Mawage

This is from one of my Top 5 favorite movies EVER:



Mawage. . . and while I laugh (a lot) at the old priest and this scene, marriage is really not anything to laugh about. 

Last night, while I was having dinner with my BFF Carla, we ran into someone we both know, and it seems she is getting a divorce.  She has two little girls. 

So this leads me to thinking about marriage and how society views it today.  And I think that people just don't take marriage seriously.  That they don't take seriously their PROMISE to each other AND to the Lord God above. 

Let's just be honest:  Most of the time, marriage is just hard.  Oh, sure, there are some people out there who seem to have those effortless marriages that really DO end in "happy ever after."  But for most of us, in the real world, it just doesn't work that way.  Marriage is tough.  It takes hard work and dedication and sacrifice.  But those are things people today don't want to give away, whether it's in a marriage or in a job, or whatever. 

I was very surprised to learn, in my early days as a Christian, as I was just discovering the Word of God, that love is an action, a verb.  I really always thought it was a feeling.  Really, I did.  I thought it was that "thing" that made your heart race a little and you got that little butterfly feeling in your stomach.  I was really kind of sad to learn that was not love.

Love is staying with someone when you sometimes don't like them.  Love is washing someones dirty underwear and drying them and putting them in the drawer.  Love is cooking dinner at the end of the day when you'd really rather eat out.  Love is cutting the grass in the hot sun, with grass clippings sticking to your sweat.  Love is getting up early in the morning with the baby so your spouse can sleep in.

And love is going out to a candlelight dinner and lingering over dessert.  Love is that comfortable feeling of walking next to someone and you put your hand out and theirs just knows to grab it.  Love is that time in the middle of the night when your foot eases over just to touch the other's.  And love is sitting in the same spot at church, week after week, month after month, year after year, taking the Lord's Supper together.

You see, love is a CHOICE.  It's something you do even when you don't feel like it, even when you hit the rough patches in life (and make no mistake about it ~ you WILL hit them).  Love takes time and commitment and sacrifice and hard work and determination.  Can you really, truly appreciate the mountaintop experiences in marriage if you haven't been through some valleys?

Mawage. . . I'm in it for the long haul!