Amen kind of Love

He sat in the same pew they had been sitting in every Sunday this summer, with his arm resting on the side of her wheel chair. She was asleep, or at least, resting her eyes as the Pastor read the Gospel reading. My eyes moved from my hymnal insert to the front of the church, and back to this couple sitting in front of us. He gently stroked her hand, and even though she wasn't really looking, he made sure she could always see the readings, the hymnal, and he even pointed to the songs so she might know what was going on.

I sat there and watched them, barely paying attention to the sermon. When our Pastor mentioned the sanctity of marriage, and how it is essentially throw-away in today's society, he read this verse:

"Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." (Genesis 2:23‭-‬24 ESV)

My eyes came back to this couple a few pews ahead of us again. These two had become one flesh many years ago, and had spent their entire lives being married to their best friend. I don't know them well, but I know them enough to know that she had given him children, had cared for him through sickness, and now, he was returning the favor. As he stroked her hand, and looked at her fondly as he did every Sunday, my eyes filled with tears.

This is what true love looks like. Taking care of our spouses, even when it's hard, even when it's frustrating, even when it means putting their needs before our own. Sharing life together, and being in love until the end of time, is not easy, but it was clear to me that these two had mastered it.

This is the love I want my children to know. This is the love their father and I are trying to emulate. To love, to cherish, to honor, and to respect, through good times and bad, for better or worse, even when the cows make us angry and the creek runs dry. This is the kind of love that I pray we still have in fifty years, even when our bodies are used up and our minds are gone.

{Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

1 Corinthians 13:4‭-‬5‭, ‬7‭-‬8 ESV}

Richelle