That Lovin' Feeling
by: Jon Crane

Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 1, No. 7 (June 27, 1998)

I had occasion to speak with my son-in-law last week. The subject of marriage came up as he had recently married my daughter. I passed on the usual advice: never go to bed mad, talk it out don't shout it out, remember birthdays and anniversaries. And told him of the old Louisville Slugger baseball bat in my closet waiting for any man who ever lays a hand on a daughter of mine in anger. The usual.

He and my daughter are young people in love, riding the crest of a wave of romantic feelings. And that's how it should be. Most everyone of us has been there and know how good it feels. But are those feelings what love and Christian marriage are all about? The reality is they are not. Those initial feelings of love--that lovin' feeling, to quote the song--will pass. But does that mean love has passed, too? Not if it's a marriage with God at its center between two God-centered people.

In any marriage--but here I'm speaking primarily of a Christian marriage--we exchange promises in the presence of witnesses and before God Himself. We promise to love, honor and cherish, come what may. We also promise to forsake all others for our spouse. And most people mean it when they say it.

But the problem lies in those "lovin' feelings". They don't last--at least with the intensity and duration that they do early in the relationship. But they're not supposed to. And if you don't know that, you might believe that love is gone when the feelings are gone.

I believe a strong marriage centers on the promises made to each other. None of us will feel very loving all the time but living those promises, especially fidelity, are the very act of Christian love. Too many people want to abandon their partner when they don't feel as loving or loved as they did in the beginning. They believe they can recapture that youthful euphoria and find that lovin' feeling again with someone else. The fact is it, too, will pass.

It can be likened to our own physical growth and maturity. We change as we grow going from a youthful world of carefree fantasy and make-believe to the exuberance of adolescence and finally to the more sober realities of adulthood. But each age gets better because more possibilities are opened to us in our lives.

So it is with love. It cannot stay at that young stage--all starry-eyed and passionate. Realistically, how would dinner get cooked, the mortgage get paid or the children get raised? It, like the human being, has to mature. And while it may include fewer or less frequent moments of that lovin' feeling, the possibilities of a shared life have expanded far beyond a candle-lit dinner and the bedroom.

Like our love of God and our willingness to show Him love in our day to day lives (even when we don't feel it), our love for another is a decision. It is a choice to remain faithful, to show respect, to cherish our spouse by doing everything we can to bring to him or her no harm. It is a meeting of his or her needs. And it is an expectation of these things in return.

Feelings come and go. A life or a relationship based on feelings is like the house of straw built by one of the three little pigs. The first little thing will collapse it. But a marriage built on solid Christian principles, one that remembers the promises even when the lovin' feeling is absent, will last. We love each other as Christ loves us--unconditionally.

Am I saying that after a certain point in a relationship, there will be no more amorous feelings? No, never. Those feelings will always be there and we can recapture them. What I'm saying is that even when they seem to have gone, it doesn't mean love has changed but grown through metamorphosis. Once it does, it is like the caterpillar changing into a beautiful butterfly--life has more possibilities because it now has wings.

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