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I was provided a copy of No More Perfect Marriages through Side Door Communications in exchange for a blog post.
Once Little Sis was born I started looking for some books to read during night nursing sessions. After reading the details of No More Perfect Marriages in the email I received from Side Door Communications I decided to take it on as one of my reads. There were a ton of great points and resources in the book. I ended up getting a highlighter and pencil out because dog earing pages just wasn’t working anymore.
Through all that I read one main thing stuck out to me. Married couple, Mark & Jill Savage, the co-authors of the book explain the difference between offering grace to our spouse verses offering forgiveness. For some reason this section really spoke to me. I am going to share a few things that they shared.
Forgiveness
“Forgiveness is a letting go of the wrongs that have been done to you in marriage so you can move on and experience new thoughts, feelings, and interactions.” -pg. 53
“Forgiveness is an intentional and voluntary internal process where you experience a change in feelings and attitude regarding a hurt. The result of forgiveness is freedom.” -pg. 52
“… forgiveness is really about cleaning out the clutter in our soul, our mind, and out hears to they can all be fully available to God.” -pg. 53
Grace
“Grace is an internal choice that frees out heart up to love.” -pg. 58
“When we walk through life as grace givers, we have less stress and are happier.” -pg. 57
“Grace needs to be the tool we choose to use to handle our spouse’s human nature.” -pg. 56
What I took away from this part of the book was that we are all human and our spouse may have tendencies that are annoying to us. And that is okay. This is where we embrace the theory of opposites attracted and that our strengths/weaknesses often work well together. In these instances we get to offer grace to our partner.
Then there are times that we feel hurt or wronged by our mate. This is a time that we get to exercise forgiveness. Not for their sake, but for our own.
Mark and Jill sum it up great on page 58 when they say:
“Ask yourself if this is an offense or an irritation. If it’s an offense, offer forgiveness before you address it; and if you’re simply bumping into your spouse’s human limitations, offer grace.”
If you want to embrace the fact that your marriage is not perfect and get some tools to support you making your way through it get a copy of No More Perfect Marriages.
Until Next Time- Truly Love,
Cassie
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