Summer Lovin’
It’s only the beginning of June and there is probably no other season where florists, photographers, videographers, reception halls, DJ’s, and caterers look forward to and dread at the same time. They have been tasked with providing the most amazing day, the most amazing atmosphere, the most amazing cake, the most amazing music, and the most amazing overall experience that two individuals have dreamed about and planned out with more detail than NASA’s recent exploration!!! You guessed it… It’s wedding season! It’s that time of year!
JUNE is reported to have the most weddings of any month throughout the year. This is why my wife and I chose December to get married. (Actually we just didn’t want to wait – OK I didn’t want to wait until June!!). Our wedding was a picture perfect day – eight inches of snow, blizzard like conditions, and my dad actually hit my new bride square in the face with a snowball (accidently… but welcome to the Snow Family!).
Weddings are huge business, front-page news, exciting, inspiring, and wonderful moments where we celebrate and cheer on a couple towards the journey of life together in the covenant of marriage. Most weddings could not be any further from the reality of marriage. Somehow… at most weddings – everything goes right or someone else makes it right. People will do incredible things to make sure you have your “magical” day!
Then we enter into this relationship called… marriage. We enter this season where bills pile up, laundry piles up, dishes pile up, and at times diapers pile up! What’s the point? Marriage requires WORK. There… I said it. I KNOW that sounds so unloving, so “not fun”, so “don’t ruin the party I’m having”… But I’m trying to ruin the party because much of it is a façade. It’s NOT a bad thing that your marriage requires work. It’s NOT a bad thing that your marriage demands EFFORT. Real love requires real effort. Real love does not need to be earned or achieved but it demands unbelievable EFFORT to display it and to extend it to another human being.
Real love means that you and I refuse to be “observers” and we choose to be “investors”! There is a radical DIFFERENCE between an investor and an observer! As an investor, you’re putting something on the line.
To LOVE someone else in any TRUE sense of the MEANING OF THAT WORD is to put that PERSON – their concerns, their interests, their needs, their desires – ALL of that stuff – BEFORE YOUR OWN.
In The Four Loves C.S. Lewis writes:
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.
An INVESTOR doesn’t run when the heat in the kitchen starts to rise.
An INVESTOR doesn’t get what they want and then RUN to the next Quick Fix, Quick Dollar, or Quick Pleasure.
An INVESTOR sticks with you through the Highs and the Lows.
In your relationships (marriage especially), what is your plan for investing into the relationship? Have you simply taken the role of being the passive observer? Have you taken the role of being the consistent critic? OR are you making an intentional plan to invest into the relationship?
Imagine your marriage months down the road if you were to make consistent and strategic “deposits” into your relationship… Like any investment it will cost you – time, energy, other opportunities, and probably some money. But the return will be amazing. Number one – your heart will grow. Secondly, the one you committed your life to will know and experience the kind of love that weddings remind us of!
So go invest! Take big risks! Don’t skimp on your marriage this summer!
God bless,
Ryan Snow
