Snow Ball Affect

This weekend was to put it simply - frustrating. It started off innocently enough. I don't remember the details but my wife promised me that I could sleep in on Saturday. Well, Saturday morning rolls around and our daughter is up bright and early - 7am. Well, the wife is not an early or easy riser. After 40 minutes of her telling the daughter to go do _____, or play with her hair, or go back to sleep, I just roll out of bed. Why bother, I've been up for the last 40 minutes and it has become obvious to me that she has no intention of actually fulfilling her promise. Then after the kids are fed she still does not get up, but wants me to lay there with her in bed. I did, but all that did for me was get me to take a nap. Although that was nice I am now feeling like I did not get anything done. To include spending time with the kids. Yesterday my beloved volunteered to bring over a meal to a family that recently had a baby - friends of ours. So she gets up early to get that started, while i get a shower, etc. I feed the kids and get them ready for church. Then as the time is getting short she is yelling across the house for whatever. I hate that! When she does that it makes me feel like I am some kind of dog to be beckoned, or that I've done something wrong. Then we rush off to church. Well, of course two people don't show up for children's ministry and since my wife has volunteered to be the children's minitry coordinator she takes all of the kids not being watched and puts them in our class which she already has to take because there are not enough volunteers for all of the children. So we get home late from church, still need to run the meal over to our friends and get back for AWANA's. *sigh* At some point I develop a headache. So I am in a not so great mood yesterday afternoon. I am not taking it out on anyone, but it is for many to see as I am not good at hiding my feelings. Now, my wife is not responsible for how I react to things, and perhaps I have not made things very clear over 13 years of marriage. But I know I have shared some things that bother me that does not seem to be very important to her. 1. If you tell me you are going to do something, or 'let' me do something. Follow through with it. 2. Do not yell at me across the house. There is a good chance I am doing something, and just because you are doing something does not mean your things is more important than mine. Grant it - it could be, but show me some courtesy from time to time and come to me to tell me what is so important. 3. Communication is a 2 party event. Just because you said something does not mean I received it, or perhaps understood it as you intended it. 4. There will be times I am in a bad mood. That does not mean I need to go take a time out. It just means I am in a bad mood and maybe I am working through something. 5. I don't need to hear about every little thing that some one else might be doing wrong or how the cashier at the Food Lion rung up 42 rammon noodles one at a time. 6. I do not want to hear about all the things you think I should have done, but didn't do - either at all, or the way you wanted it done. I have allowed my sinful reactions to dictate my moods. Especially allowing my wife to become more than she should be. Instead of communicating with her all of the above items (and probably more) I let them build and build until my mood changes noticably enough that she can see it. From there she starts to treat me differntly and it just piles on because I do not like how she is saying something, or how she is relating to me. Finally it just drags me down. When that happens I have taken my own preferences and placed them before what God has given me. Verse for today: Exodus 20:1-17 esv And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. “You shall not murder. “You shall not commit adultery. “You shall not steal. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”