14 Days of Fighting for your Marriage

14 Days of Fighting for your Marriage

Is it just me or can marriage just mysteriously enter a difficult season without any warning?!

One day, the flirting on is level ten, romance is going through the air, then boom…

We wake up to a new reality.

Maybe it’s because of a new repetitive week. or

Chaos from kids is the alarm clock to begin the week. Work overwhelming us. Finances draining us. School days make the kids come home with every emotion in the book and it challenges our parenting.

Tension in marriage is not always explainable.

As humans we experience emotions all day. Some emotions we understand why and where it comes from. Others we simply do not which can make us feel defeated of how to get back to normal.

Due to repetitive days and long weeks, the deep focus in our marriages becomes easily swept under the rug.

Habits of ignoring precedence situations in our marriages become persistent. We easily become cranky, upset, or offended with our spouses then we decide to change our attitude when we are ready to change without setting a resolution or an acknowledgment of fault.

Acts like this is just the beginning of things sneaking into a marriage. Which allows hurt, pain, and unforgiveness to harbor.

This can be a very dangerous game to play.

First, it leads to forgetting the feelings of our spouse, secondly it can lead us to our own misunderstanding about how and why we get upset. It may even alter our thinking to always believing, “It was them, not me”.

The wrong fight…

After listening to three kids cry at the same time for not sharing a toy, two teens reminding me within a five minute time frame about football practice, friend drop offs, and football gear needing to be washed; my husband calls to let me know he is on the way home. But because I’m trying to be patient with the children, I answer in a frustrated tone with him.

When he asks’ what is wrong, I abruptly answer, “Nothing, you know this is the time I make dinner and try to calm the house down before we have to leave the for football, piano practice, and to take our oldest to work, plus I still have to do baths tonight, the younger ones have a field trip tomorrow morning…..”.

The sweet husband I always appreciated for calling me after work is now the guy that pulled the last string of the day. Somehow it was his phone call that made the piñata of emotions burst open.

And what do we tend to do?….. (most of the time) We move on from the situation instead of admitting to ourselves, we are overwhelmed. It wasn’t the phone call.

It was the chaos of life, it was the bad report from work that seem to bother us more than we expected it would, it was the frustration of sitting in traffic, it was the exhaustion of caring for sick kids, it was the anxiety and depression trying to knock us down for the day, it was the reaction we did not anticipate but wish we did not do.

I am getting better at this and below I will tell you how, but first I will admit to you, I would drag it on for days sometimes. Sometimes out of pride, out of ignorance, or sometimes forgetting why we got tense in the first place but the bitterness was already making residence in the marriage so it was easier to go with the flow.

Start a New fight for your Marriage…

Once, I finally decided, the tension in the home and in our relationship was not worth it, I decided to work in this area and I simply started with this:

Ask your husband a question. Speak to him. Open the line of communication.

Simple right? Something that takes moments can help for a lifetime. It’s just the matter of are we willing to make communication happen.

Text your spouse. Call. Speak face to face. Just open the invitation to conversate with your spouse. He is your husband. Take him back into your marriage and have him as your friend again!!

If you are the flirty type, then flirt

If you are the “I just need to know you are ok with me” type, then take time to say, “Hey babe, I love you!”

Or the type that has the best time talking at the table in silence with a dessert and cup of coffee (hand raised), put a movie on for the kids, bribe them with candy to not come out till the movie is over. Mommy and daddy need some alone. Yup, do it!

Your marriage is that important!

(If you do not know what type speaks to you or your spouse yet, then I highly recommend reading the book, The 5 Love Languages. It is a great guide to understanding what actions speaks most to you and your spouse. Knowing your love language creates a atmosphere of accepting and understanding each others needs.)

Otherwise, what’s your other choice? Allow division, tension, and bitterness to slowly grow in a marriage that you once prayed for? A marriage that you once craved to have with the man you said, “I do” to?

No matter how tough or stubborn you think you can be, no one wants that for themselves or for the one they love.

Ignoring, avoiding, and simply choosing to not face uncomfortable situations in marriage has become a huge part of the division that is happening in marriages.

I can not tell you how much we can destroy by thinking it’s better to just move on without speaking to the person.

Sometimes yes, if it is because you are acting in a mature way in an ugly situation. Otherwise creating a place in your home and marriage for transparency and honesty to be exchanged at any time between you two is so very important.

It may make either of you feel uncomfortable when first trying but just saying, “Hey, babe, we need to talk, I am feeling this way right now, are you?” Can actually open a door to a new level of communication.

Make it a priority to get back to a place of having joy in communicating, to learn more about your spouse, of what they are feeing, desiring, dreaming of. Choose to longer be the first to put them to the side as you deal with the rest of life.

Do not put them on the sidelines then be the coach that yells to say, “At least I still talk to you!” (Sorry my husband played sports most of his life, it’s always about sports analogies in our home…lol)

When we are screaming our feelings to our spouse, who hears the words?! Most of the time no one. We only hear the tone.

If you are now at a point where you can not remember those moments of peace, communication, the joy of learning who they are then please, please do me a favor….?

Pray. Pray harder than you ever prayed before. Say to yourself, “I am a fighter and I am fighting for this marriage. I will give into this marriage as much I hope my husband would give into me, and us.”

You would want him to fight for you, right? The show him you want to fight for him.

Do not say, why does he not fight for us?

One has to start somewhere, be the one that rose up and acknowledge what needs to be acknowledged which is a marriage needs to be worked on.

Sometimes we have to realize not everyone sees what we see or feel what we feel. It can be quite possible that your spouse is not understanding the situation as fully as you or knows how to start. If you have a clearer picture, then know God put it in you for this season to be the fighter for the marriage. Seasons change in marriages. Sometimes it will be you, sometimes your spouse but either way, if one acknowledges something needs to be done then do it!

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Prayer over my marriage 1

This prayer is to not take with a light heart and just assume it will make all things go away. No, this prayer is to remind you why you are fighting, what you are fighting for.

So often we carelessly become careless in marriage. We get comfortable. We become an expectation to each other and all else becomes forgotten. The dreams, the hopes, the desire of the when’s and whys it all began.

Take this prayer for the next 14 days as a mission with God. Enjoy the time you have with Him. Take time to pray this on your own, to sit, and listen to what He is speaking to you. Embrace your quiet time with God and feel confident He is in the midst of it all.

More than you know, your marriage is being prayed for this day. I may now know all names but my heart is steadfast to pray for all marriages that has a yearning for revival, for a renewal, and a desire to build a healthy marriage.

14 Days of Fighting for your Marriage