Marriage Matters—Choose Your Battles

Very few battles are worth fighting or even winning. Stop and think about the last real argument you had with your spouse. I mean the argument that caused one of you to get hurt or brought a cold silence that lasted for at least a day. Do you even remember what it was about? Was it worth it?

After almost 40 years, many of which were lived at war with my husband, I have learned a few hard lessons:

♥ Very few arguments are worth the price of peace that is paid to win them.

♥ Being right is a small consolation when it damages my friendship with my spouse.

♥ Winning an argument is a much smaller victory than the victory of giving up my need to win it.

♥ Not every battlefield needs to have my flag on it.

♥ It’s harder to stop a battle in motion than it is to walk away before it begins.

♥ Marriage battles are generally fought with words, and our tongues are hard to control once they are loaded for battle. Our words used to win an argument often lead us to long-term regret and not much else.

So what are the battles worth fighting? First, I think that question needs to be posed to God. He alone knows. The best I can do is give you my opinion on two good questions to ask yourself and the Holy Spirit.

? Will someone else be harmed if I don’t fight this particular battle, especially someone in my family?

? Will not engaging in this conflict result in my disobedience to God’s word, or compromise my walk with Christ in any way?

Hopefully, your answers to those questions will serve as guardrails in your decisions in conflict. I absolutely believe there are times when we should dig in our heels, but when we do, we should be quite certain that God is dug in with us. But most of the time, we should back down. If my husband is asking me to rob a bank with him, that will be a hard no from me, and I will not be moved from that position. But if I think we need to have a go ’round because he won’t do his fair share around the house, even after numerous “discussions”, then I’m gonna have to count the actual cost of going to battle over it rather than just letting it go.

Those are simple and easy scenarios, and not based on real events, but our lives are much more complicated than that, I know. So please allow me to submit this for your consideration:

Most of our battles are fought to the death because we are prideful, not because we are right.

Choose your battles well, my friend, and remember that more often than not, no battle at all is the best choice.