New Year's Challenge

            I admit it I have completely failed at this whole blog thing the past couple months. I would give you some grand excuse as to why, but there really isn’t a great excuse to give. Hopefully I will do better this year and that is not a New Year’s Resolution. Truthfully I am not a huge fan of resolutions, because I hate setting myself up for failure. (Yes you are listening to a true pessimist ha!) But just like everyone else on this planet I have spent the past week or so thinking about what I would like to improve on or do differently in 2013. I have thought about weight loss and being healthy, which I will be doing, but not because I want to be skinnier. This is simply so I can fit into a bridesmaids dress!  You name it I have thought about it, but the one area of my life that continues to jump out at me is that I want to be a better wife. I want to be a better friend, supporter, lover, and confidant to my husband. I want to encourage more and nag less. My husband tells me on a daily basis that I am a great wife and he couldn’t have done any better. The term “I married up” is used regularly around our apartment, but I can’t help thinking that I can serve him better as a wife. There are times I know I have belittled him the moment he walked through the door. Turned him down when he was trying to show me affection, but I was too busy doing something else. Scolded him for not taking the pens out of his dress shirts before they went into the washer. Made him feel guilty once again for something he did while we were in high school! Trust me this list could go on and on, but to sum it all up in one statement I have chosen to not love my husband unconditionally. I can try very hard to show my husband respect, but if I do not love him unconditionally that respect will slowly fade away. Sure I can support Mark as much as I possibly can, but again if my love has conditions how long will this support last? 

           Thinking about the idea of loving a person unconditionally makes my stomach turn. How can I possibly as a human love one person without any conditions? How can I love my husband when I have been working all day and come home to work some more and he sits on the couch without offering once to help me pick up? How can I love my husband when he leaves his dirty socks all over the apartment? Do you want the honest answer… I can’t! It is not possible for me to do this. I am human. I will hold grudges, get angry, feel resentment. It is all part of the human nature and I could take that excuse and run with it. I could use my human nature as an excuse to treat my husband poorly and to lash out on him because he deserves it and I am not perfect. But there is another side to this. If I do want to be a better wife, friend, and supporter to my husband and to love him unconditionally I must first grow dependent on God. I cannot possibly love my husband as he deserves if I do not love Christ as Christ deserves. 1 John 4:19 says “We love because he first loved us”. This verse becomes so true in marriage. Only because Christ first loved us are we even capable of loving our spouse. I can make all kinds of resolutions about not nagging my husband or trying to be more patient with him, but if I am not allowing Christ to influence every aspect of my life I will continue to fail at these goals. So I am not going to work on being a better wife, I am going to work on being a better Christ follower. This year I want to allow God to influence my words, actions, and thoughts. Only then can I be a better wife, a better friend, a better sister, a better Alyson.