Happy Wednesday Pilgrims!!
It’s been a while, two weeks to be exact, but it feels like forever and I feel a little rusty.
First let me say THANK YOU!! for the overwhelming response to my last post. There was an outpour of positive comments and I truly enjoyed reading them.
With 58 days left to go until our November wedding date, wedding planning has moved into the “short-term plans” category. So while we’re still working on putting the finishing touches on wedding plans, Danny and I are also working on different projects that fall just outside of those immediate plans.
As far as wedding planning goes all the major components are in place. Now the challenge for me is keeping track of all the little things that need to be checked off before the week of –
Accessories/Make-Up
Deciding How I’m Wearing My Hair #thetransitioningstruggle
Gifts
Little (or not so little) things like that. Lol.
Yesterday we met with the caterer to finalize and sign the contract.
(I can’t wait for AFTER the wedding to do a complete write-up on our caterer. Her food is amazing!)
Everything went well and while there we were part of a really good discussion on love and marriage.
As always Danny brought the Truth.
TRUTH: If I Show You I Love You…
During the discussion we had at the restaurant, it was said that living together before getting married is a good idea because then you really get to know a person. And by living together first you can decide if this is someone you can really see yourself spending the rest of your life with.
Why? In living together you may find out that a person is messy (or possesses a number of other traits that makes you crazy) and decide that you don’t want to put up with that for the rest of your life. Because more often than not, people don’t change.
But that’s not true. People CAN change. And living together before can be a faux form of commitment –
“I love you enough to live with you but if I find you’re imperfect (which more than likely I will because we will be in such close proximity) I have every right to break this temporary living arrangement and go out and find someone else that pleases me more. And whoever ends up pleasing me best is, perhaps, the one I’ll marry.”
If your “love” is about what pleases you best then let me help you, it isn’t love.
Love is others-centered. It focuses on pleasing others before pleasing itself. And it seeks to do this regardless of a person’s imperfections.
Of course during the course of this conversation Danny speaks up. Danny, refusing to keep quiet about his personal convictions and the Truth he knows, shared this –
Love is not based on someone else’s actions, love is a choice.
It doesn’t take living together, and shouldn’t take living together, before marriage to know that when you CHOOSE to marry someone, you have decided to love them regardless of their shortcomings or bad habits.
Everyone of us is flawed.
But
If I Show You I Love You
You also have a choice –
Believe me. Accept it. Embrace it.
Or Reject it.
But understand that –
LOVE is a CHOICE.
To bestow love is a choice.
And to accept love is a choice.
And when two people decide to get married they are choosing FOREVER to both bestow love and to accept love.
That is something I’ve really been sitting with for the past couple of weeks.
I think this engagement period has been some of the most sobering times in my 11 year friendship with Danny.
Sometimes I have found it easier to bestow love and harder to accept the love shown to me. Other times its been the other way around – difficult to bestow and easy to accept.
(Sometimes the reality of this “love” thing Danny and I were creating scared me. At our best its paradise, at our work (yes work not worse) we put on our construction hats and he takes the lead. :Cue Lauryn Hill’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off You:)
I’m sure a large part of marriage is working to maintain that delicate balance of bestowing and accepting love.
“But how do people know if they’re making the right choice?”
It’s not so much about your “choice” being right, it’s more about making the choice the right way. Or as the saying goes, “It’s not about finding the right person, it’s about becoming the right person.”
Dating and Courtship is the time you use to investigate not only the other person but yourself. It’s a time to be yourself, reveal yourself, develop a solid friendship with the other person and discover if together you two have what it takes to be life partners. It’s this information that should be considered when making the choice.
Choosing to love based on the physical alone or because the other person does something for you may leave you empty in the long run.
Sometimes I think we forget how potent and all-encompassing love really is.
1 Peter 4:8 NIV says “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
LOVE covers sins?
It’s one thing to say we accept the annoying habits of our significant other but what happens when they’ve sinned against us? When they’ve hurt us deeply? Or when they do something we would never expect? Yes, that too, love can cover…if we’re willing to follow through on our choice. It takes work.
I think if we really understood 1 Peter 4:8 our relationships would be transformed: Marriages, Parent-child relationships, friendships, how we related to strangers, all of that would change.
If I Show You I Love You
You would not need me to say it because you would be so overwhelmed with the reality of it all doubt would be driven away. ( 1 John 4:18 NIV There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.)
If I Show You I Love You
It should look like this:
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NASB
“4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 [b]bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
To my displayers of love –
My Heavenly Father and Danny –
Thank you.
May we make Real LOVE the focal point of our weddings, our marriages and our lives!
Grace. &. Peace,
-CN
The Path Unwinding... 