First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage

Then comes finding faults.

And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye , but not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, "Let me remove the speck from your eye"; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Matthew 7:3-5

My sweet friend Kristen gave me the book Creative Counterpart, which I am reading right now. It is a great book on marriage, and encouragement in growing to be a godly wife. I am in a great chapter right now on loving your spouse just as they are, and not obsessing over their "faults" - which may not even be real faults, but just habits or things they do differently than you. And trust me, Greg has few faults. Seriously he is never lazy, he is neat and clean, he is sweet and considerate, and doesn't watch many sports (A-mazing!). Not that watching sports is a fault - of course not, but I don't like watching sports on TV at all so I am very grateful for that little added bonus :)

Anyway, the point is that it doesn't matter how many faults your spouse has - they could have a lot or a little, but it is your heart. There will never be a perfect spouse. And if there was, how would we ever learn to love like Jesus loves? Jesus loves those who are ungrateful. Unloving. Unforgiving. Unfaithful. Undeserving. Stubborn. Rebellious. Would it really be that incredible if we learned to love someone who was perfect?

There was a suggestion in the book of an exercise to do. You get out a piece of paper and write down all of your husband's faults. Then next to each fault you list out all of your wrong responses. As many as you can think of. You will see that your wrong responses are equal or worse than the faults of your husband, and way longer. Then of course afterward you have to destroy the list because this is meant only for you - to point out to yourself the huge plank in your eye. I didn't write anything down but I thought through this in my head and my list was 10 times longer and worse than anything Greg would do. Here is the example from the book to give you an idea.

Book example:

Faults--------------------------------------------Wrong Responses
Lack of time spent with children------------1) Nag
--------------------------------------------------- 2) Belittle
--------------------------------------------------- 3) Sigh and moan
--------------------------------------------------- 4) Compare with other men
--------------------------------------------------- 5) Criticize
--------------------------------------------------- 6) Neglect
--------------------------------------------------- 7) Reject as a person
--------------------------------------------------- 8) Cool sexually
--------------------------------------------------- 9) Anger
--------------------------------------------------10) Indifference
--------------------------------------------------11) Gossip to other women
--------------------------------------------------12) Publicly tear him down
--------------------------------------------------13) Quote Bible verses
--------------------------------------------------14) Feel self-righteous
--------------------------------------------------15) Feel bitter
--------------------------------------------------16) Silence

Um wow, that list is such a good representation of the Matthew verse. Left side - speck, right side- PLANK. Big huge ginormous ugly plank. Oh but honey dear, don't forget to get that microscopic, not-visible-to-the-naked-eye speck out of your eye because it is really getting on my nerves. Super. Thanks.

*disclaimer - I am not writing this post because I am finding faults with Greg, it is just what I am currently reading and thought it was good so I wanted to share :) Greg is great and he is getting more practice at loving an imperfect spouse because of all the stuff he has to deal with me.