How to Love Your Spouse Through Different Seasons of Life
Want to know how to love your spouse through different seasons of life? Well you’re in the right place!
As we all know, life can change at the drop of a dime. A sudden move, a new baby, a tragic loss, or a job promotion can affect our lives and marriage in ways that we never anticipated. But even through all the changes, life doesn’t stand still. And sometimes as life moves forward, we find ourselves unsure of how to handle our marriage as we enter the into each new season.
We have found ourselves facing many changes over the last two decades of our marriage. Many of these changes have been monumental. From having three children, losing two children, becoming an active duty military family, enduring 5 year-long deployments, moving to many states and a foreign country. Yet through it all, we’ve managed to continually build a stronger marriage.
Marriage is not an easy relationship to manage. However, if there are two willing parties, marriage can thrive in the midst of whatever changes life may bring. Although we are unable to control what happens to us on a daily basis, we are able to control our choices and reactions to the circumstances. And it’s when we harness this power to control our own choices and actions that we are able to love our spouse well through any season that many come our way.
7 Ways to Love Your Spouse Through Different Seasons of Life
Whenever we encounter a new season of life and are tempted to neglect choosing to walk in love with one another, we do our best to complete the steps below. These tips are great to help you navigate conflict and emotions that can fly heavy when unexpected changes come our way.
1. Hold the tongue.
This is something that we’ve learned to do – particularly when emotions are running high as we are attempting to adjust to a new change. This is a very effective way to eliminate cutting one another with ugly words, and it definitely helps with damage control.
One scripture we always use to weigh our words is Ephesians 4:29 (NIV), Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
2. When the time is right, talk about it.
After emotions have subsided and you and your spouse are in a place where you can talk to one another without judgment or anger, then do it. It is in this space that you’ll be able to focus on walking in love with one another and positioning yourselves to speak life into your marriage.
Communication is key to a thriving, life-long marriage. But having wisdom to know when and how to communicate is the secret sauce to creating and maintaining healthy communication between husband and wife.
3. Seal the deal; pray about it.
After we have held our tongues and talked when we are cooled off, we “seal the deal” and pray about it. We will usually choose a scripture that is relevant to what our disagreement was about and pray over the situation agreeing to confess the scripture over our marriage.
GRAB YOUR FREE MARRIAGE PRAYER EBOOK!
4. Follow up with each other.
Be sure to check in on one another as often as possible throughout the week. Write a sweet note and leave it by your spouse’s bedside table. Send a text to check in and make sure your spouse is doing all right. Make a phone call when you are able to chat or pray together. The method isn’t what’s important, but the follow up is because it shows your spouse that you are committed no matter what.
5. Create a confession list.
The most powerful weapon we have is the Word of God. When we use the Word to be the standard of what we believe, what we say, and how we behave; we can’t go wrong. What’s even more powerful is when we speak God’s Word over our marriage it helps us love our spouse unconditionally. We encourage you to create a confession list with specific Bible verses in areas you want to grow in. Then commit to a time each day to confess these truths over your marriage. This simple act of confession has kept our marriage (and faith) strong over 20+ years of marriage.
6. Lean in to your accountability partners.
Accountability partners are one of the most important parts of a healthy marriage. We know, without a shadow of a doubt, that without our accountability partners we would not be where we are today. When you have trusted people that will call you out if you are not acting according to biblical standards and speak the truth in love; your marriage is protected on a deeper level. We are so passionate about having accountability partners that we recorded an entire podcast episode about it.
You can listen to our podcast episode, Why Accountability is Important in Marriage here.
7. Always be honest with one another.
As the old saying goes: Honesty is the best policy. And it really is. We made a commitment to one another to always be honest, no matter what. We love and respect God and each other enough to tell the truth, even if it hurts. We’d rather be straight with one another and work through what we’re facing together than lie about it and cause division. If you can keep honesty at the forefront of your marriage, there is no limit to what God can do through you!
These seven steps have worked wonders in our marriage through both the good and bad times.
Regardless of how life may change around us, we don’t have to change the way we feel about our spouse. As a matter of fact, the changes life produces give us the opportunity to grow into a deeper love that only comes through the refinement process.
We pray that you’ll find some practical solutions to the seasons of difficulty you will face in marriage. God is faithful!
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