Many people start out in a relationship saying that they are falling in love. It’s the feeling of losing control of one’s emotions that feels like falling. But, when we fall we end up getting hurt. Marriage should be more than the feeling of falling. Marriage is a long-term commitment that needs nurturing, it needs care and a willingness to abide together through everything that happens in life. Through choice, and willingness a couple can grow in love to build a solid foundation. Over time as that love grows it can become something amazing and in time, abiding love can be joy that brings fulfillment to both.
Love, something that is cherished, hoped for and needed in our lives. People all over the world offer celebrations of love on February 14th. My husband and I however choose to celebrate our love on February 23nd. That is the date of our first date. It is the day when we began to grow in love for one another.
I had a professor for family studies in college tell us class, that we shouldn’t fall in love.
“If you fall in love, your gonna get hurt. But if your grow into love it will abide.” Professor, Marvin Daniel.
When my beloved and I started dating there was no doubt a physical attraction, but it was the growing together part that has kept us in a committed relationship for all of these years.
How to Grow In Love in Marriage
We go through many struggles in marriage, everything from which way to fold socks, and whose way is the right way kind of struggles, to financial burdens, life changing hardships, loss of jobs, and external temptations.
It is only when we choose every day to love beyond ourselves, despite the trials, that we grow our love. That’s the thing. Love is a choice. Each day in marriage we must decide; today, I’m going to love this person no matter what. Today, I’m going to put seek their highest need above my own. Today, I choose to love.
It is through the daily choosing that we grow into love, abiding, faithful love.
When we get caught up in the flash, the romance, and the world’s view of what love looks like we will soon be disappointed. When the day to day realities of life become routine. It’s then we can start to feel let down, like the marriage isn’t what we imagined it would be.
But, life is not candy and roses every day or every week. When we get busy with jobs, and children those things that were once considered romantic such as date nights, and love notes quickly take a backseat to grocery shopping and paying bills.
But grocery shopping and paying bills are a necessary part of life. If we neglect those things it’s not long before we are adding stresses to our marriage that need not be there. If however, you learn that taking care of the necessary is also an important part of loving each other then you can begin to trust that what is needful is taken care of, removing unnessesary worry. That too is love.
*Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
