I don’t know why I’m writing this. Really. I don’t know much about love. It’s such a wide and incomprehensible thought that I will not pretend to know it enough to write this. However for what little I know of love as a lover and husband and soon-to-be dad, I know that there is a way people fall out of love.
And that’s what I’m about to tell you.
In and Out
People fall in love. That much we’re sure of. A guy meets a girl he likes. His heart begins to throb, his mind begins to imagine, his feelings begins to fly. It’s love at first sight.
He goes out, tells his friends “I think I’m in love.”
What does that mean?
I’m not about to go and break down love in Greek terms to you here. The only point I’m trying to make is that it’s so easy to fall in love. There is a person in your lifetime that is sure to captivate you one way or another. I should know – I’ve been there.
And then he goes ahead and courts her. He wins her heart. They spend a few years together. They’re in cloud 9.
All of a sudden his job demands him to go to another place for a few months. He goes and says his supposedly temporal farewell to his lady love. She begs him to stay. He leaves.
A few months pass by and he goes back home. He goes to his girl and he breaks the news – he’s fallen out of love for her.
How did that happen? How does someone just “fall out of love?”
This is a fictional scenario – but there are tons in real life that are somewhat similar to this. Some of you may be able to relate. It’s one of those times when a heart breaks and a heart hardens up.
Left to Grow
When you plant a seed, there are certain requirements that you need to tend to in order for that seed to grow. Basically, you need to water it and give it some sun. After a while, it sprouts. You celebrate and you give it some more water and some more sun.
And you repeat the cycle until it grows mature and perhaps grows its own stump and develop its own bark and then you can leave it to grow on its own.
Love, as we know it, cannot be left to grow. It has to be tended to. It has needs. It demands to be matured.
When I fell in love with my wife, it was nothing short of love at first sight. I was captivated by her charm in a singles retreat. I continued to pursue her, court her, and win her heart.
I’m never a guy for a fling. It’s always a serious relationship or nothing. So I laid out my plans early. She’s supportive of it. So we continued to mature our love.
Since we were both serious in seeing things through to marriage, we attended marriage counseling in our first year as a couple. We wanted to know what’s ahead and we wanted to know it early on.
We read books like ‘Fit to be Tied’ by Bill and Lynne Hybels. We read ‘The 5 Love Languages’ and ‘The 5 Languages of Apology’ by Dr. Gary Chapman. And we read other books besides. We were maturing our love by preparing ourselves for commitment.
The Fallout
You see, what usually happens is, a couple falls in love, they confess their love to each other, they consummate it illegitimately, and then they go on with their lives without ever tending to their love for it to mature.
They leave their love out to dry. Sad but true.
I see and hear people who are in a relationship that have no vision for where their love is headed, and no effort to mature their love for commitment. This is exactly the recipe to fall out of love.
The problem is, the world thinks that love grows itself through emotions, when the opposite is true. Love is intentionally grown through commitment and emotions grow itself through love.
Don’t wait for the fallout of a love left to grow on its own. Intentionally grow your love with wisdom, vision, preparation, commitment and biblical principles.
Only then will you fall in love – and fall in love so deep that you’ll never find your way out of it.
