Welcome to Day 1 of The Love Dare!
You can read more details explaining how we are doing the dare here at The Love Dare with FirefighterWife. If you would like to purchase a book, Order Your copy of The Love Dare Book here
Love is patient.
Be completely humble and gentle; be patient,
bearing with one another in love.
Ephesians 4:2 NIV.
The first part of this dare is fairly simple. Although love is communicated in a number of ways, our words often reflect the condition of our hearts. For the next day, resolve to demonstrate patience and to say nothing negative to your spouse at all. If the temptation arises, choose not to say anything. It’s better to hold your tongue than to say something you’ll regret.
Please share your thoughts, challenges, successes, and encouragement for everyone participating in The Love Dare in our FirefighterWife community.
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Firefighter Wife
Founder at FirefighterWife.com
On a mission to be and inspire us all to be better humans, to strengthen fire families & marriages, to nurture and encourage fire wives, do "good business" in all areas of my life and of course, love on my 4 kids.
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Last day of summer vacation with so much to get done ……what a perfect day to practice patience!!! My husband is on shift, so the details of a successful first day of school tomorrow fall on me.
I resolve to:
-say nothing negative to my husband
-be positive and have no complaints about completing extra chores for back to school alone
-be patient when I call him today and he can’t answer because he’s on a call, because his station has lousy cell phone signal, or he’s just distracted with work duties.
-I will extend this patient love to my children…. Bubbling over with excitement and anxiety about starting school.
I wasted lots of time and money early in our marriage on psychological self help books by “experts.” They didn’t help! Until I started trusting what the only expert, the Creator of marriage and the universe, had to teach us about marriage.
Love is patient. I was not born with patience, but can grow it in my character with each choice to hold my tongue when I want to complain, to meet others’ needs before my own, and to actively listen to the millionth fire/ems story when I feel I have other things I need to get done. God, my husband, and my children are my priorities… In that order. I will listen to and trust God’s word, that He will teach me how to be the best wife I can be. Today that means practicing patience. And, I am so delighted to have other Firefighter wives walk this journey with me!!
Carmen….I love the verses in James on the dangers of our tongue! going to dig those up and post sometime today. Ironically, James is quite sharp as he tells us to watch our tongues LOL!
Great idea to practice this on your children and in your attitude with your husband on duty
I was caring for a 98 year old male patient one day, making conversation as I gently gave him a bath. I asked him the secret to his 75 year marriage (this was years ago when I was a new bride). His answer perplexed me at the time. He said, in a very stern manner, “KEEP. YOUR. MOUTH. SHUT.”
I didn’t have a clue what that meant at the time, but have since learned that that one statement was full of so much wisdom! Our culture is focusing on many things that set marriages up for failure. It tells us…… “Women stand up for your rights! You don’t need a man! If you do get married, it better be to someone you can criticize because you are strong!” This message is so self-seeking and contrary to what works (take it from me, a fool who tried it and ended up divorced). Any child can criticize and yell, that is not strength. True strength comes from being able to be gentle and quiet. To keep my mouth shut.
I learned, the hard way, that true love, the kind that lasts forever must be filled with unconditional love and respect for my husband. I love my FF husband not because he deserves it, not because he is a hero (which he is), but because Jesus loves me when I don’t deserve it.
I’ve been contemplating this heavy principle. God made marriage not primarily to make us happy, but to teach us how to be Holy (which will ultimately lead us to everlasting peace and true happiness!
I’m going to further demonstrate my love today by making my husband a cheesecake (JELLO no-bake 🙂 and take it to his station, to re-emphasize my respect for his work and love for him.
Thank you so much for the group!! I know God led me to you just when I needed a reminder and encouragement from my beautiful sisters!!
Love these daily challenges….out of 795, husband was accepted today to speak at FDIC Spring 2013 in Indianapolis – so will definitely be full of compliments and praise today!
That’s so exciting Janine!! I’m thinking about taking FirefighterWife.com to FDIC. Will you be there too?
Mine chooses to say nothing at all for days. If I say I don’t appreciate that, then I lose. Yeah seems fair..,not!