"I suppose you've gone and refused
Gilbert Blythe. You are an idiot, Anne Shirley!"
"Do you call it idiotic to refuse to marry a man I don't love?" Anne said
coldly, goaded to reply.
"You don't know love when you see it. You've tricked something out with your
imagination that you think is love, and you expect the real thing to look like
that...."
—Lucy
Maud Montgomery, Anne of the Island, Chapter 20
_____________________________________
Valentine’s Day is Friday and
appeals to our love of romance are everywhere. But have you ever noticed almost
every romantic story ends at the wedding? Shakespeare, Jane Austen, even
modern-day romantic comedies—they all reach the end right as the couple are
pronounced man and wife. It’s as if nothing after the wedding is worth seeing.
Romance is clearly something for the pre-marriage days of pursuit. Consider the
film rendering of the Love Comes Softly series by Janette Oke. Unlike
the books, in at least every other movie installment a husband dies, and so the
audience has the thrill of a new romance unfolding to heal the widow’s lonely
heart. The more recent television series When
Calls the Heart takes it a step further. Male interests end up getting
arrested, killed, or written out of the script before romance transforms into formal
commitment. Apparently it is more exciting to be single with a new infatuation
than stuck in a steady covenant marriage.
As if it isn’t enough to indulge this itch for excitement in “make believe,” a
whole market of reality television shows feed the desire for romantic pursuit. The
Bachelor, The Bachelorette, etc.,
are heavy on fast-paced flirting, candlelight dinners, and kisses, and
light on what happens after the starry-eyed couples actually have to wake up together
day after day and live life off camera. What happens after the season is over?
More often than not, the relationship falls apart.
I'm not opposed to match-making, blind dates, or romance. My own grandparents
met on a blind date arranged by friends. Six short weeks later they were
engaged. Six months after that, they were married. They will celebrate 73 years
of marriage this June. While the story of those years does read with fairytale
happiness, the practical details of how that happiness was lived out aren’t altogether
magical. There was no carriage, no bicycle built for two. My grandparents
took the bus on dates because that’s what they could afford. I’m not sure they
went to any restaurants where violins played, but my grandpa did serenade my
grandma with his ukulele and cowboy love songs. She still married him. The fact
is, though, that we don’t hear much about their courtship.
When my grandparents tells stories, it’s about the time grandpa ended up
cooking breakfast over the fire by himself in Yellowstone, handing plates of
food to his sons, wife, and mother-in-law through the car windows because no
one else would step out of the car and into the cloud of mosquitoes. There are
retellings of the two times grandma clipped a door off their car while backing
out of the garage with the car door open (yes, she did it twice). She then
tried to hide the missing door by backing the car into the garage. I guess she
thought grandpa wouldn’t notice the draft next time he drove to work. There are
the stories about babies throwing pacifiers out of the car window on 35W; road
trips to California with four kids in a car and no air conditioning; and the
family dog who bit everyone. Vomit, sickness, and child injuries fill a genre
all their own. But in all the reminiscing, what their four children remember most
is grandpa and grandma dancing, just the two of them, around the kitchen after
dinner, grandma humming a tune while they two-stepped or waltzed. Maybe the day
had been hard and the work demanding. Maybe the kids were fighting or the dog
had been a pain or the sink was filled with dishes. Still, they were in it
together. They were together, and they were going to enjoy that fact and take a
moment to dance. If that isn't true romantic love, I don't know what is. After
all, love is...
patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not
arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not
irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with
the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
This passage may be argued to refer
to the general love we have toward everyone—and it does. Still, consider how
much Paul’s admonitions to husbands mirrors this ordinary, daily,
long-suffering love:
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and
gave himself up for her [….]. In the same way husbands should
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For
no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ
does the church, because we are members of his body. (Ephesians 5:25, 28-30).
Love. Cherish. Nourish. Give
yourself up—in loving service to another.
My grandparents can’t dance anymore. Life now is a complicated choreography of
being together without crashing walkers. But if they could dance, they would.
However, grandma still gets flowers and cards, and grandpa gets his cheeks
pinched and kissed, just because he’s “so cute.” Just because.
This is the kind of love we should want. This is romance that endures sick kids
and rough trips and sees love-offerings in homemade cards, clean laundry, or
rice puddings made “especially for you.” It’s sticking together and building a
life day after day, the romance of sure friendship, partnership, and sacrifice.
It’s love that sees beauty in age, laugh lines in wrinkles, humor in deafness,
and still kisses 73 years later just because.
When my husband came along, he wasn’t what I was looking for—tall, handsome, and quick with words. The tall, balding engineer who is eager to listen and slow to
speak got the unintentional snub of “friend, but not my type.” When God was
kind enough to hit me over the head and redirect my gaze back to the guy
sitting across the Sunday school room, Matt made it clear his object was true
love, not just the emotional rush candlelight dinners and goodnight kisses at
the end of every date (or any date, for that matter). While emotional butterflies
quavered a little at this radical redefinition romance, I kept going. Maybe it
was because his personality reminded me of my grandpa: steady, quiet, calm,
persistent. I’ve never been sorry for it. Each year life together gets sweeter;
each year he grows more handsome. He never has learned to dance, but
candlelight dinners abound. Our four children couldn’t imagine eating their
corn dogs or spaghetti any other way.
My friends, the world is looking for love—in all the wrong places. Let’s not
join their fruitless search. Let’s take a good look at our expectations and
definitions and make sure we’re looking for the real thing. Anne Shirley’s chum
Philippa Gordon got it right. Fortunately for the literary world, Gilbert
Blythe persisted and Anne eventually got it right, too. Let’s not mislead our
families and friends in this. By God's grace, let’s get romance right.
 |
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things. Love never ends.
1 Corinthians 13:7-8a |
