Loving him well

My man.
I love him so.
I am learning how to love him well.
Because real love is a choice.
This is a continuous learning process.
I'll never fully comprehend it, but I am committed to finding out as much as I can about loving that man for however long it takes, which I'm betting will be the rest of my life.
And that's okay with me.

We are learning to live with and love what we have.
We are praying together more regularly.
We are enjoying each other and the time we have together.
We are delighting in our children - the little creations that we made together.


I have to remind myself of these verses from 1 Corinthians so often:




⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
⁸ Love never fails.


When I can't think of anything else to do? Love. That's always the answer.


We had a great discussion at our small group a few weeks ago. The question was posed, "What causes the most conflict in your marriage?" Most of us (with one exception) have been married at least 5 years. So…we've definitely experienced conflict. And we all know that "thing" that keeps creeping back up.

There were a lot of answers ranging from "he doesn't lead our household" to "sex" to "communication" to "security" to "finances"…we pretty much discussed the whole gamut.  

When it was mine and David's turn to talk, we shared that communication is our number one issue. That's the thing that always crops back up. I LOVE to communicate. David, not so much. I am an over-communicator, if you will. I have a lot of thoughts, issues, ideas and interests floating around in my head that I'm constantly mulling over. And I like to communicate these things. I like to talk. David just doesn't. I like to ask questions, mull things over, discuss scenarios and options. David doesn't. His thought processes are pretty simple overall. And I don't say that to mean he's not smart - he's way smarter than I am - we just think about different things and we think about things differently.


If there's anything I've learned in these last 10+ years of marriage to my complete and total opposite, it's this: being different is beautiful, a blessing really, though it doesn't seem like it at times. But it has afforded me the opportunity to grow and change and learn in ways I never would have been able to do on my own. And learning to accept and embrace his differences has brought me an incredible amount of joy.

Though marriage is inevitably challenging and downright hard, it is one of the most rewarding and fulfilling roles I will ever have in this lifetime. I can't imagine being married to anyone else and I am exorbitantly grateful that God gave me that man of mine.