Husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. —Ephesians 5:28
Love my wife like I love my body. Does that mean I can tell her to exercise (OMG NOT THAT YOU NEED TO HONEY <3 LOVE YOU) and not get in trouble? “But the Bible says so.”
The best section is this: “When you look at your mate, you’re looking at a part of you. So treat her well. Speak highly of him. Nourish and cherish the love of your life.”
The books asked what need of our spouse could be met by us. It wasn’t a huge need, but something way simple. I usually do the laundry and see usually does the dishes. She noticed that the laundry was piling up a little and did some loads. I did the dishes for her while she wasn’t looking.
God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that we were yet sinner, Christ died for us. —Romans 5:8
We were supposed to do something “out of the ordinary” today. Honestly, I don’t even remember what I did. (Maybe she can tell you.)
Instead, I want to talk about a definition of unconditional that I found online. “Time series technique in which explicit dependence on the past sequence of observations is ignored.”
Yeah. Chew on that. The past sequence of observations is ignored. To live day to day without keeping record of past transgressions is something I hope to be able to do some day.
Good impressions. Something about a judge and a book.
Greet one another with a kiss of love. —1 Peter 5:14
I never really thought about this until reading this day’s entry. The way you greet someone, whether your married to them or not, whether you known them for 1 year or 10, really does have an affect on how you interact. It can change the entire dynamic of how you’re feeling toward one another.
Example, today’s dare was to think of a specific way to greet your spouse and to do it with a smile. Well, I had a TERRIBLE day. I completely forgot about greeting Amanda with a smile and opened the door to Amanda standing right next to me with her arms open and lips turned up. Instead of hugging her and thanking Jesus that the day was over, I said something to the effect of, “Not now. Today was a horrible day. And why ?”
Bad News Bears. I don’t think we talked for like an hour.
Love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire. —Song of Solomon 8:6
A fire can be hard to put sometimes. That’s why the blazing fire :: jealousy metaphor is so powerful. It can consume you. Worse, it can burn away everything you built prior to that moment.
Not all jealousy is illegitimate. Book talks about a husband having a legitamate reason for being jealous when his wife replaces him with someone else. The book says he may be justified and longs to have back what is rightfully his.
That is also the kind of jealousy God has for us. He created us in His image to praise and worship him. He doesn’t want anything to come between us and Him. Interesting to read a book about growing closer to your spouse and hit a paragraph about loving God above all else. Yes that includes your spouse. I always use the triangle example to explain.
God
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
Husband --------- Wife
(Please forgive my horrible ASCII drawing.) As you and your spouse move closer to God, so you move closer together. But your first priority should be your relationship with God. As you learn to love God more, you’ll love your spouse more too.
So back what jealousy has to do with my marriage. I’m supposed to support Amanda in everything. “Be [her] biggest cheerleader.” I’m enjoying some time away playing sports. I boast about destoying everyone on the field and she feels like destroying me because she stayed home and cleaned the house. Love puts others first and refuses to let jealousy lead. This all seems like a dumb example, but you celebrate their success instead of being mad that they were having fun while you weren’t.
Today we told to be determined to become our spouse’s biggest fan and reject any thoughts of jealousy. We also had to rip the bad qualities we listed yesterday from our paper, discreetly burn them, and tell our spouse how glad we are about a success they recently enjoyed.
I burned it in the parking lot at work. Almost poignantly a rendition and combination of Amazing Grace and some other song came on the radio. The act of burning away her bad qualities while listening to someone sing about amazing grace was something that I couldn’t have even planned if you had given me a month to think about it. Amazing grace. Giving her grace when those qualities are being shown and choosing to react with love.
[Love] believes all things, hope all things. —1 Corinthians 13:7
Again, sounds pretty cheesy. I mean, this is pretty similar to trust on the surface. You want to believe that your spouse won’t cheat on you, won’t overspend, has your best interests first, etc. You want to believe that they have the best qualities and the self control to handle themselves in an appropriate way. But the flip side to the coin is that everyone has negative qualities.
Take a second, what are yours?
Weaknesses, failures, bad habits. Spending time dwelling on the bad things your mate does will kill your relationship. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean you should spend your time thinking about it. You are the only person that can choose to forgive and forget. Honestly, seriously, what possible purpose does it serve to make a point of remembering information about a time someone messed up so that you can bring it up again later? You want to make them feel bad right?
WHY? You love them, don’t you? Your wife. Your husband. Think about that. You purposefully save little things to say to the person to love the most on this earth to make them feel worse during an argument. That’s pretty messed up.
I know it’s difficult to try and focus your thoughts on good things always, but I think my personal twist on an old saying is pretty valid here: practice makes permanent. Forgive and forget and be done. Get back to enjoying life and why you chose to spend it together.
Today we got two sheets on paper and secretly wrote three positives qualities and three negative qualities about each other. Then we were supposed to phone and thank our spouse for having one of those characteristics.
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