I was chatting with someone recently about marriage. It’s the kind of thing we twenty-something girls like to discuss. Matrimony is hard-wired into us, so we’re either on the lookout for a husband, or trying to discover ways to improve the one we’ve already got.
So I was chatting with this girl, talking about something sweet that Leif had done for me and subsequently how much I liked him that day.
“You mean love?” She asked.
“No. Like. I love him everyday, but today I like him too.” I responded, and at her somewhat confused look, I automatically launched into my Love is a Verb monologue. Because I like to write, it’s long past time for me to jot this down.
It’s my opinion that the words love, like, and lust have become confused and their meanings lost in our current society.
That gooshy, butterfly-y, can’t-sleep-because-you-can’t-stop-wondering-if-he-wears-boxers-or-briefs feeling? Yeah, that’s not love. That’s lust.
When he teaches Sunday School and changes his grandmother’s light bulbs and reads Narnia to homeless blind children and makes your heart melt? That’s not love either. That’s admiration, affection, or just plain old like.
Love is not an emotion. Love is an action verb. It is a decision. Love is getting off the couch and making dinner because your hubby had a rough day at work and you know it means a lot to him. Love is making sure his clothes are clean and wrinkle-free. Love is teaching your children to respect their father as the head of the home. Love is getting it on at 1am even when you have headache, because let’s face it, men think about that as much as women think about matrimony and babies. I take that back. They think about it at least three times as much.
Leif knows that to love me is to know what I like at Starbucks, rub my feet, or pour me a glass of wine before he goes to tuck our daughters into bed.
The like, the ooey-gooey, comes as a result of loving one another. Because we’re human, we are not perfect. Which is why there are some days that I don’t particular like my husband. But I love him always.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1 Corinthians 13: 4-7
Wow. I really needed to hear this. I almost made a huge mistake last night but somehow I got thru it and made it to this morning. I found this in my reader and it’s 100% true. I thought the problems in my marriage were because of what my husband was or wasn’t doing. Now I realize it’s just ad much about what I’m not doing. Paradigm shift! Could be life changing. Thanks for sharing.
To know this in your twenties is a rare thing. You are a good peer to your girlfriends. I was able to witness what a marriage based on real love and commitment is like at the end of life. As my Mom lay dying of her 4th bout with yet another cancer my Dad retired only a couple of years in his early 70s dressed my moms surgical sites,emptied cath and ostomy bags,and anything else she needed day or night. Her hair had just started growing in like lambs wool as a result of chemo and he sweetly told her he loved the color and that he didn’t want her to color it ever again. He prayed for her aloud tirelessly praying for yet another healing. He lay as close as he could beside her and never left her side except to get something for her. She passed in March of 2002. To this day and after his own heart surgery and other surgeries he still asks me if he did enough. Did he tell her he loved her enough. He mourns for her when he even thinks of a question he hadn’t enough time to ask. He weeps with the thought of her and tells me constantly she was the perfect woman and he was so blessed to have married her….I have never married. Is it any wonder. I have had the example of a man’s love that most illustrates the bible’s instructions. Men love your wives like Christ loves the church. That kind of love is worth waiting for, pray God directs someone to you like my Dad.
As a man, a human, a conservative, and a pastor, thank you for sharing this. Both men and women need to hear such truthful advice. God bless.
I have never heard it put more perfectly than that!