Introduction to The Love Dare
A book called The Love Dare by Stephen and Alex Kendrick graced my hands almost 5 years ago. Knowing my audience, I know most of you have seen or heard of this book, but I am curious to how many of you have read and made it through the whole book. Comment and let me know.
When I first heard the premise of the book, I thought, “There is nothing wrong with my marriage. I love Jessica to the ends of the earth and back again. Why should I read this?”
Two basic things I learned from reading and performing the steps.
First, I do love my wife very well and the strength of our relationship is encouraging.
Second, I don’t know jack about what true love looks like in practice.
Now Mom and Dad, please don’t take that the wrong way. Looking at your relationship has been an inspiration in my adulthood and will be until the day I die, but what I realized is that I didn’t pay close enough attention.
It taught me how to truly express my love towards others, not just my spouse, and made me realize that no matter how hard we try, our love will not be perfect, but can be our absolute best.
Back to basics
Two years ago I picked up the book again because I realized that I am not a perfect human being and I have strayed from the principles of how to express love in its purest form. In my defense, our family had been through some major storms including major surgery and loss of work.
The notes I made during my first time through the book were encouraging the second time I picked up the book.
So here we are in the midst of a pandemic and I am trying to launch my writing career. In those efforts I have requested the help of my wife in up-ing my Instagram game. While doing so I have made a great connection with a man who’s story sounds familiar. For the sake of privacy, I will not go into details.
We have decided to go through the Love Dare together and keep each other accountable to its completion.
I have decided that I will follow the following format for the upcoming posts:
- What is this day about?
- What do I think about the material?
- What was my task and how did I perform the task?
- What was Jessica’s reaction?
Happy reading…
Love Dare Day 1: March 16, 2020
What is Day 1 about:
Love is patient.
Now wait a minute, I thought I remember this book starting easy.
What do I think about the material:
I will have to say I agree wholeheartedly with the material in the book. I have found throughout my adult life that most people I know are not patient. Many people walk through life with this chip on their shoulder waiting for someone to knock it off so they can blow up.
I know this is how I spent most of my early adulthood. To this day it is something that if I don’t keep a close eye on I will easily lose sight and let my “opinions” fly.
In this chapter the book says “patience is where love meets wisdom.” I absolutely love the way they put it.
I have always thought wisdom as a key component to one’s character if they wanted to be a better person. So here, if I want to love better and seek wisdom, I must be more patient.
What was my task and how did I perform the task:
Don’t say anything negative towards your spouse for the next 24 hours. The idea is that when you have an impatient thought that it normally first appears in a quick response comment usually not well thought out.
With this challenge, if Jessica says or does something that I don’t like or agitates me, I will take a pause before letting words fly out of my mouth and ensure those words are positive.
Luckily, this was not very challenging, at least these 24 hours.
While in the midst of day one, my daughter requested that we play a family game. I internally declined knowing that family game time is usually a huge stretch of my patience I knew, however, that was the wrong decision.
Instead I took a pause and went to our closet where we kept the games. I found one that no one had played before and decided it would be better than a competitive game of Life.
The game time turned into an education lesson on shapes, colors and math. No loss of patience!
What was Jessica’s reaction:
Jess, like me, struggles with patience during game time. At one point during the game, she commented, “You really like this game don’t you?”
I thought this was funny because I didn’t enjoy it that much. What I think she saw was abnormal behavior on my part. She saw a man enjoying quality time with his wife and kids, instead of witnessing frustration or irritation.
Interesting.
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