Marriage Monday: Go To Bed. You're Mad.

Earlier this week I found this article by Lydia Netzer called 15 Ways to Stay Married for 15 Years. Let me tell you, this article has got it! After I found it, I read a few of the points aloud to John and we each gave a "OK, noted" - or "why didn't we think of that?!" to some of her best points.

There is one point which I think is really fantastic, and defies one major rule we have subscribed to in our marriage (probably mistakenly):

Go to Bed, You're Mad
I can't count how many times 12:30 AM has come and gone and for some crazy reason, we're still going at some stupid argument which started at 7:00 PM and, by this point, has morphed into some ugly marriage-hating monster of destruction. During our engagement, our marriage counselor Jamie suggested that all arguments be cut-off at 12 midnight with a compromising ceasefire. But the verse "do not let the sun go down on your anger" (Ephesians 4:26) was maybe a little too etch-a-sketched into our hearts and we felt we were doing God some wrong by going to sleep pissed off at each other.

Until... yesterday in Bible study, the group of women I meet with discussed how anger - and you know the kind I'm talking about - does not produce righteousness. Well that makes sense. Duh.  Outweighing Ephesians 4:26 is James 1:20: "My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires."

This blog post isn't about not getting angry. It's about those times at 3 AM when you're completely nuts and you forget why you're fighting and your face is all puffy and it's past your bedtime. We can't think about how many times we would have just saved our energy and woke up in the morning, settled whatever little issue it was over breakfast (if it was still an issue), and moved on with our day. 

So, all that said, this week our Marriage Monday is a little lesson for us with the help of Beth Moore and Lydia Netzer (thanks ladies): go to bed, you're mad.

Thankfully, this house has been pretty peaceful for the last few months, but those times always come when we least expect them to - especially when we're sleep deprived - and when they do, we are going to work at being quicker to listen to each other, slower to speak to each other, and as a result, slower to even get grumpy in the first place... and then quickly head to sleep.