Equip your Marriage

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Two Lists Your Marriage Needs This Christmas

Posted on by Posted in Marriage Booster .
Tis the season of lists! You have wish lists, shopping lists, and TODO lists to manage. Santa is keeping track of a naughty list and a nice list. But there are two more lists that your marriage needs this season.
 
Two lists your marriage needs this Christmas
1. Truths I know about my mate
2. Lies I believe about my spouse
 
There’s a battle being waged for your marriage every day. On your best day, it’s an innocuous battle in which you must decide to give your mate the benefit of the doubt and interpret his or her thoughts and actions in the most gracious way possible. On your worst day, your marriage is under a full-scale spiritual attack. In response, you need to equip your marriage with two essential lists.

List #1 – Truths I know about my mate

Your marriageJesus declares the import of truth in John 8:32 – “Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Truth is the cornerstone upon which the success of your marriage must be grounded. However, it’s likely that neither you nor your mate have then time to identify and consciously embrace the truth you know exists.
 
As a first step in that direction, ask yourself a few questions:
  • What do you objectively know to be true regarding your life partner?
  • What sort of person is he or she?
  • Think about your mate’s character and values.

Reflect on the answers to these questions. Now build a list of objective truths that describe this unique and gifted person that blesses your life daily.

List #2 – Lies I believe about my spouse

We all have lies and half-truths that we believe. We repeat ideas to ourselves so much that we come to believe them. Sometimes these are fairly harmless myths. In other cases these are dangerous lies that distort your perspective, poisoning the relationship.
 
Common lies in marriage:
  • My mate doesn’t care.
  • When my spouse says or does something hurtful, it’s not an accident.
  • He or she doesn’t appreciate me.
  • I’m the only one actually making an effort.
  • My spouse can never change.
  • My partner is intentionally avoiding me or withholding love from me.
  • And etc.

Common elements in lies we propagate:

  • Question the motive
  • Malign the intent
  • Exaggerate the attitude
  • Assume the emotions
  • Repeat a single word/statement to give it more punch
  • Read between lines that aren’t there
  • Put words in the other’s mouth
  • Go to extremes

At the core of all of these lies you will find an assumption that your spouse intended to hurt you and/or doesn’t care or notice you have been hurt. Furthermore, you’ll find an underlying fear that your needs will continue to go unmet and that the relationship can’t or won’t improve.

The Power of Truth

On your best day, what do you know to be true about your husband or wife? What prevents you from living in the bliss of that knowledge? An internal dialogue crammed full of doubts, half-truths, assumptions, and fears. These manifest themselves as lies that you repeat to yourself often enough that you begin to believe them. On rougher, more difficult days when you are tired and stressed, you’ll readily reach for one or more lies to use as a filter for actions and words. Suddenly, you’ve gone from optimism and clarity to a clouded mess of bitterness and growing resentment grounded in assumptions and a steady mental diet of lies.
 
How do you break this crazy cycle? Hold tight to Truth and reject the lies. Earlier this year we shared Five Lies that Can Wreck your Marriage along with five truths to counter-act those lies. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that in order to be victorious in spiritual warfare, they must “take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ” (II Corinthians 10:3-5).
 
Truth counteracts lies the same way that light counteracts darkness. You and your spouse must each take ownership of your respective thought lives and battle against the temptation to entertain these lies and pessimistic assumptions.

Challenge

Let’s put all of this into action with a hands-on challenge:
 
  • Assume the best about your spouse in every situation for one weekCommitment – Assume the best about your mate in every situation. Every action. Every word. Every non-verbal expression. Interpret every point of contact in the most gracious way possible. When something seems off, assume that you misunderstood rather than assuming that your spouse intended harm.
  • Duration – Try the challenge for one week. Next, stretch the challenge out to two weeks. Eventually work your way up to a full month.
  • Accountability – Journal daily regarding how the challenge is going. Also, identify at least one person that can hold you accountable to the challenge. Pray together and connect periodically to help keep you on track.
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What Jello Taught Me About Conflict Resolution

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Conflict_Resolution_Jello-tallWorking with jello offers three important insights into conflict resolution in relationships.

  1. Give it time to cool off, don’t mess with it when it’s still hot.
  2. Stop trying to nail it to the wall, some things can’t be solved by brute force.
  3. Don’t forget it in the fridge, at some point the issues must be dealt with.
Conflict resolution is tricky. People often feel like they can’t win. If you attempt to fix it immediately, you get your face bitten off. But if you do nothing, you run the risk of sending the message you don’t care. Aye Carumba! It’s enough to make you toss your hands in the air and give up! Allow me to share three lessons jello has taught me about conflict resolution and offer you a simple strategy for addressing conflict without the extremes of pushiness or apathy.
 
Lesson #1: Give it time to cool off – You might try to fix the problem immediately. That’s a big no-no. Give the situation and everyone’s emotions an opportunity to cool down. For some people, it may be your natural posture to give things time to simmer down, but for others, this will be extremely challenging. Please note, “giving it time to cool off” does not mean that you are allowed to make a parting shot, fire a verbal arrow, or make some melodramatic overture as you exit the room. It means that you kindly and lovingly retreat from the conflict to allow the emotional heat to dissipate.
 
Lesson #2: Stop trying to nail it to the wall – Some try to force resolution to occur in an effort to tie everything up in a neat little bow. You can’t nail jello to a wall and even once its cooled you have to be patient with it. It jiggles, slides, and breaks into small pieces on your plate that are hard to scoop up. Resolving conflict is much the same. You have to flexible and patient. Reject any vestiges of rigidity or expectations about how quickly conflict should be resolved. Prepare yourself for a thorough, relentless, but loving endeavor to find and scoop all the remnants of pain and conflict that are left on your plate. It won’t be easy, but you’ll enjoy your jello a lot more than if you try and cut it with a knife and eat it with a fork the way you might a pork chop. 
 
Lesson #3 – Don’t forget it in the fridge –  Once you’ve learned to let it cool off and to be patient with the process of resolution, you must fight the tendency to let it sit on ice indefinitely. The storm has calmed and it appears that we have all moved on with out lives. Why would I want to drag that old issue back out? After all, we’ve finished dinner and we didn’t even notice the jello never made it to the table! The whole thing seems harmless until you’re looking for some yogurt in two weeks and you inadvertently knock the jello off the shelf and it spills all over the floor. Or perhaps you are digging through the fridge at just the WRONG time. “Oh, I remember this argument…” However it comes up, the unresolved issues never vanish. They merely wait to be rediscovered and wreck another perfectly good meal. It’s better to pull out the conflict on your own timetable and lovingly work the issues all the way through to resolution.
 

A simple strategy for handling conflict.

How do you address a conflict without hitting the extremes? If you are too quick to fix things, you run the risk of aggravating your spouse, friend, or co-worker. If you wait too long you run the risk of not remembering the issue(s) or of being blind-sided by the residual pain and frustration. 
 
Take the conflict at hand and break it into two fundamental categories – squishy (the emotional stuff) and crunchy (the logical stuff). You can’t force squishy things and you can’t ignore crunchy ones. 
 
Step #1 – Lovingly apply a dollop of truth and love to the affected squishy aspects of the conflict. Then step away and allow that truth sufficient time to soak in.
  • Example 1 – “I apologize for being insensitive. Your friendship means the world to me and I didn’t mean to be a brute. Let’s talk about it later when we both cool off.”
  • Example 2 – “I’ve clearly miscommunicated here. Please know I love you dearly and I had no intention of saying anything hurtful. I’d love to talk through the details after we put the kids to bed or perhaps tomorrow.”
Dollop and soak. Don’t force it and don’t try and fix it. Avoid the desire for a quick resolution. Squishy issues of the heart need time to absorb new information and change feelings. Allow time for the truth and love you have applied to run it’s course and seep into the other person’s heart.
 
Step #2 – At some point the two of you will need to roll up your sleeves and get to work. The two of you have pain to unpack and a connection to rebuild.
  • Example 1 – “Remember the other day when you stole my Cheetos and called me a baby for crying about it? I was hoping we could talk through that and clear the air a bit.”
  • Example 2 – “I feel like we need to talk about our miscommunication earlier today. It’s important to me that we throw fewer sharp objects at each other and work as a team to avoid cuts and bruises.”
Unpack and rebuild. Don’t ignore the tough issues. Crunchy things tend to be resilient and stick around for months of even years. If you don’t unpack the pain and rebuild the lines of communication, you run the risk of being surprised by the pain like stepping on a LEGO in the middle of the night.
 
Next time an important relationship experiences conflict, remember the simple lessons jello teaches us. Let it cool off, don’t try and nail it or force it, but also be sure you don’t forget about it. Instead, respond immediately with truth and love (dollop and soak) followed later by a collaborative effort to solve the fundamental issues (unpack and rebuild). Relationships are both squishy and crunchy. Respond accordingly.
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Six ways to equip your mind for spiritual warfare

Posted on by Posted in Marriage Booster .

Spiritual warfare — it’s all in your head. How you feel about good days. What you think when you have bad days. Your response to circumstances is a choice. It’s all in your head. You can choose to be a glass half-full or a glass half-empty type of person. You can choose to look at things in the best possible way or find some reason to be grumpy. It’s all in your head. The apostle Paul recognized this simple truth centuries ago:

“I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know both how to have a little, and I know how to have a lot. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being content — whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need.” – Philippians 4:11-12
In today’s post we’ll take a look at what a movie taught me about marriage, six ways to equip your mind for spiritual warfafe, and the importance of trusting God’s path for your marriage and your life.

The movie Inception says that its all in our headsWhat a movie taught me about marriage

Leonardo DiCaprio taught me the importance of mastering your own mind in the blockbuster movie, Inception. In that film, characters embark upon a mental odyssey by experiencing layers of dreams (dreams within dreams) to unlock information and explore new possibilities. Unfortunately, some characters lose a grip on what is real and what is mere fiction. As DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, explains: “Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” The solution, according to Cobb, is to maintain a totem (a unique object with a particular size, shape, and weight) which keeps you grounded, knowing which world you are in.
 
Are our lives so very different? Don’t we have trouble maintaining our grasp on what is real and what is an illusion? The enemy is cunning and will attempt to distort your view of reality. Paul cautions the church at Corinth:
“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” – II Corinthians 10:3-5 
Indeed, we must be on guard and “take every thought captive” by testing it’s origin. Is this thought holy or harmful? Is this thought consistent with what I know to be TRUTH? It’s a mental battlefield out there and it’s so very easy to run away with our thoughts.
 

Six ways to equip your mind for spiritual warfare

In our up-coming book, The Phoenix Marriage: God creates beauty out of ashes, I acknowledge the importance of preparing yourself to combat the enemy’s lies against your marriage:
“The renewal of your relationship depends upon your ability to reject the lies of the enemy and hold firm to the truths of your marriage.” – Kyle Gabhart, The Phoenix Marriage p125
In chapter 8, I go on to describe the value of creating reminders or cues to maintain a vigilant grasp on the reality of spiritual warfare. I offer six ways to establish mental reminders:The Phoenix Marriage - God creates beauty out of ashes
  1. Memorize scripture.
  2. Keep scripture and encouraging quotes on note cards and keep them in places you will see them.
  3. Christians have used physical reminders for centuries (prayer beads, prayer bracelets, some even feel comfortable getting tattoos).
  4. Set visual reminders such as pictures of armor or weapons.
  5. Find encouraging songs and listen to them repeatedly.
  6. Engage social media for reminders and tips. Join marriage-building Facebook groups and follow pro-marriage feeds on Twitter.
Victory goes to the prepared. If you are going to withstand the constant onslaught of doubts and fears that will invade your brain, you must feed your mind a steady diet of optimism and biblical wisdom.

Trust your path

Hindsight is not always 20/20. Sometimes as you reflect on past decisions, you start to second-guess yourself. Distanced from the particular circumstances, facts, and emotions you felt at the time, you can begin to question your own judgement. So when you hit a rough season in your marriage, it can be easy to think back and be unable to clearly recall why the two of you got together to begin with. Or you might reflect on other pivotal points in your relationship and lose confidence that it was handled properly or even fairly.
 
To survive the mental quagmire, you have to trust the path that God has walked you down. 
  • Trust God’s ability to bring you the right person, no matter how long ago it was. (Proverbs 18:22, Psalm 103:19, Matthew 10:29)
  • Trust your decision to marry that person. (Proverbs 3:6)
  • Trust that any difficult times the two of you experience are part of God’s refinement of you both through your marriage. (Psalm 66:10-12, James 1:2-5)
  • Trust that God has a plan and a purpose for your marriage. (Romans 8:28, Jeremiah 29:11)
EYM_Podcast_FeaturedThumbnailIn this week’s podcast, The Creep and The Cougar, Tammy and I reflect on our own courtship. We note how God brought us together and confirmed his intention for us to be together. When we met years ago, this was crystal clear! It was so obvious how God was moving in our hearts and lives. But as we point out in the podcast, we lost sight of these truths as our relationship stretched from weeks to months to years. In time, it became easy to lose sight of these fundamentals and start to question God’s plan. Holding firm to the path God set you on and trusting in that path and that process is essential. When patience wanes and stress is applied in your relationship, you have to lean on God’s wisdom, not your own.
 

It’s all in your head

As believers and as spouses, we are called into a mental battlefield. Each of us must daily fight to prioritize God and prioritize our spouse. Establish mental cues to remind yourself what is reality and what is fiction. Trust the path that God has set you both on following. Finally, reflect upon how and why God put you both together in the first place. Celebrate that shared history and prepare to battle daily with your thoughts. It’s all in your head and in your mate’s head. Speak life into one another daily and find comfort and peace at the feet of your loving father.
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I Stopped Saying Two Words to My Wife And You Should Too

Posted on by Posted in Marriage Booster .

Communication is an essential part of any successful relationship and marriage is no exception. Normally, I tend to recognize communication elements that I need to add to how I communicate with my wife. But sometimes, it’s just as important to recognize a bad habit and stop doing it. In this case, I have made a conscious decision to stop saying two words to my wife – I’m sorry.

 

Words Matter

It’s easy to get lazy with your word choice. There’s a tendency to flippantly use words without consideration for what they really mean. In the 1987 romantic comedy, The Princess Bride, Vizzini repeatedly uses the word “inconceivable” when things don’t work out the way that he intended. Each time, Inigo Montoya replies with the line: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means.”

Sloppy word choice is annoying when talking with an acquaintance. It’s problematic when interacting with a friend. But it can be poisonous for a marriage…

[This is an excerpt from a guest post over at Husband Revolution. You can read the full article there.]

 

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I Ruined My Marriage and So Can You!

Posted on by Posted in Marriage Booster, Marriage Renewal .

Some people think it’s hard to mess up a relationship, but it’s actually quite simple. I’m going to share with you the secret to screwing up your marriage so that you can learn to be a fool just like me!

OK. Are you ready for the secret? Here it comes…..Make it all about you.

Pretty simple, huh? It might seem simple, but if you are really going to fully commit to selfishness in your marriage, you’ll need to put some effort into it.

How to Ruin Your Marriage in Five Simple Steps

Checklist to followSelfishness requires complete and total commitment to yourself above all else. Your entire relationship must revolve around YOU.

  1. Your needs – Focus on your own needs and what you are or are not getting out of the relationship.
  2. Your pride – Wait for your mate to take the first step in addressing problems or resolving conflict.
  3. Your priorities – Invest most of your time and energy in work, kids, friends, hobbies, and “me” time.
  4. Your perspective – Make assumptions. Lots and lots of assumptions.
  5. Your vanity – Compare your spouse and your marriage to others.

At every turn, find a way to view your mate and your marriage through the lens of how it directly impacts you and your ideas. The more intently you can focus on yourself, the quicker you’ll be able to ruin your once promising union. I should know, because I did all five of these and I very nearly destroyed my marriage as a result.

Step 1 – Your Needs

We are all born with needs. Needs are inherently good. But the trouble with marriage is that for it to be successful you have to die to yourself and put your mate’s needs above your own! You have to invest time and energy serving your husband or wife rather than worrying about how to get your own needs met. The irony, of course, is that when both of you do this, your respective needs get fulfilled beyond your wildest comprehension. But that requires a lot of time and sacrifice. The quicker path to meeting your needs is to beg, nag, complain, and manipulate your spouse into begrudgingly satisfying your desire for time and attention.

Step 2 – Your Pride

If you’ve been married for more than a week, you no doubt have uncovered areas of conflict. There are things that each of you do which frustrate and annoy the other. Friction inevitably arises, leaving you with a choice. You can either take the initiative in resolving the conflict or indignantly wait for your spouse to extend an olive branch. Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, author of Love and Respect, suggests that the only way to break this inevitable stalemate is for “the more mature one to act first.” But of course, that would require accepting some measure of fault in the matter. That sort of humility and vulnerability could easily lead to a closer bond in your marriage. If, on the other hand, you’re aiming to ruin your marriage, I recommend that you stand your ground. Wait for your mate to take the initiative and admit fault first. 

It's all about you.Step 3 – Your Priorities

Time is a precious commodity. Every one of us has vital choices to make daily in the way we spend our time. If you want a surefire way to chip away at your marital bonds and sap your relationship of joy, you need only move your marriage to the bottom of the priority stack. Work is essential and gratifying. Children are the future. Friends are irreplaceable. And hobbies are the only way to maintain your sanity! Whatever time or energy you have left over should be more than enough for your spouse to survive on. Besides, you don’t want to be one of those clingy, co-dependent couples. Yuck!

Step 4 – Your Perspective

Perspective is a marvelous thing. With it, we have the power to color any action or statement with all manner of meaning and implication. In fact, we naturally apply our own perspective to every piece of information that we absorb. Since you share so much for your life with your spouse, it is especially important to pay attention to what assumptions you make and what motivations you attach to his or her actions. If you aren’t careful, you might find yourself assuming the best about them. You might even extend grace and understanding to your mate. Be careful. If you want to sow seeds of bitterness and resentment in your relationship, you need to assume the worst case scenario whenever possible. Make sure and twist your mate’s words and actions into the worst possible light. After all, your perspective and your feelings are what truly matter.

Step 5 – Your Vanity

Remember when you got married? Remember how perfect and amazing your spouse seemed at the time? Well, it’s only a matter of time before you began to recognize his or her flaws. Which is a pretty raw deal because you deserve nothing but the best! Another key ingredient in dissolving the joy in your marriage is to constantly compare. Other couples seem happier, exercise together more, go on better vacations, have more fun with their kids, earn more money, are skinnier, tanner, and just all around better. Their grass is super green. Why can’t your marital grass be really green too? If you want to cripple your intimacy, take note of all the ways your spouse and your marriage don’t measure up to your ideal. Memorize the list and recite it to yourself. Next, complain frequently to your devoted mate about things on that list. Before you know it, your marriage will be headed for a tailspin!

Rome Wasn’t Destroyed in a Day

Doing any one or even all of these five steps might not demolish your marriage over night. In some cases, it may take years for your selfishness to erode the fiber of your marriage. But don’t give up! Keep making assumptions. Never stop comparing your spouse or your marriage to others. Most of all, constantly turn the focus of your relationship on yourself, taking every measure necessary to meet your needs at all costs. Your marriage may be resilient, but just keep chipping away at it. Enough selfishness and sin can wear down even the strongest bond. Your marriage can be a failure – one selfish day at a time.

 

 

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Eight rules for rebuilding trust in your marriage

Posted on by Posted in Marriage Renewal, Our Story .

Trust. Its the cornerstone of any relationship. It holds soldiers together in foxholes and knits hearts together in marriage. The bond of trust is sacred and precious – until it’s broken.

What do you do when you cross the line that you swore you would never cross? How do you continue in a relationship when your spouse breaks your heart, trampling on the vows he or she promised to keep? Whether the result of infidelity, abuse, addiction, or neglect, the loss of trust in a relationship is devastating. And while the prospect of a bright future together looks dim, there is hope.

Rebuilding trust in your marriage is hard, because wounds heal crooked. My wife and I are 18 months into our own journey of renewal. Along the way, we have been blessed to walk alongside other couples. Some are further down the road than we are and others have just recently begun their renewal process. Through our renewal process and that of others, we have gleaned eight rules for rebuilding trust in your marriage.

Eight Rules for Rebuilding Trust in Your Marriage

Many of these rules apply equally to both parties, while others are specific to the spouse that is working to rebuild the trust (the trust healer) or the spouse that is learning to trust again (the hurting spouse).

  1. Be patient (both of you) – There is no timetable for rebuilding trust. Forgiveness and trust are very personal matters and require a sufficient and unknown amount of time to accomplish. Don’t rush this process.
  2. Be open (both of you) – Communicate early (before a problem can escalate) and often (as frequently as an issue occurs). Share your hearts with one another and be vulnerable in expressing your doubts and fears.
  3. Be reliable (trust healer) – Under-promise and over-deliver. Don’t make hasty, unrealistic commitments. Instead, let your word be your bond and overwhelm your spouse with your consistency and predictability.
  4. Be humble (trust healer) – Pride is the enemy of trust. You must empty yourself of ego and be willing to take any measures necessary to heal the brokenness (formal apologies, schedule changes, job changes, routine changes, etc.).
  5. Be receptive (hurting spouse) – You must be receptive to the work that God wants to do in your heart. You also need to be open to receiving love from your spouse and accept his or her efforts to demonstrate trustworthiness.
  6. Be understanding (trust healer) – Recognize that your spouse is hurt and those wounds will take time to heal. Throughout the healing process, be prepared to provide constant reassurance. Furthermore, the healing process may go in cycles. There will be good days and bad days, but be compassionate and understanding throughout.
  7. Be courageous (both of you) – It is tempting to give into fear and doubt, to assume that one or both of your will break the trust again. It is tempting to believe that the outlook is hopeless. Resist all of this negativity. Be optimistic and courageous.
  8. Be expectant (both of you) – Expect God to reveal Himself powerfully. Put your faith in Him and expect that He will meet both of you more than half-way. You aren’t in this alone. The God of Heaven is in your corner and will bless your marriage with the peace and understanding you need to re-establish confidence.

Once trust has been broken, it is difficult – but not impossible – to restore. As Jesus said, “With God all things are possible” (Matt 19:26).

Rebuilding Trust in Your Marriage is Tricky

Once trust has been broken by one or both of you, you’ll find yourselves caught in a colossal “catch-22” scenario. On the one hand, trust has been broken and is in desperate need of restoration. On the other hand, the primary means of rebuilding trust is to use words. When your words no longer carry weight, how can you possibly use them to repair the damaged trust?

As I discussed in a previous post, when you realize that talk is cheap, you must resort to demonstrating your love and commitment through action.How to rebuild trust in your marriage

Actions elegantly and clearly express your heart. By their very nature, they cannot lie. Sacrificial love can be demonstrated daily. Honor can be given through your actions. Day by day and week by week trust can be rebuild through acts of love, honor, and sacrifice. In time, words can once again regain power. But that must be earned.

Rebuilding Trust in Your Marriage is Worth It

It breaks my heart that you marriage is in need of renewal. Loss of trust is devastating and rebuilding that trust is a very hard road. But take heart, because it’s worth it. Your marriage can be made new again. Like scar tissue forming over a wound, the end result might be messy but it will be stronger than it was before. Marriage renewal isn’t just about surviving, but about thriving. Tammy and I have never been so close or felt so hopeful about the road ahead. The bond of trust can be rebuilt in your marriage, too. Your best days are together are yet to come.

The Phoenix Marriage - God creates beauty out of ashesThe content in this post is adapted from our upcoming book (available on Amazon September 2014):

The Phoenix Marriage– Your most important earthly relationship can be restored, renewed, and reborn.

God makes beauty out of ashes.

 

To be among the first to know when the book is released, join our Marriage Booster newsletter.

 

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Talk is cheap

Posted on by Posted in Marriage Booster, Our Story .
As children we wrestled with the concept of truth, relying upon the almighty promise. Anyone could say they would do something, but did they PROMISE? Did they ‘pinky swear’? Or how about: “…cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.” We would go to great lengths as children to re-enforce the truth of what we were saying with some sort of linguistic overture.
 
But what happens when that trust in words has been broken?
 

Words are tricky

Language is powerful. With it we can communicate thoughts, feelings, and intentions. We can convey knowledge, or reveal ignorance. Through language we can build up, or we can destroy. I wrote previously about the power of words in relationships (Sticks and Stones).
 
Sometimes, words fail us:
  • You try to express how you are feeling, but it comes out wrong, perhaps hurting your spouse.
  • In a moment of frustration you carelessly launch a volley of painful words at your mate.
  • You construct a web of lies with words in order to manipulate the relationship or hide your sin.
When words fail us, we find ourselves in a predicament. To right a wrong, we tend to rely upon language. To heal a hurt, we typically turn to conversation. To rebuild trust, we often make promises about what we will or won’t do in the future.  But if your words have resulted in pain for your spouse. How can you possibly repair the relationship?
 

Actions are clear

When Tammy and I began to rebuild our own relationship, we quickly ran into a quandary. During marriage 1.0 (what Tammy and I refer to as the early, selfish, skewed version of our relationship) I had made a slew of commitments to Tammy. I told her that I would always honor her. I told her that I would never leave her. I told her that our family was a priority for me.  I told her that I would keep her heart safe and protect her. But I violated her trust and replaced those commitments with an internal commitment to look out for myself and no one else. My words had failed me because they no longer carried any weight with my beloved.Talk is cheap, action is priceless.

 

 As we began to build marriage 2.0 (our new, God-centered relationship), I found it very difficult to convince Tammy that things would truly be different. She didn’t trust me, and I didn’t blame her. So what do you do when your words carry no weight and yet you need to reassure your mate that the path of your new life together will be different? While praying over this, the Lord brought me a very simple and profound message – “You show her that you love her. Talk is cheap, but actions speak louder than words. Best of all, actions never lie.” It was simple, and yet so profound. If Tammy couldn’t trust the things I said, she could learn to trust me by my behavior.  Where words had failed me, my patient and loving actions could knit her heart and her trust back together, little by little.
 
Talk is cheap. Action is priceless.
 

You will know them by their fruits

Throughout our renewal process, Tammy would repeatedly have doubts and fears crop up. This is natural, because as I have previously written, wounds heal crooked. Each time that Tammy was plagued with doubts about the things I would say and the commitments I would repeatedly make, I pointed her toward my actions to offer reassurance. 
 
I would gently remind her by asking probing questions:
  • Am I behaving in a loving manner?
  • Do you see me putting your needs and our family’s needs first?
  • When I engage you, do you experience love and respect?
You see, not only are words tricky, but our emotions can get the best of us. We can get carried away with doubt, fear, and resentment from years of pain and neglect. So how can we sort it out and see what is true and what is false? The Bible says that you can identify a true heart vs a deceitful heart by looking at its ‘fruit’ (Matthew 7:16-18). So look at your mate’s actions and see if they reflect fruit from a loving heart (I Corinthians 13) and a soul devoted to becoming more Christ-like. 
 
“…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23)
 
Words can fail you, but actions are clear and incapable of deceit. If you find that it is difficult to rely upon words when renewing and refreshing your marriage, turn towards the power and clarity of action.  Instead of promising or swearing or sticking needles in your eye, demonstrate your love through the honor and care you bestow upon your mate. Serve your spouse daily with a selfless, authentic love. Your consistent acts of genuine love and service will resonate more clearly and effectively than any speech could ever hope to accomplish.  Words come from the head, but behavior comes from the heart.  
 
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