Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:25-33 NIV
Marriage is a lifelong educational process; the main subjects are understanding, respect, trust, and love. And sometimes we men are slow learners. I certainly have been at times.
Yeah, several months after we got married, the love drug wore off in my brain just like it does for everybody. I remember my supervisor at work saying to me, “You used to talk about your wife all the time. Now you don’t talk about her any more. Why is that?”
I don’t know. Maybe I was trying to fix her. Maybe I was trying to change her so my brain chemistry would change and I would feel in love again, just like the beginning.
As you might imagine, that didn’t go well. Spouses are not objects to be fixed. They are people with whom we journey through life. They change. We change. We learn to fall in love with that new person they have become.
How do we do that? For me, I found the answer in a place I didn’t expect. I let myself be loved by God. Instead of fixing my wife, I let God fix me. Along the way, everything changed. When I no longer needed my wife to be a little god who made me feel good about myself, then my eyes were opened to see what a beautiful gift God gave me by allowing me to live my life with Kim. Wow!
I feel like this blog post needs to be a book, and, in a way, it is. My book, The Gift of Transformation, talks about how God healed our marriage, and helped me fall in love once again. You can find out more here.
Dwight
