With this nice weather comes that annual tradition of spring-cleaning. Karen is always eager to open up the house and give it a good shake. My job is the garage … I open the door and literally take everything out so I can sweep the floor and put everything back where it belongs.
As I was doing this, I couldn’t help asking myself: “How can we spring clean our marriages?” Because if you’re like me, we all get lazy and let clutter accumulate in our marriage that needs to be cleaned out.
Here are 5 areas in our marriages that may need a little spring cleaning:
Our hearts:
The dreariness of winter often leads many of us into the state of mutual co-existing. Two people living under the same roof but not connecting with each other. We begin to feel more like roommates than spouses. We need to dust off our lack of appreciation and complacency to reactivate our patience, kindness and gentleness.
Our speech:
Jesus tells us, in Matthew 15:18, there is a direct link between our hearts and our mouths. So, when our hearts aren’t clean … our speech isn’t either! It’s too easy for non-loving words, or words that don’t build each other up to slip into our marriages. We need to clean up our conversations by making sure the things we say to our spouses are in love and will build up and not tear down.
Our actions:
Remember those days when you couldn’t do enough to win the love of your spouse … those special acts of kindness, the gifts you bought … where have they gone? They’re probably buried under years of real life mess and need to be rediscovered so we can reactivate those loving actions.
Our calendars:
Calendars attract clutter and priorities get disorganized. Kids, family, work and everything else crowd out our time alone together as couples. Don’t let this happen; declutter your schedule to make time for each other.
Our needs and wants:
Having trouble seeing through the selfishness of not having your needs and wants met? Truth is … we can’t see that we are neglecting our spouses’ needs too! So, let’s ask God to scrub those thoughts out of our minds so we can see our spouses’ needs. When we work at polishing our spouses’ emotional, physical and spiritual needs they will reflect back a willingness to meet ours.
