He said there’s no doubt about it
It was the myth of fingerprints

I’ve seen them all and man

They’re all the same

I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. Maybe it’s because Valentine’s day was last month? Maybe it’s because I’ve agreed to sell myself in a bachelor auction this week? (More to come on this one.) Maybe it’s because I’ll be performing a wedding ceremony in April?

More likely, it’s because Matthew McConaughey just won an Academy Award for best actor in a motion picture.

And somehow it wasn’t for
The Wedding Planner
How To Lose a Guy In 10 Days
Failure To Launch
Fool’s Gold
or Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

If there’s a man that knows how to make a romantic comedy it’s probably…Hugh Grant. But, Matthew McConaughey is definitely a close second.

So I was thinking, why is it that we love romantic comedies so much? I believe it’s because they are really modern day fairytales. And fairytales, unlike fingerprints (sorry Paul Simon), really are all the same.

From Cinderella to Romeo & Juliet to The Wedding Date, the story is the same. Boy meets girl. An undeniable chemistry binds them together. An event happens (usually either and evil outside force or a tragic misunderstanding) that breaks them apart. Then they are reunited to resume their love. And finally….

They live happily ever after.

Recently, I heard someone pine for the elusive fairytale. My first thought was that this girl has seen Love Actually too many times. But she’s not alone is she? It’s what most of us are looking for.

But what part of the fairytale do we really want? We can say that we want the happily ever after. Is that true? Or if we’re honest, do we want the undeniable chemistry? We just want it to last forever.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works.

You see, the entire movie Pretty Woman exists in only a tiny portion of the Fairytale Timeline. And while those initial feelings are intense, it’s only a hint at the true love we’ll later discover. The happily ever after.

Ask yourself this question. If love were only or even mainly about that squishy, pit in your stomach kind of feeling, why would Jesus have commanded us to love our neighbor?

Love at it’s best is the love that one chooses to show. Even when one doesn’t feel at all like showing it at all.

That’s what happily ever after means isn’t it? You wake up and you choose to love. You wake up the next day and you choose to love. You wake up the next day and you choose to love again.

Love isn’t something you put to the test.

Love isn’t something you can’t control.

Ever after love is a choice you make.

*****

Back to the wedding planning.

Since I’ll have a captive audience, I’ll probably share something like this:

I believe love, like life, is holistic. It’s about that pit in your stomach as well as the ever after choices. It’s in her smile and it’s when he takes out the trash without complaining.

Sometimes people are brought into our lives. For some, these are divine events. For others, it’s fate or good fortune. For myself, I believe all experiences of love are actually interactions with the divine. We experience God through the very act of love itself. Relationships therefore take on a spiritual nature.

When we are truly lucky, we meet someone that makes our life better. They make us want to be better people. In fact, they equip us to do so. Often, simply by showing us through their eyes, our true potential. They see us not just as we are, but who we can become.

When this happens, when we find a person like this, we want that person in our lives as much as possible. We crave their touch, the sound of their voice, their smile. Just being around them makes our lives better.

That pit in your stomach? Could it actually be the presence of God?

When we connect to another in love, we are actually connecting to a divine power and it’s overwhelming.

And then slowly, over time, we realize the truer, deeper, eternal, ever after love as the person we love chooses to show us love back.

Isn’t this the fairytale we should be seeking? The opportunity to love, and be loved and to experience God every day with our beloved?

Or as Matthew McConaughey once said, “Life is a series of commas, not periods.”

…it’s okay. He doesn’t know what that means either.