Fruit of the Spirit - Kindness

I’ve noticed over the years that ‘kindness’ often gets lost in our attempts to be humorous, or at the least, humor is an excuse for our failure to be kind. Let me explain. How often have you found yourself, after your spouse becomes upset with you about a comment you make, saying “I was just kidding,” as if that makes things better. Or, how often are we trying to joke around with our spouse and we go too far with the joke or don’t know when to stop. Quickly, we find ourselves in ‘hot water’ and quickly trying to back pedal. Either way, our spouse is often hurt by what they perceive to be a lack of kindness.

In times like these, we need to halt the attempts to laugh the situation away or to make excuses and to ‘brush off’ our spouse’s feelings. We may feel that our spouse is being too sensitive or blowing things out of proportion. However, often when our spouse is reacting negatively toward our jocularity, it’s usually because we've hit a nerve, due to a break in our relationship connection and trust, and our spouse is not sure about our underlying motives. They may feel wary that the joking is more of a passive-aggressive or, at least, a veiled way of us making a statement regarding something about them with which we are annoyed or unhappy. When there is this type of fragility of trust in our marriage, it calls for spouses to be more attentive towards each other, to understand their struggles, and to approach each other with more kindness and a more supportive attitude.

Most couples go through times of feeling distant from each other. We all have moments where we feel self-conscious about ourselves and our weaknesses. We all have moments of struggling with day-to-day problems and our emotions being out of whack. As helpmates to each other, we are called to be kind to our spouse in our words and in our deeds. It doesn’t mean that we can’t ‘kid around’ with one another, but it does mean we need to be paying attention to how our spouse is doing in each situation we are in.

ACTION STEP: This week, seek more ways to show your spouse kindness, especially in those moments when they seem the most fragile.