Happily Ever After...?

I was thinking about love this past week.  See, love -as defined and demonstrated by Hollywood -is often an emaciated and sickly thing, a mere shadow of its real self.  Love in the movies is reduced to lust, to an animal desire that excuses rebellion against parents and shirking of responsibilities.  To believe what we watch, love means "never having to say you're sorry."  Love is what you feel when someone makes you feel good.

Love, in the movies, is usually selfish.  Love is about using the other person to feel good and pleasant, and if someone else comes along to make you feel even better, then Hollywood teaches us the virtue of "following your heart" (or as they call it in other places, "being unfaithful.").

We are told that love is to be sought above all else, and that finding "true love" will conquer all odds and result in "happily ever after."

My friends, we're being sold a bill of goods by the Walt Disney Company et al.  This love that is peddled to us might sell well, but it is not real.  It is not lasting.  It does not persevere through trial, because it is at heart self-seeking.

I believe that true love is best exemplified in Jesus Christ, and the way of the Cross.  Love is sacrificial.  Love is for the benefit of the beloved.  Love climbs the heights and endures all things because real love is not about me and what I want, but the other and what he/she needs most.  Real, true, love is a beautiful thing, something that triumphs over all adversity even in the midst of despair.  There may be no "happily ever after" with true love, but all the same "love never fails."

This past week I saw another glimpse of incarnate real love, a love like that love with which God loved us.  Last Wednesday a young woman of my acquaintance passed away after a long fight with cancer.  She was only 23.

She was an amazing young lady.  She became quite the speaker, telling the story of her fight against cancer and testifying to the hope she had in Jesus Christ.  She went on missions trips, she wrote, she sang, she generally was a great influence on all the people around her.  I'd say somewhere around 2,000 people showed up at either the viewing yesterday or funeral today to pay their respects to her -some standing in line for hours to do so.  Her story is remarkable.

But really I want us to know about her husband.

You see, this young woman had been dating a young man rather seriously prior to her cancer diagnosis.  Can you imagine that situation?  What do you do when your girlfriend drops the news on you that she has cancer?  How do you respond when the treatment plan is laid out, and the prognosis is given, and nothing is good news?

There must have been rocky times.  There must have been doubts. There must have been tears and desperation and, above all, temptation to turn away and run.  After all, can you make that choice to love when there is little possibility of "happily ever after?"  How do you, as a young man, make that decision that could potentially make you a caregiver for a long time rather early in life?

How does anyone -in our culture of self-love -so willingly offer his heart with the very real knowledge that it could be broken, and broken very soon?

But that is the decision this young man made.  He proposed in spite of her sickness.  He married her.  He gave her the wedding of her dreams, then he cared for her and gave everything he had for her.

And last week, less than a year since the wedding, she passed away.

The world calls it a tragedy.  They see the devastation of the family and the anguish of her husband and pities them.  I also hurt for them.  I long to bring some word of comfort to this young man's heart, who is far too young to be a widower.

However, I cannot say I pity him.  No, you see, he inspires me.  I hurt for him, but I admire him!  Most of us experience pain because we live in a broken, sinful world.  Life happens, and sooner or later the pain of life is visited upon our own doorstep.  But few of us willingly choose to enter a situation that will likely break our hearts.  We usually shun pain, and insulate ourselves away from it as long as possible.  Yet for the sake of his beloved, this young husband chose the pain.  He embraced the potential of a broken heart for the sake of love.  As I have considered his example over this last week, I realized just how profoundly he exemplifies the way of the Cross.

Is there a "happily ever after?"  Is there a happy ending, as Hollywood would celebrate?  Well, no.

Instead, I see a quieter kind of victory.  I see the triumph of real love over all the hurts and pains of this world.  I see a heroic stand against the narcissistic hedonism our world promotes as the answer.

I see loss and pain willingly taken on, borne for the sake of another.  I see hope in the middle of hurt.  I see a reflection of a love that Hollywood will seemingly never understand.

And there is simply something beautiful, something triumphal, about that.