A Love Letter Life by Jeremy Roloff

Author:Jeremy Roloff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2019-02-12T05:00:00+00:00

JEREMY

Auj and I are continuing to learn that if one of us loves something that falls in line with our shared values, then there must be something in it to love. And when the other is willing to find whatever there is in it to love, we get to experience a greater closeness and unity. Finding new things to love about each other is a gift that keeps on giving. It keeps alive the growing excitement of discovery as we not only unearth more to love about each other but fall deeper in love in the process. We believe that bridging the gap of separateness with strands of unity will continue to draw us closer together and that weeding out things that separate us will deepen our love.

Pre-marriage, we tried to close the gaps by sharing in our hobbies and interests. After marriage, we continue to do this in other areas as well—our failures, victories, responsibilities, and even the words we use. For example, in our house, it’s my job to take out the trash. However, when I sometimes forget, Audrey gets frustrated and points out my fault. Likewise, I get frustrated with Audrey when we’re running late because she’s taking too long to get ready. I blame our tardiness on her.

We’ve been working on shifting the way we talk about these types of situations by using “we” instead of “you.” We call it “we shifting.” So instead of saying, “Jer, you forgot to take out the trash,” Audrey says, “Jer, we forgot to take out the trash.” And instead of saying, “Auj was running late,” I say, “We are running late.” It may seem like a small thing, but this simple change shifts the atmosphere and our attitudes from accusation to alliance and from separateness to togetherness. If we are indeed “one flesh,” as Scripture proclaims we are, then we want to live into that in every way we can. We become one when we say “I do,” but we also continue to become one through daily actions and words that proclaim “we do.”

Sheldon and Davy Vanauken had a theory that “the killer of love is creeping separateness.”3 If sharing builds a thousand strands of unity that bind us together, it only makes sense that a thousand strands of separateness builds distance. It came as a bit of a shock that if we could sow closeness, we could also sow distance! Audrey and I had been forced to experience what physical distance does to love. Living individual lives, we entered a season of separateness during long distance that turned our flame of love into a smolder. Distance surely is the enemy of love!

We live in a world where genuine love—love that lasts—is hard to find. Love can be alive one moment and gone the next. We see this in the divorce rate, in broken families, in unfaithful spouses—fill in the blank. Love can flee as impulsively as the feelings do. We are a culture that chases feelings as the fruit of love, while neglecting to water the tree that produces the fruit.

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