I’m excited to welcome four new voices here writing on the theme of Everyday Grace on the four Fridays in July!
Image by Evi Wusk.
Today, meet Jessica. My friend Dan introduced us recently, and I’m grateful. I admire the way Jessica tackles tough topics with grace, compassion and humility. Today she’s talking about marriage, communication and the practice of showing grace (and believe me, I need to listen in!).
Be sure to stop by Jessica’s place to introduce yourself and say hello. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.
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I distinctly remember the reaction I had, while in college, reading a passage in Deborah Tannen’s I Only Say This Because I Love You. Tannen, a well-known writer and scholar on linguistics and interpersonal communication, often includes transcripts of real people’s conversations in her books, pointing out where these interactions demonstrate helpful or unhelpful patterns.
In this case, Rachel has just gotten home from work, running late, and she and Gregory are supposed to leave for a birthday celebration. She greets their cat and dog as she’s coming in the door.
RACHEL: Have they been fed?
GREGORY: What.
RACHEL: Have they been fed?
GREGORY: No.
RACHEL: Hi. [kiss]
GREGORY: Hi. [kiss] So it’s going to be a tight squeeze here, getting supper in and a movie and all that sort of stuff.
RACHEL: Sorry, I got sucked into an interview. I’m ready to go now.
Reading this, I was surprised that she didn’t jump on the opportunity to chastise him for not having fed their pets yet. This was immediately followed by surprise that this would be my first reaction to such an exchange.
Clearly, the model I was using as a guide for marital interactions was not a great one.
After almost nine years together, four years married, this is still something I struggle to avoid with my husband. The nagging wife / henpecked husband model driving the laugh track on many a sitcom is unfortunately the default place my brain tends to go, looking for reasons to criticize – especially if I’m feeling defensive.
If I were Rachel, I’d be on the defensive about being late, looking for an opportunity to turn it around and make it more his fault than mine: “Yeah, I’m late, but I had legitimate work stuff. But now we’re going to be even later because we have to feed the pets, which you could have done while you were waiting.”
I’m not great at giving grace to my husband.
When we think about grace and forgiveness, we often think in grandiose terms. Jesus bestowing grace on the worst of all sinners. Brothers reconciling and forgiving one another after decades of estrangement.
But grace is not just something that comes into play in the most broken, most damaged relationships. A lack of everyday grace can cause just as much damage to a relationship over time as one large act of betrayal.
This is not new advice. It comes to every engaged couple in the form of “Pick your battles.” But I’ve found that that advice can be frustratingly vague: Which battles do I pick? How do I know?
Instead, I’m working on using this mantra: “Show grace.” This doesn’t just mean I choose not to point out every thing my husband does that is wrong or annoys me. It also means that when I do bring something up, because I’m genuinely hurt or because it’s an ongoing issue, I do it in the least critical way possible, saying, “In the future, could you please…” or “That hurt me because…” rather than “You always…” or “How could you possibly…”. And when it’s resolved, I don’t dredge it up again later.
I’m still far from achieving this ideal all the time, but I think it’s one worth working toward. Showing grace to my husband each day is one of the many ways I can help our relationship be a model of God’s love in the world.
Jessica lives on the West Coast with her husband, Mike. She blogs at Faith Permeating Life, working to create thoughtful dialogue around big issues like marriage, faith, social justice, and sex.
This is really helpful, thanks for sharing
Me too. I thought there was going to be an argument about why the pets weren’t fed, but it went in a totally different direction! So, now I’ve got to sit with what that says about me. Thanks for this, Jessica! Great to see you here, and I’m truly intrigued by your bio: “working to create thoughtful dialogue around big issues like marriage, faith, social justice, and sex.” Amen.
I would have argued about the pets. Just sayin’.
Glad to know I’m not the only one who had this initial reaction to the dialogue!
Great food for thought, Jessica. I reacted the same way you did to the conversation.
Well, my first thought here, after 37 years of marriage, is that getting into an ‘exchange’ over unfed pets…just ‘aint worth it. How many times my husband and I have left the house ‘slightly ticked off’ with each other over one of these lesser issues. It only serves to put both of us on edge and feel a tad lousy toward one another. Then, at some point in the evening, one has to swallow pride and make the move to apologize. It’s just way more work than it’s worth, amen? It’s taken me years, and I mean years, to figure out what’s worth it and what isn’t. Every single day we have opportunity to strike up a ‘discussion’ (or more than one) about something that’s upset us. It really is true that we must learn to pick our battles. And often we find, upon hindsight, that what cheesed us off, was really very minor to begin with. Showing grace and forgiveness is always the higher, and better road to take. Thanks Michelle, for introducing Jessica to us. This was good.
Really good points, Jillie, about learning how to pick your battles. I’m still working on that one, I’m afraid!
Thanks for sharing that you’ve been able to learn over time what’s worth bringing up. I am still working on figuring this out, so this gives me hope!
I like this: “A lack of everyday grace can cause just as much damage to a relationship over time as one large act of betrayal.” You know how if you put a rock under a dripping faucet, even that one drop of water every few second will erode the rock eventually? I think more marriages break up over the steady dripping that erodes the relationship than over one major betrayal or explosion. Most people understand that infidelity, for example, can destroy their marriage but they don’t recognize the every day small things that brick by brick build a wall between them. Thank you for the reminder, Jessica.
I really like that analogy, Gaby.
Exactly. And I’ve found the reverse is true as well — what makes our marriage great is not the big romantic gestures so much as the small moments of love throughout each day.
Michelle, thanks so much for the opportunity to guest post!
I love this post. I used to be like this too – always keeping score, picking fights when stressed. I’m trying to show more grace in my marriage. Some days its easy, some days it’s harder.
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