Our pastor tells us often what people remember most about his Sunday messages is when he shares a personal story of how he’s messed up.  For some reason people resonate and find encouragement through the failures of others.  Not in a jealous, envious sort of way, but in a way that makes them real. This gives hope to others who have failed in similar ways.

Today we want to share with you one of our romantic flops, and it happened only a week ago. Debi planned a romantic evening for us in an effort to help me get my mind off of everything else my mind tends to dwell on. Usually her efforts are successful, but not on this night.

Why?

I really enjoyed the evening. It was fun and spontaneous. I cooperated completely even though some of it was so corny it made us both laugh hysterically. It was good to laugh and enjoy being together with nothing else to do.

Somewhere between the laughter and the fun I did something completely unexpected (i.e. stupid); I picked up my iphone for just a minute to look at my e-mails.

What I read instantly threw cold water on our romantic evening. It was one of those e-mails which burdens your heart for the friend who wrote it. Our evening went from happy to depressing with only one look at my iphone.

How did Debi handle it? She went to sleep disappointed, but she didn’t flip out in anger. We prayed for our friend, cried a little and went to sleep. The next day Debi asked if we could talk about what happened the night before. She explained her disappointment in how the night went.  She pointed out if I hadn’t picked up my phone in the first place our evening wouldn’t have turned into a total flop.

She was right!

But because she didn’t flip out over my romance flop, we were able to talk it over reasonably. I apologized for my lack of self-control in looking at my e-mail at such an inappropriate time. She forgave me and that was the end of it.

What did we learn?

• Don’t ever look at e-mail while you’re enjoying quality time with your spouse.
• Don’t flip out when your spouse treats you in an insensitive way. Instead look for the chance to talk it over openly and honestly.
• Lastly, when you are wrong, admit it! It wasn’t hard to resolve this conflict, but it sure could have been.

We both would have preferred that the conflict never happened. But unfortunately marriage is full of all kinds of flops – the key is to seek God’s help in order to not flip out!

How do you handle romantic flops? Have you had one recently that went unresolved? How could you and your spouse bring resolve to the hurt at this point? It’s never too late to try.

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This is post #7 in the Ultimate Blog Challenge to post everyday in October.