5 Crucial Lessons from My First 5 Years of Marriage: LESSON 5

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LESSON 5:  Adore Your Wife Liberally   
God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 

Adore her, even when you don’t feel like it.

I believe one of the most astonishing and frightening aspects of marriage in the first years is the apparent departure of the affections we once felt so passionately when we first fell in love. Nevertheless, I see this as the first stage of learning to truly love. We need to acknowledge that love is as much a choice as it is an emotion. In fact, in the first years of marriage, it is more often a choice than it is an emotion. 

Emotions are easy. They don’t cost us anything. Love, on the other hand, is not easy. Love demands sacrifice. Love requires effort. That which costs us little often becomes of little consequence in our lives. Nothing of any value comes free or easy. We instinctively grow to value those things in which we are invested. If I invest my time, energy and money into making my wife feel like she is lovely, adorable, desirable, and the delight of my life, then my attitude will conform to my actions and will eventually characterize my true disposition toward her. I have experienced this to be true in my own life.

God demonstrated this by pouring out his undying love on my undeserving heart, even when I was in my most unlovely state. Devoted love is always demonstrated and sustained through action, regardless of whether or not glamorous feelings are present. 

The early years of a marriage can be extremely difficult. They have been for me. But I have discovered that the more I focus on God’s grace toward me in the midst of my own sin, the more eager I am to be a conduit of that same grace toward my wife despite our conflict. 

My wife and I have both seen how marriage reveals the worst in each other; but this, in turn, reveals the best of God’s grace. And after these first five years we can both attest to the truth that Love does indeed cover a multitude of sins.