{"id":127,"date":"2026-03-23T06:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T11:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/?p=127"},"modified":"2026-03-23T06:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T11:08:12","slug":"dont-take-it-out-on-them-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/2026\/03\/23\/dont-take-it-out-on-them-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Take It Out on Them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- Don't Take It Out on Them \u2014 Monday: Side by Side | Seven Statements from the Cross | Statement Three -->\n\n<style>\n@import url('https:\/\/fonts.googleapis.com\/css2?family=Oswald:wght@300;400;600;700&family=EB+Garamond:ital,wght@0,400;0,500;1,400;1,500&display=swap');\n\n.su-post {\n  font-family: 'EB Garamond', Georgia, serif;\n  color: #2a2825;\n  line-height: 1.85;\n  max-width: 740px;\n  margin: 0 auto;\n  padding: 0;\n}\n\n.su-post * { box-sizing: border-box; }\n\n.su-post p {\n  font-size: 18px;\n  line-height: 1.85;\n  color: #2a2825;\n  margin: 0 0 26px;\n}\n\n.su-anchor-verse {\n  border-left: 4px solid #C8922A;\n  background: #faf7f2;\n  padding: 32px 36px;\n  margin: 0 0 48px;\n  border-radius: 0 6px 6px 0;\n}\n\n.su-anchor-verse blockquote {\n  margin: 0; padding: 0; border: none; background: none;\n}\n\n.su-anchor-verse p {\n  font-family: 'EB Garamond', Georgia, serif;\n  font-size: 21px;\n  font-style: italic;\n  line-height: 1.65;\n  color: #22201E;\n  margin: 0 0 16px;\n}\n\n.su-anchor-verse cite {\n  font-family: 'Oswald', sans-serif;\n  font-weight: 400;\n  font-size: 12px;\n  letter-spacing: 0.18em;\n  text-transform: uppercase;\n  color: #C8922A;\n  font-style: normal;\n}\n\n.su-label {\n  font-family: 'Oswald', sans-serif;\n  font-weight: 400;\n  font-size: 11px;\n  letter-spacing: 0.22em;\n  text-transform: uppercase;\n  color: #C8922A;\n  display: block;\n  margin-bottom: 18px;\n}\n\n.su-rule {\n  border: none;\n  border-top: 1px solid #e8e2d8;\n  margin: 48px 0;\n}\n\n.su-callout {\n  background: #22201E;\n  border-radius: 10px;\n  padding: 36px 40px;\n  margin: 44px 0;\n}\n\n.su-callout .su-label { color: #C8922A; }\n\n.su-callout p {\n  font-family: 'EB Garamond', Georgia, serif;\n  font-size: 18px;\n  font-style: italic;\n  line-height: 1.8;\n  color: #E8DCC8;\n  margin: 0;\n}\n\n.su-pull-quote {\n  border-left: 3px solid #C8922A;\n  padding: 4px 0 4px 28px;\n  margin: 44px 0;\n}\n\n.su-pull-quote p {\n  font-family: 'EB Garamond', Georgia, serif;\n  font-size: 22px;\n  font-style: italic;\n  line-height: 1.6;\n  color: #22201E;\n  margin: 0;\n}\n\n.su-lesson {\n  border-left: 3px solid #22201E;\n  padding: 4px 0 4px 28px;\n  margin: 44px 0;\n}\n\n.su-lesson p {\n  font-family: 'Oswald', sans-serif;\n  font-weight: 300;\n  font-size: 17px;\n  letter-spacing: 0.02em;\n  line-height: 1.7;\n  color: #22201E;\n  margin: 0;\n}\n\n.su-coaching {\n  background: #faf7f2;\n  border-radius: 10px;\n  padding: 32px 36px;\n  margin: 44px 0;\n}\n\n.su-coaching ol {\n  margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 20px;\n}\n\n.su-coaching ol li {\n  font-family: 'EB Garamond', Georgia, serif;\n  font-size: 17px;\n  line-height: 1.75;\n  color: #2a2825;\n  padding: 8px 0;\n  border-bottom: 1px solid #e8e2d8;\n}\n\n.su-coaching ol li:last-child { border-bottom: none; }\n\n.su-prayer {\n  border-top: 1px solid #e8e2d8;\n  padding-top: 36px;\n  margin-top: 52px;\n}\n\n.su-prayer p {\n  font-family: 'EB Garamond', Georgia, serif;\n  font-size: 17px;\n  font-style: italic;\n  line-height: 1.9;\n  color: #555;\n  margin: 0;\n}\n<\/style>\n\n<div class=\"su-post\">\n\n  <div class=\"su-anchor-verse\">\n    <blockquote>\n      <p>&#8220;Love one another as I have loved you.&#8221;<\/p>\n      <cite>John 15:12 &nbsp;\u00b7&nbsp; ESV<\/cite>\n    <\/blockquote>\n  <\/div>\n\n  <p>Marcus, 52, and Renae have been married 31 years. They built a good life, raised kids, survived hard seasons, made it through the kind of years most couples don&#8217;t. But somewhere in the last five years, dinner became a debrief. And then the debrief became silence. And then the silence became two people on their phones, eating good pasta, completely alone in the same room.<\/p>\n\n  <p>Nobody is being cruel. Nobody did anything wrong. The drift happens so slowly that neither of them can name the moment it started. They&#8217;re tired. They&#8217;ve been tired for a long time. And tired people stop reaching across the table.<\/p>\n\n  <hr class=\"su-rule\">\n\n  <p>Tonight Marcus notices Renae reach for her phone when the conversation stalls. He was about to do the same thing, he&#8217;s done it a hundred times. But somewhere in that familiar motion, something catches. Not accusation, just recognition. He&#8217;s watched this happen one night at a time for years. He knows what the next hour looks like if he picks up his phone. He&#8217;s lived it.<\/p>\n\n  <p>He sets his face-down on the table instead. Renae looks up, slightly surprised. He doesn&#8217;t make a thing of it. He just asks: &#8220;Hey, did you ever hear back from your sister about Thanksgiving?&#8221; Something specific. Something she mentioned three weeks ago that he&#8217;d actually held onto. She sets her phone down. Something in the room shifts, small, real, and entirely chosen.<\/p>\n\n  <div class=\"su-pull-quote\">\n    <p>They talk for forty minutes. Not about logistics. About her sister&#8217;s marriage, about what Marcus is actually worried about at work, about a memory from their early years that makes them both laugh. No grand gesture. Just two people who chose each other again on a Tuesday.<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n\n  <hr class=\"su-rule\">\n\n  <div class=\"su-callout\">\n    <span class=\"su-label\">What Jesus Did<\/span>\n    <p>From the cross, with hours to live, Jesus looked at the people standing nearest to Him and made sure they were covered. He didn&#8217;t check out. He didn&#8217;t let the weight of everything He was carrying become an excuse to be absent from the people right in front of Him. He saw His mother. He saw John. He made provision. Presence, in the worst moment of His life, was still His first instinct. Marcus did the same thing on a Tuesday night, and it started with putting the phone face-down.<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n\n  <div class=\"su-lesson\">\n    <p>Side by side isn&#8217;t the same as hand in hand. We can share a house, a bed, a calendar, and still be completely absent from the people we promised to love. Connection doesn&#8217;t maintain itself. Someone has to call it back. Tonight, that someone could be you. Every relationship faces challenges, sometimes all it takes is for you to take the lead with spark to turn it around.<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n\n  <div class=\"su-coaching\">\n    <span class=\"su-label\">Sit With This<\/span>\n    <ol>\n      <li>When did you last ask your spouse something that required a real answer, not a logistics update?<\/li>\n      <li>What&#8217;s one specific thing she mentioned recently that you could bring back up tonight?<\/li>\n      <li>If your spouse described your marriage to a friend right now, would she say you&#8217;re hand in hand, or side by side?<\/li>\n    <\/ol>\n  <\/div>\n\n  <div class=\"su-prayer\">\n    <span class=\"su-label\">Today&#8217;s Prayer<\/span>\n    <p>Lord, we confess that we have eaten at the same table and been completely absent. Remind us that the people sitting across from us are not obstacles to our rest; they are the ones you gave us to love. Teach us to choose presence over convenience, one dinner at a time. Amen.<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Love one another as I have loved you.&#8221; John 15:12 &nbsp;\u00b7&nbsp; ESV Marcus, 52, and Renae have been married 31 years. They built a good life, raised kids, survived hard seasons, made it through the kind of years most couples&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marriage-and-home"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/SU_20260323_BLOG.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions\/129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}