I love my wife.

I don't know if I've met her yet or not, but I love her. With all my heart! I think about her everyday and I pray for her constantly. I ask the Lord to protect her heart, her mind, her emotions, her finances, and her body. I ask God to prosper her and bless her, to make her wise, and to give her a heart that will be compatible with mine.

There's a big difference between loving someone and being in love with them, but I love her and I'm in love with her. I love her as my friend and partner in ministry, and I'm in love with her as my romantic partner and soul mate.

To love is to serve, so I'm preparing myself right now to serve her. As a matter of fact, serving her for the rest of my life is one of the things I'm looking forward to the most about being married to her. I know it will be work, I know it'll be frustrating, I know it'll challenge me and will require an enormous amount of self-sacrifice, but I want to do it for her. She's worth it all to me.

I've been working hard for a couple of years now to become physically fit and healthy for her. I know that heart disease and diabetes run in my family, so I want to do what I can now to avoid getting sick later so that she doesn't have to deal with that. I've also been working hard and sacrificing a lot to pay off my school debt so that when we meet, I won't be bringing any debt into the marriage. That will be especially important if she has debt that we'll need to take on together. Since money problems is one of the biggest causes of marriage problems and divorce, I want to do everything I can now to avoid that stuff in the future.

In the Bible, Ephesians 5:22 says "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." Wow, what a big challenge to men. I want to know how to do that. Even though I'm not married, I'm trying hard to learn exactly what that means and how to do that for her. I know it'll take a lifetime to know how to love her like that but that's ok, because I've already given her the rest of my life anyway.

I know many people say that the romance fades and you just get used to each other after awhile. Call me naive, but I don't ever want that to happen to us. Perhaps they're the exception to the rule but I've seen a few couples who have been married for decades and they're still affectionate and in love like they were in the beginning. I want to do everything I can to always romance my wife so that even after 20 years of marriage, we're still in love. Even after years of marriage, I still want to hold her hand while we drive together or while we watch movies together.

I don't ever want to stop dating her. And I won't ever get used to her. I know that'll keep me on my toes and will stretch my creativity, but she's worth it.

Even though we're not married, and I don't even know if I know who she is yet - I love my wife. I really, really do - with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I just hope and pray - oh how I pray so much - that God will continue shaping me into the kind of man she needs me to be.

Because she's worth it.