The Love Dare-Day Seventeen

Determine to guard your mate's secrets (unless they are dangerous to them or to you) and to pray for them.  Talk with your spouse, and resolve to demonstrate love in spite of these issues.  Really listen to them when they share personal thoughts and struggles with you.  Make them feel safe.

Love promotes intimacy-- He who covers an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.  Marriage is the most intimate of all human relationships.  Each of us comes into life with an inborn hunger to be known, loved, and accepted.  We want people to know our name, to recognize us when they see us, and to value who we are.  The prospect of sharing our home with another person who knows us down to the most intimate detail is part of the deep pleasure of marriage.  Yet this blessing is also the greatest danger.  Someone who knows us this intimately can either love us at depths we never imagined, or can wound us in ways we will never fully recover.  If the home is not considered a place of safety, you will both be tempted to seek it somewhere else. Perhaps you look to a friend, initiating a relationship that either flirts with adultery or actually enters it. Your mate should not feel pressured to be perfect in your eyes.  They should not walk on eggshells in the very place they should feel safe at. The bible says "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear" Marriage has unloaded another person's baggage into your life, and your into theirs.  Some of these secrets may need correcting.  Therefore, you can be an agent of healing and repairing for each other, not by lecturing, not by criticizing, but by listening in love and offering support.  Some of these secrets need to be accepted. They are part of the person's make-up and history.  In either case, you and you alone wield the power that either to reject your spouse or to welcome them in -warts and all. No one knows you better than God does, the One who made you.  And yet God, who knows secrets about us that we even hide from ourselves, loves us at a depth we cannot begin to fathom.  How much more should we-- as imperfect people-- reach out to our spouse in grace and understanding, accepting them for who they are and assuring them that their secrets are safe with us? This may be an area where you've really failed in the past.  If so, don't expect your spouse to immediately give you wide open access to their heart.  You must rebuild their trust.  The reality of intimacy always takes time to develop, specifically after being compromised.  But your commitment to re-establish it can happen today for anyone willing to take the dare.


Ouch!  This one is a painful dare for me because I am guilty of this... guilty of this, so much I can honestly say I am ashamed at myself.

Of course in marriage when there has been a long period of time together and there has been a separation you are going to have issues of trust on both sides.  I am not free from guilt in this area.  We both have betrayed each other in one way or another during our time together and apart.  However, this speaks to ME in an even greater manner because I have not protected my hubby's secrets in the past.

Maybe I did not come out and tell someone (enter secret here) but my actions towards that third party has lead them to think a certain way or come to a conclusion on their own about our relationship and that is just as much a trust breaker as openly speaking the secret.

I know my hubby holds things back from me in fear that I might say or imply things to a third party that he would not want them to know.  I get this.  This is my cross that I have to bear.  I am ashamed to say it that when I am challenged or pushed into a corner I seek out help and guidance when really I should be getting on my knees and praying to God.

I am looking for that perfect love that casts out fear.  But in order for me to get, I have to give it first.

This has been a great chapter for me and a great lesson for my heart.  Now, I have to go and prove myself to my hubby and prove to him I can be the one to be trusted again, it's not just about him.  But... I am willing to do it.. and continue to try over and over again till I get it right because he is the one I love and he is the one God gave to me and I will prove to him that we can have that perfect love that casts out fear.

~Mellie

*****

We live in a hard world. We are all faced with choices, decisions--some obvious, some subtle, that can have lasting implications. We don't always make the best decisions. Sometimes, we act out of fear. Sometimes, we act out of ego.

It is important that we all feel we have a place to be safe. A place, rather a person, that we know we can share anything and everything with and that that person, despite knowing the best and worst about you, still accepts you.

I have that person in my wife. She knows me, as she often says, perhaps better than I know myself. She knows all the amazing things I am capable of--my strengths, abilities to persuade and lead, usual strong character and determination. She also knows my terrible failings as a man and as a leader of our family.

Not only does she accept me, still--but she shows me unconditional love on a daily basis. Love that I never knew existed.

Likewise, I know all about my wife. I know her hopes and dreams. I  know her greatest and darkest fears. I know her tremendous strengths, and I know her shortcomings. And, I love her. All of her.

All these things make-up Michelle. They are who and what she is. And, they are and always will be safe with me.

As Michelle says, it all comes down to fear. We all have to accept who we are as people, what we have done both good and bad, and move forward. We all have to decide we will not live our lives in the past....we will not live our lives in fear.

I have made that decision, and it benefits my wife, our family, and all those around me that trust and count on me.

~ Joseph