So I am beginning "The love dare". This is something that I started about a year ago, got half way through and never finished. It's something that I am really inspired by and something that I think every married couple should do at some point in their relationship, the book says " Whether your marriage is hanging by a thread or healthy and strong, the love dare is a journey you need to take. I love reading about how people work, and the many things that we forget about when it comes to love. It reminds me that it's not this perfect painted picture, it's not a fairytale, it is a constant work in progress. Right now is a perfect time in my life for me to take this journey...
"The scriptures say that god designed and created marriage as a good thing. It is a beautiful, priceless gift. He uses marriage to help us eliminate loneliness, multiply our effectiveness, establish families, raise children, enjoy life, and bless us with relational intimacy. But beyond this, marriage also shows us our need to grow and deal with our own issues and self-centeredness through the help of a lifelong partner. If we are teachable, we will learn to do the one thing that is most important in marriage - to love. This powerful union provides the path for you to learn how to love another imperfect person unconditionally. It is wonderful. It is difficult. It is life changing."
*********************************************************************************
-A senior spouse was asked how they had managed to stay married for so long. The answer was that they didn't fall out of love at the same time; that there was always one of them who was ready, willing and able to work and make them succeed.
"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."
-St. Augustine
"We were given: Two hands to hold. Two legs to walk. Two eyes to see. Two ears to listen. But why only one heart? Because the other was given to someone else. For us to find."
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."
-Helen Keller
"Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essense."
-Vincent van Gogh
"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."
-Mark Twain
"You have to keep creating a marriage. We talk about everything. We grow and change together, because nothing ever stays the same; you've got to continue evolving."
-Kelly Preston
"A deal is a deal. To me, that just says it all. Marriage is for keeps."
-Courtney Cox Arquette
"Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, it’s the middle that counts the most…you need to remember that when you find yourself at the beginning. Give hope a chance to float up."
-Hope floats
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Happily ever after... and then some...
I am officially convinced that marriage is a giant work in progress... It is never perfect and the job is never done. There are times when you are so in love that you would shout it from the roof tops if you could... and then there's times when you just want your spouse to leave you the heck alone! It's so very hard, between children, housework, demanding work schedules, bills and finances and then whatever other random BS life throws on your plate it's very hard to steal the quality time, to take a breath and not be short tempered and irritable.
It was recently proven to me that life does in fact have dissapointments, and those heartbreaks are sometimes from the ones you trust the most. In one moment everything you know and everything that you've built can be pulled out from beneath you, put into a blender set on puree, and then handed back to you like "Tada!" and you're just like... "dude, WTF just happened?!" Then you get to learn some things about yourself, you get to build your self worth, you get to think about things that you have overlooked for years, you find out what you're truly capable of under pressure and hard times, and you absolutely amaze yourself.
So then you are asked with the question, what is worth more than time and pain? what is worth going back on things you may have sworn to in the past? The commitment and relationship that you vowed to stand strong by till your death... Thats when you pick up your mish-mashed life and you throw it in the mixer again, taking all of the lessons that you've learned and trauma you've overcome and you decide to push forward... completely based on faith... faith is believing in more than you know, more than what you've seen and been through. Believing that when there is faiure, lies, and heartbreak... that if you want it bad enough and you feel it in your soul, that you can have trust, love and happiness.
I believe that people make mistakes, I believe that there is weakness and deceite in the world... but it only has as much power as you give it. And that ugliness has no power in my life anymore.
It is a constent battle, you try not to be nieve to the truth, you have to have acceptance and forgivness. And it is a whole series of fears, fear of what has happened, fear of what you will never know, and fear of the future. What's amazing though is that under all of these emotions and fears and complication... there is one constant... LOVE.
When you buy a car, you sign the papers, get the keys... Is the process then done? Far from it, you must keep up on oil changes, engine repairs, new tires, car washes, constent constent maintenance... If you don't keep up on these things, your car will breakdown... as will your relationship without the proper attention and maintenance. YES lmao, I just compared marriage to a car :)
It's hard, there will always be obstacles to overcome, hardships that you must make it through, life changes that will challenge you and push you to the max, But when you are sitting by this person that you have been to hell and back with, and seen the impossible with, broken eachother's hearts and then put them back together... and you still sit together on a couch both wanting the same thing, still in love, and you still have the fight... than who's to say that anything is impossible.
It was recently proven to me that life does in fact have dissapointments, and those heartbreaks are sometimes from the ones you trust the most. In one moment everything you know and everything that you've built can be pulled out from beneath you, put into a blender set on puree, and then handed back to you like "Tada!" and you're just like... "dude, WTF just happened?!" Then you get to learn some things about yourself, you get to build your self worth, you get to think about things that you have overlooked for years, you find out what you're truly capable of under pressure and hard times, and you absolutely amaze yourself.
So then you are asked with the question, what is worth more than time and pain? what is worth going back on things you may have sworn to in the past? The commitment and relationship that you vowed to stand strong by till your death... Thats when you pick up your mish-mashed life and you throw it in the mixer again, taking all of the lessons that you've learned and trauma you've overcome and you decide to push forward... completely based on faith... faith is believing in more than you know, more than what you've seen and been through. Believing that when there is faiure, lies, and heartbreak... that if you want it bad enough and you feel it in your soul, that you can have trust, love and happiness.
I believe that people make mistakes, I believe that there is weakness and deceite in the world... but it only has as much power as you give it. And that ugliness has no power in my life anymore.
It is a constent battle, you try not to be nieve to the truth, you have to have acceptance and forgivness. And it is a whole series of fears, fear of what has happened, fear of what you will never know, and fear of the future. What's amazing though is that under all of these emotions and fears and complication... there is one constant... LOVE.
When you buy a car, you sign the papers, get the keys... Is the process then done? Far from it, you must keep up on oil changes, engine repairs, new tires, car washes, constent constent maintenance... If you don't keep up on these things, your car will breakdown... as will your relationship without the proper attention and maintenance. YES lmao, I just compared marriage to a car :)
It's hard, there will always be obstacles to overcome, hardships that you must make it through, life changes that will challenge you and push you to the max, But when you are sitting by this person that you have been to hell and back with, and seen the impossible with, broken eachother's hearts and then put them back together... and you still sit together on a couch both wanting the same thing, still in love, and you still have the fight... than who's to say that anything is impossible.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)