L is for... LOVE

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an intense feeling of deep affection 

 

 

 

 Once upon a time I believed love was a feeling. Jordan is my high school sweat heart; my one and only love. We met and were inseparable from the very start.  I was 17 and he was 6 years older. We spent every possible moment together. I had an indescribable feeling when he was around and an eagerness to be near him when we were apart.

 

At some point early on in our relationship I mentioned those feelings to Jordan and he wisely told me that those feelings are "new love".  He warned me they would fade.

 

Surprisingly Jordan and I maintained our "in love" feelings for over 7 years. I never lost the feeling until sometime after we had our two children 18 months apart.

 

I didn't feel out of love. We just sort of lost each other. I was so overwhelmed being a new mom and working that it wasn't that tragic for me necessarily but it was for Jordan. He felt alone. He fell out of love and he decided we needed to separate.

 

You can read more about our journey in my upcoming book Savannah's Surrender, but the purpose of this post is to share a very hard lesson we learned.

 

Love is a choice not a feeling. Thankfully during this awful time in our lives we turned to our faith. Our pastor was very supportive and had seen what was happening to us happen to many many couples before and I'm positive many more since.

He taught us that very important lesson along with what God intended marriage to look like and the roles of husbands and wives in a Godly marriage. He even introduced us to the Domestic Discipline concept.

We owe the success of our marriage to him and we will be forever thankful for that.

Domestic Discipline reignited many of those "in love" feelings and from time to time it sets a flame beneath us but at times even now... love continues to be a choice. A hard choice some days.

 

 

Some days love even hurts. For me Jordan is the one worth suffering for. I am eternally grateful that we didn't choose the path of divorce that so many do these days because although we could probably find that "new love" feeling we all long for until we learned that real love is a choice... that "In love" feeling would never last.