“Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down.” (Marvin J, Ashton) 70% of what we don’t like will never change! The only way to get partners to change that 30% is by enjoying them the way they are! You can spot the irony. When we love our partners the way they are, we don’t care if they change! That is the very thing that liberates them to change. Acceptance is the key to change in those areas where it is possible.” (Goddard)
For over five years my husband and I volunteered at the Juvenile Detention Center where we taught and mentored boys ages 15-18. Many of them had been involved in some very serious crimes. One day on the way to the Center, I wondered how it was that we could feel so much love for them knowing what they had done and the lives they had negatively affected. It was then that I was told that we were able to love them because we had been blessed to see them as Heavenly Father sees them.
As they began to realize that we were there because we truly did love and care for them, separate from what they had done, they began to change and open their closed hearts to our love and concern for them. I do believe that as Goddard states, “acceptance is the key to change in those areas where it is possible.” When they realized that we weren’t there to judge them, they too began to see themselves as Heavenly Father sees them.
It’s the same way with our partners. Once we accept their imperfections and know they may never change, then we can learn to love and enjoy them the way they are. I know in my 49 years of marriage the more I have been able to focus on the positives, accentuate the positives, and talk about the positives, the dimmer the negatives have become and the more I have felt his love and acceptance of me. It’s important to remember, “Charity does not flow automatically from having an extraordinary spouse. It is primarily the result of the way we choose to see each other. The single most promising marriage fixing effort is not tinkering with our partners’ characters; it is in loving, cherishing, and appreciating them!” (Goddard) It is in “[finding] the glory in our marital story.” (Gottman)
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Just as with our boys in the DT who responded and changed according to the positives on which we focused, so will our spouses begin to change because they feel our love and acceptance even with their imperfections. As Joseph Fielding Smith said, “We all have our weaknesses and failings. Sometimes the husband sees a failing in his wife, and he upbraids her with it. Sometimes the wife feels that her husband has not done just the right thing and she upbraids him. What good does it do? Is not forgiveness better? Is not charity better? Is not love better? Isn’t it better not to speak of fault, not to magnify weaknesses by iterating and reiterating them? Isn’t that better?”
Without charity as exemplified by Christ, our marital problems will seem insurmountable. “According to the scriptures, we love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). The same can apply to marriage. Our partners will love us because we first love them. Love first. Don’t wait to be loved.” (Goddard).
Goddard, H.W. (2009). Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage, Cedar Hills, UT: Joymap Publishing
Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The seven principles for making marriage work (2nd ed.). New York: Harmony Books.
BEYOND "I DO " 