Recently, a friend said to me while speaking about our children, “No one knows what the future holds.”  I have to disagree - to a point; we can look ahead and see potential outcomes.

My husband and I have been leading a couple’s small group this Spring.  Our group has been studying the book Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs.  The book is based on the premise of a husband who provides his wife the love she most desires, and a wife who provides a husband the respect he desperately needs.

What the future holds for your marriage, your children, and your grandchildren, lies squarely in your hands.  As a couple, you have an opportunity to change the direction of your marriage and develop a positive, loving, and growing relationship.  Or, stay in the same patterns of tit-for-tat, resentment, and verbal one-upmanship. 

It’s time to break the cycle.

If a husband speaks loving words to his wife, he shows his children the importance of holding their mother in high esteem.  If a wife speaks with respect to her husband, she shows her children the importance of a husband and father who is the head of the home.  If the cycle of unloving and disrespectful communication continues, the trickle-down effect will be seen in their children’s communication, marriages, and grandchildren’s lives - a glimpse at the future.

When my husband and I married, we were unchurched.  Christ did not become a part of our lives until we had been married twelve years.  We were raising our young children in a home where there was yelling and swearing taking place.  I was teaching our daughters to be disrespectful to their father, and he was teaching them to be unloving toward me.  As we grew into an understanding of what God wanted for us as a couple, we sought out counseling.  We learned about the need for personal change and developed new forms of respectful communication and conflict resolution skills. 

Every time our family gathers, as we did this past Sunday for Mother’s Day, I am grateful for a Christian counselor who took my husband and myself by the hand and lovingly nudged us toward changing our marriage.  I sit back and watch the giving nature of our daughters.  I see them teaching our grandchildren about loving God and loving others.  The grandkids are learning to talk to their mothers lovingly, and speak to their fathers with respect. 

Here is a quote from Love and Respect that spoke volumes to me -

To walk in the truth means to order your life by the Word of God.  If we want our children to walk in the truth, we must live out the same truth before them.  You may be thinking about mistakes you’ve made, the times you haven’t been a good example.  Don’t despair.  God has a unique way of eliminating past mistakes.  Where there has been sin, His grace abounds.  He erases your mistakes and puts more grace in their place. 

We can see what the future holds - a legacy of changed lives.