Marriage Monday - Love Dare 14

Today we continuing walking through The Love Dare with dare/week 14.

Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life.  Ecclesiastes 9:9

Humans are emotional creatures.  Women are really emotional creatures.  There are days when we won't want to spend every moment with our husband.  Even days we may think we don't love/like him anymore.  Our emotions can be all over the place.  Emotions are a choice. Sometimes we need to not follow our emotions but lead them. 

There is something just as powerful as that fresh, new love.  It comes from the decision to delight in your spouse and to love him no matter how long you've been married.  In other words, love that chooses to love is just as powerful as love that feels like loving.  When we first marry, we take delight in our husband.  We enjoy spending time with him, enjoy talking to him, love to hold his hand and touch him.  But somewhere down the road, that dwindles away.  We no longer delight in him.  At times we even look at him in disgust.  

Lead your heart to once again delight in your mate.  Enjoy your spouse.  Just as you enjoy being with a best friend or enjoy a hobby, you should even more enjoy your husband.  Lead your heart back to that love of the honeymoon stage.

If you pick at your mate more than you praise him, it's because you've allowed your heart to be selfish.  You've led yourself into criticism.  When we get to that point where we are no longer delighting in our husband, we become critical.  We can easily point out all he is doing wrong.  Yet we have a very hard time finding anything good about him.  We let the negative blind us to his good.  Yes sister, there is good.

But if you've been delighted before -which you were when you got married- you can be delighted again.  Think back to how much you loved him when you first married.  You did love him.  You loved to gaze into his eyes.  You loved to walk hand in hand.  You loved taking care of him.  Think about it.  Friend, close your eyes and open your heart.  Let the memories come flooding back.  Let them flood out the negativity.  Let them flood out the his bad qualities.  Let the memories rest on your heart.  

The responsibility is yours to relearn what you love about the one to whom you've promised yourself forever.  No one else can bring those memories back.  Only you can.  Pull out wedding photos from time to time.  Read old love notes.  Regularly remember these times.  It is up to you.

Today's Dare:
Purposefully neglect an activity you would normally do so you can spend quality time with your spouse.  Do something he would love to do or a project he'd really like to work on.  Just be together.

Sweet Blessings~