Forbearance

Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (Colossians 3:13)

Shirley and I both snore. It can be very annoying to be awake while your spouse snores, but we don’t let it damage our marriage. Sometimes we use earplugs, sometimes we push on our spouse to get them into a better position, but we don’t fight over it. Forbearance is the choice to put up with a weakness, failure, or annoyance, on the part of another person. You need forbearance in every human relationship – your boss, your mother, the waitress, and the paper carrier. If you don’t have the ability to forbear, life is going to make you crazy.

Colossians 3:13 mentions both forbearance and forgiveness. They are not the same thing. Forbearance applies to things that aren’t really hurtful but aren’t what you’d like. Forgiveness applies to the times you have been wronged. You're going to need both.

Any married couple will have hundreds of things that they do differently. Many of them will impact their spouse, especially use of time, money, the house, and other possessions. Many of these differences call for forbearance.

Forbearance is the choice to let something go and not affect your relationship.

Just because you haven’t said anything about something, doesn’t mean you are forbearing. If you are carrying resentment or can’t let go of something, you aren’t forbearing. If something bothers you, you only have two healthy alternatives: let it go or talk about it in a constructive way. If you can’t let it go, you’d better talk about it. If you hold it in, it may come bubbling to the surface at just the wrong time.

In a casual relationship, you may find it easy to let a lot of things go because they don’t have much impact on you. In marriage lots of things our spouse does impact us every day. This is one reason that couples may start fighting more after they are married than they ever did when they were single.

However, in marriage, there are so many things you face; it isn’t worth making an issue about them all. You just have to let some things go.

Forbearance for Now – Some forbearance is temporary because you know the issue will go away. You may not like changing your baby’s diaper, but you expect that you won’t always have to.

Forbearance Until the Time is Right - In some cases the issue isn’t going away by itself, but you may have to exercise temporary forbearance because the time isn’t right for bringing it up.  Maybe you feel you need more quality time from your spouse, but they are having to work overtime for the next month.  You may decide that this is a bad time to bring this up and that your concerns can wait for a few more weeks until your spouse gets back on a normal work schedule. If you make this choice, forbearance means you won’t allow resentment or anger to take root in your heart.

If, instead, you begin to make rude remarks and drop little hints, you might think you are setting the stage for the talk you want to have later. It is more likely that you will undermine that future talk. You may irritate your spouse on this subject without ever giving them the opportunity to respond in a constructive way.

Ongoing Forbearance – Some of the things we need to forbear are not going to change with time.  Accepting each other for who we are is essential for us to live in harmony for a lifetime.

Increased Forbearance – As we age, we might slow down, snore more, hear less, or change in other ways that become annoying.  Married couples might find new areas that call for forbearance as they get older.  Since God intended our marriage to last a lifetime, we need to increase forbearance to match our changing circumstances.  You may have learned to forbear your spouse’s “skid marks,” but later need to forbear their incontinence.  The principal from Ecclesiastes 4:10, “If either of them falls down, one can help the other up,” becomes even more important when we are falling more often.

Communicating Love

Craig had been married for twelve years. He was doing well at work and was keeping the lawn mowed and the bills paid. He had been a little hard headed in the first years of marriage, but he thought he was becoming a much better husband. The kids were doing well and Craig was beginning to look down the road to think about what life would be like after the kids were grown and out of the house. One day he came home from work and his wife announced that she was unhappy and was leaving! Craig was completely blind-sided. He hadn’t seen this coming at all. His wife assured him that there wasn’t another man involved, but said she had been unhappy for a long time and finally decided to do something about it.
Who was at fault? Was it Craig for not knowing that his wife was unhappy? Or was it Craig’s wife for not making it known a lot earlier? They are both to blame. They can share the blame and they will both suffer the consequences. It’s not too late for them to nurture their marriage and make it work. One key ingredient they’ll need is to consistently communicate love to each other.


Speaking Each Other’s Language - One of our favorite books is The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman. Chapman says that we need to communicate love to each other, but that we often have different ways of expressing it and receiving it. He says that we need to communicate it in the way that it will be best understood by the person receiving it. He identifies five primary love languages.
· Words of Affirmation
· Gifts
· Quality Time
· Acts of Service
· Physical Touch
After reading his book, we have often met with couples and noticed that they were speaking two different languages. The conversations go something like this:
“I don’t know what she wants. I keep the house up. I help her with the dishes. I fixed her car last week.”
She responds, “But I can never get him to spend any time with me. He’s always too busy, and when he gets some free time, he wants to play golf or watch football.”
Can you see the languages being spoken? He thinks he is being a great husband because he values acts of service. She thinks he is falling short because she values quality time.
To communicate love in her language, he is going to need to give her quality time.
Chapman’s very readable book will sharpen your ability to communicate love.
I would never get much pleasure out of someone giving me flowers, and it wouldn’t naturally occur to me to give them. They seem impractical since they quickly lose their beauty and die. Shirley, however, loves flowers. I can communicate to her by bringing her flowers. When I do, I’m speaking her language.
If you consistently communicate love to each other, it will lead to a contentment and joy in your marriage that will sustain you in difficult times. Your love for each other should be something that financial troubles, sickness, or other hard times can’t take away from you. Knowing that my wife loves me unconditionally makes my home a place of refuge and a joy to come home to.
Work at communicating love to your spouse. Make sure that they know they are loved.


Daily Heart to Heart – We recommend that every married couple take some time every single day to talk to each other about how they are feeling and what they are thinking. It doesn’t always need to be a long talk, but it should be consistent. Ask your spouse how they are doing and let them answer in as much detail as they choose. There may be times when one of you has a lot to say and there isn’t enough time then to say it. You will need to schedule another time to talk in more detail. If so, make this an important priority and don’t put it off for more than a few days. Your interest in your spouse’s thoughts and feelings will reassure them of your love for them.

Money

There are some great books and study materials on how to manage your finances. This post won’t tell you very much about financial management. Our focus in this post is how to exercise faith, obedience, mutual respect and good communication in handling your finances. Frankly, we’d rather see you make bad financial decisions in ways that preserve mutual respect and build your relationship with each other, than make sound decisions in ways that bring conflict and disrespect into your marriage.
Our materialistic American culture tends to teach us to earn all we can and spend all or even more than we earn. However, the Bible teaches us a balance between work and rest, and a balance between consuming, saving, and giving. The Bible says a lot about finances, not because finances are that important, but because your use of finances reflects what is in your heart and your heart is important.
Here are some important keys for dealing with money:
Trust - In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus said, “Give us today our daily bread.” We need to develop a simple trust in God based on the understanding that He is the one who provides for us. We should eliminate “disaster” language from our homes, such as saying, “If I lose my job, we’ll all starve.” We should cultivate an expectation in our homes that we will have what we need when we need it, because God will provide it.
Contentment – Trusting God leads to contentment. There are many things we could buy, that we can do just as well without.
Keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you or forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
Nurture contentment in your family by the way you talk, spending more time thanking God for what you have than you do talking about other stuff you wish you had.
Honoring God – Everything you have actually belongs to God. The sooner you fully realize that, the more peace and contentment you will experience.
We believe in putting God first by giving 10% of our income to our local church. This is called tithing. I know that people can argue their way out of tithing by viewing it as an Old Testament requirement, but we’ve never met anyone who has practiced it faithfully with a right attitude who didn’t see the blessings that God promised in the Old Testament.
“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.” (Malachi 3:10)
We don’t view tithing as a legal requirement, but as a simple discipline. It is like kindergarten in the life of faith. God promises blessings you can see. I have seen families move from constant financial turmoil to financial peace after they took this simple step of faith. Putting God first in this way will move you away from an attitude of self reliance and toward an attitude of trust and obedience.
Generosity – The Bible teaches us to give to those in need. This is something you should practice as a family.
He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need. (Ephesians 4:28)
Respect for Each Other – The way we use our money reveals what we value. As married couples, we are taught to put a high value on each other. We should consider the needs, thoughts, and feelings, of the whole family in the way we use our finances. This can be much more challenging than merely creating a budget. It requires communication and compassion.
Managing our finances in a way that treats others in the family with respect will often feel like we are juggling many balls at once. Dad wants a new set of golf clubs. Mom wants to repaint the house. Bobby needs braces. Sally wants to go to church camp. We said we were going to take a vacation this year, but we don’t have anything saved up for it. No one said this was going to be easy, but communicating love and preserving mutual respect is an essential principle in how you choose among your many options.
Jesus rebuked the Pharisees (Matthew 15:3-6) who were governing their lives by a simple principle – that giving to God is more important than anything else. With this principle they had concluded that if they had given generously to the Lord, they could ignore their parents when they had a need. Jesus shows that giving to God doesn’t relieve you from taking care of other people in your life.
Talk – There are marriages that would experience a surge of romance and improved communication by a husband and wife sitting down at the kitchen table and working together to develop a budget. The management of your finances is a great opportunity to practice communication and mutual respect, because your priorities may be very different from each other. As you work through things, you will have the opportunity to show each other your care for each other.
Perhaps some men or women fear discussing finances because they know their spouse can think of many more things to spend money on than they will ever have the money for. Some people may feel safer living with just enough money to cover essentials, so there is never a need or opportunity to talk about anything else.
Even if you have dreams that would take much more money than you ever expect to have, we’d encourage you to talk about them. Consider together what your priorities should be, what can wait for another year, and what can be put off indefinitely.

How Do You Respond To Disagreement?

How do you respond when someone disagrees with you? This is a vital question for a married person. You can’t have a meaningful relationship with another human being without disagreeing about things. No two people are alike. No two people think alike.  You are going to disagree. The big question is not whether you will disagree, but how you disagree.

Many people have a response to disagreement that short-circuits their ability to negotiate or have any meaningful communication.  If you are secure about who you are and what you believe, you can listen to someone with another opinion and respond rationally. If you are insecure, you may respond with anger, hurt, or withdrawal.

Check your heart and see if you respond in any of these ways to disagreement:

• Some people have been hurt in the past and consider disagreement as a personal attack.  They will feel hurt and respond accordingly.
• Some people have had unstable lives and have a strong need to control others. They view disagreement as a threat to their control.  They may respond with anger or other forms of manipulation.
• Some people have very low opinions of themselves. They view disagreement as evidence that they need to abandon their viewpoint.

If you are a person who has a difficult time responding to disagreement, you may think that you should limit close relationships to people who will always agree with you or people who you can control. You are wrong. You need to grow and become secure enough that you can have a close relationship with someone who disagrees with you.

• If your behavior is based on hurt from the past, let God heal you by showing you His great love.  
• If you feel the need to control others, give God control of your life and recognize that He loves others with the same love He has for you.  
• If you have a low opinion of yourself, let God speak to you and show you that you are "fearfully and wonderfully made."

A good marriage requires healthy disagreements. Healthy disagreements require healthy people.