I John 4:8 “⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.“ GOD IS LOVE! We are bold people. We did not create ourselves. We cannot manage ourselves. We believe in God and yet we continually do things without HIS PERMISSION OR AGAINST HIS WILL. We will find support in our decisions anywhere and everywhere most of the time using HIS WORD twisted to fit us. We listen to other people who are as powerless and clueless as us. We do all of that only to find ourselves praying again to the God we disobeyed, seeking answers. 

I began this series talking about my marriage and I still am. I know so many married people and some of them appear happy but their advice hasn’t always been Godly, wise or helpful. Throughout my 21 years of marriage, I’ve had many people give advice or speak to me about things to do and things not to do. Many times I’ve heard the expression, Love isn’t enough. I bought into that expression as well for a long time. Anytime, my husband and I hit difficult times where we couldn’t hear one another, that thought would play in my head. Words are powerful and that’s why we must be careful the words we accept, entertain and digest. Once digested, the words take root and produce either fruit or weeds. For me thinking or feeling my husband would never understand or become the man for me to love me and put me first, made me angry and I treated him accordingly. I remember him telling me once, that I wanted out the marriage just as much as he did but I was too coward to walk away. That wasn’t the case. I’ve always chosen him, I just wanted him to choose me. In my ignorance, I thought perpetual punishment would make him feel my hurt and change. All it did was make a man who struggled with stability more unstable. I never communicated to him directly that I was punishing him, I assumed he would get it. That was stupid. The point? I was convinced of his limitations through words spoken to me over the years and while I didn’t think they did, the words against my husband took root and produced weeds.

Likewise, my husband had words spoken to him against me and the marriage, by people he cared for and equally those seeds/words took root and produced weeds. The two of us muddled through weeds of our marriage for 20 years. 

In the midst of life, we never stopped to uproot the weeds, we kept going year after year declaring things would be different without putting in REAL WORK for it to be different. I think neither of us even knew what to pray for or how to pray, to whom to speak to or how to dismantle the weeds we allowed to grow. We got ourselves into trouble, into a hard place that we have been unable to escape, even now! Whether we speak or not, our minds find one another. Financially, we’ve been entangled all year and still have more to complete. We could drop everything but literally, we would be hurting one another, planting more seeds that will become financial weeds! Now if we didn’t have love for one another we would plant the weed seeds and try to move forward…….but love!

When we say, love isn’t enough, ignorantly we are saying GOD ISN’T ENOUGH! Now if you aren’t a believer, you can stop reading right now. However, if you know God, believe in Him, trust Him that’s a statement you should never make again! LOVE IS ALWAYS ENOUGH BECAUSE GOD IS LOVE! As men and women, we think about love in the romantic, fantasy ways, the Cinderella Love where they marry and live happily everafter. That’s how I used to believe in love! I’ve always loved the fairytale. The woman in the fairytale was always hurt or alone and the man would ride in and save her! She wouldn’t have to do anything but love him. That’s so far from the truth! As I grew older my favorite fairytales became movies like: Pretty Woman, Just Wright,and The Princess and The Frog. In each of these movies, both the man and the woman are flawed, but they fight through the problems and find the love. Neither of them are perfect but they love each other just the same.

Love isn’t about the outside, two beautiful people connecting and looking picture perfect. Love isn’t two people sharing things in common and having fun becoming a power couple. Our view of power couples isn’t even as accurate as we think! In EVERY POWER COUPLE, there will be audiences where one partner will shine greater. The power lies in their ability to allow each other to shine without feeling inferior or competitive against one another! It’s not about them not needing each other financially either! Power couples, real love is when you know, understand and see the flaws in a person, and still love them anyway. Love is when your partner hurts you and while you want revenge or want them to understand the pain they put you through, you still cannot, do them harm!

I’ve been so disappointed in my marriage. I’ve been second wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too many times. I’ve had to mend fences in his family. I bought him and his own children together to watch them have a relationship that I’ve been locked out of, imagine that. I changed the way the children and the grands looked at him by making sure birthdays and holidays were celebrated only to be ignored, mistreated and hurt. I’ve bought gifts for children who have never even called me on my birthday. In the recent separation, I’ve been disrespected over and over again and yet I chose to show up responsibily anyway. It reached a point that when we initially separated, I didn’t think he mattered. I learned differently. While the things I just shared actually occurred, he had pain as well. He lived in a house where he felt and was treated like an outsider. He lived with a woman who was mean and cold even when he didn’t know why or how to fix it. He went against the things he knew and believed to try and make the marriage work but it still felt short, he felt hurt and he didn’t even know how to communicate that. Basically, we hurt one another, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. Despite that mess, there is always a place in both of us where we find ourselves talking or able to talk and still trust each other even separated! That’s love!

To know that no matter what happens, you can reach out to a person and never doubt that they are there is a level of love that most people never reach. He and I have that! It’s why for 21 years we’ve been friends and partners. Isn’t that love?! YES IT IS! It is the same way God loves us. We stray from HIM, but when we return, HE’S RIGHT THERE! If anyone would have told me that in December of 2023, I would still love and better yet have a deeper understanding of love, for my husband, I would have called them a lie!

I remember talking to God oneday about this marriage and just as quietly in my car when I pulled into my garage, He whispered, “How dare you listen to anyone about your marriage when they didn’t start it, they didn’t put the two of you together or anything?!” I was stunned. I knew it was true but I was stunned. My husband and I spent years comparing material possessions of other couples to ourselves, comparing the success of others to ourselves, watching the lack we felt inwardly and comparing it to the abundance of others outwardly. We allowed so many seeds of discontent to become weeds and even when we didn’t speak it to one another inwardly we were warring with it. Just because it didn’t happen didn’t mean that it couldn’t happen. We tried therapy one time and at the time, my husband was mad and didn’t give a chance, although he will never admit it occurred that way. Either way after that failed session, we reconciled still. However, we NEVER UNTANGLED OR REMOVED THE WEEDS. So in our reconciliation we were trying to move forward with weights of disappointment, aggravation, fear, doubt and lack of hope! We didn’t know how to make it better.

LOVE IS ALWAYS ENOUGH when you learn what real love is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GOD IS LOVE! IF HE SPOKE IT, HE WILL DO IT. God watches HIS WORD TO PERFORM IT THAT IT NOT RETURN VOID! SO IF HE SPOKE IT TO YOU, ABOUT YOU THAT WORD WILL NOT RETURN VOID! So if the failure isn’t in God, it is in you or in this case, us. When God does something you have to believe in it enough to fight for it. You fight for decisions you make everyday. POINT OF THIS STORY – REMOVE THE WORDS FROM YOUR VOCABULARY that love isn’t enough….LOVE IS ENOUGH BECAUSE GOD IS LOVE!

Sincerely,

Kimberly Guy Davis