Ten Ways to Love: Trust without Wavering

What does "trust" mean?  Trust means to believe in someone's word completely.  Trust means knowing that whatever words a person speaks, it will remain valid; he will honor his word, come what may.  Trust means freedom from lies, the absence of deception.  Trust means ease in knowing someone, not having to bear suspicion or doubt in his actions, words or thoughts.  Trust means everything.

A solid relationship between two people cannot exist without trust.

In the Ten Ways to Love study of "Trust without Wavering," the seventh verse of I Corinthians chapter 13 speaks of the role of trust with an absolute boundary in the form of one word: always.

It always protects, 

always trusts, 

always hopes, 

always perseveres.

Nowhere in the Bible do we see commands, laws or statements that suggest modifications or meeting half way. No "sometimes", no "if/then", no "when" and certainly no "provided he does ______". God gives a strong parameter on trust when it comes to love.  Love always trusts.

Trust with your whole heart rather than just a piece of it. Trust, like faith, asks for sacrifice. We must offer up our fears, misgivings, control, and pride in order to trust. Without giving up these mainstays of self, we don't trust. We merely hold another at a safe distance, waiting cautiously for the other person to break our trust, to give us cause to doubt or to prove our misgivings right.   Mainly, we lie in wait, distrusting right from the start, when we offer this kind of behavior.

No matter where you are in your marriage right now, focus on trust.  Live in a trustworthy way yourself, and give your husband a view of what "always trusts" looks like.  Provide an environment for him that protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres, and by doing those things, you will find them coming back to you ... from him. Men who suffer from other ills of society -- addictions, deeply-hidden sins, or abuse may not fit this category.  If you have a physical or emotionally hurtful relationship, please seek appropriate help immediately.

Otherwise, protect with all your might, trust with all your heart, hope with all your mind and persevere with everything in you ... build a marriage on these strong foundations, and just feel the power of God at work.  Always!


Others in This Series:

• Ten Ways to Love: An Introduction
• Ten Ways to Love: Answer without Arguing
• Ten Ways to Love: Enjoy without Complaint
• Ten Ways to Love: Give without Sparing
• Ten Ways to Love: Listen without Interrupting 
• Ten Ways to Love: Share without Pretending
• Ten Ways to Love: Speak without Accusing
• Ten Ways to Love: Forgive without Punishing 
• Ten Ways to Love: Pray without Ceasing 
• Ten Ways to Love: Trust without Wavering 

How to Start Dating ... Again

I want to start dating again.  I only ever dated one man, and for only nineteen days in succession, so I don't have a passel of experience to offer, or many ideas of what to do.  My brain can freeze just  thinking about it: what to do, where to go, what to wear, how to act, what to say, how to say it.
 Scary. I need to get into it, but I'm so out of practice I hardly know how to start.

Breathe easy ... the object of my dating desire is the man I married.  I want to date him, learn to reconnect in that special way with him.  I want to recapture the simple things, the him 'n me time, virtually uninterrupted, all ours.  Time to look into each others' eyes, to sit long at a table and chat, to choose a movie during which characters might kiss and no one hollers, "Oh, YUCK!"

My husband and I had only a few Official Dates.  You know... the kind with dinner or dessert involved, maybe a movie or a long walk to nowhere in particular.  The kind that makes a girl swoon at every little thing, and shiver in anticipation at his nearness.  Maybe a concert or sporting event, or a drive to a beautiful vista.  The kind that finds you holding hands and really thinking about it.  The kind that makes you feel hopeful, full of joy, and still a little nervous.  The kind that ends with hope of a next date.


We participated in some dates like those and spoke for hours on the phone across campus and in person on long walks.  He proposed to me on a date that marked our college graduation and his birthday, and represented the number of days we dated:  19.  Then we started a year-long, long-distance engagement followed by marriage, moving away from family, a few moves to new apartments and homes, new jobs, miscarriage, the addition of business travel (for him), childbirth, and more distance between us without realizing we created it ourselves.

Our days of dating, as few as they were, had made us familiar with each other, bonded us in new ways, helped us see from new eyes, helped us eliminate life clutter and focus on our relationship.  Imagine that!  Dating consists of everything married life should.  We leave it behind for "more mature" endeavors, only to find they're the very activities that divide us or cut us off from the love we have known and cultivated at the beginning.  Instead, we sow seeds and leave them to grow untended.

Life events and overwrought psyches, insecurities and slipping attitudes drew us toward unfamiliar territory, which we began to explore in opposite directions and with greater irritation over the other person not willingly following in whatever direction we each decided felt right.

We forgot to connect.  We avoided discussion over hurtful things.  We forgot to anticipate time with each other.  We forgot to make special plans just for us.  We made work more important, followed by children and then "down" time -- when all the others weighed on us so much.  We had a handful of joy that buoyed us, but not often enough.  We roamed and found divergent paths in order to not have to think about struggling and to avoid discussing issues we found uncomfortable, except in heated moments when we let it all hang in dangerous doses with all the wrong words.

And we came back together.

God allowed us to fall apart so we could fall together.  Unite.  Find pleasure in our purpose together again.  Some people never do that.  They cut the fraying ties and run, often right to another person with similar issues.  They do the dating, they feel the infatuation, and then they start fraying just the same.

We started out by doing all those things we used to do nearly a quarter century ago to get to know each other.  We offered sincere compliments, we found fulfillment in conversation, we carefully noticed each other, we learned what made the other person tick, we learned the other person's joys and sorrows, pleasures and pain.  We made lunch dates, sometimes every day.  We took time away from our children to work on projects together or go shopping.

We made plans.  We looked forward to carrying out the plans.  We looked forward to making more plans like those very soon.  We looked forward to each other.

And that's dating!  

To keep up the great work we've accomplished so far (thank you, GOD!), I had a lightning-strike idea about 10 days before Christmas.  Preplanned, prepaid and packaged date nights.  A whole boxful, allowing for twelve dates throughout the coming year.  I wrapped the huge box for My Dear Man and wriggled and smiled a lot in anticipation of the grand opening.  I could barely stand the wait.

So I told a friend about it.  She went off like a firework finale and drummed up a box of her own for her husband's Christmas gift.  Her husband loved it.  They've already gone on their "first" date.

We're going at our dates a little more slowly.  In fact, as life would have it, we haven't gone on one yet.  I had to cancel plans based on a toothache (who can eat fried chicken and enjoy the severely misunderstood Scarlett and Rhett in "Gone with the Wind" with a swollen, painful jaw, I ask you), followed by children's and potential childcare-giver's illnesses.  Life will still get in the way, but so will this box!

 

It sits in plain sight, and we review it from time to time, anticipating.  This weekend will bring Scarlett and Rhett to our family room in living color, and we will feast on southern fried chicken and drink something peachy or mint julep-like in honor of the Old South.  We will date!  He will not understand some of the connections, I will have too much book knowledge, and we will both cringe when Rhett walks out, and we will have shared many things:

- an uninterrupted evening together -- just the together makes me smile
- a meal
- a movie and all of its history and lessons in perseverance (except for hanging tough in marriage!)
- our thoughts about what we're seeing (and about how much time will pass during it, I'm sure!)
- time, space, energy, self, knowledge, thought, interpretation, reaction, hope, hands, outlook/vision, understanding and anticipation

We're looking forward to date nights without actual dates assigned to them.  It feels terrific.  It feels like having someone pull out a ticket from a hat while you stand in the crowd, waiting and hoping.  Except that you get to win every time.

I encourage you ... beg you, even ... to share your ideas for date nights with those who visit this site.  We come from all over -- the US, Canada, Russia, Ireland, Poland, the Nordic Countries, the UK, Australia, Ukraine, China, Japan, Italy, Spain, France, Malaysia, Indonesia, Kenya, Cambodia and Ukraine.  Each person has much to offer, and all marriage-focused ideas help in ways you may never know.  Someone out there needs your help through your shared idea or offered thought.  Have at it! ENJOY!

Head to the DATE NIGHT: Add Yours! tab at the top of this page (or click the link above) and give us your tips and topics for a great date in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

Looking forward to reading and sharing with you.  We all need it.

The In-Law Invasion

My mother and father-in-law arrive today to celebrate Christmas a little early.  As ever, I dive into cooking in advance and cleaning down to and including the baseboards.  Housekeeping happens as necessary in my gene pool, and that means I feel a need to do it when there's a need to do it.  As in, when we will have guests.  Really, I would like to have a crumb-free, uncluttered environment in which to live, and I try.  I just didn't come equipped to keep up with it.  We all have our strengths.

I fall on the short end of the cleaning stick, and so I guess I make up for it in cooking and baking.  Which makes a mess.  Doesn't it figure?

Stress.  I feel stress to get it all right, because I think, deep down, that judgment cometh.  Some people are very particular, very expectant, and I married one of them.  He comes from that kind of lineage.  And it stresses him out, too, wanting everything to be perfect, from the house and children to the meals and relationships. 

No matter how well we plan and prepare, very little of that perfection has a possibility of happening. We are fallible humans!  Personalities clash, preconceived notions make truth crawl under the carpet, assumptions slither into attitudes, and nerves stand on edge, and when any one of these bind with another, our minds and sometimes our stomachs take a hit. 

We want better for ourselves, and we want better for the rest of those involved. 

I think all of us married folks, from time to time, have in-law issues.  Even the most perfect in-law pair, either the seasoned parental couple or the younger wedded couple, have difficulties that seem to surface.  These difficulties may happen only in their heads, but they happen, leaving stress, irritation, and sometimes anger or tears at the inability to live up to the example, in the attempt to avoid criticism (giving or receiving), the attempt to avoid advice (giving or receiving) or ilkjn the attempt to avoid a hamster wheel world of trying to be everyone's everything.

My husband and I have navigated 21 years of marriage and dozens of visits here or there with our sets of parents.  Every time I think of Exodus 20:12, which reads:

"Honor your father and your mother,

so that you may live long in the land

 the LORD your God is giving you."

No suggestion here, a commandment.  Hoo-eee!  It sometimes feels like more pressure, but, in making it reality, it pays for itself.  First, in obedience to God, which should stand as our first line of action, in all things (don't look at me -- I'm practicing, too!).  Then to the feeling that comes from blessing the very people who provided your husband by giving him life in the first place.  Finally, in the continued blessing showered on us when we witness a change in attitudes and behavior all around because we have acted as we should.  

The in-law resistance we often feel, I think, we usually create ourselves.  We have our own preferences.  We have our own hopes for the relationship.  We have our own sets of expectations that, Satan-bound, put us first ... wholly because we feel that others should act or speak in certain ways to maintain the structure of the relationship we envision.  Dysfunction runs rampant in this way of thinking.  As Sheila Wray Gregoire illustrates in "Do You See What I See?" our preferences and sadly, our expectations color our vision.  We need to use God's vision -- and he gladly shares it when we ask.  It offers more clarity than we will ever find in an independent search.  It offers grace in place of contempt, it provides hope instead of defeat, it views everyone with love instead of with impossible expectations in mind.

And, while I'd sometimes like to toss the reminder of Christ's review of the marriage commitment (Matthew 19:4-6) toward my mate's parents when advice or questions arise -- I'd be offering God's word as judgment, wouldn't I:

"He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 

I know that I have my own expectations of perfection and hopeful views of what family should be.  I know my own biological family has no claim to perfection or excellence.  And, I remember, a little sheepishly, as I think of retorts or admonitions:

"A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control."  Proverbs 29:11

I need to keep the relationship in perspective and remember that feelings are fickle and hearts live out life on people's sleeves in family relationships sometimes.  It's our job, as wives ... as family ... to protect both.