Day Seventeen: Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Colossians 3:19
Let your conversation be always full of grace. Colossians 4:6
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, how you are doing with the ground rules? While each of the daily challenges is important, it is more important to grasp these ground rules and use them as the basis for your entire marriage, not just these 30 days.
It is these ground rules that will keep a healthy marriage strong or will help to warm the heart of a wife who is teetering on the edge. Long after the 30 days are over, these basic guidelines will keep peace and harmony in a home and in a marriage.
You can’t say anything negative about your wife . . . to your wife . . . or to anyone else about your wife.
Say something that you admire or appreciate about your wife . . . to your wife . . . or to someone else about your wife every day.
You’ve worked hard these past 16 days and the end of the 30 days is in sight, but the hope is that these ideas and practices will be written on your heart so that you make your wife the priority that she should be and that a good marriage will be strengthened, a stagnant marriage revived, or a marriage in crises brought back from the brink.
For today’s challenge you get a mulligan – not a stew, a do-over. Choose one of the challenges from the previous 16 days and do it again. You might choose one that gave particular encouragement to your wife or one that you don’t feel was given your best effort. The choice is up to you, but don’t let the day pass by without doing something to encourage your wife and put a smile on her face.
* Written and distributed by Claudia J. Pate, www.theanniversaryshop.wordpress.com