I ran through my notes and found this cute anecdote:
” I went to my wife & asked, “Honey, what can I do to help us get ready on time?” Now, I didn’t really mean that. I really meant, What can I do to help you get over your problem of being so late? But I said it properly: “What can I do to help us get ready on time?”
“The first thing,” she said, “is that you could hang up your clothes. You try on various combinations of clothes & let them lay all over the bedroom.” I’d always wondered how my clothes made their way back on the hangers!
“Second,” she continued, “you could help get the children ready for bed.”
“You do that, too huh? Okay. I’ll hang up my clothes & help with the children.”
“Finally,” she said, “maybe you could get ready early & troubleshoot around the house when someone calls or comes to the door. Instead of yelling from the bathroom, ‘Honey, would you get that?’ maybe you could get it.”
The entire dialogue sent me into a state of shock! It was as if I had walked into the bedroom with a 20-gauge shotgun aimed directly at my wife’s weaknesses & right when I pulled the trigger, my gun blew up on me! What I thought was her problem was really my problem!
I realized there was a lesson to be learned from my wife’s weakness, & the lesson in that particular case was not patience–although I needed a little bit of that–but becoming sensitive to the needs of my mate”
WITHIN YOU 