Hope in Love


There is nothing more beautiful than observing couples who have been together for a very long time. I'm talking married couples celebrating 20, 30, 40+ years of marriage. I love the way they look to one another with a love and adoration of each other that words cannot really adequatley express. On observing these loving couples who I admire and adore so much, when I look a little closer and ask what made their love so wonderful, they always start by telling me how much they struggled in former years. When you stop to listen to the stories of these adorable people, you are bound to be taken on a journey much like your typical romance film.

Almost all romantic movies are made up of similar basic elements. The main character of the film will be pursuing two different desires. One desire will always conflict with attaining true love. He or she will need to overcome some form of deception that will reveal the character's nemesis. What is really appealing in any romantic movie is how the two individuals fell in love, not really what happens once they are both together.

Yet it is the happenings in between that make the story ever so appealing and juicy even though it all boils down to one thing, the oohhing and aahhing at the end when the two main characters end up together against all the odds stacked up against them.

For an hour and half of film, about 45 different scenes outline the progress of events. Scenes that set up the life of the main characters, reveal the desires and situations of the leading lady or gentelman, show progress towards his or her pursuits, display the complications, show the main characters transformation. And that is always my favorite part of the movie, always leaving me wondering what happened next. That happy ending and new life that started at the end of the film.

All of the great movies have a hook. The hook is the interesting and juicy part of the story that leaves you wanting to know in anticipation, what happens next?! The hook is the most important part of the movie and the hook determines the movie's very fantastial effect. The same hook that keeps the audience at the edge of her seat is what I imagine to be the most challenging part for the character living the experiencing.

In real life, the hook is the part of the story that can either make or break a marriage. The hook is the nitty gritty ugly stuff that not many would care to share with anyone let alone the general public.

The hook in my story was the day I lost my husband. On the 12th of September 2014. He didn't die, he just suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury in a motorbike accident. At the time my greatest fear was that he wouldn't know who I was when he came out of a coma and even worse, how much he loved me! I didn't marry the perfect man, rather I married a man who loved me perfectly. There were so many things about him that I loved and that were lost due to his injuries. Even though he did remember me and how much he loved me, the fact of the matter is that he was no longer the man I fell in love with, the man that I knew. This all led me to so many questions about him, about us and about me being his wife. I couldn't see how we would ever get through this and the more I searched for the answers, the more questions I had. Until I realised that I was actually being led, through the heavy burdens laid on my heart, to the one true source of love and all things in effect.

I didn't know how I was supposed to love this complete stranger who I was struggling to figure out. This person who I no longer knew. The loneliness of no longer having the husband I loved and knew threatened to pull down into a spiral of never ending demoralization. The panic of wondering how I am supposed to live with this stranger for the next 50 years, pretending to him and to the world that ours is a good marriage.

As all these things weighed on me so heavily, forcing me to run deeper and deeper into a persuit of finding my way, I found comfort and peace in unlikely place called HOPE. I can hope that one day I will love this new husband of mine with an even better love that I did the old one I knew so well. I can hope that the faith I have in our covenant of marriage will not let me down. I can hope that by enduring through the pain and loneliness and letting go of what I lost, I will gain so much more in what the unknown tomorrow has in store. I can hope that the patience and dying to my own needs and desires for a little while will bear good fruit in this life and the next. I can hope that in my "doing the right thing" my young children will remember the example set by their mamma and appreciate it and remember it when they are one day adults needing to make life changing choices of their own. I can hope that my efforts in taking on the roles within the dynamics of our family, roles that ideally and normally are shared by both husband and wife, would be appreciated and somehow rewarded in the long run, not materially but in ways that really count in the big scheme of things. I can hope that the big and difficult choices that I have had made and the leaps and bounds of faith that I had chosen to take would lead me into the perfect will of my Maker, the Sovereign One who spoke the world into being and Who has the ability to drive along by just his breath, the enemy of my soul. 

Real love suffers long, it bears all things, believes all things, endures all things and HOPES ALL THINGS.

Happy Valentines Day 2018!


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