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When It Comes to Love, I'm Pro-Choice

Marriage Counseling Skills …

If you'd ever like to request me as a premarital counselor, here's a taste of my skills:

Young Couple in Love: We are planning on getting married in June because that's when people do that sort of thing. Please share with us your pearls of wisdom regarding the institution of marriage.

Me: Whatever you do, don't ever remodel your house together.

Couple: Well, we didn't expect that right off, but OK. Is there anything else?

Me: Don't do it! Don't remodel together!

Couple: Maybe we should just ask you about areas that we feel are important to discuss. So, how will personality differences affect our communication, and what can we do to find a healthy compromise?

Me: None of that matters as long as you DON'T REMODEL TOGETHER! IT WILL DESTROY YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR FRIENDS AND DENMARK'S ECONOMIC SYSTEM!!

That pretty much sums up my premarital counseling. I'm of the persuasion that, as long as a married couple doesn't remodel together, everything will fall into place. Why do I think this?

Lemon Juice: The Balm of Love

In September 2003, a mere nine months after Sonnie and I were married, we decided to remodel our small house. By December, we had experienced the longest four months of our entire lives. We had a larger living room, a tiled kitchen, and many loud, angry, unintelligible arguments that were immediately recorded in our Precious Memories scrapbook.

One particular feud stands out above the rest. This particular confrontation involved a "discussion" over both how handy and how determined I should be in getting the project done. My position held that since I had the remodeling skills of an inebriated snail, whose mental capabilities resembled that of rush hour traffic, then any expectation that I would help was unreasonable. Her position stated that "snail" was indeed the correct word and that I should at least try to figure out how to perform such complex actions as carrying things. After many hours and many loud explanations, we finally arrived where we had begun: at a stubborn impasse.

That night, she refused to sleep in the same bed with me and I refused to sleep in our bed without her, so we ended up just sleeping on the floor in a completely different room.

Sometime during the night, my choice to sleep with her rather than without her softened her heart toward me. By morning, though, she was still hurt and angry, her affection for me had begun to rekindle. She wanted, however, to express to me that she still loved me, so the first thing I heard that day was, "Now I know what it means to choose to love someone."

There's nothing that will get the romantic juices flowing like when someone tells you that, despite their intense desire to disdain you and their hope that you will suffer many gruesome injuries, they'll reach deep down into their emergency stores of volition and love you anyway. It made me feel so warm and snuggly inside (if "warm and snuggly" means "like I had multiple lacerations bathed in lemon juice").

When "You're Right" Is an Insult

What was interesting about Sonnie's choice was that we had, up until this point, been disagreeing on this very issue. That is, I had been trying to persuade her that love is, indeed, a choice, and she had held that the feeling of romance was foundational for love. Well, there's nothing like being right, especially when it makes you feel like a complete loser. What we both learned that day, however, was that choosing to love is very easy to talk about, but infuriatingly difficult to put into practice.

Since that day, our love for each other has grown exponentially (which is a very romantic way to put it), but we have both carried important lessons away from that period in our lives. The first one is this: Don't ever remodel together! The second is this: "Falling in love" and "being in love" feel really, really good, but it's impossible to rely on them to sustain a marriage.

(Before I go on, let me say that our emotions and feelings are wonderful things and I, for one, am very thankful for them. They allow me to experience deeply the things of life, whether they take the form of sorrow or joy. And, while they are a wonderful garnish for love, they are a miserable foundation for love.)

Putting Happiness in Its Place

You've probably heard that marriage is a covenant and that's true. But it's probably more accurate to broaden this to say that love is a covenant, the definition of which is an agreement or contract between two parties.

Do you want to know why arranged marriages don't work in our culture today? Just think about our approach to finding a mate. We shop around asking the question, "Who will make me the happiest?" Once we've made our decision, we decide to marry that person. Then, after a while, we begin to have unhappy times and slowly but surely we begin to wonder if we've made the wrong choice. Maybe I should've waited, we think. Maybe this other person over here was the right person because they would've made me happier. Then, of course, we join that 50 percent of people who asked the same question about happiness.

So then, what is the right question? You guessed it: What can I do to make my spouse happy? If we ask this question, then all of a sudden, we don't have to worry about finding just the right person. In other words, we must choose to love and be happy rather than waiting for others to make us happy.

In fact, what I find wholly fascinating and repulsively ironic about our attitude on love is that, on the one hand, we would rather die than not be able to choose our spouse and, on the other hand, we would rather divorce that same spouse than choose to love them. We want the option to choose without the responsibility to choose.

Hosea and Gomer Sittin' in a Tree?

I believe that one of the best biblical examples of what it means to love shows up in the story of Hosea. In this book, the prophet is commanded to "take to [himself] an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord" (1:2, NIV). I suspect that this type of woman wasn't too difficult to come by during Israel's rebellious days. Of course, being the type of woman that his wife Gomer was, Hosea was seen dragging her back from relationships with other men around town. Yet, despite this humiliation and disappointment, he persisted in his love for her.

The main purpose of this marriage was to illustrate to Israel exactly what their relationship with Yahweh looked like. Israel was the whore, chasing after strange gods and Yahweh was the merciful and faithful husband, chasing after Israel.

But, why did Yahweh continue the chase? Because He had "fallen in love"? Not really. It was because He made a covenant to love Israel and refused to abandon it despite her failures.

In the same way, Hosea maintained his pursuit of Gomer because, for him, love was a covenant, not an emotion; a choice, not a feeling.

It's no wonder that the Bible is fairly silent about romance,¹ or more accurately, it's no wonder that the Bible doesn't equate romance and love. Romance is fleeting though it feels wonderful. Love is lasting despite how it feels.

Love That Lasts

Let me close with a summary and a caution. First, the caution. Some of you guys might be tempted to go on a love rampage, determined to "educate" all those "touchy-feely" girls who are blinded by romance. This, however, isn't very loving. Our first priority is to love, not to make sure that everyone believes the same thing we do about love. In fact, if we get these mixed up, we sacrifice love all together.

C O F F E E  S H O P

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Do you think love is a choice? Why or why not?

Join the discussion!

Finally, the summary. Love is a covenant. It's something that you walk into, not fall into. It is also something that takes a lot of hard work and should not be entered into lightly. Thus, if we want to love our future wives as Yahweh loved Israel, and as Christ loved the Church, we must decide to persevere no matter the circumstances.

Jesus Christ loves His Church unwaveringly, and we must do no less for our future wives.