Category: Douloi Marriage

Ten steps to love

June 16, 2026

This is the title of a Hallmark romcom my wife and I recently viewed. It was an excellent film because the man and woman disagreed about her list-making. I am not a list maker. I do not create any kind of plan for my articles or books. I don’t ever outline a book before starting to write one.

There are many twelve-step programs that you can follow from AA, NA, or any other type of addiction you can imagine. I am constantly reading articles with numbers in them. Five Character Types for Your Novel is just one of them. Numbers seem to be something that a lot of people worry about. I don’t.

My focus is on listening to what my Lord and Savior is trying to tell me every moment of my life. One of the things that I have been working on for a while is a book that I have entitled “Douloi Marriage.” It is a manual for how to serve your husband or wife.

As I have been writing different chapters, one that has developed is Steps to Love. It is based on the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians from the Bible. You know the one that says love is patient and kind. This is the love that Jehovah has for us, and it is the best kind of love for married couples.

Patience is the first step to love because a marriage will not last if you cannot wait for your spouse. Longsuffering is the word in the King James Version. Kindness is next, and a marriage without kindness will never endure.

The next step toward love is to avoid envy. This ugly green monster shows its head when one of the partners feels the other is in a better role. I’ve seen wives who thought that they were required to do all the housework, and the man spent too much time on himself. This can also be reversed in other couples.

Some of the other things that love is not are boastful or proud. Humility embodies these ideas and is our fourth step, which is one of the attributes of Jesus that we all should emulate. Being selfless is another part of our path that we must follow in our marriages.

Getting angry with the one you love is the next emotion that we must avoid in our family life. Keeping records of wrongs can also destroy a relationship. Some of us like lists, and if you are the woman in the movie, the only lists you should have for your spouse are positive characteristics.

The last three steps that must be taken to keep love alive are truth, trust, and continuing to persevere in the relationship. We all know couples who have failed in these steps. These ten methods to keep our love alive can be a great deal of work. As you walk this path, keep in mind that you are a team and together with the Lord, you can accomplish anything.

©Copyright 2026 by Charles Kensinger

We made it

May 28, 2026

Fifty years ago, Cindy and I promised each other we would be husband and wife for the rest of our lives. That’s what I mean. The hardest part wasn’t staying married. It was keeping each other alive. No, we haven’t fought life-threatening illnesses, except those that many of you have.

We’ve had surgeries, and Cindy survived COVID-19. I had a cold that year. We never had a time when it seemed like either of us would not survive. My parents and grandparents did not celebrate their fiftieth anniversary because they were not able to live that long.

Years ago, I watched an interview with a man on his one hundredth birthday. He was asked what he attributed his longevity to, and he responded, “I didn’t die.” That in itself is an accomplishment. Let’s chalk that one up to Cindy and I.

Another accomplishment is that we still love each other. Some marriages end prematurely because they stop trying to be in love. That is a misnomer, because all my faithful readers know, “Love is a verb.” I do not remember the first time I said that to her, but it was in the form of “I love you.”

We have often attempted to say this to each other over these fifty-plus years. Our first Christmas together was when Cindy turned sixteen. She was beautiful, and I wanted her to be mine. I may have tried to sing the song to her. If I did, she must have forgiven me for that. She knows I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.

We spent our first summer apart. I was in Pennsylvania, and she was chasing some guy that she and Debbie, her bridesmaid, thought looked like me, down Kearney Street. It wasn’t me, or I would not be writing this. No, I do not think she would have killed me, but she saw me get on the bus, and if I had not told her I was coming home, she probably would have ended the engagement.

We spent the next summer as husband and wife. That’s an interesting story that I’ve shared before. You can read that in “Doulos.” On our first anniversary, we lived in Joplin, in our third home together, and owned a dog. No, we did not get a dog to see if we wanted children. We got one because we wanted one. The same with the three kids. We had them because we wanted them, and discontinued birth control to make them possible.

We only have three because she started the pills again as soon as she could after each pregnancy. She may tell me I am wrong on the third. I can’t remember that far back. I mention this because this is another reason some do not stay together. They can’t agree whether they will have children or how many.

More than half of our grandchildren are over sixteen. None is married yet. We have no great-grands either. In this day, I must include that, or you may wonder. Life continues for all of us. We have been blessed to not have experienced any of those losses, either.

I do not mean that we have made it to perfection. We made it to our fiftieth anniversary date. Hopefully, we have a long way to go. We have three generations in our family. We are still a family. I believe that we are mostly functional. Pray that we are the people God wants us to be.

©Copyright 2026 by Charles Kensinger