Some people want to fill this world with silly love songs

Come what may
I will love you
Until my dying day

No mountain too high
No river too wide
Sing out this song
And I'll be there by your side

Throw it all away to be happy
Just for one day

Love lifts us up where we belong
All you need is love
Some people want to fill this world with silly love songs

One of my campers sent me a facebook message today with the link to Elephant Love Song- a shared favorite. It's been a favorite of mine for quite some time-actually probably close to a decade. I think I saw Moulin Rouge for the first time my freshman year of high school. I may have only been 14. I'm now 24. Crazy that I can say I've loved something for a decade. The song and of course the movie, contain all sorts of ideals about love and what it can do for us. "Love lifts us up where we belong."- a perfect example. When I saw it in early high school, I fully believed in that kind of crazy romantic love, though I'd never witnessed it in real life.
Now I'm 24, a decade older. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge. The fight for life has been fought many times and I have the scars to prove it. They aren't visible to the normal human eye. It takes time and energy to see them-for a reason. God has done a lot of healing but they'll never go away completely. Lessons were learned that will not be easily untaught. All of this leaves me with a very keen sense of the everpresent question of true love and what that looks like. It is this constant nagging in the back of my mind that I can't ever shake. I've wrestled with a lot of serious, deep questions-the brokenness of humanity, the place of evil in my faith, who God is, does He really exist, can I really live my life for Someone I can't prove His existence, God's goodness, what is truth, can I really presume to impose my faith upon others, the direction of my life and passions and the list goes on and on. But this question of true love, well, it's never been brought to resolution or even a general acceptance that it may never be answered.
Now I'm not talking about true love in the sense of God's love. I believe God's love exists and I believe that the only way we can show real pure love to others is through Him and the power of His Spirit. I have wrestled that sucker to the ground and beaten it to death.
No, the true love I'm talking about is what we see blasted all over our culture from books to music to tv to movies to magazines. This enigma of perfection between two individuals where the stars align and two souls become one in a glorious display of affection and utter ecstasy that is all-encompassing and completely mind numbing. I have been preaching for years to my peers as well as girls I have mentored that no such thing exists in real life. Since high school and the one time I let my heart get away from me that resulted in falling for a guy that in reality had multiple relationships going on at one time, I have been the poster child for the realistic practical relationship. My girlfriends in high school idolized those chic flicks like The Notebook just as much as any other group of hormone crazed teenage girls. And I witnessed and rescued them countless times from unhealthy relationships. I've seen the carnage and I've been the carnage of this unrealistic expectation that we place upon romantic relationships to fulfill our every need. The pictures have never left my mind and definitely not my heart.
So much so that I agreed to marry a guy because I thought my expectations for a relationship where I was actually attracted to the guy could not be met. So much so that I agreed to marry a guy because well, loving someone is a choice and not a feeling and if you choose enough times to love someone because they love you, you'll start loving them. So much so that I was pressured and manipulated into a very unheatlhy 2 year relationship that lacked any resemblance of true love.
In the midst of the ending of that relationship, one guy snuck under my armor in a way I have had a hard time forgetting- in a way that actually made me believe in the kind of stuff that happens in movies. But I was a mess (what else could be expected after ending a complicated 2 year relationship) and that chance was lost.
Since then, I have flitted from guy to guy with this ideal of true love ever haunting, the lingering taste on the tip of my tongue. No one quite measures up to that experience, and I am left with the question will anyone ever? Will I ever give anyone else a chance?
Guys have come and gone.
Many have tried, but I have become quite adept at keeping them at arm's length. I have a sharp eye and an even keener heart for the male that is looking to get beyond my exterior. And it depends on their personality and character. I'll let them into my life if I'm not attracted to them. I'm not sure if its because of my engagment that I run away from any guy that I could seriously see myself with or because of the experience following my engagement. I am left with completely contradictory messages. First, I am scared of overcommitted guys-ones that want to jump into a relationship and pursue me relentlessly. Second, I am scared letting a guy in and then finding he isn't going to do anything about it-a pattern that has repeated itself in the last few years.
I'm sure much of it has to do with myself. I'm sure much of it has to do with my emotional state and how I don't let people in and how I'm afraid of committment and the list could go on forever.
But one guy looked past all that even when I was in the midst of a really messed up relationship and saw me for who I really am and liked me and got to me. And it haunts me. I've never forgotten it though the chance is long gone. It made me wonder if maybe just maybe some essence of the true love that we all crave does exist for me. And it definitely made me realize that there must be some truth amongst the media's massacre of true love.
As I'm sitting in a movie theater of teenage and college age girls, wiping tears from my own eyes as sniffles resound around me because John's love of his life has married another man, I can't help but think, "To hell with my life, is it so awful to want that kind of love? Is it so awful to want to feel that way even if I can only be with him for a month? To truly feel like your world revolves around this person, that no one else can make you happier, even if it is just for one day? To feel so deeply connected with a person. I want that even if I can't have it forever. I just want to feel it once."