Love Me Right

Marriage is one of the biggest sanctifiers.

Misery is too.

Neither asks for your permission.

Neither waits until you’re ready.

And both have an uncanny ability to reveal what’s really living in your heart.

Lately I’ve found myself spending a lot of time in Ephesians 5:25:

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”

For years I read that verse primarily through the lens of what it asks of husbands.

Recently, God has been using it to show me something different.

He’s been showing me the kind of love that sustains a marriage.

The kind of love that survives disappointment.

The kind of love that survives suffering.

The kind of love that survives change.

The kind of love that survives us.

Because if I’m honest, there have been seasons in my marriage where I have been incredibly easy to love.

There have also been seasons where I have not.

March of 2025 changed my life overnight.

An emergency surgery threw me straight into menopause.

One day I recognized myself.

The next day I wasn’t entirely sure who I was anymore.

My body changed.

My emotions changed.

My energy changed.

My patience changed.

The things that once rolled off my shoulders suddenly felt heavy. The things that once felt manageable suddenly felt overwhelming.

Nothing prepares a woman in her thirties for that.

Nothing prepares you to grieve parts of yourself while still trying to function normally.

And if I’m being completely transparent, I know I wasn’t the same wife my husband married.

For a while, I focused on what I was losing.

What I didn’t realize was that my husband was grieving too.

Not because he stopped loving me.

Not because he wanted someone different.

But because the woman standing in front of him was trying to figure out who she was becoming.

The longer I sit with Ephesians 5, the more I realize this passage isn’t really about romance.

It’s about sacrifice.

It’s about covenant.

It’s about agape.

Agape is the highest form of love described in Scripture. It is selfless, sacrificial, and rooted in commitment rather than emotion. It is love that chooses. Love that stays. Love that serves. Love that continues showing up when feelings aren’t enough.

Attraction can start a marriage.

Agape sustains one.

Chemistry is wonderful.

Agape is necessary.

Because eventually every marriage will experience a season where feelings fluctuate, circumstances change, stress increases, health declines, finances get tight, expectations aren’t met, and life becomes far more complicated than either person anticipated.

That is when agape becomes the foundation.

Not the feeling of love.

The practice of love.

One of the hardest lessons God has taught me recently is that relational intelligence requires self-awareness.

That sounds simple.

It’s not.

Most of us are naturally aware of what everyone else is doing wrong.

Self-awareness requires the courage to ask what we’re contributing.

Why did I react that way?

Why am I offended?

Why am I expecting something I haven’t communicated?

Why am I withholding grace I desperately want for myself?

Why am I demanding understanding while refusing to offer it?

Those questions are uncomfortable.

They’re also transformative.

And if you’re wondering whether God will ever force you into a season that develops self-awareness, ask Job.

I promise he didn’t have “discovering hidden heart issues through unimaginable suffering” on his vision board.

Yet somewhere in the middle of losing everything, God revealed things Job couldn’t see before.

The same God still does that today.

The truth is, marriage has exposed things in me that I never would have discovered on my own.

My pride.

My selfishness.

My unrealistic expectations.

My tendency to become inward-focused when I’m hurting.

My desire to be understood more than my desire to understand.

My willingness to receive grace while struggling to extend it.

And perhaps the hardest realization of all was recognizing that my husband was often giving me the very things I wasn’t consistently giving him.

He was offering consistency while I was unpredictable.

He was offering patience while I was frustrated.

He was offering curiosity while I was withdrawn.

He was offering grace while I was struggling to give it.

That realization didn’t condemn me.

It humbled me.

Because suddenly Ephesians 5 was no longer a passage about what husbands should do.

It became a mirror.

The question shifted from “Am I being loved well?” to “Am I loving well?”

That’s a much harder question.

Marriage has taught me that covenant is bigger than feelings.

Character is bigger than convenience.

Curiosity is bigger than assumptions.

Consistency is bigger than emotions.

One of the greatest gifts we can give our spouse is the willingness to keep learning them.

Just because you knew someone five years ago doesn’t mean you know them today.

Life changes people.

Loss changes people.

Healing changes people.

God changes people.

Healthy marriages remain curious enough to discover who their spouse is becoming.

I’ve also learned that consistency creates safety.

It’s difficult to feel close to someone when you don’t know which version of them you’re going to get.

Consistency doesn’t mean perfection.

It means being committed to meeting your spouse’s needs above your current feelings.

It means choosing covenant on the days when covenant feels costly.

The quality of our lives is connected to the condition of our hearts.

Proverbs 4:23 tells us to guard our hearts because everything flows from them.

Marriage has a way of revealing exactly what’s flowing out of ours.

The beautiful thing is that God doesn’t reveal those things to shame us.

He reveals them so He can heal them.

Looking back, I can honestly say marriage has sanctified me.

Misery has too.

Together, they have exposed things I didn’t know were there.

Together, they have driven me back to Jesus.

Together, they have taught me that I need daily bread, daily grace, daily wisdom, and daily surrender.

Most importantly, they’ve taught me that the greatest gift in marriage isn’t finding someone who loves you perfectly.

It’s allowing God to continually transform you into someone who loves more like Christ.

And some days, that transformation looks a lot less like romance and a lot more like repentance.