Charity

Charity

What do you think of when you hear this word?

Do you think about giving money or food to the homeless?

Do you imagine a time when someone helped you out in a time of need?

Charity is all of this and more. It is love for others. It is caring for those who are in need.

What does charity have to do with our marriage?

Certainly, there are husbands and wives who beg for help and understanding from their spouses.

Certainly, there was a time when you were in need and were relieved to have the help of your partner.

What charity really is is the pure love of Jesus Christ. We are commanded to exemplify this love in the scripture from Timothy,” Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:” (1 Timothy 1:5). When you stop and think about it, if charity is love from a pure heart then charity should be at the heart of all we do in our marriage.

Here are some examples of how we can increase charity toward our spouse in order to strengthen our marriage:

• Think of the good qualities instead of dwelling on faults. This practice helps you to change the way you think and feel about your spouse. (For more information on this type of cognitive behavioral therapy by David D. Burns see this website.) (Links to an external site.)
• Make peace with the chronic problems in your marriage. Surprisingly, most of the bad habits we complain about our spouses won’t ever be changed. Dr. Gottman, whom I have quoted several times in previous blog posts, believes that the ongoing, perpetual problems we complain about will probably never be solved. We should not quit our marriages because our husband has a cleanliness issue or our wife loves to buy handbags. Rather, he tells us that we can be happy when we decide to make peace with these recurring problems.
• Come closer to Christ. Remember this post about the relationship triangle?

As we love like Christ loves, we grow closer to Christ and to our spouse.

My husband and I disagree on quite a few things. He wants the family to go vegan, I love meat. I love the challenge of fixing things around the house. He wants things done by a professional. I want to shelter my children while he wants to set them free to see how they fare in life. Eventually our disagreements caught up with us. We were at an impasse and did not know how to move past our differences. Eventually we realized that neither of us was going to change. We each held deep seated and meaningful opinions about why we do the things we do. As we developed charity towards one another and came to understand and respect those dreams and opinions, we were able to compromise in ways that could finally live with and love each other again. I never could change  certain things about my husband nor would I want to now that I understand the reason for the way he thinks. After all, his contrasting traits to my personality, his responsibility to my spontaneity, was one of the biggest things that made me fall in love with him in the first place and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

[Photo Credit]: Unknown. (1970, January 1). Marriage and Family. Retrieved March 14, 2020, from http://dottie88.blogspot.com/2016/03/seeking-to-understand-my-marriage.html