Happily Ever After

“Our love story is so pure and perfect, you’d never believe it could be real,” my husband said as we drove home from a restaurant the other night. Sure, it was spoken under the light of a nearly full moon rising against a cotton candy sky. Our stomachs were happy and full with shrimp alfredo and grilled fish tacos, and minds peaceful with the memory of a hike from earlier in the evening. It was a thought spoken in a moment of bliss. But that doesn’t make it any less true. And the more I think about it, the more I realize how little I knew about love until I found myself in the middle of it, and it’s something that continues to surprise and delight me each and everyday. I can’t place the exact moment when I fully fell, heart and soul, for Austin. Just, suddenly, I was, and knew that I had been for sometime. I realized the world was the more beautiful with him in it. And as world-changing as that felt, it was only the beginning of the most beautiful fairytale I’d ever imagined. I always wanted to believe in fairytales, in happily ever after, and that love conquers all. It was falling in love with Austin, in marrying him, that I truly did believe as I came face to face with it’s power.

Raised on a healthy diet of Disney Princess movies, Jane Austen books, and period dramas, I’ve always been something of a hopeless romantic. At the ripe age of 8 I was a fairy Princess, playing in the dirt and climbing trees dressed in tulle dresses, who never needed a prince to save me — but I sure liked the idea of one to fight dragons alongside me. Or for me when I didn’t feel like it. By my college years, I clung to Elizabeth Bennet’s sentiment that only the deepest love would persuade me to matrimony as I watched and rewatched the sitcom will-they-won’t-they stories a la New Girl’s Jess and Nick. All my source texts for love - from period dramas to Taylor Swift’s repeatedly tragic pop ballads - told me that love was a super charged rollercoaster, filled with ridiculous barriers. In short, love is hard — but worth it. I mean, who didn’t get that rush of satisfaction watching Jim from The Office burst into the conference room to ask receptionist Pam out after 3 seasons of dancing around each other. Yet when I found real love, true love, I realized it was so much simpler and so much more beautiful than any of these stories portray.

I’ve been thinking a lot about love stories recently, probably because our first anniversary is this weekend. When I think of ours, I know it would make a terrible sitcom. Don’t get me wrong - we could have had an epic will-they-won’t-moment that killed things before they began. After we’d had a couple unofficial dates, Austin was dropping me off at home and he launched into a “I don’t always understand people well” speech. At the time I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, where I assumed he was trying awkwardly to tell me that he didn’t mean to lead me on and he just wanted to be friends. I was on the verge of devastation. My mind went a little fuzzy and I decided I needed to exit the situation as quickly as possible, so with the super smooth use of finger guns and way more pep than I felt, I said “See you Sunday, buddy!” And with that I fled. I’ve never felt more like Jess Day from New Girl in my life. Contrary to every sitcom and novel I’ve come across, that didn’t set off months of awkwardness and will-they-won’t-they interactions. After a text on my part simply asking Austin what he meant exactly, I realized that he had been trying to say that he wanted to keep seeing me, rather than the other way around. With that bit of faith, grace, and an awkward 15 minutes, from that moment we took our first steps to where we are now. In a way, it was easy. Over this last year of marriage in the middle of a global pandemic that’s what I’ve realized about true love. Even if facing the realities of life’s up and downs is hard, love is easy. In the time since that first, awkward moment, a lot of hard things happened to us, but never between us.

That has probably been the biggest surprise since falling in love with Austin — that love isn’t hard. Life can be, but love — that which exist between us and because of us — isn’t. In fact, because of love, the hardness of life becomes a bit easier. In a way, this shouldn’t have been a surprise. I’ve watch the love grow and flourish between many friends of mine, even as they faced challenges. Some of best friends from my camp days spent most of their time dating and engaged an ocean away from each other. That’s hard. But the love they share seems as easy as breathing. In my own experience, this last year has had its struggles, as we managed the ups and downs of the pandemic and accompanying isolation. That’s hard. Loving Austin, waking up next to him and feeling a surge of thankfulness and adoration every morning is easy. Feeling a swell of pride at seeing him finish his PhD is easy. My heart filling with joy watching Austin giddy in delight at seeing his favorite bird, the nuthatch, is easy. That adoration, pride, joy, and delight never fade, even as we grapple with the challenges and stresses of life. Moreover, the ease of love makes those challenges more bearable.

Call it cliché, but as Austin and I were preparing for marriage we spent a lot of time meditating on 1 Corinthians 13. As much as I love a good period drama or the thrill of a ridiculous rom-com, those aren’t the source texts for love. At least not for our love. 1 Corinthians 13, however, is. For me that is a picture of love that isn’t hard, but can withstand the hardness of life. As we prepared ourselves to spend each day by the other’s side, both Austin and I found ourselves drawn to the words of 1 Corinthians 13:7. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” It was a reminder that through love, all things can be faced.

This last year has been the greatest adventure of my life, brimming with simple, beautiful moments. Watching a sunrise over the lake. Dancing in our kitchen. Catching the other’s eye, and starring, transfixed, at the breakfast table as we still can barely comprehend that such goodness happened to us. They are simple things. Easy things. Lovely things. Our love has taken our lives that were once imperfect, and made them whole perfect, even as the world around us is not. This love, which has it’s source in the perfect love of Christ, has shown us a glimpse of the resurrected, perfected life. In our union, it’s as though heaven and earth have united, for us anyway. Truly, our true love does bear, believe, hope, and endure all things. Resting in the certainty of our love, I am thankful for seeing it’s steadfastness through the hard times and its bliss through the good, and I can’t wait for all the goodness ahead of us. Until then, I’d better get back to celebrating our anniversary with this man I adore.

The fairytales were right after all — love is the greatest power in this world, and true love’s kiss will break every curse.