Do you want to be married or do you want to be right? In this post I go through some situations were I wanted to be right and my marriage reaped the consequences.
The theme for the month of September will be all about my personal marriage wins. Each month I send my email subscribers a “win” I’ve had for the month, so the posts this month are taken directly from those emails I’ve sent out. My email list is where I get pretty personal, so if you want in on this (and duh, you definitely want in on this), just sign up right at the bottom of this post. 🙂
From November 5
Hey friends,
Alright, my “marriage win” for the week is actually all about a marriage mistake. Well, a couple marriage mistakes. But isn’t that how we gain our wins? By making mistakes?
So, my mistakes were involving always needing to have things my way. Perhaps it’s because I’m a youngest child or perhaps just because I’m selfish, or perhaps both, but regardless, I really like having things my way.
As you can imagine, this repeatedly brings marital discord as it did in the three examples from my week last week:
Situation 1: We had planned to chop a significant amount of our girls’ hair off this week for some pretty intense hair cuts. I was pretty sure I could do a good job of it myself. Rich preferred I take them to someone professional since it was a big change. Welll, I ran out of time and was so convinced I could do a good job that I just did it myself while Rich was at work.
Situation 2: Saturday morning my oldest daughter had a soccer game. It was her last one, so I wanted the whole family to go. But it was raining and quite cold and Rich made the point that the younger two children would just be miserable so one of us should probably stay home with them. Instead, I got my way and we all went.
Situation 3: Saturday night was Halloween as you may have noticed. We usually watch a movie together on Saturday night. Rich wanted to watch a Halloween movie. I did not. In the end we didn’t.
I know right? Rich is the most patient man around. But these things took their toll on our connection for sure.
On Sunday mornings I try to prepare for church by asking God what is keeping me from progressing. I got the strong feeling that I need to work on this “always getting my way” thing. I honestly had totally forgotten about all those seemingly unrelated situations I just typed out, but God brought them back to my mind. I sincerely apologized to Rich and promised to do better.
I’ve been trying this week and it’s really hard! I’m ALWAYS so convinced that my way is the best way. But in the end, having a happy marriage and thus a happy family is so much more worth it than getting my way.
Love is all about sacrifice.
Have you had any experiences with learning to let go of getting your way?? I would love it if you would respond and tell me all about it!
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