Epiphany on changing the one you love

I had an epiphany one day. After close to 20 years of trying to change my husband, and thinking that the way I do something is the best and only way to do it…. I decided to change the way I reacted to it. To paraphrase the Serenity prayer - I was trying to have the serenity to accept the things I could not change, the courage to change what I could and the wisdom to know the difference.

It wasn’t as hard at it sounds to change the way I reacted. I had been beating my head against a wall for years and had been getting nowhere anyway. So, I reacted in a positive way – finally understanding that it was his way of doing it… and it would never be my way. It did not have to be right vs. wrong, but rather a different way to view the world and all that is in it. I tried to look at it from his point of view.

What happened next floored me… My husband did begin to change… because he was no longer getting nagged about it, or ragged on about it, or feeling like I was criticizing him or telling him he was wrong. For the first time in my life I was consciously ‘accepting what I could not change’.

This is not always easy to do, but it is worth it in the end. It’s funny how we tend to be the most critical of those we love the most. We should be showing our support and our love, not fighting and disconnecting from them. If they were to die tomorrow, our world would never be the same. We would be saddened beyond comprehension. I try to remind myself of that when life gets rough and I want to crawl under a rock and escape. Meanwhile, life goes on as I try to pick my battles…. Hopefully fewer and further apart each day.