That informal breakfast conversation was another opportunity to learn. We were listening to an old lady with a calm look in her face, like someone who had already lived many springs.

She poured coffee and milk in her cup and somebody offered her sugar. She thanked them, saying she did not take any sugar. Somebody gave her the sweetener, thinking she had a diet to follow.

She thanked them again and said she took just coffee and milk, without any sugar or sweetener.

People were quite amazed by her attitude, as not many people just do not take any sugar. She then told her story.

She told us that just after she got married she stopped taking sugar. We all thought straight away that she did it to follow her husband; he surely did not like sugar.

Her husband had passed away long before she told us her story, and she told us we were mistaken again; that was not the reason.

She told us how her young husband enjoyed sugar, and how difficult it was to have it during the second Wold War.

She said that, because of the rationing, they could have only a small amount per month and it was hardly enough for her husband.

She loved her husband very much, and decided to stop taking sugar so he could have all of it.

She said that when the war was over she was so much used to taking her coffee without sugar that she had lost the habit of taking it anyhow.

Nowadays, an attitude like hers would cause astonishment to the ones who cannot understand the grandness of such surrender.

Only the one that truly loves is capable of a noble gesture towards the beloved one.

On modern days, couples get divorced for so little that it is worth remembering the heroines and heroes that renounce or renounced to so many things in the name of the partners’ happiness.

In these days, when rare couples can abdicate a simple opinion in the name of the harmony of a home, it is worth remembering that living in a family is a constant exercise of commitment and abnegation.

We are not talking about not having an opinion or subservience of one or the other, but simply the need to reveal and tolerate the other's flaws.

It is not necessary to avoid something you like just because the other does not like it or for mere whim or requirement of the spouse, but if we can renounce to something so that our love will be happier, that will be a noble attitude.

Actually, true love is made of abnegation and surrender, otherwise it is not love, it is selfishness.

If amongst the ones that decided to share a home, a bed, there is no tolerance, from whom should we expect such virtue?

If you have not thought about it before, think about it now.

Think that when you make the choice of sharing the experiences of marriage, you decide to share your life with someone else and that means, many times, to give up some whims in the name of the harmony of your home.

If you realized all that only after you got married, remember that living together is an art and a challenge that is worth living with all the dedication and tenderness. When we learn to live in harmony in our home, we are ready to live well in any society.

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 “Marriage is a mutual help society, and its assets are the children we have- spirits with whom we are connected to by the process and needs of evolution.”

Text written by the Spiritist  Moment Team.