Love Dare: Day 7
LOVE BELIEVES THE BEST
In the deep and private corridors of your heart there are two rooms- The Appreciation Room and further down, The Depreciation Room.
Happy memories and encounters find their way into the Appreciation Room. Most of these were from the earlier days of courtship and are deeply engraved in one's memories. Each time you remember your loved one's good opinion of you, it brings a smile to your face and makes you fall in love with them all over again.
But maybe you haven't been in this room for a long while since you got married. Instead you might have started to visiting the other room.
Round the corner is a darker corridor. Located here is a room you shouldn't visit so much, but you just do. In this room are walls filled with angry scrawls and records of scores of those times when your spouse said a hurtful comment, vented his or her anger on you, was selfish to you, etc. This is a room where the worst thoughts of your spouse are kept like weapons of mass destruction waiting to be unleashed. Dwelling in this room makes love grow cold, makes happiness fade away, makes happy-ever-afters seem like an impossible destination.
You know the second room is bad for you but the pull is so strong. In this room, life without your spouse and possibilities that are wrong are cooked up. Each minute in the room makes you love him/her less, resent where you are more. What you see on those walls, what you feel boiling inside you may be true, but so are all the beautiful and good memories and feelings you have of your spouse in the Appreciation Room. We tend to make a big fuss about the bad things, but don't celebrate the good enough.
You know in your heart that the Depreciation room is real but you also need to know that love does not exist there. And you must stop making your way through its doors before it becomes real to you and reality becomes a faint rememberance.
When you love someone, you choose to believe the best about them. It gives them the benefit of the doubt, refuses to assume the worst. And if the worst is real, love empowers us with the ability to forgive, let go, move forward. It sees only a good future, a good anything.
To get to a new destination, you need to start thinking differently, to start focusing on something better, to start praying for what's excellent, and meditating on love.
Make the Appreciation Room your sanctuary. See the many new and wonderful chapters you can write from today. You can't change the past, but starting from now, you can change the ending. You need to control those negative thoughts, to see the beautiful in their soul and decide to do this whether they deserve it or not.
TODAY'S DARE-
For today's dare, get two sheets of paper. On the first, spend a few mins writing out the good things about your spouse. Then do the same with negative things on the other one. Place both sheets in a private place for another day. There's a diff purpose and plan for each. At some point during the remainder of the day, pick a positive attribute from the first list and thank your spouse for having this characteristic.
TODAY'S QUOTES-
1 Cor 13:7, Phil 4:8
TODAY'S
REFLECTION-
Which list was easier to make? What did this reveal about your thoughts? What attribute did you thank your spouse for having?
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