Tonight, I sat down and wrote my wife a letter, and something quite unexpected happened. Writing her was something I had been wanting to do, and I finally just decided to make it happen. It was a love letter, and I set out just to write out for her as many ways as I could to describe all that I loved, appreciated, and admired about her.
I found that in the act of focused thinking about her, I found myself adoring and desiring her more and more! These focused moments of concentrating on and listing out all of her amazing qualities, her character, her personality – I was falling in love with her all over again!
Not that I had ever fallen out of love with her – not at all. We have shared 12½-years of wonderful marriage together! It’s just that this exercise of actively thinking about her and putting into writing all that I love about her was causing this fresh, unexpected tide of adoration for her and desire for her to wash over me anew.
We do this when we’re dating: we actively think about each other. Even passively, our love is always on our minds. As the years go by in marriage though, our minds can fill up with lots of other things, from bills to chores to kids to responsibilities, and the concentration of love for our spouse can become crowded in by all these other matters.
But it can be renewed. It can be refreshed. With just a little effort, the many cares that fill up our lives can be pushed aside, if just for a few moments, to remember the miracle that is our marriage relationship.
For Dianna and me, we work together to keep the joy and life of our marriage relationship thriving in a variety of ways:
- We have a weekly Date Night.
- We try to spend at least 30 minutes a night together in undistracted conversation – about our days, about our souls, what we’re thinking, feeling, experiencing, struggling with, being encouraged by, and so on.
- We leave little gifts and notes for the other to find.
- We hug or kiss each other sometimes for no reason at all. Just because.
- We do little (and sometimes big!) chores for the other to demonstrate our love.
And when I sat down and wrote her that letter, I wanted her to know all the things I appreciated and loved about her. I did it for her. But I was surprised (and delighted!) to find the fire of my own adoration for her rekindled as I remembered, concentrated on, and then penned each new attribute of hers that was flooding my mind.
She is so awesome! And the fact that she married me – such an incredible miracle! Lord, may I never forget or take for granted all that she is and all that she means to me.
Would you be willing to try this? If you are married, would you take 20 minutes to just sit, and think about them, and remind yourself of all their good qualities, and then just write those things down in a letter of appreciation to them?
If you are not married, would you consider doing something similar? Would you write a letter to a possible future spouse – the one you are hoping for and waiting for and looking forward to? On our wedding day, Dianna gave me a box of letters that she had been writing to give to her future husband for eight years! We had only known each other for about 2-1/2 years! She was writing letters to me more than five years before we ever met! And what a gift were her words of hope and affection and prayers and longings for our life and marriage together.
Letter-writing is such a wonderfully therapeutic exercise. I hope you will give it a try today.
Like Trees Planted 