An excerpt from my book, One Arm One Leg 100 Words, Overcoming Unbelievable Hardships”
I was a little confused about my feelings for Charlene during those difficult days when we constantly fought and argued. We loved each other, but sometimes we didn’t feel in love with each other.
What is the difference between loving, and being in love? It was like having a rebellious child that you love, but you don’t like at that moment. There were times when we definitely did not like each other for a period of time. We had to figure out if we still loved each other. We did not act like we did. We were always in love with each other our entire marriage, and it felt good, but this felt different.
Were we falling out of love? Were we drifting apart? Were we going to have to split up so that we didn’t kill each other? These were scary questions for us. They were real questions, though, that we had to face in the end.
As I mentioned in the first chapter, I had a deal with God when I got married. He was supposed to make sure that I never got a divorce, and I was supposed to serve Him until the day I died! Where was God in all of this?
It was all so painful for both of us. We finally went to get counseled by our pastor. First of all, he said we should not be sleeping in different bedrooms for any reason. He also helped us to understand that love and being in love was different. Just because you don’t feel love, it doesn’t mean that you don’t love each other.
He explained that God brought us together for a reason, and the vows we took were forever. “In sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, ’til death do we part.” We began to realize that God was still with us during this painful trial, and He was teaching us His kind of love, written about in the Bible. “That while we were yet sinners, God loved us, and sent His son to die for us sinners.” (Rom. 5:8).
Now I know that it is possible that one would die for a friend, but for one to die for an enemy, that is not likely or even probable. Yet the Bible teaches that God’s love did that for us when we didn’t deserve it, or even know that we needed His love to save us from ourselves. After really absorbing the truth of this fact, God’s love penetrated into my soul and I started loving Charlene by letting His love flow through me.
It was actually easy from that point on, and I once again fell in love with my wife. Now that was a miracle! People always say that I am a good man for loving her and sticking by her, but I really don’t feel like I deserve any credit for loving her. It is so easy to love Charlene. I think it’s probably the other way around.
This is just a another chapter of my book “One Arm One Leg 100 Words, Overcoming Unbelievable Hardships”. You can buy the book by clicking this link. And surely, you will not stop reading it from the beginning till the end of this book.