– by Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand
By Love Refined: Letters to a Young Bride
Dear Julie,
I’m grateful for your frankness. It makes my duties as your godmother easier to fulfill.
You say that although the analogy of the stained-glass windows is very moving, nonetheless true lovers are concerned with “great things, beautiful things” and should not let themselves be troubled by small things.
Roy wouldn’t agree.
He and my friend Evelyn have been married thirty-five years. She’s sloppy and he’s meticulous. During their honeymoon, Roy noticed that she always left the toothpaste tube open. He asked Evelyn to put the cap on, but she laughed at him, claiming he had the habits of an old maid.
Time and again, Roy has asked her to change. Nothing doing! After thirty-five years, the cap still remains off and Roy has resigned himself to it.
Compare this to my own husband’s attitude. Early in our marriage, I noticed he would always leave the soap swimming in a small pool of water. It would slowly disintegrate into an unattractive, slimy goo – something I found unappealing. I drew it to his attention.
From that day on, he made a point of drying the soap after each use – to such an extent that I couldn’t tell from the “soap testimony” whether he had washed himself or not. (Moreover – and this is typical of him – he too developed a strong dislike for sticky soap.)
I was so moved by this, that to this day I feel a wave of loving gratitude for this small but significant gesture of love.
My husband was a great lover. And because he was one, he managed to relate the smallest things to love and was willing to change to please his beloved in all legitimate things. This characteristic is typical of great love.
I’m sure that as your love grows deeper, you, too, will come to see how the greater the love, the more it permeates even the smallest aspects of life.
With love,
Lily
“Every effort we make to forget self, to leave self behind us, and to devote ourselves to the labor of making every person with whom we are bound to live, happy, is rewarded by interior satisfaction and joy. The supreme effort of goodness is,—not alone to do good to others; that is its first and lower effect,—but to make others good.” Rev. Bernard O’Reilly The Mirror of True Womanhood, 1893 (afflink)
Our attitude changes our life…it’s that simple. Our good attitude greatly affects those that we love, making our homes a more cheerier and peaceful dwelling! To have this control…to be able to turn around our attitude is a tremendous thing to think about!
This Gratitude Journal is here to help you focus on the good, the beautiful, the praiseworthy. “For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8 – Douay Rheims).
Yes, we need to be thinking of these things throughout the day!
You will be disciplined, the next 30 days, to write positive, thankful thoughts down in this journal. You will be thinking about good memories, special moments, things and people you are grateful for, lovely and thought-provoking Catholic quotes, thoughts before bedtime, etc. Saying it, reading it, writing it, all helps to ingrain thankfulness into our hearts…and Our Lord so loves gratefulness! It makes us happier, too!
Available here.
There’s nothing complicated or magical about learning to be kinder; it just takes greater attention to the things that you do and how you do them. The Hidden Power of Kindness shows you how to become more aware of even your most offhand daily actions. You’ll find simple, step-by-step, and spiritually crucial directions for how to overcome the habitual unkindnesses that creep undetected into the behavior of even the most careful souls.
Lovely, lovely, that was so sweet and thoughtful! <3
Life can be like that, sometimes,but most of the time it’s not.to dream a perfect relationship when it rarely exists is misleading, maybe silly.
In psalm 90 it says:
“Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.”
And married life is not an exception .Some people are spared some difficulties because God knows they could not stand them, remember what Paul says:God will never test you beyond your strength! With 6 pregnancies I never had a miscarriage, when most of my friends did at some point.God knew I had enough on my plate. Beside my own experience I know quite a lot of my Church brothers married life through our community in the church. Nobody could guess what they actually live in their marriage behind the nice pictures!
I agree that a “perfect relationship” rarely (ever?) exists. That’s not what this is about. I’m interpreting this to be about understanding the dynamics of a marriage so that we can strive to make ours better. For example, like explained in this lovely post, small things *do* matter. I can keep that in mind for the next time a “small thing” comes up… I can choose to ignore it, or like the soap example I can choose to address the small thing with great love. I can’t force my spouse to do things, but I sure can control my own attitudes and actions. In many respects, we all have a “public persona” that we present to the outside world, but that veneer is very thin and mostly transparent. You seem to suggest that most marriages are simply an external facade, when I find the opposite is true – who they present themselves to be in public is more or less who they are in private too. Or perhaps I am just blessed to be surrounded by good people in solid marriages, who don’t put on pretenses to be something they are not?
There is a very good talk from Fr. Ripperger where he talks about how God often makes the things that are our weaknesses something that God has given us as a path to grace. An example he gives is if someone struggles with sins of the flesh, it’s the virtue of chastity done with nothing less than heroic virtue that will provide grace. I think about that talk often when encountering difficulties – this is a gift God has given me for my own santification?(is that the right word I’m looking for? I’m unsure now) It makes the road I’m on far less frightening when seen like that. We have a disabled child, the oldest of our crew of 5. She is certainly a challenge, a primary one for sure, but far from our only challenge.
Because of her, we know quite a few families with disabled children. Parents tend to firmly in one of two camps – either they resent the disability and see it as a burden, or they embrace the disability as simply part of the person. Both types of parents love and cherish their children equally, but those of the latter camp tend to have more solid marriages and a better outlook.
Wonderful, thank you!
I remember a dear older friend wrote in my wedding guest book that the little things were what was most important for a successful marriage. After being married, happily, joyfully, for 17 years I agree wholeheartedly and have since passed the wisdom on to other young couples. I’m sooo grateful, so happy, for my good husband and our happy marriage.
The one thing I can’t help wondering is, how do you dry the soap without dirtying the towel? Did she have a soap towel? He he.
Blessed be God! May He be praised and thanked forever!
Hee hee… I wondered that too. I was experimenting trying to figure that one out when I washed my hands earlier. Maybe he blew on it? LOL We just have one of those nubbly doohickies in the soap dish that keeps the soap out of the puddle (lake) that invariably forms in the bottom of the soap dish after the kids use it.