"Love doesn't make excuses. Love keeps working to make a difference - in you and in your marriage. Love is responsible and is willing to admit and correct its faults and errors up front. Are you taking responsibility for this person you chose for yourself as the love of your life?"Today's dare: Take time to pray through your areas of wrongdoing. Ask for God's forgiveness, then humble yourself enough to admit them to your spouse. Do it sincerely and truthfully. Ask your spouse for forgiveness as well. No matter how they respond, make sure you cover your responsibility in love. Even if they respond with criticism, accept it by receiving it as counsel.
Ouch, earlier we talked about granting forgiveness now we are talking about asking for forgiveness and because we know how difficult it was to grant it, we are now really worried about asking for it because of the reaction we might get. Plus, we can't imagine that we do anything that is worth asking for forgiveness for anyway, so the soul searching might be more then we can handle, so let's take this one step at a time.
Its very difficult to admit we've done something wrong. Unless you are just a terrible person, no one makes plans to hurt someone they love but we all do it. Unknowingly or not, we all hurt the people that we love. Sometimes we can see when we hurt our loved ones but other times we don't and its the times that we don't know we've hurt them that need the most forgiveness.
So its important that we ask our other half if there have been times that we have hurt them, for two reasons. One for a learning experience, and two to be able to ask for forgiveness. I always tell people that I can't atone for sins that I am not aware of, so ask, remain calm when they react, ask for forgiveness and whether they grant it or not thank them for their time.
Say a prayer. Find the right time. Take a deep breath and ask. It might not end up as scarey as you might think. It might even open up a needed dialogue.
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