Once Upon a Time...

I would like to begin this post with a fairytale, I hope you enjoy!

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a young woman. Now this woman was beautiful beyond anything else in the land. She had the perfect smokin’ body, she was kind and sweet to everyone (especially when we worked at the soup kitchen eight nights a week), and she got an A+ in all of her classes. She was a dream come true. Now, this young woman met a man who was quite charming. He had chiseled abs on his rippling body, he spent his weekends as a volunteer firefighter saving babies out of burning houses, and he too was acing all his classes. When they met, it was love at first sight; so much so, in fact, that the birds actually began singing the theme song from The Notebook! As they laid eyes on each other, they moved closer and had the most passionate kiss (even more so than the last on in princess bride), and they decided they would get married, have perfect kids and live happily ever after.

This is real life, isn't it? A perfect guy meets a perfect girl, and they have a perfect love. I am here to tell you that this story hardly ever happe....actually scratch that, this story never happens. Before you go and call me the "Scrooge of relationships", let me say where i am coming from. 

I think that it would be marvelous if love happened this way; I have always wanted to be in a Disney movie. Yet, the reality is, that is not reality. People don't just meet and fall in love. It is true that you can be very interested in someone the first time you laid eyes him, but that would be considered infatuation. Love has everything to do with continually giving yourself away to that person, so you can't really do that in a split second. I think we hear quite often how easy it is supposed to be to fall in love, yet these are Disney stories and books that just hinder us from understanding what love actually is.

My dad is a genius. He is very good at speaking into people's lives and speaking wisdom into situations. One day I asked him, "How did you know that mom was ‘the one’?" He said, "You know, I could tell you that your mom was the only person out there that could ever make me happy, but I would be lying to you." 

He continued on, 

"There are six billion people in the world today-there is bound to be someone else that fits everything that your mom has." He told me that it wasn't as much about my mother being a perfect fit for him, but had much more to do with him waking up every morning and deciding to love my mom. 

That is love.

Waking up every morning and deciding to love the other person that day. 

This explains why there is so much divorce, this explains why there is so much separation. It is because people expect that somehow post-marriage is some sort of Disney sequel to SnowWhite and as soon as you kiss her on that altar, life will be sweet. People get lazy, people get tired, then people give up. 

My grandparents have been married for over 50 years! Do you think that there was some struggle? Do you think they went through some trials? Sure they did! What kept them together was that they continued to love one another despite conflict. 

All this being said, A Walk to Remember is a wonderful movie (one of my favorites, shhhh, don't tell) but it is not real. I would be very careful when watching those movies to make sure you realize that is a movie. If you don't, and you begin to get these false ideas of what a relationship looks like, you are going to end up in a good relationship, but be unsatisfied because you expected perfection. That is the struggle and the tension that we see in Disney and beyond.

So may you go out and find a guy that isn't the prince charming, but is your prince charming- and may you learn to love by making a choice, not by how you feel that day.

If only I had a white stallion, 

Tommy