Love is a Gift

Ok, I was going to post this blog last Wed. night but Erick reminded me that we needed to have our couple time for our fireproof study so I did that with him instead and then went to bed to get my much needed sleep. Then I just haven't been in the mood to write I guess. Anyway, so here we go; lets see if I can remember what i was so eager to write about last week, now it isn't as fresh on my mind or heart right now but I still want to write about it...

Since having the baby, I have had the TV on during the day a lot, which I never used to do. So I am catching a lot of daytime TV lately. The other day I was flipping through and caught some of Oprah and it happened to be on cheating men and why they do it and how to help prevent it from happening. (Random huh?) Anyway, they had an expert of some kind on the show talking about it, but I did not catch who it was. Of course he was saying a lot of the same things I have on this blog and have read in other places. One of the things I thought was interesting about this show was when they were talking about a woman's part in helping make sure her man doesn't stray (meaning make sure he knows you respect him- that's how men feel loved) and this one woman in the audience was like "it should not be up to the woman to have to make her man feel a certain way, I have enough on my plate I don't have time for anything else in my life." I heard that and I was like, whoa that lady totally doesn't get it. Now on the show they were explaining that of course it isn't up to the woman to make sure her man stays loyal and that men make their own choices and blah blah. But here was this lady totally missing what was being said. I mean she totally doesn't understand marriage at all. I mean what was she doing getting married if she had mo time to love her husband? When you get married you are pledging yourself to you spouse, to love them and to be faithful to them and to unite and share your entire life with this person. How can you say you don't have time to love them? What is a marriage if there is no acts of love towards each other? That just blew me away. I could have a lot more to say about this, but right now its just not flowing, maybe another time...

Anyway, something else from last week, the next day actually... I decided after taking Jacey to school that Taylor and I would go sit and starbucks and enjoy some time relaxing. I enjoyed a white mocha and some scripture. I randomly open up the bible trying to find what to read and I ended up in Ephesians (prolly cuz my bible has been open in that book many a times before so it happened there easily). I read Eph 2 and got a great nugget out of it. In verse 8 it is that classic verse on how we have been saved by grace and not by works and that it is a gift of God. Well reading this chapter this time in lieu of the marriage study we have been doing and the new nuggets I have been getting, I saw this verse in a new way. Isn't it great when that happens? Anyway, here is what I saw... If you look back at my last blog, I was talking about how love is not about the one being loved but about the one doing the loving and how we should be CHOOSING every day to be loving and to love our spouse unconditionally no matter what. Well, when I read how God saved us and it was a gift to us, I put those thoughts together. God is love and he gave himself to us, the greatest gift of all is for us to be close to Him, united with Him. The same way, the greatest gift we can give to our spouse is unconditional love. Our love is a gift. There is nothing our spouse does to earn our love, it just is. No matter what it will always be there for them, it is their gift to have and keep and we can not take it away from them. No givesbacksies!!! Your spouse should not be having to earn your love and if they are then you need to take a look at your relationship and your heart because what you are doing is prolly not loving. Love is not a thing that can be earned. Now if you think you are doing this or you feel you are having to earn love from your spouse, then you and your spouse need to sit down hand have a serious conversation and get your relationship back on track in a healthy place. I heard on that Oprah show that the avg couple only spends 12 min a day talking to each other. That is so crazy. Communication is so key in a marriage, in any relationship really. So please make it a point to communicate effectively and wisely and peaceably. So yeah that's a nugget God gave me last week through His word.