30 Day Husband Encouragement Challenge - Day 12

Hi Ladies!  Welcome to Day 12 of our challenge!

Day 12 -

"With all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love." Ephesians 4:2

Part of the difficulty you may face as you continue in this 30-day challenge is that you really are struggling to find positive things to praise your husband for.  Perhaps the problem is not with your husband.  Have you checked your own heart?

Sometimes we get disillusioned because of our own unreasonable or unrealistic expectations (Proverbs 13:12).  It may not be that our mates are doing something wrong; it's simply that we expect too much in some areas.

Our expectations must be met in God alone, and then we will have the right perspective to ask God for the healing and grace we need to respond to others.

How sad that we give more grace to ohers than to those in our own homes.  Today, try to look at your husband through eyes of grace.  Verbally thank your husband for what he is already doing.

I love this thought of self reflection.  I'm not going to lie, our first year of marriage has had some challenges.  I think of those women that say, marriage is wonderful and perfect - I wouldn't change anything!  I usually do not believe them.  I'm sure it happens sometimes, and I think our marriage is wonderful and I feel so blessed to have found my hubby, but we are not perfect - neither one of us is!  A few months ago, I decided that I was going to stop trying to get hubby to act like I wanted him to in certain situations.  I decided that I needed to pray for God to change my heart, to make me more understanding and happy with the way that our relationship was.  Nothing is wrong with our relationship, but I think it's pretty common for newlyweds to have some expectations about how their married life will be, and they don't always come true : )  Since I started praying this, I have felt so much more peaceful and understanding towards my husband.  God is so great!  Moral of my story - I needed to look at my heart and accept things for what they are.  We can't always live in a fairy tale.