Thursday, April 30, 2009

Love is a Choice

That was the title of the daily devotional from the Purpose Driven Connection for today. I receive one of these everyday and as you can tell if you read my blog, I post some on here; the ones I think are really good. Well today's made me think, I guess it might be because after you become married it slowly begins to sink in that's this is forever, maybe that's just me. After we got our wedding video back I was actually excited because we got to hear what vows we took. I don't know about anyone else but the day, ceremony, reception, everything goes by SO FAST it's like I know I was there, but I can't tell you what we said, until Dave and I watched the wedding video together.

You know I got the best piece of advice from our preacher about being a Godly wife, he said "Give up the idea of the perfect marriage, it doesn't exist. Women have this idea or expectation of what their husband is suppose to be and it's not reality" Which is so true! And if you say it's not, your lying, I don't care. As women we have this idea that our husband, boyfriend, whatever is the best guy in the world and wouldn't ever do anything to hurt us or put us down or disappoint us or whatever. And then when they disappoint us it's upsetting, we question ourselves, we try to change ourselves or even better try to change them (which is a loosing battle). I am often in awe at couples that are married for a long period of time, I mean that is accomplishment and whatever opinion we might have of those (our parents, the couple who stays married for sake of children, etc) the REAL truth is they are living the way God intended them to live and work together.

Another friend blogged about the highs and lows of the marriage and how we all go through them. Dave and I have had a few and we have been married six months, it's going to happen. But I will tell you, I get excited about coming home to him and waking up to him in the morning. I like to do nice things for him, make him dinner, clean the house so it's a peaceful place to come home too, things like that. Love is a choice, we can choose to show love to other people or we choose not too. That's powerful because sometimes loving others is hard and we don't want too. They hurt us or make us angry or loose our trust or betray us. But God calls us to be loving. Love is a choice. Below is the devotional for today, I hope you get something out of it like I did.

"Love is a choice and a commitment. You choose to love or you choose not to love.Today we've bought into this myth that love is uncontrollable, that it's something that just happens to us; it's not something we control.

In fact, even the language we use implies the uncontrollability of love. We say, "I fell in love," as if love is some kind of a ditch. It's like I'm walking along one day and bam!—I fell in love. I couldn't help myself.

But I have to tell you the truth: that's not love. Love doesn't just happen to you. Love is a choice and it represents a commitment.There's no doubt about it, attraction is uncontrollable and arousal is uncontrollable. But attraction and arousal are not love. They can lead to love, but they are not love.

Love is a choice.You must choose to love God; he won't force you to love Him (Deuteronomy 30:20). You can thumb your nose at God and go a totally different way. You can destroy your life if you choose to do that. God still won't force you to love Him. Because He knows love can't be forced.

And this same principle is true about your relationships: you can choose to love others, but God won't force you to love anyone."

2 comments:

Libby said...

What a great post...thank you for putting these thoughts down...I'm not sure that I've ever thought about love being a choice...interesting...I'll have to ponder this:)

Anonymous said...

Girl, its awesome that you are learning this early...the part about no marriage is perfect. I went into think it would be, and boy was I wrong. Because of that we almost got divorced like 12 times the first year!! LOL. But seriously, it was so hard. Better now, thank God. But you do have to learn, thanks for sharing.