Did anyone else think of The Princess Bride a lot during this past Sunday’s sermon?
“Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam… And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva… So tweasure your wuv.”
— The Impressive Clergyman, The Princess Bride
When my husband and I had been married for about two years, our marriage went into crisis mode. With one foot in the marriage and one foot out, we had to do some serious soul searching to find out what we had expected in marriage, why we had expected that and what goals should we set now. Our romantic ideas that “wuv, tru wuv” would follow us “foweva” came into deep question. Things got much, much worse before they got better. And we’re still working on it to this day. Every day. I sure wish I had heard Sunday’s sermon 20 years ago.
Growing up, I loved it when I would overhear my mom bragging about me to someone else. The only thing that made me feel better than that was when she looked up from her coffee in the morning, seeing me sleepily walking into the room in my pajamas and exclaiming, “There she is!” as if she had been waiting for me to wake up and be with her. My mom did love right. I felt loved.
What my mom did naturally was publicly and privately express her love and affection for me. These were two of the tenets of love-done-well described in the sermon. And, wow, do they work.
The third tenet from Sunday’s sermon was to show love spiritually, to love God more than we love our spouse, which opens us up more fully to love our spouse. And to love others as we love ourselves, including our spouse.
I don’t know about you but I am looking forward to intentionally applying these three methods of showing my husband how much I truly love him!
Tweasure your wuv!