Love, True Love

Ah, the impatience of youth! I marveled last month when I overheard two high school girls discussing their love life. One couldn’t understand how the other could date the same guy for nine whole months without getting bored!

Well, perhaps life can be boring in some relationships, but never, ever in our marriage. Challenging? You bet! Exhausting? Quite often. Hilarious? Frequently. Stressful? Absolutely. Delightful? Most definitely.

But never, ever boring.

Besides the frantic fullness our lives resemble now, even when life was quite the opposite our relationship was never boring.

When we were first married Brent and I spent almost two years as caretakers for a millionaire’s estate on one of the islands that sprinkle the waterways of the Pacific Northwest. There was no road to anywhere and the owners were only there for two months out of the year.

Even though Brent and I had been separated for most of the two years before we were married, after being together literally 24/7 it didn’t take long for us to finish one another’s sentences or crack identical jokes simultaneously.

But we were never bored with one another.

I find it truly tragic that our society has foisted the cardboard façade of being “in love” as a replacement of truly loving. Sure, romantic relationships include all those precious, prickly, sweaty-palm, tingly sensations. But if that’s all someone looks for then they are doomed to ever wander from their own versions of Jennifer Aniston to Angelina Jolie, from Billy Bob Thornton to Brad Pitt, seeking a new experience and someone exciting, someone who will make them feel good, someone who will thrill them—someone who they will constantly feel in love with, to end with a preposterous preposition.

But I propose and scripture supports that real love has substance and goes far, far beyond mere titillating emotions. Real love is hard, hard work, to which any guy who has ever really tried to understand a woman will attest!

Even St. Peter refers to the challenge: Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge . . . (I Pet. 3:7) Sounds like a life-long assignment. And trust me, figuring husbands out can be nearly as challenging.

So when Brent and I celebrate our 35^th wedding anniversary this year on a cruise, we thoroughly expect to laze away some days, to snooze in afternoons and schmooze with new friends. We might even get a chance to talk to one another some.

But I assure you, we won’t get bored.

I beseech you couples, whether young, old, budding or mature, dump the empty notions of being in love and choose the much harder, fantastically rewarding task: love one another.