Unconditional Love

At church, we have studied Ephesians 5: 21-33 over the last couple of months looking at marriage. I know the verses, I’ve listened to the messages time and time again, but this time the message had a whole new meaning.

After The Accident, there was a lot of talk about my marriage. The talk about IF our marriage would last ran through everyone’s mind and through a lot of mouths as well.

I was given all the statistics of divorce after child loss. I was taken back by some of the conversations. I was given anecdotes of those whose marriages didn’t last. As I recall, I’m not sure if I heard of the LOVE that expanded in marriage after a tragedy and/or loss.

Sometimes I was angry that people would question my love for my husband. In fact, I lovingly told some people, I just lost my daughter; why in the world would I want to lose my family?” It didn’t make sense that people were asking me that after all I was going through.

I know that most of the questions came from a place of love. They didn’t want to see any more hurt come to me and my family. And for that, I’m grateful.

The night of The Accident, after we came back from the hospital, I turned to Trent and told him, “The enemy will try to tear us apart; we can’t let that happen.” Trent whispered back to me and said, “we won’t.” We were so broken, and our heads couldn’t even begin to work through the magnitude of what had happened earlier that afternoon. Trent and I couldn’t bring Sadie back, but we could put on our armor and fight to grow deeper in our faith, love, and protect our family. That was our promise to each other and the boys.

Marriage is ever changing depending on circumstances. Our first year of marriage looks different than year five; looks different than year nine. Our football marriage looks a little different than our “off season” marriage. Marriage before The Accident looks different than after The Accident for obvious reasons.

But here’s the bottom line…

I love Trent more now than I did the day I met him. I love him more after The Accident than I did before. I can’t even begin to explain why, nor do I think this is the platform to do it, but he knows.

Trent is the only other one who knows what it’s like to lose our daughter, Sadie. He is the only one who gets my pain. Trent and I have promised to talk to couples how our LOVE expanded because of our faith in Him.

The love in a marriage should replicate the way God loves the church (Eph 5:25).

God loves us unconditionally.

Trent loves me the same way as I love him--unconditionally.