The Love Dare Challenge: Days 11-15

Here we go...entering the third week of participating in the Love Dare Challenge along with Moogie Mama. Have you missed out on the journey so far? You can catch up here:
- Joining the Challenge
- Days 1-5
- Days 6-10

All caught up? Okay, then I am ready to get started on the next week if you are!

Monday (day 11) - Love cherishes. Wow, you NEED to read this day (click on day 11 and it will take you to the page from the book). What an amazing comparison that puts into perspective how we should choose to view marriage. I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to hurt myself yet when I hurt my husband that is exactly what I am doing. Today's dare: What need does your spouse have that you could meet today? My husband is working a 12 hour shift, stopping home long enough to change clothes and then is heading off to a meeting that will last 2 hours. I think that when he gets home he could probably use (and will greatly appreciate!) a warm meal and a chance to relax. Simple but something that sometimes doesn't happen when he isn't here at dinnertime. This really reminds me to look at his day and think about what I would want from him if it was me in his place.

Tuesday (day 12) - Love lets the other win. Today's topic really hits on the fact that often we are so bent on being right or getting things our way that we totally plow over our spouse and cause unnecessary arguments to continue on much longer than needed. I know that I am guilty of standing firm on something just because it is what I want without even stopping for a moment to consider what my husband wants. I love the line from this day that says, "...you are choosing to give strong consideration to their preferences as a way of valuing them." The dare: Demonstrate love by willingly choosing to give in to an area of disagreement between you and your spouse. Now I could not think of anything off the top of my head that was a continued disagreement. I spent a day praying that God would reveal that area to me. I even asked my husband...who also couldn't think of a specific area. So my dare to myself is to be aware of this during future disagreements and to choose to give in.

Wednesday (day 13) - Love fights fair. I strongly recommend that you read this day and get some great ideas on "we" and "me" boundaries to set before arguments break out between you and your spouse. I know that we have established some from that very list - divorce is not even allowed in our vocabulary because it isn't an option for either of us and using it during a disagreement is both hurtful and destructive. Today's dare is to talk with your spouse about establishing healthy rules of engagement. While we have done this before, I definitely think a refresher doesn't hurt. Things are always changing and growing within our relationship and it is good to reevaluate areas that may be in need of tuning up.

Thursday (day 14) - Love takes delight. Today I am supposed to purposefully neglect an activity I would normally do to spend quality time with my spouse. I am actually going to apply this to tomorrow. I would normally go yard-selling (I don't even know if that is a word!) with some of my friends for most of the morning but I am going to skip it to take advantage of my husband's day off. He is working a lot of overtime right now and I know it is important to make the most of the time we do have together. I am also choosing not telling him that I would have liked to have gone because he would feel bad that I was missing it and insist I go. In the past I would have been a martyr as I sacrificed my own desires for his...I am learning that that kind of defeats the purpose! See, I am learning:)

Friday (day 15) - Love is honorable. The challenge is to choose a way to show my husband honor and respect that is above my normal routine. Tomorrow he is working 10 hours of overtime and so I decided to make his lunch for him. I usually try to have leftovers from dinner to make it easy for him to through together a lunch but that doesn't always happen. I know that it would give him one less thing to worry about if I got his lunch together for work so that is something I did for him tonight and he was very grateful.

Want to join us in The Love Dare Challenge? It's not too late, there are still 25 more days to go. Come over and link up at me at Moogie Mama:

 Also linking up over at Heart and Soul Pursuits:

The Love Dare Challenge - Days 6-10

I am not a quitter. I don't run for the hills when things get tough. I'm not scared of getting to the heart of my weaknesses and failures. Okay...I just lied. Big time! All of that is completely false. But, I want it to be true. I don't want to give what used to be truth power in my life any more. So I am not giving up on this challenge. I am not going to point the blame at my husband's lack of cooperation. It is about me. The going got tough because this challenge hit the nerve of my biggest shortcoming. I don't feel worthy. I don't find value in things that are just for me. If I am not getting approval from an external source, I don't invest in that action. Hence the reason I struggle with my weight, hence the reason I struggle to do kind things when they go unnoticed. I need somebody to tell me it means something to them.

So as I go into this week I am choosing to focus on me. What I need to learn. What I need to overcome. Will you pray for me? Trying to overcome the shortcomings that have plagued you your entire life are hard! And I am going to need some borrowed strength. But I am going to stick with it. Are you with me?

Monday (day 6) - Love is not irritable. A loving wife is not overly sensitive or cranky but exercise emotional self-control. Okay...let's hit the road running with this one! Let's see what the challenge is: Choose today to react to tough circumstances in your marriage in loving ways instead of with irritation.  Begin by making a list of areas where you need to add margin to your schedule.  Then list any wrong motivations that you need to release from your life (click on the link I attached to day 6 so you can get the full understanding of this). 
I think that both stress and selfishness play a role in my negativity. I become cranky and snap when things have just gotten too overwhelming. Most of the time I do this to myself by either doing what feels right in the moment or by overstretching myself...both which lead to stress later on. If I would put work before play I could curb a lot of stress that creeps in when everything needs to be done all at once. If I asked for help and let myself off the hook for the unimportant stuff I would also be less stressed I'm sure. In turn I would be less irritable which I am sure would bless my husband immensely.

Tuesday (day 7) - Love believes the best. Today I am to take two separate pieces of paper and on one take a few minutes to list the positive things about my spouse, on the other I am to list the negative things. I then put them aside for another day. I am to then pick a positive attribute off the list and thank my husband for it at some point throughout the day.
One of my husband's positive attributes is that he is helpful. He really goes out of his way to help me get caught up around the house so that I can relax. I made sure to tell him that today. I actually am pretty good at thanking him on a regular basis for all he is and all he does. But what the book touched on about not spending time dwelling on what is negative about your spouse really spoke to me. While I would like to think I am a mostly positive person, I know all too well that damage that can be done in our relationship when I start going over and over the things I don't like. I honestly believe that a lot of divorces could be avoided if people just changed their thinking. Actions are important too but it starts with the way you think - about yourself, your spouse and your relationship.


Wednesday (day 8) - Love is not jealous. Now when I hear the word jealous and apply it to a relationship I think of a boyfriend being jealous of another man who might have his woman's attention or a wife who is jealous of her husband's sexy secretary. But there is actually another far more destructive form of jealousy that takes place in marriage. When husband and wife become jealous of each other's successes or the good things happening to them. I wish I could say that this doesn't apply to me but at times it does. Not as much as when we first had kids. I was so jealous of the freedom I perceived him having compared to what I felt I had. Every waking, and sleeping, moment of mine was devoted to the kids and they were rarely out of arms length while he got to often think of himself first in a situation and got to do accomplish tasks without munchkins attached at the hip. This ate at me to the point that when he spent two hours mowing the lawn I was fuming because he got to get out and I was stuck. How crazy is that?
This kind of plays off of yesterday's challenge and how important it is to change your thinking in a situation. It was when I stopped comparing what he got to do to what I got to do, when I started valuing my spot in our marriage and in our family instead of cursing it, and when I started focusing on how I could make things easier for him rather than myself that the burning jealousy began to dissipate. Sure, it creeps in once and awhile, but I am much better at curbing it before it gets out of hand. Today's challenge is to discreetly burn the negative list and to share with your spouse how glad you are about a recent success he or she had.

Thursday (day 9) - Love makes good impressions. Today talks a lot about showing greetings and how it is easy to be kind to those we like but they we are called to also be nice to those we find difficult to like. It goes on further to talk about greetings and how we greet our friends and even strangers kindly but don't always do so with our spouse. The challenge for today is to think of a specific way you want to greet your spouse today. Do so with a smile and enthusiasm. Then determine to change your greeting to reflect your love for them. 
For me, this is going to really apply when my husband is working day shift. He comes home after a 12 hour shift and I am almost always cooking dinner when he walks in. I usually glance up and say hi because I am busy and other times I am totally disheveled if the past hour, or the entire day, has been particularly rough and I barely greet him at all. I know I need to make an effort not only to stop what I am doing and physically acknowledge he is home, but I also need to put aside the craziness of the day to show him how glad I am he is home. When he walks in that door the boys squeal and through themselves at him and it makes my husband feel loved and glad to be home. I want to make him feel that way too!

Friday (day 10) - Love is unconditional. This year God has hit me with this message over and over again. We live in a world where love is a feeling and as soon as that feeling is over we are encouraged to bail. God's word teaches us about agape love which is both selfless and unconditional. True love, the type that leads to lifetime marriages, is the kind that continues despite the feelings. There are always going to be periods of highs and lows and how you conduct yourself during the lows is what defines your love. 
Today's challenge is to do something out of the ordinary for your spouse. Something that proves to you and them that your love is based on your choice and nothing else. You know what I did that was out of the ordinary? Took the blame and apologized without being asked. Our day was a little chaotic because I hadn't planned any of our meals. It sounds simple but it is something that tends to add stress to our day when we have lots of running around to do and need to be in places at specific times. So as we drove to church Friday night I took the time to apologize to my husband for not doing my part. Meals are typically my responsibility and when I drop the ball it causes chaos in the house. I wanted him to know that I acknowledge my part and plan to do better. This is big for me because I have a hard time admitting my faults or shortcomings. He of course forgave me and insured me it wasn't my fault alone but it felt good to not only express this to him but to recognize it myself.


-Update: I went into this week wanting to quit because last week didn't go so well. But I stuck it out and had to tell you that this week was 10 times better. I think that my change of attitude about the whole thing really helped and in turn, my husband has responded in a totally different way as well. I am excited to see what next week brings!


Want to catch up?
The Love Dare Challenge - Days 1-5
Joining the Challenge

Want to join in? I am linking up with Moogie Mama and you can link up too:

Joining the Challenge

One of the blogs I read, Moogie Mama, is starting a Love Dare Challenge (you know, from the movie Fire Proof) and is encouraging other bloggers to participate. We will follow the Love Dare Monday through Friday and then blog about it on Saturday. I have been interested in trying the Love Dare and have heard many great things about it so I thought this was a great opportunity to get started. Hope you'll follow along. And if you have a blog feel free to join in and link up as well:)

For those of you who don't actually own the book yet (like a certain someone who is typing this) here is a great link that goes through the book day by day so you don't miss anything. There are even free journal pages you can print off:
http://www.klove.com/blog/post/2010/01/05/The-40-day-journey-starts-Wednesday!.aspx