Make Your Marriage Better Not Worse

This is a behind the scenes peek at one day in which I had a chance to see if I’d learned anything at all about loving my husband.

I’m gonna show you two photos I took in my kitchen one morning.

My new podcast is called Divine Connections and it’s all about connecting the truth you believe to the life you really live.

The truth we believe is God’s word ~ and the life we really live is the kind of life filled with everyday stuff.
Like Coffee and vitamins.🙃
*You can get to the podcast from the Homepage of this website. (Or search Divine Connections Kelly J. Grace on Apple Podcasts or Spotify)

Connecting Divine Truth and Everyday Life

I read through the Bible each year and a few weeks ago the plan took me through the Song of Solomon.
There we find Solomon sweet-talking his beloved.

Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.(Song of Sol. 2:15)

Now you’re wondering what do those pictures have to do with that Bible verse???
I used to think those little bits of trash left on the countertops were like the little foxes that spoil the tender grapes.
But I was wrong.
They’re just little bits of trash that take a nanosecond to toss into the trash compactor.

The little foxes are my negative response toward my husband that prompt me to criticize and nag him.
The real little fox is my insistence on having things my way around the house.
That’s what ends up spoiling the tender grapes.

That word spoil means to corrupt, to offend, to ruin.

Marriage is a big life-long commitment to loving another.
And love, according to 1 Corinthians 13, does not insist on its own way.
Bad news for us control-freaks, but good news for our marriages.
Actually I think I adopted the term control-freak in order to not have to say selfish person.🙃

Love keeps things in perspective.
Trash on the countertop is nothing.
It’s not abandonment or infidelity.
On a scale of personal vices it’s positively minor, but it used to drive me nuts.
Short drive, right?

Sometimes Solo Sometimes Duo

Notice Solomon says, “Take us the little foxes”.
Us.
Sometimes you have to tackle this stuff together.
Sometimes you have to share with the one you love the thing that gets under your skin.
Sometimes you have to work together to remove the little hindrances to love.

Sometimes, but not this time.

I’ve written before about being a good wife and advocated for constructive versus destructive tools to work on our marriage problems.
https://kellyjgrace.com/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-good-wife/

I decided to BUILD NOT BREAK.
Proverbs 14:1 has that very message.
Build don’t break.

In the interest of full disclosure here’s what makes my husband crazy?
The stuff I unloaded out of my car.

The little raised hearth in the Breakfast Nook is so convenient.
Too convenient.
That’s getting put away now.

A Visual Reminder

God must have thought this relationship lesson needed another layer of reinforcement.
When I stepped out on my front porch I noticed the destruction of my coleus plants.
A week ago I noticed some little holes in their beautiful leaves.
Now those little holes have multiplied and the health of parts of those plants is actually threatened.
The plants reminded me that the little wounds we inflict can eventually add up to real damage.

This Was A Good Day For My Marriage

 

Why? Because I loved my husband enough to toss out his trash and not allow it to be a hindrance to our love and our marriage.
The tender grapes are safe for now.
One victory at a time.