Are There Days It Is Just Hard to Love Your Spouse?
This week in the Dispatch:
Little known Thanksgiving facts
A look at “The Good Shepherd” in books
The Awesome Marriage Podcast looks at each spouse’s “wants”
The Better Man podcast begins the three-part series “Unsettled”
In Insights, the two aspects of love
2 Challenges and a Next Step to grow your marriage
This Week’s Quick Hits:
Each Thanksgiving about 40 million turkeys are cooked
President George H. W. Bush was the first president to pardon a turkey
Black Friday is the busiest day of the year for plumbers
“Jingle Bells” was originally a Thanksgiving song when it was written in 1857, titled “One Horse Open Sleigh”
Three Thanksgiving Trivia Questions for you (the answers are after The Next Step)
Which President made Thanksgiving a permanent national holiday?
Which President tried to make Thanksgiving the third Thursday in November to help boost the economy for the holiday season?
Which President made turkey pardoning an annual event?
Book
The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester
If you have Apple TV, you have probably seen the promotions for the movie Greyhound starring Tom Hanks. If you like exciting and thrilling stories, this WWII story inspired by true events is for you. We see Captain Ernest Krause (Hanks), captain of the ship Greyhound, lead a convoy of 37 ships on a treacherous mission across the Atlantic to deliver thousands of soldiers and supplies to Allied Forces.
The movie is taken from the book The Good Shepherd, a novel based on true events. The book gives us a deeper look at Captain Krause and the importance his faith in God played in his life. The book is every bit as exciting as the movie and a great read.
Podcasts:
Awesome Marriage Podcast
What does your husband want from you as his wife and what does a wife want from you as her husband? Christina and I dig into these questions in the two newest episodes of the Awesome Marriage Podcast. Last week we addressed “3 Things Your Wife Wants From You”, and this week is “3 Things Your Husband Wants From You.” If we know what our spouse wants and follow through on it, we are taking a big step towards an Awesome Marriage.
A Better Man Podcast
In this month’s A Better Man podcast, Pastor Colby Taylor and I begin a three-part series titled Unsettled. In this first episode we look at compromise and the challenges and choices we face every day. Help us continue to get the word out about this podcast designed to help all men not just be an okay man, but be a better man.
Insights
Let’s start today with these two questions:
Are there ever days when it is just a little bit hard to love your spouse?
Are there days when he or she is in a horribly annoying bad mood or does things that just tick you off?
I will step up and say that my answer is “yes” to both of these questions, and I think Nancy would say the same. As a spouse, we are often at our worst around our spouse. That has always been somewhat of a mystery to me but I see it played out over and over in couples.
For me, there is no one that I feel more comfortable with than Nancy. I can be totally myself. That in itself is good. That is what I want in my marriage. The downside is that I can take advantage of that comfort and be at my worst with her, which is not good. If you have been married any length of time at all, your answers are also probably “yes.” So what do we do about it?
What I see so often in our culture today is that those down times can cause real damage in a marriage. Far too many of us can base our love for our spouse on how we feel at the time. We can go from “I am so glad I am married to you,” to “I don’t want to be married to you” in seconds. That just does not work and will never give you what you really want in a marriage. Why doesn’t it work? Marriage is a commitment. It is a commitment on the days it is easy to love your spouse and on the days it is hard to love your spouse. It is a commitment when your spouse cannot get enough of you and when they tick you off. It is being in it for the long haul. It is one-day-at-a-time, day after day, month after month and year after year.
Love is where we all want to be in our marriage. We want the love of our life. We want a love that lasts a lifetime. To make this a reality, “love” needs to change from a noun to a verb. It has to be an action word. It is me actively loving Nancy every single day. It means that I put her above myself. It means being totally unselfish. It means serving her like Jesus served me. An action word. Love as a verb = an awesome marriage!
Challenge:
What can you do on those days when it is hard to love your spouse while being faithful to your commitment to your marriage?
What does serving your spouse look like to you?
Next Step:
Think of three actions that you can do to show your spouse how much you love them. Now, live them out!
Thanksgiving Trivia Answers:
Abraham Lincoln
Franklin Roosevelt
George H.W. Bush
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