Our love story began with a twenty-minute conversation 22 years ago. It was love at first sight. And, those twenty minutes showed me that we both shared a love for God and a passion to live our lives in obedience to where and how God leads us. In our arranged marriage’s “family date”, I also met the strong godly influences in her life. After this and a few more “solo dates” over the next two months, my wife and I were married.
This comes across as a huge surprise to many of my friends who grew up in the West and date for months or years before having the “DTR” conversation or those who find their partners by swiping through surprisingly “efficient” matchmaking apps.
What is even more shocking to them is when they find out that my wife had practically decided to marry me even before we ever met as she had prayed that she would marry the first person God would bring to see and propose to her!
It has been 22 years since then. We have lived in sixteen different homes across three different continents with three complete career transitions (from student to engineer to pastor) and have had three children (including two of our amazing children who we adopted). We have also had two near-death illnesses for both of us, lost a dear brother and a father in the past three years, and discovered deep brokenness and trauma inflicted by others in our past while tasting the goriness of our own brokenness flaring up every now and then.
Through all of these, our love has grown and matured and I can honestly say that we are in the best season of our married life now and love each other more than we did ever before. Our best years really are ahead of us. What made such a kind of love possible? The answer definitely does not lie in either of us. So, here are three life love lessons we have learned along the journey that has helped us.
- The Purpose of Marriage
In our early years of marriage, we were introduced to Gary Chapman’s “Five Love Languages” where he shares that we should express love to others in the way they like to receive love. It was fascinating to us but hard to practice in moments when our self takes the better of us.
It was much later that we came across the work of Gary Thomas whose famous quote from his book “Sacred Marriage” stuck with me deeply. He says, “What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?”
Most people tend to marry seeking happiness as the end goal. However, the harder one tries the more elusive it becomes.
But the more we pursue holiness, happiness tends to abound.
God brings together two imperfect people to draw them to him so he can make them more beautiful than they were before. It is not only what we do in marriage that matters but who we become.
2. The Process of Marriage
Marriage reveals our deepest, darkest brokenness.
Marriage is a grand mirror that reveals our brokenness to each other. There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. It can take a few months for some, a few days for others, or even a few hours for a few before their marital dreams come crashing down but it does not have to.
Marriage does not change anyone but it forces the real person who no one truly knew about before, to come out into the space between two broken individuals.
Just as Adam and Eve attempted to cover their nakedness through fig leaves (and assumed that God cannot see through that), we tend to cover our brokenness through our appearances or performances. We tend to believe that we can only love our spouses more if they fix themselves in x,y,z areas. And, when that does not happen, our “need-based love”, in the words of C.S. Lewis, tends to vaporize.
Add to this the brokenness and trauma that each one of us experienced from our past. How could love grow or thrive in a place like that? Love definitely cannot grow by itself.
3. The Power for Marriage
Where and how does one get the power to make marriages work?
For love to thrive, the epicenter of our love needs to shift from us and our needs to Christ. It is only as Christ is formed in us and we see Christ-likeness in one another that we will be empowered to love each other freely, unconditionally, and joyfully.
It is only as Christ heals us not only from our brokenness but also our pain and trauma that we can give ourselves freely to one another.
For that to happen, we need to experience dying to our selves, dealing with our pasts, and being united to the life-giving power of the resurrected Christ.
When the love of Christ gets poured into our hearts through his Spirit (Romans 5:5), husbands will be able to love their wives as Christ loves us. And wives will be able to love their husbands as Christ submits to God the Father. There is no more a battle of the wills. So where do we begin?
Start here
Like every flowering plant that needs to be nurtured, for our marriages to reflect Christ more requires intentionality and actions. Perhaps deciding to pray together daily, have one meal a day together no matter what, going out on a date once a week and finding things to do together on a regular cadence can all help our marriages to flourish.
Maybe then everyday can be your Valentine’s Day!
For more resources on marriage please visit – https://thespectrum.church/video/?play=2DWCWR-Avyo