The Love Dare - Day 10

Laughter is a good thing.  So why then do I sabotage it so often?  My tendency, when I come home at the end of the day, is to dump on Karen all the frustrating things of the day - the things that didn't happen, the things that didn't go as expected, the things that didn't get done.  Karen is a Romans 12:15 kind of gal.  She weeps when I weep and rejoices when I rejoice.  (It's a really neat form of love - one we're all supposed to be practicing, by the way.)  But there's a risk in loving people this way.  The mood and tone of voice I bring home often gets passed on to Karen, sometimes for good and sometimes otherwise. 

I don't know why I've never thought of this before, but I realized today that I need to consider the cost of letting a negative mood control my words and tone of voice.  Yes, it lets me vent (whine?) in a mild sort of way, but at what cost?  If it just drags Karen and others down, then it's probably just another way to be self-serving instead of genuinely loving.  Besides, my mood is not my lord, Jesus is my Lord, and His word instructs me to dwell on "whatever is honorable... right... pure... lovely... and of good repute."  Philippians 4:8 goes on to say, "if there is any excellence and anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things."  Hmmmm..... I'm not sure I've been practicing this lately.  It's not that there is nothing in my life that fits these categories.  Jesus, Himself, fits them all, and He is "the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8), which pretty much covers the good days and the bad.  At the very least, I could start my conversations with something encouraging about Jesus and about the life He's giving me.  Psalm 147:1 says, "It is good to sing praises to our God (even on bad days); For it is pleasant and praise is becoming."  "Pleasant" and "becoming" - those aren't the words that come to Karen's mind when I'm whining that my day wasn't perfect!  But with a bit of love-inspired change on my part, I might become a carrier of "pleasant" and "becoming" things!  

So this was my goal for today: Talk first about the positive things of the day!  Take Karen on a verbal tour of those things that were encouraging and edifying.  I certainly had no shortage of good things today.  So I shared them, and they brought smiles and expressions of happiness to Karen.  As the Psalm said, they were "pleasant" and "becoming."  And a funny thing happened.  I never got to the disappointing things of the day.  I guess they didn't seem that important any more.  Or maybe God simply healed the minor bruises on my soul so that I didn't even think of them anymore.  He does that, you know, and He uses pleasant words to do it.  "Pleasant words are a honeycomb; Sweet to the soul and healing to the bones" (Proverbs 16:24). 

I thought my participation in this Love Dare was going to be really good for Karen, but it's turning out to be good for me too!  What was it that Jesus said along these lines?  "Whoever wishes to save his life with lose it; but whoever loses his life (gives it away through intentional acts of love?) for My sake will find it." (Matthew 16:25)  Guess what I found today in this Love Dare!  A path that leads to pleasant and becoming things for both Karen and me!  A path where laughter is likely to dwell.  I like it!