Well, I blew it today.
Okay, so that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I said something to my husband today that I wished I hadn’t.
With several young children in our house, there are a lot of sippy cups to clean. A lot. My OCD nature rears its ugly little head when pairing up the cups with their tops. Each lid is a specific color that matches perfectly with a specific cup. Sure, they can be mixed and matched, but I prefer the colors to coordinate. For the past several weeks, the blue lid has not been paired with its proper cup because my (truly wonderful) husband put the dishes away. I didn’t want to be a nagging wife, and so I kept my annoyance to myself. So, you can imagine my delight last night as I loaded the dishwasher and saw that both the blue cup and the blue lid were going to be in the same cycle! I started the dishwasher just before bed and was practically giddy as I realized that I would be able to reunite the cup with its proper lid in the morning.
Sadly, the events of this morning took a different turn than I expected. While my husband got our son’s breakfast ready, he just happened to pick the first cup and the first lid he found in the dishwasher. Out of all the possibilities, he chose to pair the blue lid with the green cup!
I was unaware of this tragedy until later in the morning when I was unloading the dishwasher. I groaned when I saw that the blue lid was already in use with an “improper” cup. I figured it was time to say something to my husband. So, I tried to be polite as I said, “For future reference, this blue top goes with this blue cup.” There, I had said it. I was going to be proactive in educating him and hoped that it would solve the problem.
It took about two minutes after I spoke those words for me to realize how pointless it had been for me to verbalize them.
Jason didn’t know about how over the past several weeks the lack of this particular cup/lid combo was driving me nuts. I had kept that to myself because I didn’t want to be a nagging wife. Even today when I did mention it, I did not yell or criticized him, but I spoke without thinking and my words did nothing to build up or edify my husband or our marriage.
Ephesians 4:29 says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”
It is relatively “easy” for me to live by the first part of this verse. I don’t use curse words, and I try hard not to partake in gossip. Yet, today I realized that I pretty much ignore the second part of this verse.
- Was my comment helpful in building my husband up? No.
- Did it benefit him in any way? No.
- So, in keeping in line with Scripture, should I have said it? No.
Oh, how I wish I could have these reflections and conversations with myself before I open my mouth to speak. Especially when it comes to conversations with my husband. I didn’t say anything nasty or disrespectful, but my words did not build up my husband. In fact, my words served only to feed my frustration. I should have thanked him for getting breakfast for the children this morning instead of focusing on which cup he used. If I had thanked him for being an involved father, then my words would have benefited him, and it would have helped me focus on the positive!
[…] – then they don’t need to be spoken! (For anyone interested, last year I wrote this blog post on being an Ephesians 4:29 […]