I have to admit when I shared this with a couple of friends just a couple months after I had lost Bill I really didn’t intend for it to be shared with any more than those two people. But since I’m doing this series on marriage and this was my advice to them, I really don’t want to leave it out.
We all have different love languages. I think over the years I began to realize how important sex is to a man. Making time for each other may mean different things for different people during different times of life. I think the first step may be to realize how God created us and created marriage and gave us such a gift of being so intimate with each other.
I remember those days of working, raising children and just being busy doing all kinds of family chores, activities, and errands. I would fall into bed exhausted at the end of the day, just wanting to get a good night’s sleep. We typically make time for and plan all sorts of activities with family and friends. I want to encourage you to think about planning and saving some of that energy for one another. Our marriage and our intimacy is something worth planning for and treasuring.
I’ve been realizing more and more what a gift God gave us when He said, “The two shall become one flesh.” To be fully known and loved by another person is like no other relationship on earth. We’re told to leave and to cleave. We leave the family we were born into and cleave(cling) to one another. Learning to leave and cleave takes a lifetime. To know one another and be known so well and yet so loved and accepted is an amazing gift. Marriage is hard but it can be so, so good. To have the love and comfort of that one person as we walk through life together is an unspeakable blessing and mystery as well.
God somehow made us multidimensional. To be truly intimate we need to share on every level of our lives. That means intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and physically. We not only need to, but we also get to share in this relationship called marriage. God intended for us to be different from one another, male and female He created them. Who can explain the way of a man with a woman and a woman with a man, it is a great mystery. When it is as God created it to be it is so deeply satisfying and good.
Again, it doesn’t just happen in the first few months or even years of marriage but it happens over time as that unconditional love grows and blossoms. Then in the good, and especially in the hard times of life, we begin to get somewhere close to experiencing the gift and blessing God gave us in marriage. It comes when we put Christ first in our marriage. Then as we walk through life and love, comfort and spend time just being together will we begin to know and experience the unselfish love that God the Father showed us when he sent Jesus to die for us. We will begin to understand love and forgiveness as we give it to one another with Christ-like love and it is then that we begin to approach what it really means to be intimate.
Photo by Becca Tapert on Unsplash