pine ceiling…hence the angle…somehow, I liked this…
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