Dare Six: Love is not irritable?

Are you saying that I have an attitude?  I do not have an attitude!  I am irritable?  You are the one being irritable, saying I have an attitude . . .

Women are never irritable, right?  It isn't as if once a month something just comes over us and turns us into Mrs. Hyde.  Oh wait, it does!  I am so guilty of being irritable.  Just today, I found myself eating lunch and thinking, "Why did James have to do this?" "Why did James have to do that?"  I was being so irritable about everything!  Well, even though this dare was for yesterday, I am still thinking about how often I seem to be irritable.

Yesterday the Love Dare challenge was to choose "to react to tough circumstances in your marriage in loving ways instead of with irritation.  Begin by making a list below of areas where you need to add margin to your schedule.  Then list any wrong motivations that you need to release from your life."  At first I had no idea what it meant by adding margin to my schedule.  Really.  I had no idea.  Then I realized it meant breathing room, a deep breath, time of prayer, or a moment of calm.  The book mentions that stress leads to irritability.  How true!

When trying to list areas where I need to "add margin", I realized that I had plenty of time that I was simply misusing.  My stress occurs when I have procrastinated so long that everything is riding on the last few moments.  In those last few moments, I can be a monster to be around.  The added margin needs to come from me using my time wisely so that the monster stays in her cage.

Practically, I need to designate home days, where I stay put and get done things in the house instead of going out with friends or going shopping.  I need to plan my meals so that last minute I am not flipping out because everyone is relying on me for food.  Besides planning, I need to learn to rely on God as my peace.  No matter what storm is raging in my life or soul, He can calm the storm.  Not only is He my peace, but He also promises that his burden is easy and light.  Instead of taking on the world as my personal burden, God can handle the world and He asks me to simply follow Him.  My added margin can be had by relying on God as my strength instead of expecting myself to be Wonder Woman.

By way of my motivations, I tend to be motivated by what I think I should get out of a situation. I tend to think about how I am inconvenienced by something James does or how I did not get my way out of a situation.  Though my motivation should be love and following Christ with my entire life, I get distracted by my desire to flip on the television and get lost in a show or my desire to be liked by other people.  There are only two people whose opinions should matter to me, that of my husband and that of my Lord.  I need to begin thinking about what causes me to take certain actions.  Why should I do things without even thinking about why I am doing them?  Motivations matter.

Fortunately, even though I have been stressed out lately with school deadlines, Josiah's care, and tending the house, I have sought to be loving in my reactions to James.  He came home from work last night at 11 p.m. and I was going crazy because I had one more DVD lesson to finish up before taking a test.  Instead of exploding at him, I just explained to him what was going on with my schoolwork and how I was feeling about the situation.  The result of the even-tempered conversation was that he unpacked while I finished up the DVD.  Normally, I would go off on him about how stressed I was, how I had to get this done, and how he needed to just vacate.  I think talking to him calmly about what was going on worked a lot better than reacting as I normally would.

If love is not irritable, then love isn't irritable even once a month.  It isn't irritable on a bad hair day, and it isn't even irritable when my husband leaves nasty shaving fuzz all over my sink.  Instead of having my stress level sky high or my motivations out of whack, I have to keep myself even balanced so that I can love James to the best of my ability.  I treasure my marriage much more than I treasure my stressful schedule or my other motivations, so any stress or motivation that challenges my marriage has to take the backseat.  Being irritable is a choice; it is not something that I am helpless to stop.  From now on, I am going to notice when I am being irritable and find out why.  Loving James is worth choosing to not be irritable.