2 Characteristics of Love
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My husband and I recently attended a Couple’s Getaway coordinated by the Turning Point Fellowship (April 2016). Here are the lessons I learned and my thoughts of it…
The love that we have for our spouse when we first got married is not enough to sustain a lifelong of marriage. It needs to grow. The reason marriage fail is because we expect that the love we have then should remain the same.
- Love only grows when you choose to love.
Most of us got married for the wrong reasons. I got married because my boyfriend then made me feel good. Because he is good-looking. Because I know he can provide. And I thought then that the chicken-skin I got every time I think of him, and when I’m with him, is love.
Those chicken-skin incidents could be part of love. But it’s not all there is to love. It should grow. It can only grow by choice. By making, creating love.
1 Corinthians 13, 4 Love is patient,love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking,it is not easily angered,it keeps no record of wrongs.6 Love does not delight in evilbut rejoices with the truth.7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
These verses in the Bible shows how I can make my love muscle stronger. There was a time in my marriage that I willed myself to memorize it, so I can live it. Did I perfect it? Nope. But the choice to make love grow is half the battle.
“Love is pliable. You are responsible to shape your love” (Wayne Cordeiro)
- Love only grows when you choose to forgive.
Growing up is a difficult process on its own. I had to look for God. I had to look for the good in the challenges that came my way. I willed myself to grow up through those challenges.
I thought marriage will be a lot easier because in my opinion, I have grown up. And I know that love is a choice and so, I will simply choose to love. What I didn’t realize then was that I was poor in forgiving.
To clarify, I don’t keep track of my husband’s misdeeds. Nor do I take his faults against him. I am quite aware that he cannot love me exactly the way I want to be loved. I know that there will always be this longing inside that only God can fill.
To make my love muscle grow stronger, I chose to learn his love language. I chose to learn the sports he likes to play. I chose to be his cheerleader and number one fan. I chose to see the best in him. My prayer was always, “Lord, help me see my husband the way you see him, precious in your sight. Help me love him the way he wants to be love”.
What I forgot to take into account are the wounds I had from the battles in life. Those wounds are sensitive to what cause them in the first place. And made me extra protective of the scars. Just because my husband was not aware of all the wounds and battle scars I had, I begin to resent my husband.
It was difficult for me to get out of resentment. My reasons for resenting were valid. I felt victimized. I know I had to snap of it. But the will was not there.
And so I prayed, “Lord, can you help snap out of this unhealthy mindset, this unforgiving heart?”. I know that I cannot take out my past hurts to my husband. I have to remember that my husband had wound from life’s battle as well. He has scars as well. We are two wounded soldiers. Demanding that he help me just because I have bigger scars is not the way to heal our wounds. I may have the bigger wound superficially, but what if I was healthier and can heal faster? What if he may have smaller wound but during that time, he was not as healthy? Health, spiritual health has a big factor in healing fast.
And so, I decided to forgive my husband. And that’s when God began healing my all my wounds. And my scars, are much stronger muscles than before they were wounded.
Conclusions:
- The Couples Getaway made me choose to forgive my husband, even though 99% of me doesn’t want to. It’s easier to choose not love, not forgive, and just try to outrun the pain.
- Satan really hates marriage. And he will do everything to destroy it. If he cannot make do it today, he will try again tomorrow, and every day that I am alive. And he will not hit me in my strongest point but in my most tender spot. Mine was abandonment. Satan was not able to make me disobey God outright. When I was in my deepest hurt however, it was such an easy thing to bail out of marriage, to dishonor the vow I made in the presence of God. Disobedience was effortless.
- Prayers from friends and small group support sustained me and my marriage to Jun.
- All things work together for good to those who love God. (Romans 8:28). The “dark cave” in my marriage taught me to seek God earnestly. Not just to ask for the things of this world. It taught us that money, good looks, beauty alone cannot make marriage work. It has to have God in the center of it. I can confidently say that Jun agrees with me.
- The “I love you” we say to each other has a whole different and deeper meaning than when we first said “I love you”, when we didn’t yet learn every imperfection we have.