8 TIPS FOR YOUR MARRIAGE
God knew it wasn’t good for man to be alone, which is why he created Eve, his helper. In marriage, we are supposed to help one another and be teammates. Which is why we created these 8 tips for your marriage to helps with parenting, dealing with disagreements/conflicts, and every day life!
1. SAFE LANGUAGE
I had grown up in a family that was toxic yelling, fighting all the time. So I didn’t know what it was like to have a healthy argument. And there is a way to have a healthy argument. It’s not if you fight, it is when you fight. There are some absolute, don’t cross this line, things to not say during an argument.
“I’m done. I quit. I’m out of here. I want a divorce. I don’t love you anymore. You’ll never see me again. You’ll never see the kids again.”
Because when you do, it opens such fear and doubt when you throw these hurtful darts.
2. FIGHT FAIR
Again, we’re gonna fight. It’s not if it’s when. Fighting fair means that you don’t use the word “you” as much as you use the word “I”.
“You always do that.” (As if I’m that consistent.) “You never clean up your dish…”
Instead say, “When you do this… it hurts my feelings because…”
The one thing that you cannot refute is how somebody feels, their feelings are valid. That doesn’t always mean that those feelings are right, but at least you’re saying this is how I feel.
3. GROW INDIVIDUALLY AND TOGETHER
It’s important to grow spiritually and individually. As you grow closer to Christ, then you grow closer to each other. So it’s important to individually be doing that. But it’s also important to be doing that together. Right? What are some ways that we do that together?
Sometimes we’ll read the same book at the same time and we’ll discuss it. We listen to the same sermon at the same time, and we discuss it. We’ll do something separately to grow ourselves but then come together and ask what each other’s takeaway was. The most intimate thing we can do is pray for one another. It’s also very intimate to pull out of another person, something that God is doing in their heart, because then they’re allowing themselves to be vulnerable. And you’re, you’re edifying them by saying, “That’s so good. That’s a great thing that God is saying to you.”
I think that when we’re teaching people in the ministry about putting Christ First, honestly, that it’s not that we’re neglecting other things that need to be worked on, but if we put God first, then the other things come more naturally. Or you become more teachable for the things that can matter practically.
4. NO “BLACK-BALLING”
I could run to church, and I could run in my friends, I could run to anybody and I could tell them things that Chris has said, even since he’s become a Christian. Things that have hurt my feelings or have been done that have hurt my feelings. But I would never say that to anybody. I love my spouse and I’m going to forgive him because I love him. But if I go and tell other people, then those people now have a skewed vision of who Chris is.
I don’t remember a time, at least in the last 20 years that I’ve done that to you. But I can tell you what brings anger up inside of me. If I hear someone say something negative about you, that’s that this, my that’s where the anger starts coming out, because I want to I am her protector, and I want to protect her. And not only protect her physically, but protect her from anything that would be said about her or whatever. And so, man, oh, man, you’re my partner. And I only want to say what’s good about you?
We speak life about each other. So I speak life about my husband. And if you hear me talking about my husband, it’s going to be good stuff because he does really good things. He’s very good at being the leader of our home. I don’t speak of the negative things.
5. LAUGH TOGETHER
Life can be serious, take a moment and laugh with each other. Nurture your friendship.
6. IT’S NOT ABOUT ME
It’s not about me, and it’s not about my feelings and what I want all the time. I have to be thinking about your needs, and what’s good for you and so forth. So I have to put myself aside and that’s hard to do because it’s hard to get past how we feel.
Christ gave the example and he talks about that in Ephesians where Paul writes that as husbands, we’re supposed to love our wives like Christ loves the church. And then it talks in Philippians about how Christ put his feelings aside. And he said, “I’m going to do what’s best for the church, I’m going to die on the cross.” And so I’m He’s my example.
7. COMMON GROUND PARENTING
So our next one is having common ground with parenting or I don’t know if that’s the way to say that, but getting on the same page as parents. Because if you’re not on the same page as parents, you’re going to be disagreeing all the time in front of your kids. It’s important to have that set down about how you want to raise your kids, what you’ll allow/not allow, how you’ll discipline/not discipline so that when the time comes, you and your spouse are on the same page.
8. LEARN FROM OTHERS
Early on, we didn’t have a clue, especially when we were brand new in Christ. And one of the things that we decided to do early on is to begin to watch people from afar. Not watch people in the sense that, “hey, we wanted to be them”, necessarily, but we wanted to watch people so we could learn from them. If we wanted our kids to turn out a certain way or have a marriage like someone else, then we’d watch what they did. We didn’t compare our marriage to their’s, but we saw the qualities we wanted in our own life and watched. Vise versa, when we saw something that we didn’t want as part of our family make-up, we took note not to do certain things that other people did.