(Don’t forget to read part 1 to get the fullness of this article.)

In Marriages, life exists. Life will bring problems, situations, circumstances that may be a result of our own actions or at no fault of our own. When a problem has come up in a marriage the first response should not be in a defense. Don’t be afraid to take a step back and assess the situation and seek God’s face for guidance. Don’t see that stepping out of the room gives the other person the upper hand. Instead look at it as an opportunity to do the right thing by looking through steady eyes and not of eyes full of emotions of the moment. Sometimes the best thing to do is excuse yourself and take a minute and then come back and deal with the issue. It gives you the chance to consider grace.

Grace is not the excused wrong. Grace is the ability to give room for mistakes and adjusting yourself to accommodate for the mistakes to be corrected. Grace is taking a person by the hand and saying, let’s do this together, let’s go through this together, let’s conquer this together – without self-motives or expectation.

Think of grace as you would an infant that is learning the word no. At first you would gently remove the hand from what they are trying to grab or touch that is wrong or dangerous such as a hot stove. Then if the baby continued to do it – a no, removing the hand a little firmer may follow. You don’t get angry with the baby, or love them any less. You simply do not want them to get hurt and to learn what is wrong without the consequences of the wrong action such as touching a hot stove – resulting in a burn. Now if the baby continues to do the same act, over and over and persists, a stronger action needs to take place. But what if that same child after all that time, still touches the stove and gets burned? What do you do? Did you want the child to run away from you or come to you to get help? Do you treat the burn and deal with what needs to be done? By them touching that stove and getting burned – did that cause you to love them any less?

This is no different then what we should be doing for our spouses. They are going to do things that are going to cause a negative result, consequence, and some may even be permanent ones. Did you let that change your love for them? Did you allow your grace to see them through and be there for them or did you reject them and turn them away out of your own hurt, pain, and self-outlook? Did you consider breaking your lifetime commitment due to an inconvenience to you?

Our Father in Heaven, is so gracious to us. He is so patient to love us as we go through everyday making new mistakes, helping us to recalculate, making room for us to learn and mature, while still all the while loving us with that everlasting love. He even sees where we put things before Him, getting ready to walk into a trap of the enemy, warns us, and even endures us ignoring every word He may say, but His love is still the same. He made that everlasting commitment to us and only we can break it.

This is no different for marriage. A marriage is entered into with the vow to be an everlasting covenant. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live, is the words that we vowed to our spouses. It was not “if you do this, then I will love you”.

Marriage is not started out as perfect. It takes a lifetime to work on that perfection to prepare you for the perfect marriage when Jesus takes us as the Body of Christ as His Bride. Our spouse is one that has come into our lives to help us learn what love is and so many other things. We have become so distracted by the world’s definition of love and have let go of what marriage really is. It is time that we dig our heels in and see that marriage is for life. Marriage is a commitment to love our spouse no matter what and to show them the grace that we would want God to show us.

It is my hope that as you read this, you will reflect in yourself and to see where you may have holes in your grace for your spouse, or how you have changed your love based on your spouse’s behavior, response, or reaction to something. Let this be a reflection that it is time to get our love walk right with our spouse and get our grace in balance. Even beyond this, if you could just grasp the understanding on how much grace God has shown us, we should be even more generous of giving out this grace to all we come in contact with. Remember grace is not the substitute of saying that what is being done is ok, but the ability of giving room for mistakes and learning from them so that growth, stability, and love can take place. I myself am still learning the depth of this, but with God and learning more about His Grace will give us the necessary ability to give it out freely.