For those of you who haven't heard of The Love Dare, this is a book written by Alex and Stephen Kendrick, a 40 day devotional and love challenge. The book was the storyline and basis for the movie Fireproof. Through Bible scripture, breaking down principles of love and a daily dare, the book has been instrumental in saving marriages and relationships. The purpose of our family love dare is to be proactive in protecting our family. Days 1-6 were breezy for us. Say nothing negative, give your loved ones an unexpected gift, we learned quite a bit from being patient with the girls, to working on new ways to openly communicate, but in the end these are things that already came natural to us as a family. Not prepared for Day 7. Literally brought me to tears, as I read the scriptures, chapter and dare to Charles we knew we had allot to work on.
"Love Believes the Best" I Corinthians 13:7. Cliff notes of this chapter, it summarizes rooms we maintain and visit in our hearts. The Appreciation Room (made up of great memories, the things we love about our mate, kind words) then the Depreciation Room (made up of weaknesses, failures, hurts, and things we hate about what our partner has done or did to us) basically when things are going well we visit the appreciation room, but we have tendencies to visit and linger in the depreciation room, dwelling on things we felt were selfish, stupid, hurtful and even though sometimes our partners do everything to make those feelings go away, we can't forgive or let them go. The emphasis of this chapter, the only reason you should ever visit the Depreciation Room is to write over the big engraved hateful words and phrases of hurt with "COVERED IN LOVE". Doing this means no ammunition for disagreements; could this really mean sweet forgiveness, a tool to for you to use when you cannot forget about hurts? I felt moved to take this deeper than just my immediate family to the exteriors of the hurt throughout my life. It's so hard to forgive people that have hurt you or your family.
Matthew 6:14-15 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. The Dare: I wrote out the things I love and appreciate about Charles and the girls, 2nd sheet the things that have hurt me. I even grabbed a 3rd sheet, things I have done to them that hurt them. I placed all of these away for another time. 4th sheet I wrote out on paper the people I was holding strong holds of bitterness against, symbolically wrote FORGIVEN, COVERED IN LOVE in red over the names. Crying and sobbing for God to help me forgive and heal brokenness. I finally felt a wonderful peace overcome me. I then shared with Charles one of the things I love about him, “I love the way you love me and our family” and I humbly asked for him to forgive my short comings and in his heart cover them with love. He replied “I already did”.
