Day 2 — When Love Walks Through the Dark
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” — Ephesians 5:25
How far would you take that command? “To love her just as Christ loved the church.”
If your answer is anything short of forever, it may be worth sitting with the unsettling question: Why did you ask her to marry you?
Love, the way Christ defines it, does not flinch at eternity. His love did not taper off at the cross. It stretched across His final breath, then rose with Him in new breath three days later—unstoppable, undefeated, unchanging. A love that does not quit.
On our wedding day, we spoke vows with trembling joy—“for better or worse”—but our minds rarely lingered on the worse. We imagined rainstorms and medical bills, maybe a long argument over something neither of us would remember a month later. But “worse” rarely comes dressed in the predictable. Sometimes “worse” arrives quietly, like a fading flame.
What if “worse” means a season when her affection cools, when her laughter no longer rises like it used to, when she grows still, distant, withdrawn—not because she wants to hurt you, but because her soul is fighting battles she doesn’t know how to name?
What if “worse” means she pulls away, not because she’s exhausted, but in rebellion?
What if “worse” means you wake up one day and realize you’re strangers sharing a kitchen?
And—God forbid—what if “worse” means the painful sting of unfaithfulness?
I don’t write about these possibilities with a cold mind. They grip me. They gnaw at the edges of my heart. They force us to confront the unanswered question of what our love is made of. They inspire us to explore past the soft love of convenience and into the hard love of covenant.
Consider the book of Judges. Israel wandered from God again and again, their hearts lured by idols, their devotion cheapened by forgetfulness. The Lord had every right to abandon them—but He didn’t. His love pursued them through their wandering. It pursued them through rebellion. It pursued them into the shadows they willingly entered.
This is the love Christ commands husbands to imitate. We are not supposed to wait until things get better. We’re supposed to possess a love that enters the dark places with purpose. It’s not a love that keeps score, it’s a love that keeps a covenant. It doesn’t collapse when wounded—it rises when crucified.
Marriage was never designed to be upheld only by seasons of warmth and ease—it was designed to be carried by the kind of love that endures like Christ’s: unwavering, steady, relentless. A love that stands guard in the night. A love that walks into the places your wife fears. A love that stays even when every voice in the world says leave.
To love her like Christ is to love her even when she doesn’t know how to be loved; when she is radiant and when she’s unraveling, when she’s holding onto you and when she pulls away. You do not love her only when she is easy to love. You love her because God gave you the sacred honor of doing so.
Love on purpose. Even in the dark. Especially in the dark.
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