In fitting with the twenty-eight days of February, I thought it would be fun to look at some old love-sonnets and verses. It would be fun to share the verses with our husbands or even to secretly practice them.  Remember the day when your husband said, “Come live with me and be my love”?  He may not have been so poetic, but he was at his sincerest. Let not a day go by that he doesn’t know you are so happy to be his beloved!

The Bible is full of verses of love and those should always be first in our hearts, but one verse I would like to share is in Colossians 3:12-14. “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection” (emphasis added).  I really like the phrase, “put on love.”  When we think of love, we do not normally think of it as something we have to put on like a garment. As godly women we need to choose carefully what physical garments we put on and it is easy to see how much more care we should take in putting on our garments of love.

Our garment of love is really for all to see, but I would like to emphasize what we wear as our garment of love for our husbands. Remember the shining, bright and strong garment of love we wore as a newlywed? It was invincible and imperishable. Are we still wearing that beautiful garment or have we covered it up with a cloak of doubt and discontentment? Let us take off any unfit clothing and let our garment of love shine through for all to see, especially our husbands. Let the beauty of a true godly love be seen in us by our husbands.

1. “True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.”  ~ Yeats – Practice selflessness!
2. “Love is blind, jealously sees too much.” ~ Yiddish Proverb – Be blind to flaws!
3. “Love is missing someone whenever you’re apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you’re close in heart.” ~ Knudsen   – Miss him!
4. “Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart.”  ~ Unknown – Have lots of fun!
5. “My delight and they delight, walking, like two angels white, In the gardens of the night;”  ~ Bridges – Be his angel.
6. “Do I love you because you’re beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?” ~ Rodgers & Hammerstein, Cinderella – Be beautiful inside!
7. “Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.” ~ Ustinov – Give that tender look!
8. “Who being loved, is poor?”  ~ Wilde  – No financial complaints!
9. “Take away love and our earth is a tomb.” ~ Browning – Fill everywhere with love!
10. “He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.” ~ Tolstoy  – Crazy-love!
11. “Sometimes the shortest distance between two points is a winding path walked arm in arm.” ~ Brault    – Hand in hand!
12.  “The love game is never called off on account of darkness.” ~ Masson – Or anything!
13.  “You know you are in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”  ~ Dr. Seuss – Be sleepless!
14.  “Love and a cough cannot be hid.”  ~ Herbert – Don’t hide it!
15.  “A man is not where he lives, but where he loves.” ~ Latin Proverbs – Where does he love?
16.  “You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.” ~Unknown  – Be generous!
17.  “Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.” ~ Rochefoucauld – A candle or bonfire?
18.  “As the bow unto the cord is, so unto the man is woman. Though she bends him, she obeys him, though she draws him, yet she follows, Useless each without the other.” ~ Longfellow  – Bend, obey, draw, and follow.
19.  “I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life. And, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.” ~ Browning – Breathe love!
20. “The test of our love to God is the love we have one for another.” ~ Unknown – Will you pass the test?
21.  “The kindest and the happiest pair will find occasion to forbear; and something, everyday they live, to pity, and to perhaps forgive.” ~ Cowper  – Always forgive!
22. “Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.” ~ Brooks  – Not duty-bound, but love-bound.
23.  “For you see, each day I love you more, Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.” ~ Gerard  – Build love!
24.  “A hundred hearts would be too few to carry all my love for you.” ~ Unknown  – Abundant love.
25.  “Love begets respect, respect begets appreciation, appreciation begets loyalty, loyalty begets devotion, devotion begets honor, and honor begets the truest love of all.”  ~S.F.  – Begin your begets!
26.  “If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me ye women you can.”   ~ Bradstreet   – Be one!
27.  “I love thee, I love thee, ‘Tis all that I can say; It is my vision in the night, My dreaming in the day.”  ~ Hood   – Be his vision!
28.  “Will you love me in December as you do in May, Will you love me in the good old-fashioned way? Will you kiss me then and say, that you love me in December as you do in May?”  ~ Walker – Love in December!

By Susan Follis
Susan Follis lives in Lamar, Colorado. She and her husband, Jim, have been married almost 34 years. They have six children and four grandchildren. She loves learning about being a godly wife and mother.