A Prayer for Patience with My Spouse

Father, it is the small things tonight, the dishes left again, the same question asked twice, the habit I have pointed out a hundred times. I feel my jaw tighten and a sigh building, and I am tired of being so easily annoyed.

I confess I extend patience to strangers and coworkers all day, then walk through my own door and hand my spouse the worn-out scraps of it. The people I love most should not get the worst of me. Yet too often they do.

So I turn to You, who has been endlessly patient with me, who has forgiven the same failure in me more times than I can count without ever sighing or keeping score. Let me draw my patience from Your deep well.

Slow my reactions. Widen the space between the irritation and my mouth. Help me see the whole person and not just the habit, the heart and not just the friction of two lives sharing one space.

You said to be completely humble and gentle, patient, bearing with one another in love. Bear with my spouse through me, since on my own I run short so fast.

I lay my short fuse at Your feet. Trade my irritation for tenderness. Make me a calmer, kinder place to live beside, day after ordinary day. Amen.