Beloved. What a beautiful word. It has been defined as dearly loved, dear to the heart, sincerely and deeply loved, and in Websters 1828 dictionary, (my personal favorite) it means "one who is greatly loved".
My husband is my beloved. There is not another human being in this world who is dearer to my heart or more greatly loved by me than my husband. (Now that is really saying something because we have 8 adorable grandchildren!)
I have learned after 23 years of marriage that I was pretty dumb as a young woman, because I was clueless as to what real love is. But God, being who he is, chose to give me the gift of mariage to my sweet husband, knowing that I had no idea, or rather a secular idea of what a marriage commitment meant. Praise God!
It is my intention with this blog to share real life lessons that I have learned about love, marriage, sex, and what God has taught me is my responsibility and joy as a wife in those areas. I hope to center all of the posts around some part of the Song of Solomon which is what I want the "theme" of this blog to be. I may mention our children our grandchildren once in a while, (can't help myself!) but my focus is hopefully to encourage married couples to celebrate this wonderful gift God has given us called marriage, especially the fun part! (yes, I do mean sex!)
So today I begin with the word "Beloved", taken from that oh-so-sensual book of the Holy Scriptures, that is in itself a marital-sexual celebration! The reason I chose "My Beloved" as the title for this blog is because more than anything else, discovering that there is a sexual celebration book in the Bible, has helped me to look a my marriage and my faith in a whole new way. In studying the Song of Solomon, I have grown closer to my husband, and to my God. It is too easy to walk through your life, marriage included with a sort of detached faith, because the mundane every day cares weigh so heavily upon us, and God seems so far away from normal everyday life. Religious stuff can seem sort of surreal, not connected with our everyday lives and marriages. But I am here to tell you that those kind of thoughts are straight from the devil! God cares about your marriage so much that he put a husband and wife enjoying the sexual pleasures of marriage smack dab in the middle of your Bible!
Now it may just be me, but I have always looked to the center of things to find what I consider to be the best part. For example, in each of the Star Wars trilogies, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, guess which ones are my favorite? Episode 2, Episode 5, and the Two Towers! Yes! The ones in the middle! Oreos? The frosting in the middle! Favorite seat at the symphony or a movie theatre? Middle section, middle row, middle seat! Now some of you may think that I'm a bit o.c. here, but I just want the life that I am in the middle of (47 y.o.) be centered! Now that I have "discovered" the ultimate married sex guide, written by the Creator of sex himself, I'm choosing to center my marriage around God's very relevant to our everyday lives teaching about being married and having sex! (Whew! That was kind of a round about narrative! sorry!)
I have learned to love my husband dearly, deeply, and greatly. He is my beloved. I have learned to love him because of who he is, not because of how I feel. That was the # 1 most shocking revelation God gave to me. Real, true Christ-centered love, is not engendered by how we feel, but who he is. We love our spouses because they are our spouses. We chose to marry them, now we must choose to love them. Love is a choice NOT a feeling. We'd all be in a world of hurt if Jesus had waited to "feel like" dying on that cross before he did it. He chose it on purpose. Choose to make your spouse your beloved, on purpose. Believe me, when you put all of energies into loving God and loving your spouse intentionally, the "warm fuzzy" feelings just begin to flow! Of course the key to loving your spouse even when you don't feel like it is to put your feelings on the back burner, and theirs on the front.
So for today, I encourage you all to break out the dictionary and thesaurus, (you can find them online, my favorite Webster's is here: http://www.1828-dictionary.com/ ) and look up what it means to be beloved, and all of the related terms. Choose to make your spouse feel beloved today. Begin to study the Song of Solomon, there are many great commentaries that help with the poetic-type language that is used. A quick amazon search will give you tons of resources. One of my favorite bloggers recently plugged a couple of new ones. I'll go back and look, and I'll add a link to my next post. It really is exciting to realize that God is concerned with our sex lives and our marriage relationships, and that he isn't silent on that subject, just watching us fumble around in the dark trying to figure it out for ourselves. He has a plan. A great plan. The best plan, and in great sensual detail, if only we will study his word and apply it to our marriages. May God bless you all in your efforts to learn to love your spouse intentionally.
~Kathy
BTW-
There are many wonderful Christ-loving folks who faithfully blog about marriage to encourage all the confused and clueless people like me. I praise God for the Internet now, although I use to hate it. (more on that in a future post.) As soon as I figure out how to post a page of links, I will include the ones that have encouraged me for the past year. God bless their tender hearts!
