Of course, you have the right to suffer, but as a practitioner, you do not have the right not to practice. We all need to be understood and loved, but the practice is not merely to expect understanding and love. It is to practice understanding and love. Please don't complain when no one seems to love or understand you. Make the effort to understand and love them better.

It's better to admit your weaknesses and make provision for them than to pretend you're something you're not and suffer the consequences when your true character surfaces. Caring about not hurting girls or tempting boys you've not yet dated trains you toward compassion. And compassion will serve you very well in marriage.

Any situation that calls me to confront my selfishness has enormous spiritual value.

Let us become intentional to use personal slights, inconveniences, acts of gossip and slander, times of difficulty, and even sickness as opportunities to grow in patience and understanding and humility instead of bitterly resenting each one.

What if I ran all my actions through this grid: "If my son-in-law treated my daughter the way I'm treating my wife, how would I feel?" Men, that's the way what you're doing looks like to God. Women, just switch the genders. Imagine hearing your (perhaps future) daughter-in-law talking to her friends about your son with the same tone and words you use to describe your husband: How does that feel?

Humility is about the little things in life, and marriage is 90 percent small stuff. We don't build humility on giant gestures as much as forge it with consistent, thoughtful actions day after day.

It is a sophisticated spiritual challenge to not compare your spouse's weakness with another spouse's strength.

You have to understand before you can respect, and you have to respect before you can fully love. This is a tremendously spiritually therapeutic process, an emptying of myself so I can grow more in my love for others.

I believe God designed marriage, in part, to "pinch our feet." Both men and women need to have their pride assaulted. All of us, men and women alike, if we are to become like Christ, must, by definition, learn to become servants. And marriage gives us the opportunity to do just that.

response—"Lord, how can I love him [or her] today like he [or she] has never been loved?" The answer may be very practical: take over a chore, speak a word of encouragement, take care of something that needs fixing. Or it may be romantic, or over-the-top creative, or generous, or very simple.

Look for the good in every person and every situation. You'll almost always find it.

Honesty and love. — Frankness and truthfulness to myself and to the one I love. Truthful between two as one. You are part of my life, no pride, vanity, or anger involved.