Thankful for My Husband

Last night I had another moment of weakness and really gave my husband a good a** chewing. I could trivialize it and chalk it up to monthly hormones (which I CAN attribute a goodly part of it to), but I won't because I want to take responsibility for the words that came out of my mouth, that ground him a new cake hole.

Out of gratefulness that he's still mine, I changed my profile picture on my MySpace page to one of the two of us. We are imperfect, he and I. We both cause eachother pain, and we struggle to communicate and our conflict resolution skills leave something to be desired. But we stick it out, and I think I may even be able to convince him to go to counseling, though he's not that type by nature.We have not arrived. We don't have it all figured out and we cause eachother unhappiness, but you know what? He's not meant to be the source of my happiness, God is. Jeff and I are both imperfect beings, and as such, could never be the source of perfect happiness for one another nor are we meant to be.

Does this mean that we are exempt from caring for one another and doing our best to love, honor and cherish one another, as we promised to in our wedding vows before God and man, hell no! Jeff and I are honor bound to fulfill those vows and to hold one another accountable, and to correct one another in love. We are also to respond in humility and to forgive one another.

Jeff pointed something out to me last night in the heat of our marital battle. He said that he didn't know if I could forgive, that he didn't know if I was capable of it, because I say I forgive him, and then I bring it up later to remind him of it.I told him humans don't forget like God. He said that we aren't supposed to hold something against someone and bring it up again, because if we do we haven't totally forgiven, and you know what, he's right. And I didn't like it. I pointed out that he must not truly have forgiven me for things then because he brings up things to me. I didn't want him to know I thought he was right or that I agreed with him. I didn't even want to CONSIDER the implications of his words, because I wanted to be ready with my next barb for him, my next attack, my next mortar of evil intent. I wanted him to feel how much he annoyed me right then, how many things he did that offended me or made me angry with him.

And there it was. I haven't truly forgiven him for things he has done against me. I was so intent on harping on him for not asking for my forgiveness the right way when he had hurt me (you know, like a REAL apology stating what he did wrong and then asking me to forgive him) that I realized I don't really forgive. Jesus says that unless I truly forgive others, my heavenly father won't forgive me.So today at lunch, I'm going to apologize to Jeff and ask him to forgive me (regardless of whether or not he does the same) and I'm going to ask him to make a plan with me to work on our communication skills and go for counseling because I don't want to live another 7 years without making changes. Our marriage could be so much better than it is, if we would just stop focusing on the other persons imperfections and start working on being a better spouse and lover for the benefit of our spouse and of our marriage together.