The Love Dare, My Day One

I have decided recently that my marriage was not going well. Long story short we're had a small seperation and have gotten back together but things are still not great. Having said this I recently (yesterday) decided that I was going to take steps to change myself to better my marriage and that the only way to do this and have it succeed was to look to God for the answers and to use tools to help guide mt path. The first tool that I want to use is "The Love Dare". It is the same book used in the movie Fireproof which greatly helped to inspire me to begin this process.

Today is Day 1 of the Love Dare.
Today's Dare:
The first part of this dare is fairly simple. Although love is communicated in a number of ways, our words often reflect the condition of out heart. For the next day, resolve to demonstrate patience and to say nothing negative to your spouse at all. If the temptation arises, choose not to say anything. It's better to hold your tounge than to say something you'll regret.

This one is simple to say but I found that in practice can be harder than you might think especially if you're not used to holding your tounge, which I am not.

The day started off easy enough. We only see each other for about 20 minutes in the morning before I have to leave for work (I work a standard 8:00-5:00 Monday through Friday office job and He works as a server so he's hours are different than mine). He worked dinner shift today so he came to my office and picked me up for lunch. On lunch break we went to Walmart and picked up some oil for his car and some sea salt for me (I just repierced my belly button). We then went to Ross and bought him a new belt because he was in need of a new one. We went through the drivethru at Dairy Queen and thats when it started to become hard to not say anything negative.

We were mid way through the drive thru waiting on the people in front of us to get done. He likes to listen to sports radio, which I can't stand. People talking for hours and hours about the same thigns over and over everyday gets old to me but he's a sports fan. The radio was already up a good bit and he proceeded to turn it up more.
I asked "Did you have to turn it up more? Was it not loud enough?"
He said "I couldn't hear it."
I was upset because it was so loud it was painful to listen to and I just wanted to argue with him about his "I couldn't hear it" statement but I held my tounge and simply said "ok". We'd have those arguements before and we both end up mad and the radio just gets louder. I didn't say anything negative even though I wanted to and within a few minutes he turned the radio down without me saying another word.

When lunch was over He dropped me back off at my office and proceeded to go run a few errands. If only took me about 5 minutes to realize that I'd left the sea salt in his car. I called him and told him what I did and he said he'd drop it off to me on his way into work. He had to be at work at 2 for a meeting so around 1:15 he called me. I assumed he was going to tell me that he was outside or almost to my office. I answered the phone and he told me that he just finished with an oil change and that he needed new brakes. We talked about that for a moment then I asked if he was on his way to drop off the sea salt. He'd forgotten and was already almost to work (which is about 30 minutes away). I let out a breath and counted in my head and said "ok". We talked for only a moment longer than got off the phone. It was nice to end the conversation on a good note instead of with an arguement but it was hard not to say something about him forgetting something that was important to me.

Not a prefect day but progress was made on my part. It's amazing how something so simple can be so hard to do but cause such a positive effect on my day.