Purposefully neglect an activity you would normally do so you can spend quality time with your spouse. Do something he or she would love to do or a project they'd really like to work on. Just be together.
Love takes delight- Enjoy like with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life. One of the important things you should learn on your journey is not to follow your heart, but rather lead it. You don't let your feelings and emotions do the driving. In your marriage you will not always feel like loving your spouse. It's unrealistic for your heart to constantly thrill at the thought of spending every moment with your spouse. Nobody can maintain that burning feeling. A newly married couple takes delight in the one they call their spouse. Their love is young and fresh and have romantic hopes for their future. However there is something just as powerful as that fresh feeling. It comes from the decision to delight in your spouse and to love them no matter how long you have been married. In other words, love that chooses to love is just as powerful as love the feels like loving. It's time to lead your heart to once again delight in your mate. Enjoy your spouse. Seek their companionship. Desire their conversation. Welcome this person back into your heart fully. Again, you get to choose to what you treasure.. treasure your marriage. For some this challenge of delight may only be a small step away. For others, it may require a giant leap from ongoing disgust. The responsibility is yours to relearn what you love about this one to whom you've promised yourself forever.
What really struck me when I was reading my chapter was I know this feeling of not feeling the thrill of your spouse. I know there have been times in my marriage where my hubby misses and seeks that thrill, the excrement of the new and the new possibility that may be out there. I am sure we all have at one time or another in our marriages. But I am always quick to recall that once that newness wears off you are right back to where you were with your last spouse or partner never really growing in yourself or your marriage but simply looking for that selfish all over good feeling. As my hubby and I get older and grow deeper in ourselves and our marriage I think it's becoming clear that what he and I have is really good and a lot of people look all their lives for a love like ours. Sometimes I think we forget to appreciate what we have because we are tempted by the outside world.
Typically every night my hubby and I have the same routine. We spend time doing something we love (working out together) then we have dinner and family time and then we spend the rest of the evening alone together in our room. So I was a little concerned on what I was going to do extra to spend quality time with him. But sure enough God worked HIS work and rather than talking to my hubby about doing something different for our routine of the night my hubby just turned off the TV and we spent the evening in bed talking, laughing and bonding. It was as if my hubby knew we needed to have that extra quiet time together and have a more focused time with each other. I really felt like God worked through my hubby last night and we had a FANTASTIC evening.
My hubby posted a quote on my Facebook wall the other day I want to share:
“Love is the free exercise of choice. Two
people love each other only when they are quite capable of living
without each other but choose to live with each other.”
― M. Scott Peck
― M. Scott Peck
This is so true for him and I. We have lived apart, we were separated trying to find our own lives and moving on looking or having that newness in other relationships, but we still choose to come back together as one. This quote I feel goes right along with this chapter. I choose to be with my hubby. I choose to delight in who he is and how we are when we are together. I choose to fight for him. I choose to forgive and forget because I know this is the man for me. I choose on days that I may not feel like hanging out with him to turn my thoughts around and be thankful that he is here with me again. I choose to recall how I felt living apart from my hubby and I don't ever want to feel that again.
Life is about the choices we make in every areas of our life. I choose God who loves me and is unmoving in his patience for me to commit fully to him, just as I choose to be this way in my marriage towards my hubby. I choose us.
~Mellie
**On a side note my hubby has started to do the challenge himself. We have not really talked about it but he will make cute little jokes like, "It's day Two today, boy these challenges get harder and harder." I can see his effort that he is putting into each day and I can see that he is taking this seriously and even in just a few short days I can see changes in my hubby. He now prays over us before he leaves for work each day. Never in my life would I have ever thought this to be a possible scenario for us. I actually always admired couples who pray together at the start and end of each of their days. God is amazing and this just proves to me that we can never give up. We must continue to fight the good fight and for the good of our marriages. No matter what comes against you, dig in deep and find that strength. Ask God to lead you and help you and surrender yourself to him. Miracles will happen.**
***I have a couple friends who are struggling in their marriage. I challenged them to take the Love Dare with me. This is a 60 day love challenge based off the movie FireProof Your Marriage. I have started this challenge in the past but not fully dove into it or completed it so I thought if I got these ladies to do it with me we could all work through it together.
http://www.lifeway.com/Product/the-love-dare-paperback-p005180605
I am always looking for ways to improve my marriage, my faith and my relationship with my hubby. I am doing this for me more so than FOR him. It is about changing who I am and who I want to be as a wife and mother and child of God.****
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