The Greatest Romance In History

So I'm putting on my overalls and tank top to go outside and do some yard work right before your Daddy was heading off to work, and he walks in the bedroom to get a kiss good-bye, "Oh, you look sexy!" he says. That could be, right there, one of the greatest love quotes of all time. Here I am in my scuzzy clothes - the non-figure defining fashion faux pas #57 - and my beloved husband thinks I am sexy. It sure put a little skip in my step as I went out to wash windows and water the flowers.

Two days ago at lunch, I was watching the movie City of Angels. A fictitious story about an angel named Seth (played by Nicolas Cage) who falls in love with a doctor named Maggie (Meg Ryan). He falls from grace to become a human to be with her. Just days later she dies in an accident. Visited by an angel after she dies, Seth is asked if he had known what was going to happen to Maggie, would he still have fallen. He responds, "I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss of her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it. One." That is a great love quote. Another great one from that movie, is when Maggie is dying. "I'm not afraid. When they ask me what I liked the best, I'll tell them, it was you." Cue the waterworks.

Both quotes speak of the depth of their love. Quotes like "You complete me," from Jerry Maguire. and "You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on" from Pride and Prejudice. You don't question that kind of love. It's deep, and profound, and real. When you are deeply in love with someone that is what you feel. You see them in the grungy clothes, and think they are sexy. Good heavens, I think your Daddy is sexy when I spontaneously throw a ball of fresh mozzarella cheese to him at the grocery store and he catches it. I think he is sexy when he's on his knees in prayer. I think he's sexy when does the dishes. Let's face it, I am hopelessly, deliriously, excitedly, wholeheartedly in love with this man.

That is the kind of love we want for our children. We want you to feel that completeness. We want you to have the greatest romance in history. To be able to tell your children one day, "I love your Daddy/Mommy 3,000 times more than I did on our wedding day." To see your beloved at their worst and yet only see the best. To know that their heartbeat is one of your favorite sounds. That when you cuddle close, their smell is one of the most captivating you've ever breathed in. How do you feel about your beloved right now? We want that for you for your lifetime, compounded and multiplied. So love and be loved. Don't ever take it for granted. Cherish it and nurture it. It is absolutely worth it.

Discussion: Write down a statement that describes how you feel about your beloved. Do you have a favorite love quote?

Prayer: Father God, we thank you for this love of our life. We pray, Father, we never forget to show how much we love our spouse. Lord we thank you that you showed us first and foremost what love is. In Christ we pray, Amen.

Love Letters

In a red Pizza Hut gym bag in a burgundy trunk I took to college is every love letter Brad ever sent me during our college years. With no cellphones and long-distance calls costing so much, Brad and I wrote to each other as often as we could when we were apart at holidays or over the summer. Sometimes we wrote every single day. When I received a letter from my sweet beloved I would try to smell him in the paper, hold it close to my heart and ache to be with him. Some letters were pages and pages long and others were sweet little notes. One letter even included a cassette where Brad recorded himself for 30 minutes on one side and I recorded myself on the other. (Anton and Kayla got to hear part of this and we were all freaked out by how much Anton sounded like 19-year-old Brad). If you want to know about our love story, it's all pretty well detailed from Brad's point of view in that stack. I believe Brad has an equally large stack of letters from me. It's interesting for us to go back and read those letters. To learn what our priorities were, our outlook on life, our mushy, romantic words for one another and the details of our day to day lives. I cherish those letters. It's a unique step back in time.

Last year when I went to St. George Island with my sister for a week, Brad asked me to write him a letter every day and he would do the same. So each night before I went to bed, I wrote him a letter. We each had a nice stack to read when I got home.

In today's world, letters are becoming more and more a thing of the past. We have emails. We have texting. We have Facetime and Skype. And with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, communication is immediate. So there is no need to write a letter. To Brad and I as writers, that is kind of sad. Letter writing is a lost art. Emails and texts are regularly deleted, never to be read again. Not that they have to be, but what a sweet memorial to love they are! To read about Brad's love for me in the years 1983-87 up to our marriage date and knowing how much more I feel it even today is pretty uplifting and precious.

When Brad and I have long gone, our children will have access to those letters. And I am sure they are filled with some pretty embarrassing comments from the two of us. Will they ever read them? Maybe not. But they will have in their hands a forever record of how their parents felt about one another from the very beginning, how they handled time spent apart, how they lived for the days they were together, how they handled disagreements and the sweet memories of a long and beautiful love story and journey. The question is whether our not they will be able to decipher the handwriting.

I guess we would encourage you to write letters to one another. They don't have to be lengthy, but they will be a sweet memory for you. Don't hesitate to be mushy and share your feelings, your memorable moments, your dreams and goals, your day-to-day activities and deep love for one another. It's something you can hold onto for a long time. Pen to paper - the written word is a tangible, historical moment in time. Praising God we both have them from one another.

Discussion: When is the last time you received a note or letter from each other? What do written letters mean to you?

Prayer: Father, Your Word is the most beautiful love letter of all and we thank You for it! That we have it to hold and read over and over again is such a gift. Thank You for the gift of the written word. We love you. In Jesus, Amen.

Making Sense

"I love her," Ellis says to his father, William, about his girlfriend, Jenny (aka Adaline), in the movie The Age of Adaline.
"How do you know?" his father, played by Harrison Ford, asks.
"Because nothing makes sense without her."

It's a climactic scene in the movie that I watched with my mother, Anton and Kayla yesterday. A sweet love story with a bit of a twist, the words Ellis speaks on how he knows he loves Adaline/Jenny is pretty universal. I told both my children they would know they were in love when apart from their beloved their hearts would ache. Sure enough they both found people they feel that about. When I asked Anton how he was going to handle being away from Kayla when she was down at Troy now that he's graduated, he said, "We're not going to talk about that right now." He doesn't even want to think about it.

I have to say, while watching the love story in the movie unfold, I immediately began thinking about Brad ... how much I love him. Nearly 28-years later and I am still unbelievably in love with him. This is what we want for you. That your love story never ends. That any time you are apart, that you ache to be back together again. And that everything makes more sense because you are with your beloved.

"I am my beloved and my beloved is mine." (Song of Solomon 6:3) Praying as your hearts are intertwined with each other now and become so even more deeply in your marriage, that the feeling of connectedness and "making sense" grows ever stronger, more beautiful and fulfilling.

Discussion: How do you know you are in love? What makes sense now that you are with your beloved?

Prayer: My Lord God, we thank you for our betrothed. We thank you for fashioning them into the soul our hearts love. Lord, help us keep that connection to one another, that passion for one another in our relationship. In Jesus name, Amen.

How It Is With Love

There is a precious story by Edward Monkton called A Lovely Love Story. It tells of two dinosaurs: a fierce one trapped in his cage of ice and a lovely one who smells nice and melts that cage with kind words and loving thoughts. While they are together they start to see the differences in each other. She has a free spirit, her mind skips around and she love to shop. He is tender, funny, clever, distant, peculiar and is overly fond of "things." They both decide to overlook their differences, because it's what makes him a "richly charactered individual" and because she "fills their life with beautiful thoughts and wonderful surprises." They grow old together enjoying each other's stories and feeling the warmth of the sun on their backs ... because that "is how it is with love."

It's a sweet story of how we may not be entirely sure how we fell in love in the first place, how vastly different we are and yet how much we compliment one another. It's a wonderful reminder that a marriage of a "fierce dinosaur" and a "lovely other dinosaur" is all about love, forgiveness and embracing the quirks of the other.

I am deeply in love with my husband. I grow more in love with him every single day. There is no doubt I love him a gazillion times more than I did when I first met him in 1983 ... and I loved him a lot then. The thought of being without him tears at my heart. He is the love of my life, my support, my best friend, my treasure. I am blessed and better in this life because God created him.

But we're so different. He loves sports. I love movies. He must have his coffee in the morning. I need chocolate every day. He has trouble hammering a nail. I can change an electrical outlet and replace a car headlight. He cares for people with a deep passion. I hate to cook. He will run for the endorphins. I love to shop. He remembers details of road trips. I like to take photos of everything. He never makes the bed. I hate to put clean clothes away.

But we both love the beach. We both love to watch TV together in our snuggle chair. We love to hike. We love to travel. We love to sing Christian music. We enjoy card games. We love reading. We take new adventures. We love to hold hands, hug, pray together, enjoy candlelight dinners and serving the Lord.

And somehow it all works.

We know how much you two couples love each other. It's deep and real, sweet and tender, challenged and supported. We've watched you and love how you love each other ... the idiosyncrasies and all. You will learn even more about each other the longer you are together. We pray that, like our love, yours will grow even more rapt, powerful, rich and deep-rooted. That you will delight in each other as long as you both shall live ... with the warmth of the sun on your backs.

Discussion: Have you read A Lovely Love Story? What do you love each other? What are some of your differences? What do you like to do together?

Prayer: Father, You formed each one of us in our mother's womb, creating us in Your image with our perticular gifts and personalities. And you brought us together, Father, we pray for Your glory. May we fall ever more and deeper in love with each other and with You. In Jesus, Amen.