True Love

I can't sleep so I am blogging a thought I just shared with a friend. It is a thought my sister shared with me this past week on love. I hope it speaks to you like it did to me.

My sister and I were talking about relationships this past week and the sometimes unhealthy "in love" feelings we can have for a man. Of course we all know that the Bible teaches us to put our love and devotion to God first, our husband second and our children/family/friends third. How many of us have really sat and thought this one through??

I know this is a complex thought when just blurted out there like I have above, so I would like to break it down the way my sister did.

First of all, God wants us to love our husbands. He wants us to follow our spouse and allow him to lead our family unit through faith, finances and daily decisions. While we are to love our husband and follow our husband we are not to allow our husband to control our devotion. When we try to take the steering wheel of our life away from God and give it to our husband, to man.....it is disastrous.

While we are to follow our husbands leadership I am reminded of what my mom would always tell me about peer pressure "If they jumped off a bridge would you do it?" We are to follow our husbands as long as their path is pleasing to God and follows His commands. Ultimately God is to be in control.

When we forget that God is in control we begin to rely on our husband to fix everything, answer every problem, love every fiber of our being. That is putting a lot of pressure on our spouse! That is not allowing him to be the man God wants him to be because he is too focused on striving for perfection. We are setting our spouse and ourselves up for failure.

Secondly our whole love is for God. It is only right, only healthy that our aching love, the love that comes with painful yearning and desire to please be protected and set aside for Him. God is our Heavenly husband. We are to desire to please Him and love Him with every fiber of our being.  Our actions should reflect that devotion and love.

After we have given of ourselves and our hearts to the Lord, then it is right to give our love to our husbands; and only in a married union that is built upon the Rock. Only then will our need to please our husband be healthy because our need to follow Christ is already being met.

Only then can we realize what a healthy union and devotion to our earthly mate should really and truly be. Only then can our false expectations of our relationships with men be put to rest. Only then can God begin to work within us to be His light to the world and an encouragement to our husbands.

My sister said, "The song says but that's not true. You need more than that and it was always intended to be more than that." Once we have God and our love for Him is right, then our devotion to our husbands will fall into place.

I hope this helps someone out there. It really struck me after we hung up how many times I am more worried about whether Soapy is happy; if I am making him happy, if I am pleasing him. I realize from time to time how I have been more worried about his approval instead of His approval; times I lean to Soapy for comfort and protection instead of my Heavenly Father. That is not healthy and is something I need to fix. It results in disappointment that Soapy couldn't live up to my expectations but how could he? That isn't fair to desire him to take the hole that was only meant to be filled by God.

Tonight I am going to pray God helps me preserve that hole just for Him. Tonight I will sleep well knowing God's arms are around me instead of feeling the "need" for my husbands' arms around me to keep me safe.