I'm wondering about love. Can it really last forever? I'm a romantic at heart, so of course I'd like to think so. My parents just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, and I'm grateful for their witness; even more so my grandparents, who have been together for well over 50 years.
But marriages are crumbling all around me. I understand that love grows and changes over time, and those changes are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes just the way things are. But I don't understand it at all. Maybe I'm not supposed to. But I know I'd rather be alone than be with the wrong person, and sometimes I wonder if I have the guts to even take a chance like that--because how can you really know?
Maybe it isn't about knowing, but you have to at least think you know in order to promise to love someone forever. Forever. I always said that once I get married, I will never get a divorce unless my husband beats me or cheats on me, and even the latter might have some qualifications. But I recently learned of a divorce that's happening for no scandalous reason; but the couple's arguing is teaching their children that marriage is "an engine of misery," to quote a written note about the situation. I wonder if it takes more courage to stick it out in a failed marriage or to be honest about what it is. I wonder if some homes are better being openly broken than quietly at war.
It makes me think of Obadiah Parker's version of Outkast's "Hey Ya." It draws out the hint of mournfulness inherent in the lyrics, which the hip-hop beat and hand claps brush over. "If what they say is, 'Nothing is forever,' then what makes love the exception?" Not to get all moralistic here, but...well, the only thing that's really forever is God, and God is love. "From everlasting to everlasting you are God" (Psalm 90:2). "His love endures forever" (26 times in Psalm 136). "God is love" (1 John 4:8). That's all I've got right now--those (and many more) Bible verses, and this final verse of the first hymn in the United Methodist Hymnal, courtesy of Charles Wesley:
In Christ, your head, you then shall know,
Shall feel your sins forgiven;
Anticipate your heaven below,
And own that love is heaven.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
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Sunday, March 20, 2011
I'm Wondering About Love
Posted by
Sarah S. Howell
at
2:10 PM
I'm wondering about love. Can it really last forever? I'm a romantic at heart, so of course I'd like to think so. My parents just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, and I'm grateful for their witness; even more so my grandparents, who have been together for well over 50 years.
But marriages are crumbling all around me. I understand that love grows and changes over time, and those changes are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes just the way things are. But I don't understand it at all. Maybe I'm not supposed to. But I know I'd rather be alone than be with the wrong person, and sometimes I wonder if I have the guts to even take a chance like that--because how can you really know?
Maybe it isn't about knowing, but you have to at least think you know in order to promise to love someone forever. Forever. I always said that once I get married, I will never get a divorce unless my husband beats me or cheats on me, and even the latter might have some qualifications. But I recently learned of a divorce that's happening for no scandalous reason; but the couple's arguing is teaching their children that marriage is "an engine of misery," to quote a written note about the situation. I wonder if it takes more courage to stick it out in a failed marriage or to be honest about what it is. I wonder if some homes are better being openly broken than quietly at war.
It makes me think of Obadiah Parker's version of Outkast's "Hey Ya." It draws out the hint of mournfulness inherent in the lyrics, which the hip-hop beat and hand claps brush over. "If what they say is, 'Nothing is forever,' then what makes love the exception?" Not to get all moralistic here, but...well, the only thing that's really forever is God, and God is love. "From everlasting to everlasting you are God" (Psalm 90:2). "His love endures forever" (26 times in Psalm 136). "God is love" (1 John 4:8). That's all I've got right now--those (and many more) Bible verses, and this final verse of the first hymn in the United Methodist Hymnal, courtesy of Charles Wesley:
In Christ, your head, you then shall know,
Shall feel your sins forgiven;
Anticipate your heaven below,
And own that love is heaven.
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