Marriage Mondays: Are Valentine's Green?

Does anyone out there have a green Valentine to give to your sweetheart tomorrow? I bet not, because Valentine's aren't green. Jealousy was never evidence of true love. In fact, a glimpse of a "little green monster" is a sure sign that something rotten lurks at the heart of a relationship. 

Whitney Houston contributed more than one iconic love songs in her time, some of which are the "soundtracks" of my early relationship experiences. Hers was the kind of voice that made me want to close my eyes and hold my arms out and spin around ... away from chairs and tables. ;) When she was found lifeless on Saturday afternoon, the media lit up with remembrances of her life and musical gift, overflowing to the Grammy Awards stage. Sadly, reporters that followed her rise to stardom noted that she was a "church girl" whose life took a wrong turn when her marriage to Bobby Brown became filled with jealousy that led to substance abuse and, ultimately, destroyed her gift and her life. 


Jealousy is not the color of true love. "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous" (1 Cor. 13:4a).  "For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?" (I Cor. 3:3). No one gives a green Valentine, because jealousy is not the gift we give when we love someone else more than we love ourselves. It's not the gift we give when we are striving to show God's kind of love every day. Jealousy can creep up on marriages both famous and common, fresh and seasoned, young and old.  

Satan knows how to insert jealousy into a marriage:

• suggestions that we are not lovable
• suggestions that someone else is pursuing our mate
• suggestions that our mate is not faithful
• suggestions that God doesn't want our best
• suggestions that we have to guard something before our own heart

Is your heart turning ever so slowly green? 
Have you allowed jealousy to rob "your Love" of "your love?" 

A green heart will destroy us and the love we are meant to enjoy. Let's give our sweethearts Valentines this week, but let's not make them green.