The Love Dare: Love takes delight – Day 14

Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life, – Ecclesiastes 9:9

One of the most important things you should learn on this love dare journey is that you should not just follow your heart. You should lead it. You just don’t let your feelings and emotions do the driving. You put them in the back seat and tell them where you are going. It’s unrealistic for you to think that the thrill, the chemistry and the emotions that go with a loving relationship will be there every single minute of your married life. Fact is there will be those moments, where you don’t feel your spouse at all. You may actually not be angry with him, he or she may not have hurt you in any way, but you just feel flat. No emotions, your spouse is just like a colleague at work.

A newlywed couple takes delight on each other. Their love is fresh and young and the hopes for a romantic future linger in their hearts.  Some people give this couple a few months to come back to ‘earth’. However it is important to know that loving is a decision. You choose to love and delight your spouse irrespective of how long you have been married. It’s a choice.

You therefore need to make a deliberate choice to delight your spouse. Enjoy spending time with her, not necessary talking love matters, it could be even a discussion on soccer, politics, church issues or even the next investment frontiers. You could be assisting on sorting the rice, peeling potatoes, making the bed together, and folding clothes together. What you treasure is a choice. You make a deliberate decision to love and make your spouse happy.  Enjoying taking a walk with him as he visits his barber, or accompany her as she goes to the market or you going out to check on that ‘ka plot’. You basically delight in spending time with your wife, even when you have actually nothing in particular to do.

Tell your spouse nice things, flirt with him or her. Send him those lovely SMS (some would call them naughty) that you used to send in your first weeks of marriage. If you are married, you definitely know what I am talking about. There are those classified SMS’s that no one else should see. They are only for you and your spouse. Play with your spouse. Think about it, you know the things that will make your spouse laugh, those that will jolt them from their slumber and have them laughing uncontrollably and leave them with a huge smile. You can sing, do a poem, and do a dance or even some acrobats. But do something that will bring a smile in their faces.

From today onward you need to start leading your heart to delight your spouse. You need to always consider the things that will make your spouse happy and excited to be with you. This would be outside the realm of the usual ‘I Love you, I miss you’. Go out and play with some mud, some water, tickle your spouse, let them laugh. Decide that you will not be guided on the feelings of the moment alone but on the fact that you chose willingly and deliberately to love your spouse for who she is and who she may become in the future. Love is a choice and not a feeling that you fell for. So choose this day to deliberately delight your spouse, because love delights.

TODAY’S DARE:

Purposefully skip or postpone an activity that you would normally do so you can spend quality time with your spouse. Do something he or she would love to do or an activity they would really like to work on. Just be together, even where your contribution is negligible to you. It makes a whole lot of difference to him or  her.