LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS

May 31, 2009

My time has been used in reading, keeping house, and encouraging our children to continue to not waste time in their education. One of the books I completed reading this past week left me in tears in response to one of the best love stories I have ever read...only to end with the woman dying in the end. What makes for vibrant relationships? What keeps two people in love? What draws two people together? What keeps two people together for a lifetime in complete blyss? A passage from this book expresses the answers to these questions. How many of us truly have relationships like this? Is a relationship described below attainable, or do just a few in this world have the joy of entering into such ecstasy?

'"Look," we said, "what is it that draws two people into closeness and love? Of course there's the mystery of physical attraction, but beyond that it's the things they share. We both love strawberries and ships and collies and poems and all beauty, and all those things bind us together. Those sharings just happened to be; but what we must do now is share everything. Everything! If one of us likes anything, there must be something to like in it - and the other one must find it. Every single thing that either of us likes. That way we shall create a thousand strands, great and small, that will link us together. Then we shall be so close that it would be impossible - unthinkable - for either of us to suppose that we could ever recreate such closeness with anyone else. And our trust in each other will not only be based on love and loyalty but on the fact of a thousand sharings - a thousand strands twisted into something unbreakable."

Our enthusiasm grew as we talked. Total sharing, we felt, was the ultimate secret of a love that would last for ever...Through sharing we would not only make a bond of incredible friendship, but through sharing we would keep the magic of inloveness. And with every year, more and more depth. We would become as close as two human beings could become - closer perhaps than any two people had ever been...

How is your marriage? Does it carry a vibrancy such as described above? Through the book this couple took joy in the sharing and it did not seem like work. Abandoning self to partake in the other's life and enter into their world. If two people are united in this goal, could it be that more marriages might survive? Could it be that more marriages might be more joyous? Is it possible to create this kind of love after 20 years of marriage? Can it be attained if only one person strives for such aliveness in the relationship? I challenge all of us to consider how we can create a thousand strands that twist together so as not to be torn apart. Perhaps there are those relationships which cannot be mended so tightly, and perhaps we have to come to grips with the reality of that, for which we yearn as expressed above cannot be fully known here on earth, but is waiting for us in heaven.