Kindness is more consequential than we may have thought.

I can’t even remember exactly what happened (I’ll choose to blame pregnancy brain for that), but a couple weeks ago I was frustrated with Tom. My frustration may have been valid, but the way I expressed it was not. But see the thing is, sometimes I am a bit slow to recognize where I’m wrong when I know my feelings are valid… as though the validity of my feelings absolves me of all accountability for how I communicate said feelings.

Side note: Thanks to therapy, I can tell you this is because I spent my entire childhood having pretty much any negative or “inconvenient” feeling shut down or invalidated by my dad. So as an adult, sometimes I am a tad blinded by the validity of my feelings and ignore the faults of my delivery and related behavior. Just sharing in case you can relate because I suspect many people can. You’re not alone and there are ways you can break that pattern without invalidating your feelings - especially if you have an emotionally healthy spouse.

So whatever happened, happened. He apologized for whatever I was frustrated with, and then things were quiet for the next half hour or so. I was very tired and frustrated, and he was likely just trying to not frustrate me more. If I’m honest, I really felt no pull whatsoever to apologize for the way I spoke to him at this point. I sat down on the couch after I put the baby down for her last nap of the day. He grabbed my hand, took me into our bedroom without saying a word and then…

He gave me a massage. And then just laid down next to me.

There was no ulterior motive here. No hope or intention of it leading to something else.

While he was doing this I asked him, “Why are you so nice to me?” (This is more of an inside joke than a serious question). He responded, “Because I love you.”

And when he laid down next to me, I apologized. I didn’t feel like I had to because he did something for me. I genuinely started to feel like I needed to apologize for the way I communicated my frustration. There was something about this act of service, this kindness, that softened me - especially since it came at a moment that I personally would not have felt like showing kindness if I were him.

In the moment I knew I wanted to say sorry, I realized this is no random thing.

“Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and restraint and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?” - Romans 2:4

No, I’m not calling my husband God! And I also don’t think he did what he did with the thought that it would cause me to feel “sorry.” (I actually think he was taking our marriage counselor’s advice and doing an act of service to diffuse his own frustration.)

But what it stirred up in me is a soft heart, just as the verse indicates. Hard hearts don’t repent, soft hearts do. Hard hearts don’t allow themselves to be humble long enough to feel apologetic. Soft hearts do. And nothing softens a heart like kindness, especially kindness in response to unkindness.

Our marriage is far from perfect, but it is definitely a union of two people who want to do whatever it takes to make the other person feel loved. God knows we fall short, but we make it right when we do even if the process of that gets muddy for a second.

There are ways my husband shows me love that are representative of the love of Christ, and this moment was one of them. Our tendency as flawed people is to repay unkind words or acts with a harsh word or unkind action, somehow thinking that it will bring about the “sorry” feelings we feel they should have. If your marriage has contained moments like that, I’m sure you know as well as I do that it never works that way. A hard response makes a hard heart even harder. We dig our feet in, and let the dominos keep falling until we’re surrounded by a mess we don’t know how to fix.

Kindness breaks the cycle. It softens the heart enough to be able to see if there is something there that needs to be addressed. This is pretty logical, too, right? I mean if he treated me unkindly in response to how I spoke to him, my heart would feel justified, not introspective or apologetic.

Is that not true of the love of God? Romans goes on to say in a later chapter that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” While our hearts were hard and far from God, He displayed the greatest act of love this world has ever known. He did not repay evil with evil, or as the Psalmist wrote…

He has not dealt with us according to our sins,Nor rewarded us according to our guilty deeds. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him. - Psalm 103:10-11

This kind of love and kindness is necessary in marriage.

Quick [important] clarification: I’m not talking about excusing or ignoring hurtful things and calling it grace or love. If I regularly spoke in an unkind or disrespectful way to my husband, the loving thing for him to do would not be to continually accept it and ignore it. Because, eventually, that would erode our marriage because it would erode him. Quietly allowing something to destroy our marriage instead of addressing it is not loving. It’s love that calls us to address hard things with honesty for the sake of maintaining a healthy, fulfilling marriage, and it’s love that drives us to correct what needs to be corrected. Accountability helps sustain love.

But with that said, I repeat what I wrote above:

The kindness within love is necessary in marriage.

Hard hearts stand alone. Soft hearts mesh together.

It’s the kindness of God that softened our hearts enough to lead us to repentance. And it is the kindness within your love for your spouse that creates a safe environment for a soft heart.

My marriage needed me to let the Holy Spirit show me this.

I’m sharing because maybe yours does, too.

~ Alyssa