I feel the central message of Goddard’s book, “Drawing Heaven into your Marriage”is the way to strengthen our marriages is to try to become the best person we can be.
We do this by putting off the natural man, which help us to develop charity and
humility. I feel the necessity to strengthen my marriage by focusing on the
areas that I need to work on and by loving my spouse through his weaknesses.
Goddard said this, “the natural man wants to love himself and fix others, God
has asked us to fix ourselves through repentance and love others.”
One way we put off the natural man is by letting go of
our critical thoughts and opinions of our spouse. Gottman, in the book “The Seven Principles for Making
Marriage Work,” discusses two different reasons criticism exists in marriages. The first he states is
because of an emotionally unresponsive spouse and the second reason criticism
exists is from within, and is connected with self-doubt that has developed over
the course of one’s life. I’d like to focus on the latter of the two reasons.
Gottman suggests two things to do to overcome criticism within. He first suggests accepting
yourself with all your flaws and to also practice showing thanksgiving and gratitude
for your spouse. Gottman suggests that by practicing and incorporating this
spirit of gratitude in marriage, we will be less critical of
ourselves and grace and forgiveness will enter our world.
I have a
great husband and I feel very blessed to be married to him. I also know that he
has weaknesses as each of us do. Something that has blessed our marriage are when we try to focus on each other’s positive characteristics and to work on fixing ourselves instead of trying to change the other person. This has not always
been the case, but as we try to keep our focus on the positive, we receive positive results, and our marriage has been blessed. I have a testimony that as we work on putting
off the natural man, and focus on and show gratitude for the wonderful traits
of our spouses, our personal lives will be blessed and our marriages will be
strengthened.
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