There is no life as complete as the life that is lived by choice.-Shad Helmstetter, Ph.D., author and behavioral researcher.

This is the quote you will read at the beginning of chapter 1 in Ramona Zabriskie’s book Wife For Life: The Power to Succeed in Marriage. I have learned about how much weight and power CHOICE has in my life. Each choice has an impact on my life and each impact carries a consequence no matter how tiny.

To me, some tiny choices like whether I scramble or fry my eggs in the morning for breakfast really don’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of things. Yet other tiny choices are much more powerful in directing the outcome of my daily, weekly, yearly and lifelong existence. And more importantly, they affect my happiness and personal well being, as well as the growth I have in the relationships around me.

I haven’t always chosen to love my husband. Instead I’ve chosen anger, indifference, blame, to be the victim, pride, to be right-no matter the cost, silence, to let things fester till I burst, annoyance, to be too busy, and a bunch of other really horrible sounding things.

I have also chosen other things — which are good and important and may sound innocent, but when chosen OVER my relationship with my husband are still detrimental — things like my children, my hobbies, girls nights, other family members, and work.

In the past, before attending an Understanding and Appreciating the Men in my Life seminar with Ramona Zabriskie, and before reading Wife for Life The Power to Succeed in Marriage, I had chosen to believe a false definition of what love is, what it means and where it comes from; that it just happens to me instead of me having any power or control over creating the love in my life.

But now, as one Wife for Life reviewer stated so well: “I feel as though I have some choice in the matter of attraction which is, WOW! A relief!”

We DO have a choice and knowing that is so empowering.

My sister-in-law Lyndsay had an incredible experience with choosing love for and from her husband (my brother Bart). Her arm (pictured above) is one of her personal reminders of the power that is in choosing love and choosing him.

On her blog she had this to say:

I think in this world and in our culture we love to ‘love’! We talk about it, fantasize about it, sing about it, write about it. Most people speak of falling in love, or feeling love.

True Love has nothing to do with a feeling…

^{1 Corinthians 13 4} Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 ⁸ Love never ends.

So then, if as Christians, this is our definition of love,
and love NEVER ENDS why is there so much divorce in our marriages?

LOVE IS A CHOICE many of us are incapable of making.

I know exactly what Lyndsay is saying here, and have taken notice at how much I love to ‘love’. It’s easy to get caught up in that culture and really diminish the true definition of love. To love for the sake of ‘loving’ or to feel that rush isn’t substantial and won’t last.

C.S. Lewis explains, in my opinion EVERYTHING so well;

Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go… But, of course, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from “being in love” — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit.

David Sabey, a friend of mine’s husband, recently discussed this point of choosing love on his blog also. He puts its so well here:

The egocentric view of love suggests something like this: If I love you, then I will marry you. If I stop feeling that love, then I will divorce you. When love is understood as the prerequisite to and justification for a committed relationship, the moment that emotion disappears, so too does the reason to maintain the relationship.

The non-egocentric view of love is more like this: I choose you, so I love you. If I divorce you (i.e. stop choosing you), then I don’t love you. In this conception, a lack of love doesn’t cause divorce; divorce is evidence of a failure to love by one or both partners.

Instead of thinking about what another individual can do to make us feel a certain way, we instead think about what we can do to continue choosing that person in the face of other options.

Looking inward at the choices I can make is a power I believe in so much. Wife for Life has helped me strengthen that power as well as given me practical tools of how to utilize it. I believe that I have choices: the choice to decide for myself how I want to be, what perspective I want to take, and what kind of love I will create in my life.

I no longer have to wait for others to change or make me happy. I can make good habits to choose love every day. And what’s interesting to me, is that as I take advantage of this power to choose more love in MY life, it ends up naturally influencing those around me as well.

That’s the power of love.