Lazy Love, page 21
Prior to taking our vows as man and wife, Shaunie and I were in premarital counseling with Bishop T. D. Jakes. Our final session with him occurred less than twenty-four hours before we walked down the aisle on the gorgeous island of Anguilla. We were filming our conversation to include in our reality special Destination “I Do,” which added a little pressure to our responses because we knew countless viewers would be tuning in.
We met outside in a lovely, shaded patio area near the resort hosting our festivities. When we had been served iced tea, I noticed that Bishop Jakes placed a tumbler on the table beside him that held only ice. We proceeded with our conversation, engaging and enjoying the thoughtful questions and gleaned wisdom shared among us. Bishop Jakes generously shared the best practices and practicalities he and Mrs. Jakes had learned in their shared decades of matrimony.
Two hours quickly passed, and after a short break, we resumed our discussion of how a marriage thrives. Without missing a beat, Bishop Jakes picked up the glass that had once contained ice and drank down the cool water it had become. He smiled and said, “Sometimes when you leave something alone, it naturally becomes what it’s meant to be. I didn’t force this ice to melt into water that I could drink. I simply placed it in an environment so that it could naturally transform into liquid.”
He proceeded to share that in his vast experience of counseling couples, both before marriage as well as afterward in the midst of struggles, he has found that the most growth takes place when each person stops being so pushy in trying to fix their spouse. Instead of insisting, either consciously or unconsciously, for their husband to be more sensitive, thoughtful, and caring, wives could let them desire and shift toward this naturally. Rather than wanting their wives to be more attentive, supportive, and physically demonstrative, husbands could relax and appreciate the woman whom they chose just as she was.
Pushing one another will not accelerate growth—only frustrate both of you. If you enjoy and accept each other, shortcomings and all, then eventually you each become more of who you’re supposed to be. He will be more authentic. She will be more authentic. The love between you will demonstrate the unconditional acceptance, emotional nurturance, and divine grace that God bestows upon each of us.
This is the essence of eros.
Settling for anything less is always lazy love.
WHOLE NEW WORLD
I know firsthand, though, that lazy love can be radically transformed into eros. From my experience and that of others I know, meeting your future spouse is rarely the meet-cute of romance novels and rom-coms on the Hallmark Channel. While online meetings leading to real-life, in-person appointments still prevail for many couples, matchmaking single friends remains a pastime obsession for many BFFs, grandmas, aunties, sisters, and teammates. Shaunie and I were, in fact, introduced by a mutual friend who knew we were both single and had a hunch we might hit it off.
While she and I agreed to meet, I suspect neither of us had thought it would lead to anything more than friendship. We were both reluctant to admit that we were willing to date anyone, each of us saying that we would never marry again. When we met, both Shaunie and I were each still very affected and broken by our past relationships. We had both settled into singleness, assuming that this was the gift God had for us as we moved forward. In other words, we both stumbled into our first date with lazy love dragging us there.
And there was no instant attraction or immediate laser-gaze, eye-locking awareness of immediate love. Instead, there was a coming together of two people uncertain about what they wanted or needed in a relationship, considering all they had been through. We were both parents of teenagers and young adult children, each comfortable in our calling, and content to rely on the Lord’s timing.
Curiously enough, having no real desire or expectations for a serious relationship was incredibly freeing. We quickly abandoned lazy love and became intentional about just being present with each other when we were together. Each of us was surprised to discover the other was not exactly what we expected. Our curiosity and openness allowed us to just talk and compare stories, discuss our kids, and evaluate where we were in our lives. Because we weren’t worried about impressing each other or being coy and flirty or any of the other driving forces often at play in relationships, we relaxed and just took each day, each encounter, each conversation as it was.
Knowing what I know now, I would encourage you not to start with an end in mind when you date or meet someone to whom you’re attracted. You’ve probably met people, both women and men, who already have a vision of their future wedded bliss. They know what the theme and the venue for the wedding will be, where they’ll go on their honeymoon, how many children they want, and what their home will look like. These people go on first dates and hear wedding bells in the background before they have any idea if they like one another.
Because we were in no rush and had no end in mind, we discovered more about each other than if we had declared we were seriously dating when we started. Our time together followed its own natural pace, an organic course of action determining our next steps. We weren’t thinking about being together forever. We just kept showing up one day at a time. We didn’t look ahead beyond the next day, if that. Even as we grew closer and began considering blending our lives together through marriage, we didn’t assume or rush or second-guess what was ahead.
So often the pressures and expectations involved begin to accumulate and form an overwhelming weight. People begin worrying about whose family will visit for which holidays and who they’ll see on vacations. Whose furniture to keep and whose to lose, which toaster and microwave, on and on and on. Layers add up and suffocate the spontaneity and limit the love growing between you.
Once you’re married, continue to take your relationship one day at a time. Don’t race into mythic milestones. When you get married, everything doesn’t change because your name or address does. Marriage bridges two histories, two continents of life lived, two people coming together who view the world in totally different ways. The magic of marriage is not about converting or hijacking the other to your world but about creating a new and different world of your own together.
You converge to build a whole new world you can both live in together.
A world that is whole because you are both required.
One that is new and has never existed before you two came together.
RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU
Finally, let me say that if you desperately want to experience eros love, then stop looking, perhaps even stop dating. The harder you work to make it happen, the more elusive eros love often becomes. With this kind of love, I suspect the old adage is true: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Only in this case, when the student is ready, they will meet another student and become each other’s teacher.
Too many people can’t find an eros relationship because they’re working so hard to make it happen. I’m reminded of a post I saw on Instagram or TikTok recently in which this teenage son pranked his dad just as the dad was about to leave for work. The son texted: “U left your phone in the house. Want it?” Sixty seconds later the dad rushed back in the door and looked at the son, who was working hard to keep a poker face. “Well, where is it? You said you saw my phone.” By then the son had burst out laughing because his dad had fallen for it even while standing there with his phone in his hand.
Looking for eros love is often like that. We think we’re missing something essential, but it’s already right in front of us, already part of our lives. It may not look like what we expect or be whom we envision. It may have little to do with sex appeal or physical attraction and everything to do with soul chemistry and heart attunement. Like the glasses perched on your head as you frantically look for them, you finally pause and realize you already have what you need.
Eros love does not always lead to marriage, but marriage should always be kindled by eros love. Marriage relies on the capacity to love in all four of these biblical areas we’ve explored—agape, phileo, storge, and eros. Committing to love another person for the rest of your lives requires a hybrid blend of gratitude, grace, and gravity to be anchored to God together in the present. The more you love God and experience His love, the greater your capacity to love your spouse—and others—becomes.
CONCLUSION
Love Is Proactive
This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love.
—John 15:12–13 MSG
No matter what threats you encounter in your relationships, lazy love will not win. Because once you have experienced divine love, it changes everything. The way you love is no longer reactive but proactive! You can first love others because God has first loved you.
Lazy love may have become your default setting, but it no longer determines who you are and how you love yourself, God, and others. With agape as your foundation, you discover and explore both giving and receiving love in all its forms. You realize that with God as its source, true love is never lazy but always active, resilient, dynamic, compassionate, and joyful. As you become more mindful of wanting love, refusing to settle for less, and experiencing more active love, the old lazy default tendencies of your past will recede and fade. Because the sense of contentment and satisfaction produced by true love, with your heart full and your soul at peace, becomes the essence of who you are.
You no longer need to settle because your heart has been awakened.
Relationships were never intended to be “complicated.”
You were made to experience loving relationships in ways that inspire, stimulate, challenge, accept, comfort, and motivate you. To be known without any defenses or pretenses, any posturing or positioning. To be aware of what you truly deserve rather than what you’ve been willing to settle for.
Now that you are aware of the threats posed by settling for lazy love, you can not only know better but relate differently. You can rely on receiving and experiencing God’s love to fill you and fuel you. You can embrace knowing that you are made for deep, trustworthy, meaningful connections with other men and women. You can bask in the freedom to love with abandon, to give love without expecting anything in return, to forgive—yourself and others—when you fall short of love, and to enjoy the fruits of sacred relationships, including trust, honesty, open communication, security, attunement, affection, and intimacy.
You can overcome the weeds of lazy love in the garden of your heart.
As we conclude our time together within these pages, I would like to share my hope and prayer for you through a paraphrase of Paul’s familiar description of love from 1 Corinthians 13:1
May your love wait when there’s no reason to hope and when you feel impatient.
May your love refuse to brag or trash-talk, cast shade or get jealous.
May your love forget to hold grudges, remember to release anger, and lose sight of self-interests.
May your love celebrate what is true and authentic, not what is false and deceptive.
May your love forever guard, reach, climb, forgive, endure, and thrive.
May your love never fail.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my dear mother, you sent me the most beautiful text message on Thursday, February 29th at 7:50 p.m. You said, “Hey son! I want you to know that you are the anchor of my life.” What you don’t know is that tears streamed down my face because I didn’t know that we had switched places. Thank you for encouraging me in all of my pursuits and inspiring me to follow my dreams. I hope this book shows you that you didn’t waste your time by going through the pain of birthing me. I love you forever!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bestselling author and treasured spiritual leader Keion D. Henderson is founder, CEO, and senior pastor of the Lighthouse Church and Ministries, one of America’s fastest-growing churches, headquartered in Houston, Texas. His ministries and initiatives are fueling the explosive growth and far-reaching impact of the Lighthouse Church, whose congregation continues to blossom with more than 15,000 dedicated members and over 800,000 unique weekly viewers worldwide across all social media platforms. With more than twenty-six years in active ministry, Pastor Henderson is known for educating, nurturing, and equipping his congregants with life-changing lessons to navigate their faith with sound values and biblical principles via his accelerator for entrepreneurship. Through the weight of his words, impeccable judgment, and sophisticated understanding of the forces shaping the world, Pastor Henderson delivers the word of God with rapid-fire precision among a new generation of believers as he continues to keep faith relevant in today’s culture. Pastor Henderson is a passionate humanitarian yielding a steadfast commitment who cares deeply about the plight of the people and gives back to the global communities he serves through his nonprofit Take Action Now. Recognized by the John Maxwell Institute as one of the top 250 leaders in the nation, Pastor Keion Henderson, born in Gary, Indiana, is a devoted father to his beautiful daughter, Katelyn, and a devoted husband to his forever wife, Shaunie Henderson.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
1 Shelley E. Kohan, “Valentine’s Day Spending Is Expected to Hit $26 Billion, One of the Highest on Record,” February 3, 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleykohan/2023/02/03/cupid-is-not-fretting-over-higher-prices-for-valentines-day/?sh=35386aab109f.
2 Lisa Bitel, “The Real St. Valentine Was No Patron Saint of Love,” February 13, 2018, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/the-real-st-valentine-was-no-patron-of-love-90518?gclid=Cj0KCQiAxbefBhDfARIsAL4XLRoTTwhOYnTpcxsrkV3SzsCJG6yG_6Jy7CUJjgPPyCgw6Ucme-I_vy8aAnnAEALw_wcB.
CHAPTER 2
1 History.com editors, “Alexander the Great,” updated September 22, 2023, https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/alexander-the-great.
2 History.com editors, “Alexander the Great.”
3 Helen Fisher, quoted in Katherine Wu, “Love, Actually: The Science Behind Lust, Attraction, and Companionship,” February 14, 2017, SITNBoston (blog), https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/love-actually-science-behind-lust-attraction-companionship/.
4 Fisher, quoted in Wu, “Love, Actually.”
5 Fisher, quoted in Wu, “Love, Actually.”
6 Fisher, quoted in Wu, “Love, Actually.”
CHAPTER 3
1 Attachment Project, https://www.attachmentproject.com/attachment-theory/.
2 Attachment Project.
CHAPTER 5
1 C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2017), 34.
CHAPTER 6
1 Odelya Gertel Kraybill, “Attunement and Love in Psychotherapy,” Psychology Today, January 31, 2021, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/expressive-trauma-integration/202101/attunement-and-love-in-psychotherapy.
CHAPTER 7
1 Julie Beck, “What It’s Like to Carry On a Friendship with a Friend Who Can’t Rememer It,” Atlantic, January, 22, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/01/friends-who-high-five-every-week/617775/.
2 Katherine Dillinger, “Surgeon General Lays Out Framework to Tackle Loneliness and ‘Mend the Social Fabric of Our Nation,’” CNNhealth, May 2, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/02/health/murthy-loneliness-isolation/index.html.
3 Dillinger, “Surgeon General Lays Out Framework.”
CHAPTER 8
1 “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” words by John Fawcett, 1782; music by Johann G. Nägeli; arr. by Lowell Mason, 1845.
CHAPTER 11
1 Scott Dutfield and Tanya Lewis, “Human Heart: Anatomy, Function & Facts,” updated July 27, 2022, Live Science, https://www.livescience.com/34655-human-heart.html.
2 “Who Was Dr. Daniel Hale Williams?,” Jackson State University, https://www.jsums.edu/gtec/dr-daniel-hale-williams/.
3 Marilyn Yalom, “How Did the Human Heart Become Associated with Love?,” ideas.ted.com, February 12, 2019, https://ideas.ted.com/how-did-the-human-heart-become-associated-with-love-and-how-did-it-turn-into-the-shape-we-know-today/.
4 Easton’s Bible Dictionary, s.v. “heart,” https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/heart/.
5 Adolphe Adam, Christmas hymn, “O Holy Night” (n.p.: W. F. Sudds, 1883), notated music, https://www.loc.gov/item/2023849567/
CHAPTER 13
1 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2023), 63.
CHAPTER 15
1 “China’s Great Wall Is ‘Longer Than Previously Thought,’” BBC News, June 6, 2012, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-18337039.
2 Gaurav Gupta, “Great Wall of China: The Complete Travel Guide for First-Time Visitors in 2024,” Triangle Travel, https://traveltriangle.com/blog/great-wall-of-china/#:~:text=The%20Great%20Wall%20of%20China,of%20the%20world%20every%20year.
CONCLUSION
1 “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (1 Cor. 13:4–8).
