Falling in Like all over Again Pt 2

Excerpt: Drifting apart? Identify when we started drifting and why. We drift if I focus on your faults. If I lose touch with your heart. If I say I love you but my choices say otherwise. If love becomes a duty, we drift.

Recap of Pt 1: Watching God respond to Israel can help us respond well to our spouse when our hearts begin to drift. 
While these posts focus on the marriage relationship, these insights can apply to any friendship that's at risk of drifting. 
#1: Reflect on the journey of your friendship so far and identify where you’re at now. 
As doctors identify symptoms to diagnose an illness, let's identify any signs in our relationship that we’re drifting apart. 
#2: Remember what your friendship was like when it started. We resist this. It's painful. Why stir up hope? Because the heart I fell in love with may be buried under pain but it's there. Can I give her the same grace I would want?

#3: Recognize where you began to journey separately. 
“I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me ” Jer. 2:2 
"What fault did your fathers find in me that they strayed so far from me?  Jer. 2:5 

It is so easy to assume I know how my wife feels. About me and about us. But it’s also just as easy to be wrong.
The same is true with God. I once endured a long season of spiritual apathy. And grew indifferent to my indifference.
 
While sedated by apathy, I was oblivious to how my indifference affected God. So He told me. One day my reading plan took me to Jeremiah 2. Even in my boredom, I still read the Bible daily. I didn’t expect Him to speak to me through it.
But this day, He did! In Jer. 2, God opens up His heart about Israel. The words I read felt very personal. As if I stumbled on a friend’s private journal. In which he opens up his wounded heart. Only to learn that I’m the one who wounded it.

Jer. 2 is a love letter from a bridegroom God to Israel, His bride. It broke His heart to write it as it broke mine to read it. It also broke His bride's heart to read it. For he voiced his deep love for her. And his deep pain over her unfaithfulness. 

I tried to see Israel’s idolatry and apathy from God’s point of view. But what I saw instead was a glimpse of my own idolatry. My own apathy. It hurts deeply when you realize you left your first love. Even more so to see its effect on them. God writes as a grieving husband who recalls the love of his bride. And the deep pain of losing that love.
 
His chosen people had started turning their hearts to other gods and wandering off. Straying away from their God.  
But like a spouse who cheats and leaves and then blames it all on their mate, they blamed God for why they strayed. 

Jeremiah 2 offers clues as to why Israel strayed away from God. There are many reasons and they're the same reasons couples today start drifting apart. We are often quick to blame the other for the rift between us. But just as it takes to build a bond, it takes two to break it. While one may start a conflict, it's often prompted by something the other spouse did or said. And even when it's not, the other spouse's response will largely determine whether the gap closes or widens.

In God's relationship with Israel, He often refers to Himself as the husband and Israel as His bride. And for them, the bride Israel has initiated the rift because of her sin and idolatry. If you ask her, the blame is on God for not giving her what she wants. So spouse, if you don't want the rift between you to widen, pay attention to Israel's 'marriage' to God. Note the reasons she pulled away. If you’re drifting away from God or your spouse, it could be for one of these reasons.

Learning why you first pulled away from each other may shed light on the current issue and help you recover first love.

You can drift apart if all you can see is your mate’s faults or the differences between you.
"What fault did your fathers find in me that they strayed so far from me?  Jer. 2:5 (NIV)

You and your God:
Like Israel, I can feel like I’m justified in my complaints against God. So I stop seeking Him.
Because of a need He didn’t meet. A loss He didn’t prevent. Words He didn’t say. In a crisis, silence feels like absence.
But He hasn’t left me and never will. He may be silent but He’s there. It may not feel true, but He cares.
And He hopes I’ll voice my pain. But we rarely do. We assume He’s abandoned us, so we return the favor.  

You and your spouse:  
It happens in marriage. We drift apart if we start focusing on the other's faults or how we’re different. Of course we are! 
God knew it when He brought us together! The irony is: Early on, our differences didn’t keep us from falling in love. They may have been what attracted us to each other. Or at least we saw our need of them. But most of the time, couples in love hardly notice the differences. All we see is the one we love. We grow indifferent to the differences between us. 

The very differences we now resent. At first, I only saw her. Now I only see her faults. I no longer see the heart I fell in love with! If I close one eye, hold a penny over the other, I'll see a dark circle. If all I see is her faults, I no longer see her!
 
“But she’s not the person I fell in love with. She’s different!” So are you. Is it love to reject you because you’ve changed? Then don’t reject her. Get honest as to where you’ve changed. Help her understand you. Not as an excuse but as a starting point to heal the rift. Be willing to work on changing what needs to change. If you want her to accept you as you are or give you grace if you fail, can you do that for her? 'But I need that from her!' Love like Jesus. Make the first move.
 
‘And if she doesn’t reciprocate?’ Do it for love. Do it for Jesus. Be a man who does whatever love would do. Like Jesus.

Fact is: we all change. And we need to. We aren’t born mature or perfectly loving. We ‘grow’ in love or we stay selfish. 
Hopefully, we become more loving as we age. But we often don’t. To the degree that one of us or both of us becomes less loving and more critical of the other's faults, to that degree our marriage will be less tolerable. If honest, we’ll want out.

Not ready to talk about falling in love? How about falling in like? News flash! Your spouse is still likable! Even if they’ve changed for the worse. We often change for the worse if we don’t feel worthy of love. If I feel pressured to measure up, I’ll either resist you or make it my aim to please you. Is that so bad? It can be. If my motive is to be who you want me to be so you’ll love me, guess what I stop doing? Loving you. Men, let's recover our calling as husbands. It’s to love our wives, not get love from her. Yes I want her love but that’s out of my control. What is in my control is choosing to love.
 
The honeymoon season is precious because we’re both looking at each other through eyes of love. In that greenhouse of unconditional love, our good qualities shine. But if we feel like we’re never good enough, we get irritated if we have to prove our worth or earn their love. Which we can't. Why? Love is a gift. Not payment for services rendered. Without love we look at others in the way we think they see us: through eyes of judgment. So good traits get buried. We 'change'.

Once I become critical, all I see is the negative. Who she’s not. I lose sight of who she is. I start doubting her love. So I search for proof. And since she's human, I find it! So I refuse to think I might be wrong. "I know her!" Do I? The heart I fell in love with is likely still there. Buried under the faults I focus on. And angered by the new portrait I've drawn of her.
 
‘Michal, Sauls daughter had fallen in love with David’ 1 Sam 18:20 Fast forward a few years after their wedding:
‘when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart’. 2 Sam 6
She went from being ‘in love’ to ‘despising’ him. (despise: to regard with extreme dislike) She accused him of ‘disrobing in the sight of the slave girls as any vulgar fellow would!” However, on this day, she was wrong about David’s motive.

As David said, ‘it was before the Lord’ that he danced with such joy and abandon. Not before the eyes of the women.
Years later, we learn that she had reason to be distrustful. But in this case, she judged his heart wrongly. Your spouse has surely done things that hurt you or have broken your trust. But be slow to assume you know their motives. Or that they'll always be what they once were. Don’t quickly form a view that emphasizes faults and minimizes every good trait.
 
I get why it's  hard to keep loving someone if you're convinced they no longer love you.  Yet I still need to offer a caution. And this comes from painful firsthand experience. You can know with certainty what they've done or not done, said or not said, but you can't always know with the same certainty why they did what they did or why they said what they said. 

When events happen, we often attach meanings to them. But if the event involves what you did or said, I cannot say with certainty what your motive was without hearing your view of the incident. I need to let you speak for your own heart. Explain your why. I think I know why, but you know the truth. And if you're unsure, God knows. Point is: I don't. 

This came home for me 20 years ago when I became very discontent in my marriage. All because of a lie I had believed.
I was convinced my wife didn't really love me that much. All because she wasn't loving me in the way I wanted her to.  
Then I read Katie Byron's book 'Loving What Is'. She lists 4 questions to ask yourself if troubled by a persistent thought. #1: Is it true? #2: Can you be absolutely sure it's true? #3: How has that thought changed the way you think? #4: Who would you be without that thought? I examined my discontent through that filter and found I had been listening to a lie!

Let’s say my wife stops asking about my day when she always used to. So I label her selfish. Yet I forgot that I stopped asking about her day years ago. And she’s put up with it. Why did I stop? She forgot once, so I assumed she didn't care. 

You can drift apart when you stop noticing where your friend is at right now.   
“They did not ask, 'Where is the LORD, who brought us up out of Egypt.” Jer. 2:6

You and your God:
Israel is in slavery to Egypt, so they cry out to God. He rescues them from bondage. Leading them by the cloud of His presence to their promised land. Until the day they just lose interest, pursue other gods and gradually stop seeking Him.
A.W. Tozer once complained of preaching that only focused on ‘accepting Christ’. He said our ‘logic maintains that since we’ve found Him, we need not seek Him more.’ Like newlyweds who stop pursuing each other, we lose interest. 

To know God is like exploring the universe. There’s always so much more of Him to know. Which He longs to show us.  
What’s He shown you lately? What’s He up to in your life? What do you think He's saying? Do you still ‘stay in touch’?

You and your spouse:
What’s going on in your mate right now? In your marriage? What concerns you? What encourages you?  If my mate changes for the worse, it’s all I see. But what I can miss is how they’ve changed for the better.Which is sad. I don’t notice that my wife hasn’t guilted me about the messy garage for months. And she used to do it weekly. It still bugs her as she can’t find stuff. But she knows I’m stressed so she lets it go. How has your mate changed for the better over the years?

Have you acknowledged it? Or do you assume they’ll always be what they once were. Deep change calls for persistence. Which is hard to maintain without encouragement. As selfish expectations can drive a wedge between a couple, so can unrealistic expectations. They breed discontent. Why? We want our mates to be who they were when we met. But is that a fair ask? It says “I want you to be who you used to be. Look like you once did. Treat me like you used to treat me.” I'm
not saying we can't ask for kindness. I'm suggesting we also show them the kindness of accepting them as they are now.

Why does it matter? People change! As proof, look in the mirror. You’ve changed too. Wouldn’t you want your husband to love you for who you are, faults and all? Well, God calls you to love your man as he is now, not as you'd like him to be.

Love does not withhold itself until you measure up. God didn’t do so with you. But how do I love him like that if I don’t even like him right now? Actually, you can’t. That's the point. Only God can love like that. It takes God to love like God.
And He wants to help us love like Him. Let Him. You can love like Jesus! Who loves us even when we don't deserve it.  
 
The reason love is so hard is that our natural bent is to curve inward on ourselves. To see that our needs are met and our wants are satisfied. However, this selfish bent usually remains hidden in the early years. No one is more selfless than a man or woman in love. “I’ll do anything for her, regardless of what it cost.” It's usually years later that I start caring about the cost. Until Jesus makes me like Him, the longer my needs go unmet, the less I'll care about her needs.  
 
The longer we’re together, the more I’ll measure you by how you treat me. I become far more conscious of how well you’re loving me than how well I’m loving you. This self focus changes my criteria for what I like. I tend to like what makes me feel happy. Like when you look a certain way or treat me a certain way. It’s a major reason we ‘fall out of like’.

You can drift apart when you give your mind and heart to empty pursuits.     
“They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves.” Jer. 2:5b

You and your God:
Idolatry is when you love and treasure something more than God Himself. When you make it the central focus of your life. You believe you cannot be happy without it. It’s where you get your worth and identity. An idol isn’t always a bad thing in itself. It's incredibly easy to turn God’s good gifts into idols. Where we love His gifts more than we love Him.
 
You and your spouse:
We can do the same thing in marriage. God meant for us to have desires. But He never meant for our desires to have us.
St. Augustine was convinced that what defines a person more than anything is what they love most. He once said that
‘The essence of sin is disordered love.’ Which He believed is the reason so many people are discontent and unhappy.  
His conclusion was that for most of us, our lives are ‘out of order’ because our loves are out of order. 
 
My loves are out of order if I love less important things more than they merit and important things less than they merit. 
It's ok to want success or chase a dream, but if I love my dream more than her, she knows. In her eyes, it's my mistress. Regardless of how fiercely I deny it. The problem is: my words say she's more important. But my choices say otherwise.

You can drift apart if you care more about the rules of friendship than you do your friend.
“Those who deal with the law did not know me.” Jer 2:8

You and your God:
The pharisees loved their rules far more than their God. Jesus said all the commands can be summed up in one: Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. The goal of every command is to help us love. Either God or man. For what matters most is love. But what mattered most to a Pharisee is keeping the rules. They reduced love for God to a list of rules that must be kept. As if that's what He wants. Measuring their walk with God by how well they keep them. They’d search Scriptures for what God wants and make up rules. Yet never come to Him, which is what He wants.  
You and your Spouse:
Listen to a conversation from 'Fiddler on the Roof' where Tevye questions Golde's love. Why? She seldom tells him so.

Tevye: Do you love me?   Golde: Do I what?   Tevye: Do you love me?  Golde: Do I love you?  
Tevye: Golde, I'm asking you a question! Do you love me?   Golde: You're a fool!   Tevye: I know!
But do you love me?   Tevye: Well?   Golde: For 25 years I've washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned the house, given you children, milked your cows. After 25 years, why talk about love right now?    Tevye: But do you love me?    Golde: I'm your wife!   Tevye: I know! But do you love me?

Golde's answer is to list all she does for him, yet he's not content with that. But if love is reduced to duty, who would be?
God wants my heart. Not a checklist of all I do for Him. And my wife wants my heart, not a tally of all I've done for her. 
 
In a marriage, once love turns into duty, any hope of intimacy is at risk. You might think ‘But there are obligations in marriage. There is a place for duty and keeping your vows whether you feel like it or not!”  Certainly! But fulfilling my obligations is one thing. Settling for obligatory love is quite another. If I’m doing acts of love begrudgingly only because I ‘should’ or ‘ought’ to, I’m not doing it out of love. And my spouse will know it. And that it's a poor substitute for love.                                                                        
Some say ‘I love her, but I don’t like her right now’. I get that, but it’s no excuse for not treating her with love. If you’re rude or unkind, then you can't say you love her. Oh, you may feel love at times. But love is not a feeling. It's a choice.

Love is what you do regardless of how you feel. Did Jesus feel like taking on my sin at the cross? To love like Him is to do what love calls for. Despite how I feel. Yet I’m fooling myself if I think my mate should be satisfied with a begrudging love or martyr love. ‘I guess staying with her is my cross to bear’. Doesn’t sound like God and it doesn't sound like love.

 In Part 3, we’ll look at more warning signs of a drifting relationship. Taken from the book of Jeremiah.
You can drift apart when you look outside your relationship to satisfy your relational needs or desires.
You can drift apart when you stop admiring or respecting one another.
You can drift apart when you become addicted to pleasure or controlled by your feelings.
You can drift apart when you see this journey as an obligation rather than a privilege.
You can drift apart when you’re preoccupied with the journey and forget your friend.

In Part 4, we’ll watch God’s response to Israel and learn how we can heal the rift and reignite lost love.
#1. Resume your journey together on mutual terms.    #2. Recover your ‘likability’ and rediscover theirs.