I'M IN "LIKE" TODAY (AS OPPOSED TO LOVE?) PART 1

Two recent comments from my blog readers touched my heart:

"I really love reading your blog, Kristy. It fills me with hope and understanding. I hope one day that I, too, can enjoy a relationship like the one you and your husband have. I've been praying for the right partner to come along, one who will share in my love of God and my yearning to be closer to God and know Him more intimately. I know that God is able and when His timing is right, He will bless me with the right person. Your blog leaves me with so much to think about."

Another:

"Any chance you'll write a nonfiction book? I love Christian love stories that encourage us in marriage."

Thanks, readers, for your kind comments.

But I just want to warn you: all is not bliss in marriage, even Christian marriages, even ministerial marriages (mine)!

A few posts back, I wrote on the topic "I'm So In Love." Today, I titled my post, "I'm In 'Like' Today (As Opposed to Love?)." I heard a woman say to her husband, "I don't like you today. But I love you." She meant she loved him but didn't necessarily like everything about him (or what he'd just said or done to her).

That's how I felt Saturday morning. I felt like I didn't get my just dues from my husband. In other words, something he did hurt me. And I'm not telling you about it. (GRIN). The important thing is, we worked through it.

But at the time, I thought, I don't deserve this. I'm a good wife and see to his needs admirably, yada, yada, yada. I've even cooked him homemade barbecued meatballs over wild rice, and black-eyed peas and okra, and home-baked muffins, and peach iced tea for lunch, and it's Saturday and I'm besieged with chores, and here, he treats me like this?

During times like this, there's a tendency to feel, Poor me. Kinda' reminds me of the song on the old TV show Heehaw:

Gloom, despair,
And agony on me,
Each for the other,
Excessive misery.

You begin to think of all you're doing right, and all he's (or she, as the case may be) doing wrong, and the first thing you know, you're thinking, I don't have to take this.

As a minister's wife, I've had women and men tell me things like this, and the next thing you know, they've left their mates and marriages.

And most of the time, they're then on a quest to find a new mate.

One who'll treat them better.

I know a young woman like that now...

Let's call her Sarah...

Sarah has two small children.

And she's just filed for divorce.

They live in a beautiful home, belong to the country club, and she's available to take her kids to every kind of lesson or activity they desire, plus she does the same.

Oh, did I forget to mention? There's a man who's "been coming 'round" lately who compliments her and tells her how wonderful she is. Which she is. She's a wonderful young woman, a knockout in the looks department, a whiz in the organizational and decorating arena, with a heart as big as Texas. He's been saying all this to her...

And now they're "involved."

And her husband's "out the door."

My heart aches.

I know another young woman...