Recently a husband was complaining bitterly about his wife’s attitude towards domestic activities while she complained about how rude he was at times when he wanted to correct her and even outrightly abusive at times. Demands of life and our expectations can sometimes leave us with little or no steam and vigour at times, temporarily we might not be the best friends or lovers. It’s easy to love other people when everything’s going well. But when there are hurt feelings, mistrust, or clashing wills, relationships don’t feel very much as though they are of God. Yet it is at just those times, that we can witness the movement of God in our lives, leading us to healing, trust, and cooperation. These can be opportunities to let go of character defects and to exercise virtues.
When major family relationship problems are encountered, it’s common to attempt a control strategy. You try to get the other person to change. Sometimes this approach works, especially if your request and the other person are both reasonable. But many times it just leads to frustration because we need to work on ourselves.
