Love…

Love is in the air! With valentines day being tomorrow we are seeing hearts and cupids all over the place. I think that this “holiday” really over-commercializes the idea of love… but it does also bring it to the forefront of our minds. For the last few weeks our pastor has been talking about marriage on Sundays, and its been good! (you can check out his previous messages here)

Anyway, yesterday he talked about the “hard times” during marriage. Of course hard times are relative to each couple, but we all have our own experiences with these. We fall in love and are in that infatuation stage… everything your significant other does is “cute” and you hardly see the faults. Kinda like the whole valentines day phenom, everything is hearts and roses… the butterflies you get when he says your name, etc. After you get married and start living together that infatuation can start to wane. Chris and I have been married for 4 1/2  years now (wow!)… and the type of love we have has changed, for the better, in my opinion. The butterflies still come now and again, but the type of love is different. It is a deeper and, dare I say, more passionate type of love. There is something so…. safe… about having been through life together for awhile. I’ve had some pretty ugly moments. I’ve seen a lot of my imperfections and selfish rise to the surface… and he is still here… everyday… choosing to love me. That’s one of the other points Greg made was that Love is a choice (or luv is a verb if you’re an old school dc talk fan). I cannot agree with this more. Love is a commitment. When we said I do we made a commitment to make this work. Every day it is a choice. Some days that choice isn’t easy; most days it is.

So just an encouragement for ya’ll… choose to love, everyday. Even when its hard. Even when it hurts. You have the power to make the choice. You either walk through it, or walk away from it. Either way, you have the choice!