Years ago, Charles and I had not been married that long, and we were struggling. I won't go into the details of that struggle, but we were struggling. When I look back at that period of time, I'm so embarrassed because I realize now that I was so selfish. I was in a place mentally and emotionally where I didn’t even want to be married anymore. I didn't like some things that Charles did and I didn't like some things that were going on in our marriage.
I started saying to myself, “Monica, you don’t deserve this, he’s not doing this or it would be so much better if he were doing that.” Of course these thoughts were coming from the adversary, but all I cared about was my happiness and what was and wasn’t being done for me and to me.
I then got some really good advice from my grandmother. She told me to, “for a period of time, stop trying to fix Charles, stop focusing on whatever he's doing that you dislike.” She said, “I want you to just ignore that for a little while, and forget about it. For right now I want you to focus on what you need to fix. Identify some areas that you could improve on and for the next month or two, I want that to be your focus.”
I thought she was a lunatic for suggesting that to me and I thought there was no way this plan would work. However, my grandmother had been right about quite a few things in the past, so I decided to at least try. I picked up the scriptures and started reading them because I really didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how else to start identifying my faults. I mean, I knew there were some things wrong with me, I just didn’t know how to organize those thoughts and begin this process of fixing myself. So I thought I would start by turning to the word of God.
God’s not going to lay everything out for you and tell you all the answers right as you open the scriptures.What happens is when you expose yourself to the word of God, you expose yourself to the spirit. The spirit softens your heart and by doing so, increases our ability to listen to God.
As I started taking the time every day to spend some time in the word of God, my heart started softening. Well, the bad news about this experience is that I started seeing my own weaknesses, and my own failures in my marriage started becoming more evident to me. At some point this list got to be so big that I started feeling overwhelmed. All of a sudden I was realizing that God's world is really black and white and I had been living in mostly gray. Things are either of God or they aren’t. I realized that I had somehow been justifying a lot of behaviors in my mind because I was hard-hearted and trying to get away with doing things not of the Lord. With this new mindset of things either taking me closer to God or further away, I became overwhelmed with how far I had slipped away from God.
Nevertheless, the Lord helped me to slowly start working on these things. What happened was exactly what my grandmother said would happen. I got so caught up in my own mess and trying to worry about all the things that I needed to improve that I completely forgot about the things that I had wanted to fix in Charles. What also happens when you spend time with the word of God daily is you start recognizing his hand in your life. You start recognizing the good in others more easily because you’re looking through more Godlike eyes. You start seeing people as God sees them.
Just like when we become parents we love our children and want others to love them as well. We know our kids can be rotten at times, but we love them because we also know how wonderful they are and we can see their potential. That’s how God looks at you and me and our spouse and I can only imagine He wants us to look at our spouse the same way. He wants us to love them, and help them, and be forgiving and patient.
Now I am in no way talking about in any way accepting verbal abuse, physical abuse, or any type of abuse. I will never suggest that anybody should endure those things. I'm simply talking about trying to learn to see and love our spouse the way the Lord does. That's what happened for me and by following my grandmother's advice and turning to the Lord I was able to soften my heart and learn to have a greater love for my husband.
This story and many more can be found in my book, "Raising A Generation of Ladies & Gentlemen"-- a 52 week (one year) study guide for you and your spouse to read together to get on the same page and gain all the skills needed to be the best role models for your children.
Thank you for reading this blog and for being open to new thoughts and ideas. We all can learn from one another's experiences. It's the beauty of sharing ourselves with others.
