A Valentine

It’s Valentine’s Day! I would like to dedicate this blog to all of you out there who are in a relationship and desire for it to be better than it is.

In the beginning God decided to breathe life into a man He had created in His own image. That “image” has been debated over time by people much smarter than me, but for sure God is LOVE and therefore, we were created to be love. Not just a vessel to hold  love; to give and receive love; but to actually be love, a noun that doesn’t really exist unless it is also a verb. Much of the fear and anxiety and stress and struggle that we wrestle with is because we are not living as we were created to live. We are not being love. We don’t receive it well and we don’t give it well and we don’t live it well. When that is the case, we are living in a state that wasn’t designed for us. We were fashioned by our Creator to be the visible reflection of Him to the world and when we withhold or refuse love, we are not functioning according to the Manufacturers specifications. We are essentially like a fish out of water… miserable and on our way OUT.

The best way to discover if you are truly reflecting the love of God is to take a look at how you love your partner. Not how you feel about your partner. Love isn’t a feeling. Love is a decision we make repeatedly… to give without first receiving, to keep no record of wrongs, to be kind even when you’re hangry and patient even when you are tired. Love is throwing away the score board. Love is learning to cherish because that’s how God feels about them and learning better methods of communicating respectfully. Love is work. Love is constant. Love is life.

If you are feeling like you fail to meet the above standard, please understand that you are surrounded by the rest of us failures. Love is not a destination, it is a journey. If you stop traveling toward loving better, you will never arrive at where you always dreamed your marriage would be and where God wants it to be. In 41 years of marriage we have had times when we failed miserably and times when we just stopped trying and times when … well… I just wanted out. But I can happily say that we both circled back, after every failure, and realized where we wanted to go and gave up a little of ourselves to get a little closer to the goal. We discovered that when you lay down your “ideal partner” list and learn to love the one you have, you gain something far better. 

Our marriage isn’t perfect. We still frustrate each other and misunderstand and allow our feelings to get in the way of the fact that we are on a mission. But mostly, we enjoy doing life together every day. We laugh and we smile and have a lot of fun together. We don’t worry that we don’t have a lot in common, but enjoy what we do, and are learning to do life together better. And that, my friend, is my prayer for you.

There is so much good that God wants for you. In order to receive it, you must let the walls fall down and pack away the pride and let your heart be filled with His love, rather than your resentment. When your heart overflows with His love, pure and unconditional, I believe you get a little taste of heaven on earth, because His love will become complete as it is manifested in you.

No one has ever seen God.

But if we love each other,

God lives in us,

and his love is brought to full expression in us.

1 John 4:12

That verse says, to me, that we are in partnership with our Maker to demonstrate His love. Home is the best place to hold up your end of the bargain.

May your Valentine’s Day be unforgettable,

not because it is like a fairy tale,

but because it is the beginning of a wonderful love story,

 starring the One who is truly Love.