To see the good in people requires practice and is taught by example. During a morning retreat I attended last week, the priest said "...sometimes you don't see any virtues in your husband, (your wife) or your children. What has probably happened is that the virtues you once saw have become "invisible" with time; you became used to them. It is also a common occurrence that what you perceive to be a defect is not really a defect, it is just the way they are".
To live with charity within family relationships is very hard; it is a daily struggle. It consists of trying not to see the defects in others, but rather focusing on their virtues and trying to see the multiple defects in ourselves.
If your husband or wife did had not have any virtues when you met them, you probably would not have married them. Sometimes it is easier to only see the big sacrifices I make - and to repeat constantly to everybody what I do for all of them every day. It is harder to stop for a moment and contemplate the sacrifices the others around me make and the way they try to be better everyday.
You have to have at least ten minutes of peace and quiet to sit down, think and analyze your relationship as mother (father), wife (husband) and friend and interpret the different ways of communications between man and women. Women use gestures, postures and an indirect message; men, they go straight to the point.
Women keep going over and over on the same message, interpreting what he or she was trying to say, or should have said; men take the message literally and move on.
We should never criticize, stone wall or act with contempt. It will be used against us sooner or later. Look at the positive side in the people around you, no matter how hard it may sometimes be.
2 comments:
This is wonderful advice!
Your post came just in time. Sometimes I have to remind myself that my dh has his personality quirks and is entitled to them just as I am entitled to mine. Happy New Year
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