I celebrated, and I mean celebrated, my 25th anniversary with the most wonderful man in the world last week.  It seems so hard to believe that 25 years ago we committed our lives to one another.  We have been through a LOT, both good and bad, but a lot of good.  We grew up together, at least I grew up after marrying him at 18.  He has seen my very worst and maybe a little best (but not a lot).  He knows me better than anyone else and loves me the most, I think.  There is little I wouldn't do for him.  He is my very life.

I was thinking about what love really is.  It's hard to define, especially after 25 years.  I thought I knew what love was when I was 18 and marrying the cutest guy I'd ever seen.  I loved his blue eyes, but even more his passionate love for God that was willing to give anything and pay any cost to follow Jesus.  I wanted to go with him wherever God called him, to help him and to give my life alongside his. 

At times we have struggled in our focus, or maybe I have.  Five children and one miscarriage later things don't seem as black and white as they used to.  Close friends have let us down and relatives have passed away.  Losing a baby on Christmas changed that holiday forever.  Watching a parent lose his mind in recent days has brought incredible sadness and pain.

So what is love?  One thing I'm certain about is that it's not ooshy-gooshy romantic nonsense.  Actually there is that element but it seems somehow small compared to the depth of feeling I have for my man. 

No, real love is about sacrifice.  It's about being there when no one else understands.  It's about doing the hard stuff when no one sees or understands.  It's about suffering together and laughing together and understanding what no one else does.  It's about a promise and a faith that transcends this earth.  It's about service and obeying God.  And it's even more than all of that.

I read some quotes about love that I think begin to express some of what love is about.  Thanks to owlhaven.net for these.  And to my dear, dear husband, thanks so much for being the example of love to me that you have been.  I have been so faithless and lazy in our relationship and you have been true and patient and sacrificing.  I love you beyond anything I could ever have imagined 25 years ago.  I can't even imagine what our love will be like 25 years from now!  But if God wills, I'll be here beside you.  Just where I belong.

Do not think that love in order to be genuine has
to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without
getting tired. Be faithful in small things because
it is in them that your strength lies….Mother Teresa.

“True love” isn’t so much a dreamy feeling that you have
as it is an enduring commitment to give sacrificially — even,
or perhaps especially, when you don’t feel like it….William R. Mattox, Jr.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him….. Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

We all love best not those who offend us least,
nor those who have done most for us, but those who make
it most easy for us to forgive them….Samuel Butler.

The strongest evidence of love is sacrifice….Carolyn Fry.

Spread love everywhere you go: first of all
in your own house. Give love to your children,
to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor…
Let no one ever come to you without leaving better
and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness;
kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in
your smile, kindness in your warm greeting….Mother Teresa.