When I was a basketball coach, a saying I used with my players was, “Don’t waste your energy on things you can’t control.” There was only a certain amount of energy they had available to them, and they couldn’t control the temperature in the gym, what the referees did or didn’t call, how the fans or other players treated them, and so on. Any focus on those types of things only served to distract them from their ultimate purpose; winning the game.
I knew that in my marriage, the same principle had to apply. I could spend time and energy worrying about whether there was another guy or if this was a mid-life crisis my wife was going through, or whether becoming an empty nester was at the root of the problems she was having. Any of that would only take energy away from my ultimate purpose; winning back her heart and love.
My wife and I are both Ted Dekker fans and read everything he writes almost as soon as it comes out. A number of his books deal with the subject of sacrificial love. He spins tales of characters who have to make terribly difficult choices and endure awful pain for love. The theme of rescuing the beloved is also prevalent in many of his novels.
My wife had revealed that, deep in her heart, she still carried a desire to be loved that way by me. I went back to God for wisdom, and back to Ted Dekker for inspiration. I began to search the scriptures for every verse I could find about love, marriage, husbands, and wives. I wrote them all down on notebook pages and began to speak them out loud every day. I made them my constant prayer, substituting my wife’s name into the verses and making them personal declarations.
For inspiration, I went to Ted Dekker’s Circle Trilogy to read again about, “The Great Romance,” as he calls it. It’s the story as old as time. The man rescues the woman, wins her heart, and makes her his bride. She is unable to resist and falls forever in love with her hero who protects and cares for her ever after.
It’s exactly the kind of love that so many people today dismiss as only a silly fairy tale and not to be believed in. It’s the kind of love that an entire culture is on the brink of rejecting. It’s the kind of love that I believe that everyone, deep in the secret places of the heart, longs for. And it’s exactly the kind of love that I decided I would do anything to experience, no matter the cost.
The Restoration Tour 