Choosing to Love Noelle Owen


Love is much more of a daily decision than a feeling.

I’m not sure I would have said this sentence five years ago. Then I was still looking to gratify my own sensual and sexual needs. I was coupling these needs with an imaginative story of success and happiness and believing that love was somehow a concoction of them all. Love, then, was imaginative, playful, hopeful, and ultimately ridiculous. Today, I choose to define it differently.

Love can still be imaginative, playful and hopeful but ultimately it’s a choice. We choose to wake up and love. We choose to look across the dinner table and listen with intensity or passivity. We choose to unload the dishwasher and clean the litter box because our partner hates it, even though we’re exhausted and want to go to bed (this is a little insight into my world).

We choose to create imaginative spaces where love can bloom and hope can reside. We choose to reorganize business schedules and plans to maintain date nights and vacations. We choose board games over secret Facebook relationships, honesty over brevity, communication over silence, forgiveness over regret, apology over anger, trust over threats, and most importantly, we choose to not take ourselves too seriously.

Love is a choice. How often we choose it defines our happiness and our hope.

But I also get that it’s unrealistic to think we can live in a constant state of ecstasy. We can’t always listen or always succeed. We’re human and we fail. We put ourselves first, we hurt, we get frustrated and sad. We wish we had more time to spend at work as well as time at home. The balancing of both makes marriage confusing, and at times lonely. Which is another reason why I believe love is a choice.

We all get sad, depressed, frustrated and angry. We also get excited about things our partner hates. We love watching football when she/he loves it when the TV is off. We spend money on eating out when she/he spends money on groceries to cook at home. Over time these patterns fester and eventually cause conflict. The conflict leads to arguments, the arguments lead to personal attacks.

But despite our flaws, temptations, and cowardice attacks on the other, love is still the choice to change, to apologize, to seek forgiveness, and to see beyond our own ego and insecurities.

In the two years I've been married, I've asked numerous couples what the best and worst thing about marriage is. The best two things I've ever been told was by my best friend. He said the first secret to marriage is remaining "emotionally available.”

Choosing to listen when all you care about is being heard. Choosing to cuddle when all you want is to be alone. Choosing to appreciate, understand, not judge, hold in unconditional positive regard, and to love with a love that comes from God.

Remaining emotionally available allows you to navigate tough times, lower your defenses, feel less threatened, and see the other as equal.

I've learned a lot in two years of marriage, but none better than being emotionally available to my spouse. She deserves that from me. She’s a person who cares deeply, is passionate, works hard, and shoulders more responsibility in a given day than anyone I know. And for these reasons alone she deserves a spouse that is emotionally available. She deserves a lover who knows her for who she really is and a partner who walks alongside her.

And so do I for that matter.

When both parties realize they are responsible for the decisions they make, love blooms. When both parties remain emotionally available to one another, love deepens. And all of this is most definitely a choice.

The second thing my best friend told me is, “You have to love yourself.”

To fully embrace and hold your partner in love means you must be comfortable and secure in yourself. Otherwise feelings of defensiveness, insecurity, and hate arise.

To love yourself and to be comfortable in who you are allows you to look into the eyes of your partner with the capacity to be emotionally available, for you finally aren't worried about you. You aren't preoccupied with outward expressions, one-liners, or always having the last word. You are just present. Ready to receive and ready to love.

Today, and every day, I choose to love and be loved by Noelle Owen! Happy Valentines babe!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Most Difficult Parable Ever

Image
Theologian N.T. Wright finds the parable of the fig tree to be quite strange.  He says, “Jesus' warning in Luke 13 is at once amplified by this almost humorous, yet in fact quite sinister, parable of the fig tree in the vineyard.” And it is sinister.  It’s a hard pill to take.  Jesus' parable goes like this: A man has as fig tree planted in his vineyard.  One day he comes out looking for fruit on it, but there are no figs.  He says to the vineyard keeper, “Look at this tree.  For three years, I've come hoping to find some fresh figs, but what do I find? Nothing.  So just go ahead and cut it down.  Why waste the space with a fruitless tree?” The vineyard keeper replies, “Give it another chance, sir.  Give me one more years working with it.  I’ll cultivate the soil and heap on some manure to fertilize it.  If it surprises us and bears fruit next year, that will be great, but if not, then we’ll cut it down.”...
Read more

The Bird of Dawning Singeth All Night Long

Image
This Christmas I was moved by the words of Frederick Buechner.  For my last blog of the year I offer to you his wisdom rather than my own ramblings.  I hope it does for you what it continues to do for me. Frederick Buechner says in his book The Faces of Jesus: On the dark bulwark of Elsinore, Shakespeare has Marcellus and Haratio reflecting on Christ in the opening scene of Hamlet: Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, No fairly takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallowed and so gracious is the time These lines from the first scene of Hamlet in a sense say it all.  We tend to think time is just progression . . . as moment following moment, day following day, in relentless flow, the kind of time a clock or calendar measures.  But we ...
Read more

Sacrificing Joy

Image
I have been told my biggest weakness is I take myself too seriously. I agree. But here is my dilemma: My life is filled with responsibilities and deadlines. I go to school, pastor a church, assist my seminary in their admissions process, and feel obligated to be a good friend. My school takes up twelve hours a week plus roughly twenty hours of study. I work at least 10 hours on my sermon and spend two days a week with my congregation. Fifteen hours of my week is given to the McAfee Admissions Office and every Saturday I play softball with some friends. With this schedule I am up to 57 hours of responsibility time plus two days are given to my congregants. Why do I do this you ask? Because I can. Because God is blessing me in it. Because it gives me a sense of fulfillment. All of these shape an identity for me. And I love every second of it. We are all busy people. We all know what it is like to work the extra hour or sign up for one my volunteer role. We all over...
Read more