Since this is the month of Valentine’s Day, I thought I would focus my devotionals on the voice in our heads regarding love. From “Why doesn’t anybody love me?” to “This wasn’t what I signed up for” and “Why am I a bum magnet?”
Please remember, this is NOT an advice column and I am not pretending to know all the answers because when it comes to this topic, I probably have more questions for God than answers myself. I’m just sharing different things I have learned in my own journey.
This coming December, Andrew and I will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. I am so thankful to God for my husband. When I was younger, I dated several people, had a few long-term relationships and even spent 3 days engaged. I had this issue of wanting so badly to be in a relationship that I spent a lot of time trying to make square pegs fit into round holes. Some of these guys were seriously jerks (hence, the first person I ever called a bum magnet was yours truly), others were nice guys, they just weren’t right.
I will never forget the first time I met Andrew. I had just started working at Walmart, and one of my trainers told me I just had to meet Andrew, or Drew, as he was known to all of us then. At the time, he was the manager in charge of the overnight stocking crew. He was coming to work as the rest of us were getting ready to go home. This was in the days of stores closing at 10, so he got to wear blue jeans and t-shirts to work. I’m telling you this because the first time I ever met him, he was wearing a purple t-shirt with a frog on it, that said, “Kiss me, I might be a prince”. Something has to be said for the fact I remembered that. The shirt disappeared before we ever started dating. That was in September of 1989.
Over the next year and a half, Andrew switched to days and we truly became friends. In May of 1991, I started realizing I had feelings for him. This was a problem because he was my boss and there were rules against us dating.
For the first time ever, when it came to a relationship, I started praying. I prayed that God would open doors to make it legal for us to date, and then I prayed that Andrew would ask me out. One of my positions while working for Walmart was that of a loss prevention floor walker—I caught shoplifters. In August of 1991, a position opened for a new store in Decatur. When I went to interview for the job, the first question I was asked was, “Are you dating Drew Browning?” I could honestly answer no. My soon-to-be supervisor told me Andrew had made several calls to make sure I got this interview.
I was still praying things would change so he could at least be in a position to ask me out. It looked like that was happening. I got the Decatur job in September, and officially transferred out in October. The next week, Andrew asked me out. We dated six weeks and then drove to Kentucky one Friday morning and got married. It is unreal to me that we are going on 25 years. Because I prayed so fervently for this to happen, I never had a second of doubt that it was right.
We have always tried to make God the center of our marriage and at times, we do a better job of that than others. We do get to experience that strange phenomenon of “two becoming one” because I think we have very seldom, if ever, both been in a rough place with God at the same time. Usually, whichever one is going through doubts and fears, the other one has received a boost of grace to help combat the negativity.
I would say around the year 2002, I heard something that changed our lives. I was on my way home from work at lunch. I was listening to Tony Evans on the radio and he was telling how God wired men and women differently. Ephesians chapter 5 tells husbands to love their wives (vs. 25), but it tells the wives to RESPECT their husbands. (vs 33). This was truly an ah-ha moment for me. I had read several Christian relationship books but had never gotten the message this clearly. I knew I felt the most important to Andrew when he would show actions of love—a hug, a kiss, grabbing my hand if we are walking into a store and I always assumed it was the same for him.
That day though, I started watching how he responded to those things versus how he responded when I quite simply showed him respect. We live in a society where it has become the norm to put men down. So many of the television shows on now seem to portray women as the smart ones and their husbands as bumbling idiots. This is just wrong. Watch for it, you will see what I mean. If shows made a habit out of men treating women that way, or even two women treating each other that way, it would be a big deal. When you realize God made men to crave respect, some of the things you see will honestly start to hurt.
In getting ready to write this, I turned back to Tony Evans and found a wonderful little e-book on just this subject. You can download it here:
I encourage you AND your spouse to read it, there are even some little daily devos in it.
I also encourage you to watch your actions toward your spouse this week. Women were made to crave love, although not all in the same way. They were made to want to know someone cares about them. Men were made to crave respect. They want to know someone believes they are capable of taking care of the people and properties God has entrusted them with.
I’m leaving you with When God Made You, by Newsong and Natalie Grant.
I encourage you this month to look at your relationships. If you have a spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend, spend the month searching how you can draw yourselves closer to God as a couple. If you are single and still waiting for God to send you “the one”, search yourself and see if what you are looking for is what God would really want for you too.
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