Our premarital counseling covered the expected topics — communication styles, conflict resolution, finances. It did not quite prepare me for the specific, unglamorous realities that actually shaped our first years: that love, as 1 Corinthians 13 describes it, is mostly patience and kindness practiced on ordinary days, not grand romantic gestures reserved for anniversaries.
I wish someone had told me that resentment builds in silence, not in arguments — that the conversations you avoid having cost you more than the ones you have. I wish someone had told me that loving Daniel well would sometimes mean not insisting on my own way (1 Corinthians 13:5), even when I was fairly sure my way was better. Marriage has taught me more theology about love than any book on the subject, mostly because it keeps testing whether I actually believe what I say I believe.