You are my best friend.
You are God’s love made visible to me
You are the evidence of things I had only hoped for
You are my safe and quiet place
You are my heart
Brett,
Knowing that our marriage relationship is meant to be a reflection of the relationship between Christ and the Church, I will show in my life how the Church responds to Christ. I will submit myself to you, in everything, even as you love me as your own body.
I will pray for you, asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. I pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way; bearing fruit in very good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.
I will follow your leadership, not pressing for my own way, but trusting you and trusting God.
I will honour and respect you, even when others I love criticize you or when I may not understand you.
I will be your best friend – confiding in you first, before all others, and drawing you in to my life and thoughts and plans and dreams and listening to yours.
I will be intentional about working out my love for you, in words and in actions. I will affirm you and support you and will spur you on to live in the fullness of who you were created to be in every sphere of your life.
I will be your number one fan, cheering you on from the sidelines, in areas where God has called you to be in terms of your specific gifting, skills and calling.
I will encourage and comfort you in distress, spiritual difficulties and sickness.
I will appreciate you and forgive you even when you disappoint me or fail to fulfill my expectations.
I will seek to satisfy you as a whole person recognizing you have both needs and desires that may be physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual, always trying to strike a balance between the different areas of who you are and not giving any of them to too much or too little attention.
I will laugh with you and take joy in who you are.
In loving you, I will embrace all that love is. I will continue to seek every day to love patiently and kindly, not envying or boasting in anything I do in or for love. I will seek to love and not be rude or proud. To love, not seeking my own way, my own satisfaction, my own rights or what is owed me. I seek and will continue to seek to love without being easily angered. In this I will try to approach every interaction and altercation from the base-line that you love me and so will try to interpret your words and actions in that light. I will seek to love in a way that does not keep a record of wrongs or slights or hurts or disappointments or frustrations. I will not delight in evil but will rejoice, always, with the truth. I will love you with a love that always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.
This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.
I have chosen and will continue to choose to love you and commit my life to you above all others.
I, Valerie, take you, Brett, to be my husband, according to God’s purpose. As your wife I will submit myself in love to you as to Christ. I will do this in His strength, no matter what may come our way.
On Afternoons and Coffeespoons 