“You can’t live on love.”
With good intentions that was advice given just over 10 years
ago and this stubborn heart set out to marry her best friend, determined to
prove that statement wrong.
Over the past 10 years we have learned just what it means to live on love and there have been times when love is all we’ve lived on.
The first years were rough ones, we faced loss and
disappointment and life head on. Love
was something we thought we knew all about, a verb that we blissfully and naively
stepped into. For some time, we got the
majority of it all wrong. We allowed circumstances and others opinions and late
notices and burnt dinners and unpacked boxes to define our life together. The tangible art of two lives becoming one
was messier than we anticipated, dirtier than either of us cared to admit, and
harder than we ever thought possible. We
went from a spirit of “conquering the world together” to one of “how in the
world did it turn out like this?” We
took the love that God planted and grew and tended to for years before we said “I
do” and we squandered it away. We blamed
each other for our own shortcomings, we were stubborn and unwilling to budge,
we wept silently over stacks of bills, we placed burdens on one another that we
should have relieved, we held grudges when we could have redeemed, we were
critical and quick to point out something when it didn’t go our way.
We had love, we wanted to understand love, but we did it all
wrong.
There was a defining period of time when we, like the prodigal
son (Luke 15:11-32), came walking back to our Father. When we realized we had to go back to where
we began or we’d lose it all, so we turned it all around and He
met us there.
God met us in the mess
that we were. He lavished us with
this grace-filled kind of love that is only through His own heart. He showed us what love was really all about
and how aside from Him, we would never get it right.
“Marriage is a crucifixion and you aren’t meant to survive it.”
Charles Stanley
We took our love back to the
cross, and allowed our-single-selves
to be crucified in order that our-married-selves could live as one. When
our marriage remains grounded in Christ, it cannot be undone. Ten years later and we have this
imperfect, beautiful, moment-by-moment grace LOVE that we do not take for granted. We have learned that it is not our circumstances
or others or bills or dinners or messes that define our life together but
instead, is the undeserved sacrifice that is Christ. Our marriage is to be a reflection of the
ultimate marriage between Christ and His Church. We still have shortcomings and we still get
it wrong some of the time, we are far from perfect, but we extend grace and we
stay hand in hand. We hold our tongue
when we’d like to shoot words. We allow our wills to bend and meet one
another. We are quicker to apologize and
slower to allow feelings to speak over Truth.
We fix our eyes on the eternal and let go of the worldly things that don't matter.
This life is still rough and we
still face loss and disappointment, immense amounts of it to be honest, but we
understand it differently now. We allow
God to refine us through it and make good out of it. We lean in close when life wants to pull us
hard away. It’s still messy and the sin
is still dirty, but it is part of living and we are living ON LOVE and
we are living IN LOVE.
If there’s one solid Truth that I
have learned in 10 years of marriage it is this:
You can’t TRULY LIVE without TRUE LOVE.
“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10
Happy 10th Anniversary My Love.
Thank you for being my very best friend through it all.
I Love You. Always.
