Day 14

Love Takes Delight

"Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life." -Ecclesiastes 9:9

One of the most important things you should learn on your Love Dare journey is that you should not just follow your heart. You should lead it. You don’t let your feelings and emotions do the driving. You put them in the back seat and tell them where you’re going. In your marriage relationship, you won’t always feel like loving. It is unrealistic for your heart to constantly thrill as the thought of spending every moment with your spouse. Nobody can maintain a burning desire for togetherness just on feelings alone. But it’s also difficult to love someone only out of obligation. A newlywed takes delight in the one they now call their spouse. However, there is something just as powerful as that fresh, new love. It comes from the decision to delight in your spouse and to love him or her no matter how long you’ve been married. In other words, love that chooses to love is just as powerful as love that feels like loving. In many ways, it’s a truer love because it has its eyes wide open. It’s time to lead your heart to, once again, delight in your mate. Enjoy your spouse. Take her hand and seek her companionship. Desire his conversation. Remember why you fell in love with their personality. Accept this person – quirks and all – and welcome him or her back into your heart and actually start enjoying who they are again. It’s time to remember why you once fell in love. To laugh again. To flirt again. To dream again. Delightfully. The responsibility is yours to relearn what you love about this one to whom you’ve promised yourself forever.

Today’s Dare: Purposefully neglect an activity you would normally do so you can spend quality time with your spouse. Do something he or she would love to do or a project they’d really like to work on. Just to be together.