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I heard from Kelly this morning who wrote the following:

Hi, Kevin!

Thanks for reaching out and following up on this challenge. 

I wish I had seen this email on Thursday…Instead of today! 

We had lots of drama and chaos at our house over the weekend. If I had seen this on Thursday, I could have truthfully answered…”YES!”

Since I am just now reading it…No, I jumped “instantly” more times than I would like to admit…but the amazing thing about this challenge, is that it is forcing me to examine my behaviors and attitudes when they arise. 

All the drama and chaos have settled…as it always does…

And I had the wisdom…Thank you, Heavenly Father…to apologize for my “instants” last night as we went to bed…And God granted Randy the compassion to accept my apology! 

While replying to Kelly, I thought about this cycle:

I think it's safe to say that every spouse goes though some portion of this cycle several times a week.

Do Good: You love your spouse, and are doing the best you can to be there, help out, and generally do good. But, all good things must eventually come to an end. 🙁

Mess Up: Inevitably, you're going to say or do something to upset your mate. Whether you do it intentionally or unintentionally, the result is the same: you've hurt your mate, and have to live with the consequences. This leads to the toughest part of the cycle: confession.

Confess: Just like in spiritual matters, confession is not practiced often in a marriage relationship. Worse, it's confused with apologizing (we'll deal with that shortly). Confession is an acknowledgement to God and your mate that you know you sinned, messed up, or fell short. When you confess, you're simply agreeing with God and your mate that you messed up. Confession is hard, and that's often why we skip it. But, it's essential, and must come before we even try to apologize.

Apologize: Apologizing is when you ask your mate to pardon you for what you did wrong. It's easy to say, "I'm sorry" without feeling remorse. Often, apologizing is done just to shut our mate up (be honest!). Maybe that's why so many spouses don't consider their mate's apology genuine. If you're going to truly apologize, it's best to do it in a manner that your mate will feel is sincere. Take the Apology Language Quiz with your mate to learn each other's apology language. This will open the door to forgiveness.

Receive Forgiveness: God will always forgive your sins and failures (1 John 1:9). Jesus' death on the cross and resurrection assured that. You simply need to receive that forgiveness. Here's where it gets tricky: Will your mate forgive you or will you forgive yourself? First, there's nothing you can do to make your mate forgive you outside of sincerely apologizing, learning from the wrong (coming up!), and doing good. If your mate forgives you, awesome. If not, you still have an obligation to love him/her and do good. As for forgiving yourself, that will happen to the degree that you accept yourself as person of value who deserves mercy - no matter what you did. If you struggle with accepting yourself, seeing a therapist should be high on your to-do list.

Learn: What's the use of confessing, apologizing, and receiving forgiveness if you aren't going to learn anything? Henry Ford said, "Failure is the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." But, that only happens if you LEARN from the mistakes of the past. The cycle restarts here with doing good. But, you should only start doing good after learning from the experience you just endured.

Consider if you're following the marital mess up lifecycle in your marriage.

I know you're going through the first two stages. The question is if you're completing the cycle by confessing, apologizing, and learning.

Complete the cycle to make your marriage work.

Kevin

ps - Haven't joined the 23-day challenge to make things better in your marriage? You can do it now!

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