But I'm afraid those movies have done us women more harm than we realize. They have completely and totally distorted how we view true love.
Without realizing it, somewhere in the back of our minds, we've come to think that "true" love must be laced with intense drama, heartbreak, highs, lows, stop-you-at-the-altar-right-before-you-marry-the-mediocre-guy, chase-you-through-Manhatten-on-a-motorcycle, run-through-the-train-station-and-get-down-on-one-knee, over the top kinds of moments!!
Somewhere in the midst of all the Hollywood hype, we've lost appreciation and respect for the quiet, steady, constant love of a man committed to his wife and family.
Over the years, I've been blessed to experience and observe this kind of quiet, committed love in many different ways.
But one story is worth sharing...
It's the love between a man and a woman who married young. Very young. She, at the age of 15 kind of young.
Everyone said they'd never make it. They didn't care. They loved each other.
The first time she ever met him, she was standing in a kitchen sink painting. His first pick up line..."Do you date?"
She told me how he almost didn't make it to their wedding on time because he was fixing his car. But he did show up and they married on a Sunday afternoon with him in a new suit and she in her new lizard shoes.
She told me stories of how they'd sit in their house with one light hanging down in the middle of the room, hovered around a radio, listening to the Grand Ole Opry.
She told me how they would play checkers with a board he had made and bottle caps he had saved.
She told me how they'd go to Fruit Basket Dances at friends' houses.
She told me how he had only made her mad, I mean really mad, one time. And how he did everything he could to make it right.
She told me how they had raised 4 children together through good times and bad and had lived to see a slew of grandchildren and great grandchildren.
He was a man, a quiet man, that was committed to the Lord, his wife and his family. He worked hard day after day to provide for them.
He would never make it as the lead man in any movie and would have never graced the cover of any novel. (He did, however, have such beautiful blue eyes...) And his slanted, left-handed writing wouldn't have penned any words to be passed down through the ages.
But he had the love of one woman...my grandmother. His baby.
I don't think I ever, ever heard him call her by any other name. She was his baby.
I was blessed to watch her hold his hand when he crossed over from death to life. As he was being ushered into eternity by his Savior, she was stroking his head. She never left his side during those days of suffering. She, suffering herself, stayed beside him. She wiped his face. She brushed his hair.
And even in his most delirious of moments, he would search the room for his Baby. He wanted her by his side. And by his side was where she stayed.
I saw in the hospital room that week, day after day, true love. Real love. Committed, quiet, last-forever kind of love.
No, not a love that would make it on the big screen, but an amazing kind of love that runs deep and can't even be parted by death.
