I met a girl when I was five years old. I can still remember locking stares with her as our Sunday School teacher introduced me to the rest of the kids. I can still remember how my heart melted when she didn't look away. How the nervousness I felt, being the new kid at church, seemed to fade into nothing as I lost all sense of myself in those bright green eyes.
Somehow, at five years old, I knew that this girl was the one for me. I had no concept of marriage...no understanding of love...in fact, I don't think I truly grasped either until very recently. But that didn't stop me from getting one of her friends to ask her to be my girlfriend. I recall my victorious fist pump very clearly at the news that she had said yes.
And then we switched churches, and I didn't see her anymore. So imagine my excitement when she came walking up the parking lot one Sunday; the butterflies going crazy in my belly when she said hi to me for the first time in who knew how long. Those big beautiful eyes saying so much more.
Somehow, at such a young age, I knew she was my other half. Even so, I spent quite a bit of time denying it. Dating and then breaking up. Seeing other girls. Watching her date other guys. Looking for something else that never had the slightest ability to replace what I had when we were together.
I've always considered myself to be fairly intelligent. But with her, my mind turned to complete mush. You know that children's book, Goodnight, Moon? You know, Goodnight, old woman whispering, Hush. Goodnight, bowl full of mush. Well the contents of that bowl shared a remarkable resemblance with my brain.
December 13, 2013 marked our ten-year anniversary. And it has been quite a journey...to say the least. I have made awful mistakes. A LOT of awful mistakes. But in retrospect, I think they were really all the same mistake...repeated over and over again.
That mistake is this: I grew to think that love was about me instead of it being about her.
Remember that boy I mentioned earlier? The one that got weak in the knees when the little girl with the bright eyes paid attention to him? He may not have been able to explain what he was experiencing, but he knew what love was. He knew that his whole world revolved around that little girl. When they weren't together, he was thinking about her. About what he could do for her when he saw her again. About what he could do to make her smile. To see those gorgeous eyes light up.
Somehow, I lost that along the way. Love became about expectations. Conditions. Feelings. It became about me being happy...usually at her expense. How is it that a five-year-old could understand this while a so-called adult could be utterly clueless? I'm really not sure.
I do know what I've learned, though. I've learned what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote in Ephesians 5:25-27, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or blemish, but holy and blameless."
Christ gave up everything for the church. That's LOVE. It isn't a feeling that comes and goes. Love is action. Christ didn't say he would die for us, but only if we love him in return and do this, this, this, and this... No, he died for us. Period.
Action. Love is action. And true love requires no response. No expectations. No conditions. It does not hinge on the other person accepting that love. IT JUST IS.
This is what I understand: I do not have the ability to love unconditionally. But I can try. I'm not capable of being a perfect husband. But through Christ, I can be a good one. I can't promise to never be selfish. But I can make it the exception rather than the rule.
I can forgive with open arms because Christ sets that example every time I fall away and come crawling back. I can be humble and ask for forgiveness. I can wipe clean the record of wrongs. I can choose to see my wife the way God sees her. Without stain or blemish, but holy and blameless.
It took me ten years of marriage to understand these things. But once I did, it was like a set of blinders being taken off of a retarded horse. I feel like that five-year-old boy again. And nothing in this world can stop me from doing my best to make those unbelievable green eyes light up every day for the rest of my life.
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