When I started this journey I really wanted to have some great insights from all the research I was going to do. Well life, school, church and of course my marriage took precedence over the research. However of late I have become more and more intrigued about what is out there about this phenomenal union called marriage.
I spoke with a friend recently who shared with me that the great writer Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love has a new book called Committed. If you are a fan of Gilbert's than you know all her work is research based. I thought how cool is this, I wanted to do research, time would not allow so God had someone do the work for me and it will cost me less than $10 to get it. I know I serve an awesome God! When I embarked on the journey to understand more about this book I came across an interesting write up and somewhat of an excerpt. It stated the following:
For all the variability in the meaning of marriage, one fairly consistent element over time and place was that it had nothing to do with love. “For most of history it was inconceivable that people would choose their mates on the basis of something as fragile and irrational as love and then focus all their sexual, intimate, and altruistic desires on the resulting marriage,” Coontz writes. In fact, loving one’s spouse too much was considered a threat to social and religious order, and was discouraged in societies as disparate as ancient Greece, medieval Islam, and contemporary Cameroon. The modern Western ideal of marriage as both romantic and companionate is an anomaly and a gamble. As soon as people in any culture start selecting spouses based on emotion, the rates of broken marriages shoot up. “By unnerving definition,” Gilbert writes, “anything that the heart has chosen for its own, mysterious reasons it can always unchoose.”
I do not know how you feel about that but I was shocked and felt a sense of sadness. Today I am honoring my husband with committed love because I would not have it any other way. The God I serve is all about love and there is a full chapter in the Bible called Song of Solomon that speaks of a great committed love and romance. I am honoring my husband today with committed love because I chose him and he chose me. Not out of convenience or happenstance but because of love. I believe Gilbert is correct, "anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose." And I also believe anything that the heart has chosen; the heart can continue to choose that same person every day. It's called commitment which is of course the title of her book. I can't wait to dig into her research.
Wives of the world, in what ways do you honor your husband with committed love? How do you ensure him every day that you are in it for the long haul? When I say committed love, I am not just speaking about staying in a marriage. There are plenty of people that stay in an unhappy marriage for their children, financial reasons, status etc. I am speaking about the making the commitment to allow yourself to be loved and to give love at all times. Now that is a challenge. I believe it is what Jesus calls unconditional love. Please share your stories with us about how you honor your husband's with truly committed love.
Blessings,
Rochelle
"Acceptance of the power of God in one's life lays the groundwork for personal commitment to self and to others."
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