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A Novel Approach to Marriage Building - A Gilded Sky, Chapter 3
Remember, when you get to the questions that are specific about your marriage, make sure you both share!
Warning: The question contains spoilers. If you haven't already read the book, you may not want to read the questions.
In the last full paragraph on page 18, Greg is thinking about the fact that Beth had obviously been hurt and wondered if she would ever see that he would never hurt her intentionally. "He’d seen Luke and Nalani enough to know that guys have a tendency to do stupid things and hurt women’s feelings but he’d also seen his brother learn from his mistakes and make it up to his wife."
Do you think it makes a difference to hurt people whether the hurt was intentional or not? Should it make a difference? How important is that last part, that Luke learns from his mistakes and makes it up to his wife?
Read 1 Samuel 1, the story of Hannah and Elkanah. In what ways does Elkanah address Hannah's hurt? In what ways might he make it even worse? How does Hannah deal with her hurt in spite of her husband's inablity to make things better? Read 1 Samuel 2:1-10 & 21. How much do you think Hannah's heart of praise had to do with her answer from God? Filter it through the New Testament. What parts are changed and what remains? (You might need to read some New Testament verses about suffering.)
Does the story of Hannah and Elkanah help you put your hurts in perspective? How often do you depend on each other to heal hurts rather than depending on God? Do you resist seeing when you've caused a hurt? Or do you try to see your mistakes and learn from them? Discuss some recent hurts (like from this week. If you didn't discuss it before, unless it's a really, really big thing, you should probably just let it go and let God heal it.) What was it that you were really hurt about? How could your spouse have handled the situation in a way that you would not have been hurt?
Apologize for the hurts you caused each other and forgive each other. Then work out a plan for how you can deal with hurts immediately or avoid them altogether.
Other A Gilded Sky questions:
If you have any questions or comments about "A Novel Approach," please email me at cheryl@cherylokimoto.com
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