Same Old Thing This morning while writing notes on my daily devotional, I noticed the vivid blue color of the pen I was using. A very beautiful blue color that contrasts nicely with the white paper I use. I have been using the same pen and paper for months. Why am I now just noticing this? The metropolitan area I live in is located in a valley between two beautiful and magnificent mountain ranges. We can drive to a ski resort in the winter in 30 minutes. The Wasatch Mountains are on the east and the Oquirrh Mountains on the west. Every day I drive towards the Wasatch Mountains on the way to work. Daily the beauty and magnificence fills my windshield. Unfortunately on most days I don’t even notice the mountains. I notice the guy who cut me off. I notice the tasks I have to complete at work. I notice the low gas gauge. How can I miss the beauty and magnificence of God’s creation for something as trivial as bad drivers? Today I was thinking about these situations and how they transfer over into my past and present marriage. For years before my marriage exploded in 2008, I devalued and ignored my wife’s beauty and magnificence. I marginalized her intelligence and compassion. In return my wife spent her time thinking that she had married the wrong person; that her life would be better with someone else. She concentrated on the negatives instead of the positives the same way I did. We had fallen into a perfect trap set by the enemy. We spent our days thinking, “What about me?” Thank God we were able to recover from the betrayals and infidelity this deadly thinking helped cause. The enemy’s plan ultimately failed. Today I am more aware of the dangers of complacency. I know how forgetting the good and focusing on the bad is deadly to marriages. I try and remember daily to appreciate the beauty of the mountains and the wonders of my wife. My wife is beautiful and intelligent and compassionate. She deserves to be viewed this way. She deserves to be loved unconditionally. She deserves to be protected. She deserves to be cherished. How about today we tell our wives how beautiful they are and not that they didn’t do the dishes.
