Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Tuesday Tip #12: Remembering your first love

Why or how did you fall in love with ______? What made them so spectacular that you couldn't live without them? I remember why and how I fell in love with El. And it happened so fast that I wasn't ready nor expecting it. He made me laugh. He listened attentively. He made me a priority. He was helpful around the house. He wanted to please me. I remember how kind and gentle he was in the beginning our relationship. I wanted to be around him all the time. I wanted to spend all of my spare time with him. Then we got married. And some things changed. Life (our jobs, school, bills, life) seemed to get in the way and we didn't do a very good job at remembering our first love. Remembering why or how we fell in love. Remembering to laugh, to listen, to make each other a priority, to please each other. We didn't remember to be kind and gentle. Part of the issue was that we had a handicap - we didn't really know how to be a married couple. We didn't really know how to be ONE flesh. It took us almost losing our first love to wake up.

Remembering your first love may seem easy. But El and I have talked to several couples that seem to have forgotten why they fell in love in the first place. What made you want to marry that person? What was it about them that said 'forever'? Hopefully, you didn't just think that after "I do", you wouldn't have "to do" anything else because that's when the real work begins. Think about when you first met Christ? You were excited to go to church, read the Bible, pray, memorize scripture, volunteer, and help others. If you slowly drifted away from those things then you were slowly drifting away from Christ. Christ wants us in relationship with him. Relationship = the state of being connected, interdependent, a bond, alliance, linked. These things don't happen on their own. Our relationships aren't bonded by super glue. Meaning we didn't just set it and forget it. We have to stay connected. Just like the branch has to stay connected to the tree to produce good fruit; we must stay connected. This connection is the key. It's our link, our interdependence, our bond to our first love.

Remember why or how you fell in love with your spouse. And then get back to loving them just the way you did in the beginning. Make a list of things you used to do and do them again.