The Greatest of Loves

Happy February to all of you passionate people out there, I hope your Valentine’s Day was amazing. With love being the theme for the month I did some serious soul searching to narrow down what was on my mind. It started with a trip earlier in the month with a friend to work on her daughter’s wedding. Later I mixed things up in my head with thoughts of my parent’s upcoming 50th wedding anniversary. While shopping for this and that at the local hobby store we found hundreds of beautiful items and suggestions for celebrating the momentous event where two people manage to meet and gaze into each other’s eyes and spend some great date time. All of this is usually done in all their Sunday best attitudes and apparel; not too messy. A few months down the road after thinking this is the cat’s pajamas they decide they want to spend the rest of their lives together. Everybody cheers and congratulates them for “learning to love another” and they skip off to ever after. The start of ever after usually involves a big party,multitudes of flowers and lace, tuxes, fancy dresses, lots of food, dancing and lots money. It involves photos to preserve the moment for all eternity. In our circle it also usually involves a promise made before God. This promise is one neither party can truly grasp the meaning of until they have been married for many years. We send them on their way with well wishes. As I shopped for wedding things with my friend I remembered I needed to start planning for my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. I wandered down to the silver (25yrs) and Golden (50yrs) matrimonial section of party central. Sadness came over my heart as I noticed that as a society we spend more time, energy and resource on celebrating a lifetime of love BEFORE it really starts than to celebrate with great joy the amazing lifetime commitment of those who have actually honored their vows before God, mopped up puke on holidays, held hand during the birth of new life, cried together as they said goodbye to loved ones and watched each other go from the sexy youngster they gazed at originally to a person who is wiser, gray and more wrinkled. In the section for these celebrations there were just a couple of silly plastic twenty five and fifties along with some token crap (forgive the term but it was crap). I decided to look other places later on. What I found was the same crap, usually more or less of it but nothing of great beauty or joy like you found in the wedding section.The cheap plastic crap began to symbolize the lack of importance that spending a lifetime with someone should hold. So here is what I began to think what if when a couple got married we said, "Hey this is great! Congratulations on making your decision; to try to accomplish, knowing one of the greatest of loves. Let us know when we can start planning your 25th or 50th wedding anniversary. We are so happy for you it will be a journey of a lifetime". What if the big reception was thrown in honor of actually achieving a lifetime of commitment to another and still knowing (most days anyway) that your life would be so much less without that person. What if upon an engagement a young couple spent years planning THIS big event taking careful notes of what was important or meaningful to the other. What if the dinner served was her Sunday pot-roast he loved for 50 years, prepared by their children and all their friends shared this special treat. What if the flowers were chosen because he brought them to her after each of their children was born. What if the vows were renewed and this time the couple knew the meanings of for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health. What if there was substance to the celebration and it was something that was anticipated and looked forward too for many years? What if as the celebration occurred the couple thought back on all the good times and bad and knew that they had really...really gone the distance. How much sweeter this special day would be. So much more special even than the wedding that is really just a firm starting ground. In our society we would never allow a graduation to take place before the education. We wouldn't give a trophy before the game ended. Yet in the institute of Holy matrimony we do just that. How many of us would finish anything if the prize, graduation, desert came first? If we were promised a desert, without finishing the meal? Would some of us even make an effort when the main dish was hard to swallow? Maybe we should put less into the start of marriage, more into building and succeeding in it and celebrate joyfully at a lifetime of accomplishment. There are only really a few really great loves in our life most of the time it takes us many years to recognize these for what they are; although some occur at an intimate starting block instantly. The love of our Lord, the relationship we have with our parents, our spouse, children, grandchildren and siblings. Some of us grow to love extended family and friends how blessed we are when we can add these to our love box. The greatest loves are the ones we build upon, struggle with, breakdown and rebuild with purpose to gain a stronger tie to someone we care deeply about. Those loves deserve; in my opinion the grandest of celebrations when they occur. (the photo below is of our 25th anniversary a couple of years ago when we finally got to go on our honeymoon; I know we appreciated that time together so much more now than we would have at the start) Copyright2014 Micheline Edwards