Pride

This week was focused on pride.  This week should have been called "Here, have a big slice of humble pie" week.  Seriously.  We read a lot about pride and repentance.  There are so many things that I need to work on and yet, I'm glad that I was able to learn so much on the subject.  There's so much more to repentance than I had really thought about before.
One of our assignments was to write about one of the little prideful games that we play in our marriage.  I chose one for the assignment, but I'll write briefly about another one here.  Talking about my husband's faults with other people.  Namely, my sisters.  I'm pretty bad about going to my sisters to vent when something isn't going well.  But a sister shared this quote in Relief Society a few weeks ago and it really stuck with me.  She said that she had heard this quote from someone when she got married - it says, "My husband has a lot of faults, but you'll never hear about them from me."  Isn't that great?  It's so simple, yet so powerful.  I try to put myself in my husband's shoes.  How would he feel if he knew, or heard me talking to my sisters about all of his faults and errors?  I know that, were the tables turned, I would feel pretty awful.  I would be pretty ticked off, too.  We read a lot about honoring each other in Dr. Gottman's book this week and I believe that we honor each other when we sit down together to talk about our needs, rather than going to someone else to complain about them.  The chapter that we read in Dr. Goddard's book this week was about humility and repentance.  Here are some of the quotes and snippets from that chapter that I really loved:

"In great literature - including scripture - the highest and noblest service entailed sacrifice and selflessness.  In contrast, evil was always self-centered and self-serving."

"Any time wee feel irritated with our spouses, that irritation is not an invitation to call our spouses to repentance but an invitation to call ourselves to repent.  We are irritated because of our own lack of faith and humility.  In contrast, when we have the "mind of Christ," we see our spouses in a new way..."if you would have God have mercy on you, have mercy on [your spouses]". (That last part of a quote was from Joseph Smith.)
Appreciating is more powerful than correcting.  Appreciation inflates the tires on which we travel.  Criticism is a slow leak in those tires."

"I cannot truly repent without sacrificing some of the natural man."    We have to give up the natural man, which is prone to judgment and weakness and let Christ direct our lives, including our marriages.

This week was a really great week and I have a lot to work on!  I hope that we can all work on letting go of the pride that hinders our progress and hurts our marriages and work on loving each other as Christ loves us.  If you want to read a really great talk regarding the sin of pride, please read this talk by Pres. Spencer W. Kimball.  You can find it Here.