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It's the Little Things

          Perhaps the most important thing that I heard from this week’s content was Elder Wirthlin say that sometimes the greatest acts of love are not like the things that poets and writers talk about, but rather the small, loving acts of kindness throughout the day that make the biggest and most profound difference in a marriage. It was interesting to take this thought and carry it into watching the “Fireproof” clips. It was the small glares, eye rolls, and snarky comments that really caused and escalated problems and fights in their relationship. If there was an issue, “sprinkling” it with these small, but negative acts made it 10 times worse. Seeing just how much these small negative acts affected their marriage, wouldn’t it be interesting to see how doing frequent, small, kind acts affects a marriage as well. If doing these small, mean things can almost bring marriages to the ground, doesn’t the opposite surely have the capability to build it up to be the strongest that it can be?

         I will admit that I have been guilty of doing these small, inconsiderate, and rude things in the heat of an argument. If you ask my mother, my “eye rolls” as a teenager were the source of many of my punishments. At the same time, however, I have been able to see how performing small, yet meaningful acts for my husband has not only made our marriage stronger, but it has allowed me to get to know him so much better as well. In the last two years that we have been married, I know where he likes his socks in the drawer, where to put his favorite foods in the fridge so he will easily find them, and 100 other little things. I know these things not just because I have randomly noticed them, but because I have seen how important these silly, small things are to him. He does the same for me. I am still guilty of doing an occasional eye roll, but I consistently make it an effort to make sure I am doing frequent acts of kindness and love rather than letting my anger or frustration get the best of me and escalate a problem that did not need to be escalated. 

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