Cultivating Love

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” — Colossians 3:12–14 (NIV)

Dearest Daughters,

Love is the most important thing in a marriage. In fact, we might even say that love is the marriage.

Scripture tells us that marriage is the way God chooses to demonstrate His love—between Himself and His bride, the church (Eph. 5:22-33). And so, our own marriages must reflect that holy design if they are to be true marriages, Christian marriages. But love is not static. Love is a living and growing thing. It must be tended.

If, after a year of marriage, you look back and see that your love has not grown—or worse, that it has shrunk—then something is wrong. Love should not merely survive; it should thrive.

Look at your garden. If you plant peppers in April and come back in May and they look exactly the same, you immediately know something is wrong. If you’re a good gardener, you don’t just sigh and let them wither. You dig around the roots. You check the soil. You compost. You weed. You adjust the sunlight, add water—whatever it takes to help them grow and bear fruit.

This is how we must approach the love in our marriages.

The very first feelings accompanying love are strong—so strong you may think it will grow all by itself. But it will not. The burst of life that makes a seed sprout is powerful, yes—but that young plant is fragile. And so is new love. It must be nurtured, guarded, fed.

So how do we do that? How do we tend the plant of love?

We feed it. We water it. We weed around it. We check the soil.

Let’s talk about the soil first. The soil of your marriage is the environment you build around it—what you fill your heart and mind with, who you spend your time with, what your home absorbs. Do you spend time with each other? Do you spend time with people whose love you admire, whose marriages you’d be glad to imitate? If not, your love may be rooted in nutrient-poor ground.

Look for relationships that are further down the road than yours. Let your time and conversations be seasoned with things that edify—books, scripture, stories that make your heart ache with longing to become more than you are. Let them move you to prayer. Spend time in homes where this longing is shared. This is the compost. This is the mulch. This is how you nourish the soil.

And what about water?

Words are water. Express your love often. Your dad and I speak words of love to one another almost hourly. Every goodbye is sealed with a kiss. Every return is met with warmth. When he works long hours, I never let him leave without sending him off with care—and I never let him come home without a welcome.

These may seem like small things, but they are not. They are the daily watering that keeps the plant alive.

And the weeding? That’s just as important.

Weeds are little things—grumblings, irritations, sharp words, withheld kindness. Of course, there will be frustrations in any marriage. Dirty socks. The cap off the toothpaste. The clatter of dishes at the wrong time of day. But do these things matter enough to choke out love?

If the plant matters, you pull the weed.

You say: “This is an imperfection—but this is why God puts us together. Because only together can we be made whole.”

Even the annoyances can become opportunities. When we serve each other in the things we do not enjoy, we are truly loving. And in time, that service becomes joy.

So let your every thought, your every action, your every word be a cultivator of love. Feed it. Water it. Weed it. And place your marriage in a garden rich with light, air, and holy company. Let the people around you, the pages you read, and the prayers you pray feed your love.

As it is written:

“Let all that you do be done in love.” —1 Corinthians 16:14

With all my heart,

Mom