Falling In Love Again…
02 May 2011 Leave a Comment
*Note: this post is written in honesty and hopefulness. I know it sounds harsh but it’s just real and I’m working through my junk right now.
So a couple weeks ago I was sitting on the computer and looking at Facebook, admiring photography, checking blogs that I follow regularly. And I turned and looked at my husband on the couch. He was laying there watching ‘his shows’ which I have long ago grown tired of – how many episodes of NCIS can you watch? Seriously? And then it hit me – in a moment of brutal honesty….” I don’t love him.”
I felt terrible, I felt like I was the worst wife in the history of the world. I began to think of what life would be like in a long, sad, loveless marriage. And that made me realize that my thinking was selfish and UN-Christian. I was falling into a pattern of thinking that was NOT good, and I recognized it immediately.
I thought back to many years ago when I went to an Ann Graham Lotz conference and she shared a similar testimony. She woke up one day and realized she had lost her love for her husband. OK…this is BILLY GRAHAM’s DAUGHTER. She’s not supposed to fall out of love. Or be weak. Or sin. Right? She continued to tell the story of how she was faithful to pray for her marriage and her husband and herself. Over time she began to fall in love with her husband again.
I had no idea that what she spoke on so many years ago would come flooding back to my memory and awaken in me a desire to choose. I had to choose to not throw my hands up and say “I gave it a try, it would be better to find someone that I can love and who will love me the way he’s supposed to without me telling him. And he won’t lay on my couch watching these stupid stupid television shows!”
A few days later, I shared my feelings with my husband. The news hit him like a ton of bricks…his wife was not in love anymore. But there was a second part of this conversation that he just couldn’t hear through his reeling disappointment. I was not giving up. I was praying for our marriage. I was praying for my heart to change. I was praying that God would restore my love for my husband. I’m not looking anywhere else. I’m not planning a new life. I’m praying and hoping and waiting. And even though I ‘feel’ dry, I am positive that this time will pass.
My husband told me this was his chance to love me as the husband God designed him to be. That he would not give up or leave. He said he is committed to our marriage and to waiting for my heart to be his once again. Gosh….just that…makes me realize why he was put in my life. When I am weak he is strong. And when he was weak I was strong. And as the days pass and he quietly serves me and smiles at me and comforts me when I was sick recently…I see the man that I fwll in love with and God is working on my heart. I just want to be around him. I find myself looking at him not with disappointment but with renewed admiration. I am trusting GOD to heal me.
