In love, and the ‘in’ has been strengthened

I love Debbie, I did before but there’s a new level now. A more complex, diverse, intentional and dependable level of love.  Peter is here.  Peter is here!  I could write for a thousand pages and not find a language deep enough for the expression of pride and love I have for my son and my wife.  Oh how it is deep.  I thank God for them. I will, for them?… anything. 

Complex.
Our love is complex now, not just a two way show, we have no.3 in this double act.  This third member has not been invited from the outside but created inside the love.“Forged in the fires of human passion”1, “made from love”2. With this third member we are stronger but not as simple, and this is no bad thing. A simple love is easy to extinguish and complex love keeps you tangled and I’m glad our love is more complex.

Diverse.
Over the past 2 week I have showed Debbie, more than ever I’d say, how much I love her.  Isn’t that romance, the ability to show that you love someone.  Yet not one flower, present, chocolate, or meal was bought.  (I would love to resurrect the word romance from the pansy, upper class French image that it places in our minds, to the ability to show one that they are loved, not just liked, not just thought pretty, but to show that they are completely, wholly adored.) The things that I have don’t for Debbie have not been day time TV, and the way that I’ve be romantic toward Debbie will continue to diversify now that we enter the fullness of the word family. Love will look different and I’m glad our love is now more diverse.

Intentional and Dependable.
Those of you who know me know that I can’t talk to long in a teaching capacity without saying the word ‘intentional’.  I now love Debbie on purpose, it’s intentional and from her side it’s dependable. This is where the promise of love is worked, and realised.  Debbie not only needs me but she needs me to love her, and just as much, if not more, Peter needs me to love Debbie.  How else could I teach my son how to love and be a husband if not by showing him? Peter needs parents who are in love and I’m glad our love is more intentional and dependable.

Love is a want and I want to love Debbie but now there’s a more realised responsibility of love, ‘I don’t have a choice but I still choose you’3.  Though there is 1000 more things I could say, I’ll just finish with my prayer/hope.
“As Peter grows up may he know and understand the Fathers love for him by the way I love him and may he know and understand Christ’s love for His church by the way I love Debbie, and my he show the world what God is like by loving others more than himself.”
I’m in love with Debbie, and the ‘in’ has been strengthened.

Ps. I would love to be able to write a blog about meeting Peter for the first time but I can’t find the words but here’s some photo’s of him and his parents! Come visit! 

 

1 – Rich Mullins in song ‘We are not as string as we think we are’
2 – Stevie Wonder in ‘Isn’t she lovely’
3 – The Civil Wars in a complex song about tough marriage called ‘poison and wine’

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Resurrecting Romance

Love isn’t something talked about too much, I mean love as that in that thing they talk about in songs and the thing that people have to work at, the thing that increases each time you take out the bin without being asked. 
I mean songs, books, movies, poems, card greetings are written about it, or maybe they just hint at it.
But in every day convo, romance, real romance is a rare topic. I guess by ‘romance’ I’m talking about the ability to show someone that they are loved.
Not the ability to string words together to get your way.  

Cause if I’m honest sometimes when Debbie’s doing a pancake making dance (it’s funny and she’ll kill me for saying that) I just think that I’d miss her even if we’d never met.  And yet the Bible doesn’t leave romance un-talked about, you just need to read a wee book between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah.  Man… it’s a book about marriage, insecurities, the vulnerableness of a close relationship, physical passion, the respect of marriage, and the gentleness of love. 
One really interesting thing is an early comment is one of insecurity, ‘She’ says ‘don’t look at me for my skin has been darken by the sun‘ and so on and it takes the man a good few chapters of complementing her beauty to get her round to the idea that she ‘looks the part’.  

you can never tell your wife enough, how awesome she looks.  

One small verse that really has been true to me and pushed me into action in my now year of being married.  Is found in Ch2v15

Catch for us the foxes,
    the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
    our vineyards that are in bloom.

The vineyard is a picture of 2 things in the book, The girls beauty and the relationship itself. In this context it’s a metaphor for marriage. Watch for those little foxes, that just ruin the day, ruin the car journey, ruin a ‘night in’, spoil your ministry.  The little things that annoy eachother. 
We’re not talking about huge elephants that tramp on a marriage like being abusive or an affair. 
This is the little things that just spoil the time that is meant to be ‘love’.  Things like, ignoring each-other when in public, always being late, not taking the bin out until asked 3 times, the washing lying in the basket for a month, money being spent on something deemed unapprobate.  Or we could equally say, that the little foxes are, being uptight, unnecessarily annoyed and aggravated that: she’s making you late, he’s not taking out the bin, the washing is lying for weeks. 
There is a casualness and an accepting spirit needed to be married to someone and keep love alive.  I used to say  that’s not the way I’d do it, if living on my own. I needed to wake up.  I’m not living on my own. I’ve got a family.

There is a need and skill to notice the little foxes and there’s a sacrificial spirit needed catch them!  And there is a big need to encourage in your wife/husband in what they are good at, in what their gifts are in.  To build them up so you can love them more. 

Stop the little foxes. Tell your wife she’s beautiful.

Hope this came across ok, I felt the timing was right with my sister getting married at weekend and our 1 year anniversary yesterday.

Standing on Grace.