True Love?

This morning I was remembering a time when I was in high school. It was the beginning of my senior year, to be exact. I was 17 and surviving my first dumping experience. I was truly devastated, but it was more about my wounded pride than my broken heart. It did send me into a time of serious contemplation, spiked with cynicism, which brought me to the (revolutionary!) conclusion, that there is no such thing as true love. It just doesn't exist. It is some kinds of fantasy/illusion that we create out of boredom or desire or delusion. Now, I realize that in the history of the world, this is not a novel idea, but it was completely novel to my eternally optimistic and (at that time) sapilly romantic little mind. This week I came across some entries in one of my old journals expounding on this theory of mine. I read it now and still see my little romantic heart beating through all that so-called worldly cynicism I gained through my post-break-up suffering. Sometimes it's amazing how truly naive I am!!

But in a way I think I was onto something. I see now, the truth that my jaded, wounded pride was twisting. The truth is that life is not like the movies, or like the fairy-tales that I lived and breathed while I was growing up. There is no "perfect" love that is going to sweep me away and solve all of my problems. But there is something even better. There is real love. This is the love that sees all the flaws in another person and chooses to love them anyway. This is what the Bible speaks of when talking about agape love. It is love that is unconditional. It can't be earned and it can't be lost and it isn't blinded by fantasy, but is clear-sighted, and so, is also enduring. I have found that love. I experience it from my family, from my amazing new friends, and from my Creator...my Daddy-God. I've also seen a real-life, real-love story unfold before my very eyes in the last few months. I have watched one of my very best friends fall in love with a man, and whatched him fall back in love with her, and I see how beautiful it is. Some of the beauty is in pain, and some of it in laughter, but throughout, the beauty is there. And it may not be the "True Love" of movies. There are no bells, or fireworks, and the work is not over for them. But this love is real, and unconditional and everlasting, and it will carry them through every storm. So this is my tribute to Lori and Ron, and to my own love-affair with my Lord, Jesus Christ....and to the man who I believe is out there, who will love me with Christ's love on this earth. This is my tribute to real love.