There is No Growth Without Change

There is no growth without change; there is no change without fear or loss; and there is no loss without pain. We fear these losses, even if our old ways were self-defeating, because, like a worn out pair of shoes, they were at least comfortable and familiar.

Every change involves a loss of some kind: You must let go of old ways in order to experience the new. ~Rick Warren

I love this devotional by Rick Warren. Pair of old shoes. Yep those shoes are comfortable and familiar. After 40.5 years of marriage, our marriage was comfortable. But God asked us to grow, to change, maybe lose some habits. Ouch! No, Lord, I’m comfortable. But we jumped out of our comfort and went to a marriage retreat. I have written several blogs about the sessions. But the telling part was what would we be willing to do to actually change?

I absolutely love this small detail that we have changed. The speakers, Les and Leslie Parrot, called this, “sharing withhold. “ I told Mark we were going to rename it because I can’t ever remember what it’s called. I am going to call it the two positives and 1 negative. At least once a week, we have done this and it is a game changer. I love it! It seems so small and insignificant. But isn’t that the way change often happens...beginning with a small thing?Bad or good change?

The reason it’s called “withhold” is because we “hold onto” a negative feeling about something that happened. There is power in holding onto that thought. It grows and grows and becomes larger than life. We will remember this action or the words that our spouse said and festers like a infection that does not get air or any way to get healing. 

By the same way, sometimes we hold onto a compliment that we noticed about our spouse and we keep it inside because they are not worthy of our praise. Oh my goodness, the compliment may have been the breath of life that our spouse needed to hear.

So here is how it goes...at least once a week one of us say, “How about two positives and one negative?” One goes first and says one positive, one negative and end with a positive. The negative can get sandwiched in the two positives. Here is the wonderful part, our spouse can only say “thank you” for all comments. If they have something else to say, they must wait thirty minutes to address any of the comments. You can guess, after 30 minutes, it will rare to even remember the negative.

This simple act is like a fresh rain on our marriage. It washes away the infection that had been hiding under a rock, waiting for an opportunity to bring it up in the worst way and the worst time. Cool thing, your spouse can not justify the negative for 30 minutes. We love to justify, don’t we? But this exercise gives us time to think about why our spouse said this...why this was important enough for our spouse to mention it. If we are wise enough to be quiet for 30 minutes and think about what they said, miracles may happen that we did not anticipate. Love this tiny change in our marriage that will help us grow our marriage for the next 40 years. I love you, Mark Cooper(aka Superman).