Charity

A few weeks ago I interviewed my parents for a family relations class I am taking. Some of the things I asked them were about how they handled their differences and worked out conflict during the first few years of marriage. Their response was always about communication. They just talked a lot! They didn’t have too many differences because they have very similar personalities and think a lot along the same lines. This makes communicating very similar. They have a pretty fantastic marriage and rarely do they ever argue. I tried to pry more and see if anything was different when they were first married and how they dealt with tedious faults that each other got frustrated with. They said those tedious things haven’t gone away. My mom still does things that my dad gets irritated with, and vice versa. This hasn’t changed the happiness in their marriage though. The key is that they haven’t tried to change each other and they just focus on what they love about each other. The way they handle conflict or irritations is truly with charity. Through this I have come to realize that marriage is not about fixing each other’s faults to become happy.
 I have learned this even more this week as I have been reading Chapter 7 in H. Wallace Goddard’s book Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage. Goddard said, “most of us would prefer that our partners think about the 80% of us they like rather than dabble with the 20% they don’t like…John Gottman has made interesting discoveries about that 20% that we don’t like. He as discovered that approximately 70% of what we don’t like will never change! We can be mad about that. We can feel cheated. But heaven seems to have constructed that percentage and it is not likely to change! What a wise design! Rather that re-working our partners to our liking, we are invited to cover their weaknesses with our charity!”
I feel like this describes my parents exactly and really reassures me that I can have a happy marriage for eternity. It won’t be easy….but with charity it is possible. This helps me a lot as I have been trying to change myself and not my husband but the thoughts and urges to criticize him and nag him, for good reasons, keep coming. A quote from Goddard that really helped me push those feelings aside is this one, “When we love our partners the way they are, we don’t care if they change! That is the very thing that liberates them to change. Acceptance is the key to change in those areas where it is possible.” I need charity to really have that kind of love and I need to want to have charity with all of my heart to really receive that gift of charity from God.
A start to doing this is stated well from Goddard’s book. He quoted Wendy Watson. She said, “the best-kept secret in many marriages is the strengths spouses see in each other…. An interesting fact about commending your spouse is that the more you do it, the more you see in him or her to commend.” As I start focusing on the wonderful things and actively showing it that to my husband the more good I will see. This is where I will start because it all is pretty overwhelming as I think about the change that I need to do within myself. I will start here and pray daily for charity, to be able to see others, especially my husband, as God does.