What Real Love Looks Like

Girl meets boy, there’s some challenge they face preventing their love story, then fate brings them together and they fall in love and live happily ever after. 

Between these Hallmark love stories and Hollywood romcom movies it’s easy to find ourselves swept up in the fairy tale fantasies of love. While there’s nothing wrong with a good clean love story to watch on a rainy afternoon, we must never forget what love really looks like. 

I often need the reminder of what love really looks like, but I can easily compare my sweet man to the fictional characters in books or movies and begin to pick apart the ways he seemingly doesn’t measure up to the romantic ideals on the screen. 

My mind wanders and fixates on the gap of who my husband is and who he could be if he were like these other men. I’m soon thinking, when was the last time he bought me flowers? Why doesn’t he go to all the trouble of planning out a perfect date night? I haven’t gotten a surprise gift in ages.

This dangerous gap is where many of us stay. But we will be wives who renew our minds to truth, not allowing the enemy to tarnish what God calls Holy.

So what does love really look like in marriage? How can we live as wives who hold fast to real, true love instead of allowing our vision to be skewed by the enemy?

Love looks like the trash can being emptied from the kitchen and taken out at night, the dog being walked before bedtime, killing bugs that you don’t like killing, helping with laundry, getting up every morning and going to work to provide for the family, sitting together on the sofa after a long week and just enjoying a movie side by side, praying for me, spending weekends on ball fields while cheering on kids, driving for hours on long family road trips, caring for aging parents, serving in church on the weekends, going to church with the family, fishing trips, beach trips, investing in retirement funds instead of buying something they want, spending time investing in friends over game nights and dinner events, enduring awkward family holidays, eating chips with you while you’re pregnant and don’t want to eat alone, late night diaper changes or feedings, being the last one to take a shower, so others make sure to have hot water. 

Love looks like the everyday things that are happening right in our own homes. They often aren’t wrapped up in extravagant roses or laced up boxes with jewelry, but love is there right in front of us. 

It can be so easy to overlook what feels like mundane in the middle of the mess. Satan would love to distract us and deter us from the love right in front of us. But I promise you, when you fix your eyes on looking for the ways in which your husband loves you right now you’ll be surprised at all the expressions of love happening all around you. 

Wife Step: Spend a few minutes and think about the little things your husband has done recently that are acts of love. Thank him for them the next chance you get, and more importantly, spend some time today thanking God for your husband and the ways in which he loves you. ​

Natalia Drumm is a writer, speaker and teacher with a passion for building community and engaging women in the Word of God. She is married to her high school sweetheart, and they are raising three little boys in their home town of North Port, FL. Natalia and her husband serve in their local church as marriage small group leaders and life group coaches. They have a passion for healthy marriages as they have seen the restorative power of God in their own marriage and family. 

Natalia is an assignment writer for Lifeway Women and serves as the Bible Study Content Editor at Living by Design Ministries. She also volunteers at Proverbs 31 Ministries on their proofreading team and leads a COMPEL Discovery Group. Natalia writes over at www.nataliadrumm.com where she creates devotional study books on issues relevant to womanhood and living in the fullness of God’s design for womanhood. 

When not writing, or serving at church, Natalia spends her time running, reading and enjoying a good Netflix binge. She’s also not be one to turn down a cold Coke and hot chocolate chip cookie. 

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