Small or Big Disappointments in Your Relationship Can Be Healed through the Power of Forgiveness
Have you ever let your spouse down? From the outside looking in Christian Married couples can often be assumed to be perfect or without much trouble. But I think we all get that everyone experiences hurt in their relationship from time to time. Of course we want to reduce the frequency of these happening as much as we can. However, we are going to focus on the aftermath and how to work toward reconciliation through forgiveness as you read this article.
As you will always hear me say, if you are being abused emotional, physically, spiritually, or sexually then safety takes precedence over reconciliation. Only when safety can be established, can reconciliation be possible.
The Hurts
It doesn't really matter what type of hurt has occurred, as long as one person feels slighted in some way then it should be dealt with. Now this doesn't always mean that the person on the other end of the hurt is 100% at fault. Sometimes we all have triggers from our past that can play into feeling hurt. But no matter the situation, hurts could always use healing.
I remember when I was a kid, getting physically hurt on several occasions. One that stands out to me that I have a minor scar occurred when I fell and scraped my knee on a piece of glass. At age 9 or whatever I was, the cut probably seemed much worse and bigger that I thought.
I was with my dad at the time and he came to my rescue by helping me get bandaged up. Having him by my side was a comfort that helped heal my hurt for sure. Now of course in this scenario, he was not at fault for anything but there was certainly power in engaging with me to comfort me and help with my hurt.
Forgiving the Hurts, the Small Ones
As a Christian married couples, sometimes it can be something as simple as forgetting to take the trash out as promised. Or maybe you didn't text on your way home like you normally do. You possibly spoke with a harsh tone. For most Christian married couples these types of issues are generally considered small.
However, an exercise in forgiveness can still be powerful. I will puff out my chest a bit and say this is where Heather and I excel. We don't always get the small things right, but at the end of the day we recognize that genuinely admitting our faults and where we mess up is something we are pretty good at. Now I'll bring my chest in a bit to say, that if God did not first forgive us then I wouldn't understand how it worked or be able to implement it. So I give Him the credit.
Forgiving the Hurts, the Large Ones
These types of hurts can be much more difficult to navigate for sure. I might be dramatizing things here, but I often use the word betrayal here. These can often include emotional or physical affairs with other people. It can include financial betrayals as well.
I have worked with many Christian married couples over the years who have had these large hurts happen. Whenever I give details of couples I worked with professionally I will change details and names to protect privacy. But I will never forget one couple. We will call them Bill and Sally.
Bill had lost his job, but never said a word to Sally. As you can imagine the relationship was strained prior to this, but that of course is not meant to defend his omission. Bill thinking he could start digging his way out of a potential financial calamity started to gamble online. He took $30,000 from their savings in hopes that he could make more to cover things until he found some other job. Unfortunately he lost it all.
Once this came to light an incredible amount of pain rose up in both of them. Obviously for Sally trust had been completely shattered. It would take almost a year and a lot of repair by Bill to fix the damage before Sally would even consider forgiveness and complete reconciliation.
However, I was able to witness this reconciliation and forgiveness in my office after about a year of working with me. And let's just say it was nothing short of amazing. Anger had finally been replaced by Joy. Tears replaced with Smiles.
How did this happen? Well it happened with a lot of work. But one act of genuine admittance of wrongdoing at the right time by Billy coupled with Sally's willingness to forgive was the icing on the cake that changed things.
Do You Need Help With Forgiveness in Your Marriage
We can all use a tune-up when it comes to forgiveness. Even though I told you earlier that this is probably a strong suit for Heather and me, that we still need to talk about it to make sure it front and center.
Do you struggle to know what to say in this conversation to get the wheels turning?
Well we have just the thing and it is FREE. It is called the Couples Forgiveness Conversation Starter. In this free PDF we discuss a bit more about what Forgiveness "is" and "is not" and how to talk about it together.
The remainder of the document has 20 questions that you can ask each other to learn more about forgiveness. Once you gain a better understanding of each other, you will then be able to practice forgiveness much easier.
Click on the button right here to get the free Couples Forgiveness Conversation Starter and you'll also be subscribed to our newsletter to stay in touch with everything we do at Love How Deep.
Thanks for reading!
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